Month: August 2012

Husbands Linky

First reading in Parliament passed, by a resounding 2 to 1 majority – it seems like NZ is on the road to marriage equality. Marvellous, marvellous news. Go celebrate with the webseries Husbands, by Jane Espenson among other smart folks. It has just started season 2, has a bunch of neat cameos, and is funny.

Doing the rounds again, a timely reminder of just what a dramatic and risky achievement Neil Armstrong (and Aldrin) managed: Nixon’s speech (by William Safire) prepared in case they didn’t come back. (via Frank)

Melanie Lynskey, NZ’s most Charlie-Sheeniated export, is doing a guest blog run at the interesting Film Experience. I like her DVD collection. Unsurprising really.

Back to the Future in Grand Theft Auto

How the patent system is really, really broken, and Apple’s recent legal victory shows how bad this is for pretty much everything. (via Michael U)

Some cute babbies listen to a guitar. I would have linkied this even before I became a dad. 45 seconds of delight.

Ruth H sent me the amazing Schmidt Pain Index. This is like a menu at a whisky appreciation night, only describing insect stings. (She got it via Mindhacks, who got it via RadioLab, which means this is the third time in six weeks that Friday Linky appreciates Robert Krulwich.)

Somehow or other Malc found this, which is an argument against the existence of e-books that just gets a leeeeeetle bit out of control. Er, WILDLY and OFFENSIVELY out of control.

Y’all are reading Gem Wilder’s blog by now right? She does linky stuff too! Her latest Wilder Web update has a big list of happymaking things, Laurie Penny on Julian Assange, Royal Tenenbaums, Stockholm subway, and moar! And she says nice things about me, *blush*.

Best personal ad ever?

It is actively hurting me to think about climate change stuff right now. George Monbiot captures the zeitgeist in his blog this week, pointing out that news of a huge new record melt of arctic ice was ignored by UK media, while front pages were covered with excited debate over where a new airport runway should go. In the US, the Republican National Convention has turned out to be a de facto climate denial party, rolling back even the verbal concessions to its reality made during the GWB administration. And closer to home, there’s this and there’s this and aaaargh. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
Go read this post by Steve Hickey about why he’s giving a few bucks to the 350 movement. I recommend you do the same. I haven’t done this yet myself but blogging about it here will compel me to follow through. I’ve got to get back on the train of taking actions around this, and every little step builds momentum. (Also related: why we are poles apart on climate change, via Karen)

Baby Got Back, in the style of Ian McKellan (via Judd Karlman)

NYT investigative piece about online reviewers for hire. (via Making Light)

Album sleeves in their original locations (via Pippy D)

Do you have enough reasons yet to love Emma Stone? No? Here’s another one then: Blade Runner photoshoot (via starlajo)(LINK FIXED NOW DOH SORRY)

Star Wars, spaghetti western style (via Pearce)

Jayne Eyre (not a typo) (via Making Light)

An amazing piece of whimsical guerilla public art: ride the bus, make a fish eat people’s heads.

And finally, via Chris Elder: water wigs, images of water exploding on the heads of bald men.

Safety & exclusion at the Dowse

The Dowse Art Museum here in controversial Lower Hutt is hosting an exhibition with a video component that only women will be allowed to view. The video shows Muslim women getting ready for a wedding. Limiting views to women is a condition of display, in accordance with the wishes of the subjects.

This has got people talking, unsurprisingly, but most of what is being said is dumb.*

As far as I can tell, sitting under this issue are two contrary positions, and I don’t think they’re self-evident. Here’s my take on them:

“A public gallery must not share an artwork if some people will be excluded from seeing it.”
vs.
“A public gallery can share an artwork even if some people must be excluded from seeing it in order for the subjects to feel safe.”

Now, the way I’ve written that second position is important. I think most people who align with the first position think they’re arguing against something different, namely this: “A public gallery can share an artwork even if some people must be excluded from seeing it because another culture says so.”

This is a spectacularly unhelpful framing, for all sorts of reasons, but mostly because it treats culture difference as the final word. Their culture is just different to ours, and in this case, it’s offensively different! But culture isn’t the end of the story, it’s just the beginning. Look under the hood, and you find that cultural differences are almost always just different expressions of values that are shared across cultures. Here, it’s about safety, and about how people in different cultures feel safe. In the culture shown in this video display, safety is heavily gendered in a way it isn’t here.

If you accept my framing that talks about safety, then you have a discussion on your hands, a proper ethical conundrum. Does safety justify exclusion? Can exclusion ever be justified? It would be nice to have that discussion. I see no signs of it so far, though.

