Here come the Iran experts

As you’ll note from every news service, something’s up in Iran. They just completed their Presidential elections and announced a big victory for regime favourite Ahmadinejad; now there are protests that the result is fraudulent. The word ‘coup’ is being bandied about.
The overall result doesn’t seem out of line with what little I know about Iran; Ahmadinejad has a lot of support out of the cities. That said, the details I’ve seen talked about certainly raise eyebrows. The reported victory margin is huge for a President whose only consistent public-image successes were in his interactions with the U.S. More alarming signs are noted by Juan Cole, such as Ahmadinejad reported as taking Tehran by over 50%. Cole is of course cautious about whether this is proof of tampering, but he concludes that it “looks to me like a crime scene”.
In any case, it is clear that the big cities are hosting a challenge to the legitimacy of the election result, and that the regime is mobilising in force to put down the dissent. If the election was stolen, there’s no way to hand it back to the rightful owner now – the regime has thrown its weight behind this and unless the Supreme Leader goes down we’re stuck with four more years of Ahmadinejad. What’s at stake now is the terms on which the regime operates from here on. Things have got a bit rougher and tighter since Khatami’s term as President but overall the Revolutionary Council and the Supreme Leader have been able to exert a lot of control relatively softly; expect that to change, and for political battles to get a lot more upfront in the coming four years.
Iran exerts a lot of power over the region, so there will be global consequences for this sequence of events. We all just have to wait for the battles to be fought and resolved. Of course, the rest of the world should be quick to demand transparency of election processes and the right to protest freely. Soft support for the relatively-reform friendly candidate Mousavi isn’t a bad idea either. Still, Ahmadinejad will be in the seat for the next four years and it’s important to keep talking with the man. He’s far more conservative than I’d like but he’s also smart and principled; we could do a lot worse than him.
And don’t get carried away. This is hardly a coup; the President of Iran isn’t even the head of state. It isn’t a civil war either and isn’t going to become one. And as dramatic as the photos of protest are, they do not tell more than a tiny part of the story.
Also worth a look: Laura Secor at the New Yorker.

No Men On Cover plskthx

Suraya’s Filament magazine has been getting a fair bit of press of late – a five-minute feature on nightly current affairs TV show Close Up, an interview on NatRad and BBC Radio 1, and also The Daily Mail spat the dummy and missed the point which, Suraya reports, is quite good for the credibility.
So this latest post from Suraya gives you a good opportunity to raise your eyebrows in consternation:

Filament has just been knocked back by the first distributor to say they’re not going to distribute us on the basis that we have a man on our cover, not a woman. That’s the rule – women’s magazines can’t have men on the cover. But men’s magazines can have either a man or a woman on their cover.

Yes indeed. I leave all the ways in which this is stupidwrong as an exercise for the reader. (Okay, you get one free to start you off: there is a global print media crisis happening. These old rules do not work.)

Pecha Kucha 5

Made it to Pecha Kucha last night, first one I’ve got to. It’s a format for creative types to share Some Stuff using a 20-slides-with-20-seconds-per-slide format. Was gud.
Briefly, I particularly enjoyed:

  • Tim Bollinger, whose distinctive comics-based political activism was great fun;
  • Jared Forbes of Lumen who talked about remodelling the visitor centre at Mt Bruce nature reserve;
  • Maurice Bennett, the guy who makes art out of toast, who was just as much fun as you’d expect;
  • Chris Jackson talking about chair design across 2000 years;
  • Joshua Judkins of global geektech darlings Ponoko, who talked about playing the Lost Ring alternate reality game and blew my mind a bit with some of what happened after I stopped paying attention (my earlier post on the Lost Ring);
  • and of course Edward Lynden-Bell of this parish, who talked about the Drake Equation and the likelihood of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe.

It was good fun and definitely worth the $9. Pecha Kucha nights are springing up all over; check your local area to get in on the action.

RESOLVE group

Yesterday attended a talk at university by Dr Wojke Abrahamse of Surrey’s RESOLVE working group, about their research project to encourage lifestyle changes in the home in response to climate change. Their project used a mix of information provision, goal setting and tailored feedback over the internet, and achieved significant changes.
This has a lot of crossover with my own research in this area (indeed, one of the questions asked was whether anyone had tried using groups – I held my tongue but will email the relevant parties later). It also has the same limitations – self-report risks of inflating results, preaching to the converted, etc.
Three things of interest:
(1) there is some evidence that environmental changes are more likely to take root when accompanied by other big lifestyle shifts, particularly moving to a new home. Seems obvious now it’s been pointed out. Something to keep in mind anyway…
(2) one of the participants in Wojke’s study was so enthusiastic he tracked carefully the energy usage for each shower by each member of his family… among his detailed conclusions? “The strongest indicator of shower energy use is hair length”. Hee! Is Greenpeace ready to start a “short hair will save the planet” campaign?
(3) this came out in discussion – Wojke felt that the very different circumstances of each person make it difficult to advise people in general where they should start if they want to make some changes, but I think her own data tells a different story. The right place to start is with the very easiest things. All behaviours are not created equal, and some can shift markedly without much difficulty (e.g. stopping the use of standby on your appliances, shifting to low-power lightbulbs) while others demand much more to shift (e.g. using your car less, shifting to home-cooked food from prepared processed food). In her own data, car use patterns hardly changed, even though change in other areas was distinct; this is precisely to be expected. It just seems obvious to me that people should start with the very easiest things (regardless of the relative ecological impact of those things) because each change builds up context for, commitment to and moves identity towards environmental responsibility. (This also betrays my bigger diagnosis that individual action is primarily useful for its consequences in the political marketplace, making politicians act like this stuff matters to voters.)

