Month: November 2011

Good for the Greens

Three years ago, I was disillusioned about the low % of votes cast for the Green party, despite what I thought was a perfect set of conditions for them to thrive. “Is 7% as high as it’s ever going to get? Will the Green party always be this small?”

Turns out the people in the comments who said, nope, it can go bigger – they were right. The Green vote is sitting around 11% this time around.

It’s a marvellous result for them, even if it sits in the context of an election result that doesn’t give much to celebrate – very low turnout, a savage defeat for the main opposition Labour party, key losses for the left in almost every close electorate contest, and (most galling) the ridiculous spectacle of consummate politician (and political opportunist) Winston Peters riding in at the last moment and polling nearly 7% in doing so.

It’s a clear success for the new approach taken by the Greens, a careful don’t-scare-the-horses, friendlier-to-business model that has drawn a lot of criticism from their base. Ultimately I’m comfortable with this; given the failure of the big parties to engage with urgent environmental problems, the Greens need to be a party of influence, and if they have to sell some of their soul to get there then that seems like a political calculation they need to make.

A less-scary Green party also opens up space on the left for a true social justice party to come in and be vocal about those causes. The Mana party is the first shot at this, but I’m not yet confident it can hold together under the strain of the big personalities at its core; only winning one seat might be a blessing for the longer game.

Anyway. The country voted John Key back into power, despite polls showing they don’t really like his policies and don’t really know much about the rest of his party. That’s not a great endorsement for the NZ version of democracy, I guess.

Gonna be a tough three years.

(I also predicted “Many inside the Nats are eager to get on with their 90s-era project while they have their hands on the tiller. Expect big battles inside the National party as the ideologues take on the pragmatists.” – and the view from the outside is that I was wrong about that. There might be battles inside the party but almost nothing has leaked out into public view, it’s all a united front behind that nice Mr Keys. Anyway, with a second term won while openly campaigning on asset sales and welfare reform, the pragmatists and ideologues now find themselves happily in alignment. The waiting game has worked out beautifully for them.)

Golden Claws Linky

(This post is an election-free zone, Kiwis. Take a break, grab a cuppa, and make with the clicky.)

Thanks to the kindness of one @BKDrinkwater, I saw a movie in a cinema yesterday (second time this year! Whoop!) – it was Tintin, and it was fun, though I can see why the purists were furious – it was definitely a movie interpretation of Tintin, not just an adaptation. After which, some Wiki clicking revealed that there was a 1947 stop motion adaptation of the adventure Crab With The Golden Claws. Fascinating. Would love to see that.

Achewood is back! Don’t start with the most recent strip though. And don’t start at the start. Start… um… I dunno where. Randomly.

I haven’t even watched this yet but it’s getting muchas sharing by people who comment stuff like “amazing” and “so cool” so I reckon it’ll be worth your time.

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

What have those Muppets been auditioning for?

Watch while you can: song medley at the Jim Henson memorial service. Clips from this incredible event never stay up on YouTube for long. This is wondrous and a bit heartbreaking.

Found that via the AV Club’s ongoing retrospective of the classic Muppet Show – which also makes the entirely accurate claim that Rita Moreno performing Fever is “one of the best of the best segments of any TV variety show ever”. Watch it. 2 minutes of incredible.

And while Muppeting: Muppets audition for the part of Yoda

Disturbing LEGO insight

You Are Not So Smart does social insight, small groups, the Robbers Cave experiment, and a whole bunch of good stuff that I love.

Fascinating overview of the story of the online alternative currency BitCoin at Wired.

Great feature journalism: the men who maintain the Forth Bridge.

How Adbusters started the worldwide Occupy movement. And here’s a nice summary of what Occupy is all about.

Octopus thinking. I love octopus stories. This story is an example of why. (via Emma)

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cosplay. I haven’t watched this show so I’m not a brony. But it sounds like a good time.