—

My personal view right now? I have to say it doesn’t bother me. Here’s why:

I want New Zealand to be a multicultural society, and that means one that accepts cultural practice that is not consonant with our own expectations. If we want to welcome people from other cultures, then we have to give them space on our turf to do things their way. It’s that simple.

(What’s not simple is figuring out exactly how far that goes. FGM is not to be blithely welcomed in my multicultural NZ, for example. Where to draw a line has to be carefully, probably painfully, argued out over generations; but the starting point and the principle is nonetheless clear.)

So I’m totally cool with an art gallery following an other-culture’s ideas, including a public-funded gallery as a small part of its ongoing work. Violating my cultural norms for a short time seems like a small price to pay to give space for, and access to, another culture.

And yes, the norm here is involves gendered discrimination. The idea of gender equality is awesome when it’s used to attack the concentration of social power in men. But that just doesn’t apply here; this is about protecting the social power of women. I think I support this inequality for the exact same reasons I support equality in the vast majority of contexts.

Also: there’s an idea that allowing this exclusion weakens the general principle of equality in our society. I don’t buy it. Maybe someone could convince me, but I just don’t see how you can get there from here.

Also 2: yes, there might be legal issues – if this is non-compliant with Human Rights legislation, then it’s gotta go, because that’s the law. But it’ll seem to me like an exercise of law that isn’t warranted, a false positive on the spirit of the legislation.

That’s where I’m sitting right now. Totally open to being pushed or pulled around on this, should a sober exploration of this ethical situation ever eventuate. Ha ha.

—

* Really dumb. There’s a lot of talk about political correctness, obscenity, Sharia law, thin edges of wedges, and numerous tangential comments on Maoris and playdough. The complainant getting media is a perfect example of this type, and I think it’s obvious his opposition is bound up with some unpleasant stereotypes and fears.

Woof Woof Ruff Linky

Dog Shaming is being linkied everywhere but I’m linking too because it is indeed perfect. Dogs have a broad range of dog-type emotions, but “shame” might be the one that is most similar to the human version.
Also canine: BARKOUR! (via Fraser P)

I’ve linked to The Dark Room before, but here it is again because it’s been turned into an Edinburgh Fringe show. Well worth a click around. No, I haven’t made it out of the Dark Room, not without being beaten to a pulp anyway. (ta to Craig Oxbrow for the heads up)

Teju Cole, previously mentioned here during that whole Kony debacle, has been continuing his awesome micro-length fiction on Twitter (so different to the other microfiction I’ve seen on Twitter which is almost always about cleverness). Here he explains why a Mos Def/Talib Kweli/Common track from the late 90s is perfect music. (Via Amund. Circuitous hat tip to Michael Upton who recommended listening to Black Star back before it was cool to recommend listening to Black Star.)

Also about hippity hop music: this fascinating piece analyses the rap technique of fabulous Jean Grae from a music composition perspective; & Nathan Rabin’s history of hiphop reaches ’91 with lots of early Tupac and a surprising-to-me revelation about MF Doom’s identity pre-MF Doom.

Music puns! (via MrsMeows)

Strong Female Protagonist: a neat webcomic. Gender, superhero deconstruction, social justice, other stuff. Beautiful art & confident storytelling.

Who influenced who? Crazy data visualisation (via Hugh Dingwall)

NZ is considering legislation to require plain packaging for cigarettes. British American Tobacco’s response is the most reprehensible social marketing campaign in quite some time. (Big spend, too, with lots of TV ads as well as newspaper/magazine presence.) “CREATE” shouts the advertising (see the poster on the NBR), or if you read the small words too, If We Create It, We Should Own It. Yep, they’re making it about intellectual property, which is (1) so unlikely to succeed they’re either grasping at straws or running some elaborate double game, and (2) even more sickening than the usual corporate attempts to co-opt the idea of creative ownership. And I know this isn’t even a link, I’ve basically put a rant in the middle of a linky this week, sorry about that.

Laurie Penny writes an epic, personal, (very triggering of course) piece on rape. Julian Assange on the one hand and the entire Republican party on the other have generated lots of noise on the subject lately, but this account cuts through the din.

Photorealistic portrait created with ballpoint pens.
Speaking of which: customer reviews for BIC’s “For Her” Ballpoint Pen.

Great 2010 Fortean Times article on Dennis Wheatley, writer of super-popular stories of Drawing Room Satanists. (via Danyl)

The rise and fall of grunge typography (via Allen Varney)

53 jokes you probably missed on ‘Arrested Development’ (yep, most of these I missed)

163 horror movies in 2 1/2 minutes

James Earl Jones reads The Raven (via Bruce Baugh)

Door does a Miles Davis impression (via Nick Tipping)

TARDIS blueprint (via Allen Varney)

Maude Apatow (yes relation) writes about falling out of love with Twitter

And finally, via Russell Brown, it turns out Western music has been doing music videos wrong this whole time. K-Pop with PSY shows the way:

We know it linky

NASA and we know it (via half the internet)

Trond thinks about the contradiction of corporates that don’t extend free market principles to their own internal structures, instead operating in strict command & control hierarchies.