Slow Walkin’ Linky

Tintin vs. Predator.
Cracked profiles 5 other-pedias. Conservapedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica are the most interesting if you haven’t encountered them before.
Visualizing randomness.
A 2007 New Yorker story on how criminal profiling is bunkum.
Free album by Del the Funky Homosapien: funk man (the Stimulus Package).
And finally: International Jurassic Park Erotic Fan-Fiction Writer’s Association.

Alien: The Prequeling

I can’t let this pass without comment.
It’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Alien this year (a couple weeks ago on May 25 to be precise). The anniversary has been marked by word emerging that a new Alien film is in the works.
Wikipedia entry for the “space jockey” alien from the first film: “In the bonus materials of the special edition Alien DVD, director Ridley Scott expresses the opinion that a film exploring the backstory of the Space Jockey would be an interesting direction for the series to take.”
Tom Rothman, co-Chair of Fox, 28 April, answering a question about whether something is going on with Ridley Scott and Alien: “I think he’s toying with the idea and that would be great for us. I mean, it’s always been a matter of, really, if you can get the originator to do it that would be the greatest thing, so I’ve got my fingers crossed, all of them.”
Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother and partner, May 29: “Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company.”
Carl Rinsch is a director of commercials. The one doing the rounds is this: (here are others)

I’ll always have a soft spot for the Alien flicks. I first watched Aliens with a friend on an illegally dubbed copy hired from a friend’s older brother; we watched it in the afternoon and had to turn it off halfway through and do something else for a while because the ride was so intense. It remains to this day my favourite film, and my nomination for the most well-crafted film of all time. The Alan Dean Foster novelization of Alien was the first horror story I read, before I saw either film. I love the first film dearly, am a fierce defender of the third film, and think the first 3/4 of the fourth film has a lot to recommend it. I bought all the comics, which in many ways featured the best development of the source material and incidentally were my gateway into the broader comics scene. I paid actual human money for the Colonial Marine Technical Manual and two different editions of the Walt Simonson adaptation of the first film. I own a children’s book that is a genuine spin-off from the Aliens universe. And, of course, my translation of the Aliens mythos into roleplaying form means I’m still known as the Aliens guy around the NZ RPG scene, almost ten years after my last Aliens game*.
I love these films. And I have to say, I’m not wild about a prequel, Ridley Scott or no Ridley Scott.
There are mysteries to unfold, certainly. What was the nature of that space jockey alien? How did the Company know to send the Nostromo to that planet? Had there been human contact with the aliens before?
Is there a film in those mysteries? I don’t see it, myself. The mysteries around Alien are classic examples of questions that don’t need to be answered. They’re like the questions in the original Star Wars that were answered by the prequel trilogy – the answers served only to diminish the originals by closing down possibilities of meaning. What had felt rich ended up feeling empty. (Besides, Michael Jan Friedman wrote a novel that answered all those mysteries. Incidentally, it also featured the only appearance of New Zealand in the entire Aliens mythos.)
So I’m hoping this film won’t come to pass. In fact, I’m hoping that we do get a remake or a reboot instead of a prequel – the franchise is too lucrative to be abandoned for long, so I’d prefer something that didn’t try to weave itself into the margins of what has come before but instead made a forceful restatement. It would fail, sure; but at least it would only fail itself, rather than failing the original as well.
On the other hand, a 30th anniversary Aliens relaunch that I am excited about: a new comic series from Dark Horse. Rock.
* for those waiting for news of the next one, and I know you’re out there: I wouldn’t be holding your breath…

Freeze for Climate Change

This Friday there’s going to be a Freeze in many centres around NZ. Random people will assemble at 1pm and freeze in place for 5 minutes. Volunteers will hand out little flyers about climate change to people.
It’s for the UN’s World Environment Day, June 5. This year’s host is Mexico City, whereas last year it was good old Wellington, NZ – not that you could tell. Although the Freeze guys did their first run then too:

They expect many more people this time out. The WED theme this year is specifically climate change oriented: ‘Your Planet Needs You – Unite to Combat Climate Change’. There’s a specific focus on the Copenhagan meeting in December, which adds to the messages out of the massive Kyoto Science and Technology Forum in December, which identified Copenhagen as the crucial moment; and the recent talk by Bill McKibben of 350.org pushing for a global day of action in October. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Copenhagen as we get closer to the conference, but the take-home message is that everyone involved in climate change response is looking at this event. This will be where things happen, or don’t happen, that set us on our global course.
So: Friday. Standing still in a street. If you click the videos in my Friday Linkys you’ll know I’m a sucker for that kind of street theatre-intervention. Will it save the world? Of course not. Will it help? A bit. And every little bit helps. Check out the website and head along. If you’re not in NZ, figure out what your area is doing to mark the day – there’ll be something happening. Keep your eyes open and if you can have some fun along the way, great.
Oxfam NZ has a petition on this same subject.
Another reason to care about Copenhagen: it is the stomping ground of REPTILICUS.