And finally… India talent show

Gag-a-minute Linky

People liked something I put on Twitter during the deeply weird events of yesterday morning in NZ politics. It ended up on the Listener blog even (at 1pm). The best bit is that not ten minutes after I wrote that our PM came out with a line that really did sound like it was scripted by the greatest satirist of the antipodes:
“Key was asked if the investigation was an appropriate use of police resources.
‘The good thing is we’ve lowered the crime rate by seven per cent across the country so they do have a little bit of spare time'” (Source)

Humour is a funny thing. (See what I did there?) I’ve always been fascinated by the behind-the-scenes of laugh-getting, the hard graft that goes into working up a gag. Twitter itself is a bit like a giant gag-writer’s room, everyone chucking ideas and variants at the wall until something sticks. There was a great This American Life that looked inside the writer’s room for The Onion, and I’ve been listening lately to Robin & Josie’s Utter Shambles, which is a charming podcast that always seems to end up in a discussion about the nature of comedy-as-work. It’s an inside-baseball look at how comedians interact with each other and position themselves in relation to the rest of the world, and a reminder of just how distinctive is the comedian’s role in society. Highly recommended. The Alan Moore episode is great as a starting point, it’s how I got in.

The usual gang of idiots from MAD magazine had a reunion. Also: Podcast interview with Al Jaffee, who at age 90 is still drawing the fold-in at the back of the mag. Amaaaazing.

Bret McKenzie talks to the NYT about writing songs for the Muppet movie. Like this one:

Gnat questions the value of a degree in computer science vs. getting out into a startup. He’s been losing his former confidence in what was the right course of action. Of interest if you are, or someone you know is, heading towards university age and looking towards a career in coding.

Draw a Stickman

Graphic designer takes issue with that kerning game linked last week

Guy has the script for John Boorman’s 1970 attempt to film Lord of the Rings. He takes you through it. Sounds… wacky. And very 1970s.

Early Star Wars scripts! See how Lucas’s ideas evolved, if you have the patience. I’m more curious why no-one has tried to make a fan-film of one of these early versions…

Ayn Rand: she really, really admired a brutal murderer. Woman had issues.

Film critic Hulk on Happy-Go-Lucky. The all-caps Hulk-speak is exhausting, but stick with it if you’ve seen this film, because this is easily the smartest thing i’ve ever seen written about Mike Leigh’s semi-masterpiece.

The McRib as arbitrage.

Via Ivan: earliest known prank phone call. 1884.

Naomi Klein writes very damn well about climate vs capitalism. Highly highly recommended.

And finally, via Hannah, put some Caruso in your Christmas. Coincidentally, this is the five-year anniversary of when I put this gem in a Friday linky:

Election ’11: Something you can do

In our MMP electoral system, every vote matters.

Social psychology tells us that the biggest influence on our behaviour is the behaviour of people we know.

Our day-to-day social groups usually share our opinions on political matters, but Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, other social media tools) connects many of us to people beyond this.

So here’s a simple thing you can do before the election: announce on social media how you’re going to vote. Perhaps also say why if you can sum it up in a sentence. No big song and dance required, no need to engage in arguments if people reply. Just speak up.

It will count.

D&D for MMP

On Saturday I helped out for a few hours at the D&D for MMP fundraiser, in which some very game folks embarked on a 24-hour D&D marathon to fundraise for the Campaign for MMP.

MMP, for those outside of NZ, is our current proportional electoral system, which is coming under the eye of a national referendum. I think it’s likely to romp comfortably home, but complacency is not a good idea when there are some well-funded opposing forces with an interest in decreasing the fairness of our democracy.

My role was to sit down with my friend Ben and run the social media for 4 hours, 4pm to 8pm – a live update stream, Twitter, Facebook, and the blog. We had a good ol’ time, and reviewing the 24 hours it is clear our stint was, er, the least reverent.

(I can’t access the livestream right now to find it but I recall being particularly pleased by a comment speculating that the monstrous Owlbear was created after an owl and a bear sat down for a cup of tea in Epsom.)

The event raised about $2000 which is very nice for a grassroots campaign to have. It also seemed to get some nice profile-raising media out of the event – hopefully that translates into a few more dollars and votes.

It was a fun time, and nice to contribute to the bigger picture for a change, something that’s been very hard to do while having adventures in nappyland.

Grow and Grow Linky

So I have a Linky file where I bookmark all the odds and ends I come across while browsing the internets. It is a big file. But this week I don’t even need to dig into it because so much stuff has turned up this afternoon or in my email. So it will grow and grow and grow…

Geological Society of America finds the lair of the Kraken. (At least, an expert explains an ambiguous fossil site by speculating there was a real big scary octopus that ate plesiosaurs and then arranged their bones in pleasing patterns. Eek.)

Aaron put this in comments last Friday: cheese or font?

George Monbiot exposes the self-mythologising BS indulged in by the ultra-rich. Ahhhh.