Step aside Lego. Playmobil madness is here.

Famous album covers recreated with my socks (via Gem Wilder)

The invader

No doubt you’ve seen the remix Gotye made of his most famous track, entirely from YouTube clips of people covering (or parodying) the song. Svend has pointed out this was inspired by the interesting remix project ThruYou. There is also a TED talk.

War Sand: whoa.

15 minutes of lovely coffee chats between paired-off Brit comedians. Really enjoyable.

Backstage lingo in NYC restaurants (via Paul Litterick)

For my academia peeps: Why Impact Factors Suck

What makes Paris look like Paris?

I’ve seen a few guides to how to correctly fold fitted sheets, but I never remember them. Here’s an excellent step-by-step that is impossible to forget. My sheet-folding life has changed for the better!

David Tennant – spoken word performance of Spandau Ballet’s Gold

The story of…. pallets. Really interesting. (Allen Varney again)

New website actually reads through the Terms of Service for many websites & rates them. Cool cool cool. (Allen Varney again again.)

“Science chicks from history!” (a tumblr) (via Kat Urbaniak)

Mo Farah running away from things

More people are killed by cows than by sharks. So: cow attack survival guide

Indy scenes that never happened (via Craig Oxbrow)

And finally, via Dave Cormack and several other people: Baby Got Back, sung by the movies

And also finally, from everywhere, it’s another Call Me Maybe riff. Wait a second, Chatroulette is still a thing that exists??

Sunset to Light Linky

Sunset to light is a new short film – images and music – by some friends. It’s London, now, and it’s quite lovely. The musos involved are beloved to many Wgtn folk as members of the Dukes of Leisure. Not embedding it, because it really needs to be seen in its native environment as embiggened as your screen can handle. Nice work guys. Go see go see go see.

As I write this, people are getting out of the NZFilmFest screening of Kubrick’s The Shining, and tweeting about it. Mr David Ritchie sent me this link the last time I got all Kubricky on here: The Overlook Hotel, ephemera from The Shining

Darth Vader in love (by Peter Serafinowicz)

Oven temperatures LIE TO YOU man

Medical reviews of every episode of House

8-bit covers to classic novels

The Truth about Colbert-style Truthiness – more stunning research out of Maryanne Garry’s lab

Christian fundamentalists vs. set theory

HP Lovecraft answers your relationship questions – this is exactly what you expect it to be, executed to perfection (via Mike Upton)

Juan Cole’s list of the top 10 differences between white terrorists and other terrorists has been going rapidly viral, and for good reason. Check it.

6-minute excerpt from a charlie kaufman keynote address, adapted into an evocative short film that is pretty inspirational really

Public transport decorated like Versailles. Wow.

Why Silver medallists look so blue

Infographic of the 100m race across history – the rate of improvement here is quite astounding. How long can this possibly continue? How much of this improvement is physiological, how much is technique? Wow.

Five friends take the same photo every five years for three decades (via Gem Wilder)

Via Dave Ritchie: cutting edge science on the effect of peanut butter on the rotation of the earth.

TED as a whole gets a blistering serve in this review of some recent TED ebooks. (via Allen Varney who probably gave me half these other links too.)

Half-drag portraits (via Allanah)

Good advice for when there’s a creepy dude in your circle of friends (via Jess Pease)

Texts from Jane Eyre

And finally… the Moby song.

NZFF: Cabin in the Woods (USA, 2011)

Awesome fun, but.

A Goddard/Whedon clever-clever horror movie that takes the stereotypical slasher film structure and dismantles it. I fought hard to avoid being spoiled for this film but it turns out I needn’t have bothered, because it pretty much unfolds completely predictably from the juxtaposition set up in the first two scenes. The joy of it isn’t surprise though, it’s in execution, particularly in the gags. This is funny stuff. I did guffaws.

What it doesn’t do, is say anything clever about the horror genre, and I think it was trying to. There’s a subtextual thing in there that, I think, really doesn’t get what horror films are for, or conversely, what audiences want from horror films. So while I really enjoyed the film, I also want to argue with it. I suspect that the bits that threw me out of the experience – without exception, these were times it pulled a turn from grim nastiness to funny, which is trademark Whedonesque – failed for me because they were founded on this misapprehension.