Baltimore youth develop a slang term to fill in a gap in English grammar (via Michael Upton)

Helpful Tumblr tells you if something is racist. (Via the Knifeman, who can’t figure out why the Star Wars prequels get a pass)

Via lots of people: a baby re-enacts scenes from classic movies.

10% of UK population have a parasite messing with the dopamine levels in their brains. Unnerving.

Big collages of movie posters show the patterns in their designs. Some of these are more convincing than others. Definitely worth a look.

Ancient Iran had a drive-thru weapons shop. Um.

Think of a person. Now this genie will ask you either/or questions until he guesses who it is. Surprisingly good. (via… someone)

When Return of the Jedi was being filmed, some fans crept up to the location and took a bunch of spy photos. These are great.

Two interesting items from d3vo:
Sly Stallone designs a pen. This is everything you hope it will be.

And The Stonehenge Song!

And finally, I don’t know what this is

Lodge Linky

A bevy of Twin Peaks linky:
* a Twin Peaks computer game, in retro 8-bit style, for free download
* the Dale Cooper tapes – digital version of the cassette tape of all Cooper’s reports to the mysterious Diane, including all the TV show reports plus a bunch more made specifically for this release
* amazing photos from the making of the final episode of the series, taken by actor Richard Beymer

Scientific American’s archive to 1845 is free to access until the end of November.

The Kerning game! I got 100% on half of these, which made me far happier than typography has ever made me before. (Hmm, except maybe baiting people with messages in comic sans.)

Craig Ferguson has Amanda Palmer, moby, Stephen Merritt & Neil Gaiman performing “Science Fiction Double Feature” from Rocky Horror…

The Awl has this lovely article about Sherlockians, their most exclusive society, and their “Great Game”

Free online service to manage all the admin that goes along with flatting with people: Flatmin.

There was gonna be more but all today has been spent with poor feverish babby. So just have time to add this:

And finally… Dangerous Minds found this, unsurprisingly. It is… just set aside 1 minute 23 seconds and watch it.

Anonymous Events

(This was going to be part of the Linky, but I realised I wanted to say a bit more, so….)

Seems like Anonymous, the global hacker group that emerged from the wild free-for-all of the 4Chan websites and burst on the scene with global action against scientology, are doing some interesting stuff right now.

Operation Darknet was a sophisticated plan that, if I’m reading it right, broke through the anonymity of the “Darknet” (the most hidden parts of the internet) to grab identity details for a paedophile network; and it did this because paedophile users undermine and discredit the Darknet, on which Anonymous relies to function. That’s a bit of a hashed summary but the statement is well worth a look. Particularly interesting, they were supported by contacts in the group behind the Firefox web browser.

Operation Cartel on the other hand is yet to launch, and is even crazier. They’re taking direct action against a very dangerous & very resourceful Mexican drug cartel. I would not be surprised if some Anonymous members – or those believed by the cartel to be members – ended up dead because of this action.

Makes me reflect on Anonymous. Global worldchanging events are being enacted and affected by a bunch of 14-year-old tech geeks*. This isn’t a phase; this is structural, part of the incredible shift in power that new communication technologies have enacted. Global life has shifted (irretrievably) online, and power in the online world cannot be restricted by politics or class or any of the traditional control mechanisms. Online, power derives from knowledge and commitment, and only knowledge and commitment. And teenagers are famous for fiercely adopting causes, and for inhaling knowledge about subjects of interest. Oh – and for having time to fill. Anonymous and its successor networks will be making news for a long, long time to come.**

* Yes, that’s the stereotype and it is unclear how much it relates to the reality. But as stereotypes go – I mean, whoa. This has been the demographic with the least social power of all demographics. That was the entire rationale behind that great TV show “Freaks & Geeks”. Time was, 14yo tech geeks were the lowest of the lowest of the low on the totem pole of power. Well. That’s changed.

** And yes, sometimes Anonymous do crazy stuff that probably hurts more than it helps. Comes with the territory. I hope the ratio of help to hurt shifts positively as experiences accumulate through the network and are passed down to new generations of members. And it seems to me that the primary motivation of Anonymous is social justice, with lulz a close second; I suspect that these networks will always tend towards these motivations, partly because teens are fundamentally concerned with these things, and partly because more negatively oriented motives will not be able to sustain a large network. In other words, I think their hearts will always be in the right place when they break stuff they shouldn’t.