Conversely, what it *does* do is celebrate scary movies. And it celebrates beautifully. It gets how scares work and how gags work and how tension unites the two. It plays out, on a scene level, beautiful beautiful moments that I will always remember. They didn’t all add up for me, but I definitely got my money’s worth. Would very happily watch again.

(Also a Go Girl takes her top off.)

NZFF: The Imposter (UK, 2012)

Documentary about a family who found their lost son after four years, only it turned out it wasn’t their son at all, it was an imposter. Told from the point of view of the imposter.

This is a heck of a story, and it’s easy to see why people have been eagerly talking about it. The main figures are fascinating (the core family, the increasingly odd imposter), and the supporting characters are memorable (including an FBI agent who is, er, not the best advertisement for that agency, and a Private Investigator who is a born star).

The twists and turns don’t seem quite so gasp-worthy to me though, and probably to anyone else who studied psychology. “How could the family possibly accept this chap was their son?” Well, “very easily”, says psyc. Because if there’s one thing psychologists know that they can’t seem to get into the public domain, it’s that we are way more cognitively fallible than society tells us. You Are Not So Smart.

Like most documentaries I see these days, it is too long – it would probably make for a great BBC 60-minute no-ads TV documentary, but at 90 minutes it really felt like it took ages to get going. Anyone who goes to see documentaries on film (or rents them on DVD) will know this phenomenon though, and it’s pretty forgiveable really.

So, I didn’t gasp and I thought it was long. That sounds pretty negative. Actually I really enjoyed this film, I’m just unwilling to talk about why because it’ll spoil the surprises – and the filmmaker really makes the most of those surprises. Definitely worth your time.

Per Capita Linky

Two small words that every Kiwi knows: per capita. During an Olympics year we hear these two words even more frequently.

What if every sport was photographed like beach volleyball?

I’ve linked to this before I think but it’s worth another look: athlete body types, an artist’s reference

Did you hear about the badminton teams that were tossed out of the Olympics for playing to lose in order to get a better draw in subsequent rounds? That’s not the Olympic spirit, is it! Also, its a sign that the tournament design is deeply flawed.

Laurie Penny on Olympics-London from the perspective of the tube

Wil Wheaton’s web show “Tabletop” has had a two-parter in which some good people (including John Rogers, showrunner of cult caper TV show Leverage, and Bonnie Burton, until recently the friendly face of Star Wars on the internets) play the story game Fiasco. It’s a good watch, and might give you a sense of why I love the roleplaying game thing so much. (& hey, if anyone out there would like to give this sort of game a try, give me a shout – I am Fiasco-enabled…)


Fascinating (PDF) essay on “phantom states” like Taiwan, Gaza/Palestine, Northern Cyprus… how they function when they aren’t part of the apparatus of global statehood, and the problems they cause.

Star Wars Identities exhibition – sort of pictures of Star Wars things made up of smaller pictures of related Star Wars things? Sort of.

Some more caveats about microfinancing from an insider. This has been discussed in this blog before. The short version here seems to be: the form has potential, but it is trivially easy to abuse and exploit the system and so that is exactly what is happening all over the place. (via Amanda Lyons)

Whoa – a blacklist in the UK for construction industry workers who speak out about worker safety? This sounds horrific.

Busting myths about New Zealand using population data – NZ’s Dept of Stats shows how engaging with the public is done.

Wired has the story of a social media spy, who may not be a spy.

Book covers in the digital age

Big trigger warning for this link. There’s been a big thing on Reddit where sexual assaulters & rapists talk about their actions. Jezebel argues there’s much to learn from this; others have vehemently disagreed (not least due to Reddit’s supposed tendency to provide comfort & cover to misogyny). I tentatively agree with Jezebel on this, not least because this is a huge swathe of content that academics will already be furiously subjecting to thematic analysis. But it does make me uncomfortable. I link it here anyway because even if you don’t click through I think it’s important to know this exists in the world, that the huge conversation that is the internet makes discussions like this possible if not inevitable. Issues of gender representation & sexual harrassment are being discussed seemingly everywhere online right now, so hopefully this is building towards some kind of positive change. (via Daniel Gorringe, among others)

Film special effects guy explains the 7 most common CGI screwups (EDIT: margie points out this guy is a girl. Awhoops. In time between reading this and blogging it, my memory was rewritten to accord with gender steretypes.)

Explaining the Higgs Boson discovery in the form of a mural

Is Margaret Thatcher dead yet? Man, there’s still a lot of fury at Maggie, huh.

Ten fake books in movies that we wish we could read

Every 3D movie is the same

Classics scholar hanging out in Florence writes amazing blog post about why Machiavelli mattered. If you only have the same surface knowledge of the guy that I do, read this.

And finally, via Fraser P: