Month: May 2013

Unconspiracy Linky

9/11 conspiracy theorist changes his mind. Because of… facts! Has that ever happened before?? (via Nate C)

BBC’s Newsnight devoted ten minutes to exploring the question: was Doctor Who a bit rubbish in the 80s?

Freaks and Geeks is getting the AVClub Classic treatment. The pilot episode writeup appeared today. It’s my favourite TV show ever, employing the form of commercial television for a character study with novelistic depth, and founded in a humane compassion that is rare in any narrative.

Extreme Barbie Jeep Racing (via Bruce Baugh)

The “PUNK” music collection, exclusively on CD. Basically the only collection of punk music you’ll ever need. Features all your favourite punk bands, like INXS and Crowded House. (via DavidR)

Greatest wedding photo in the history of the world (via Keane)

Letter to Richard Dawkins about religion. Some well-put stuff in here.

BBC recipe site has a recipe for Marmite on Toast. As you’d expect, the comments are worth your time. (via loads of people)

This gender-swapped recasting of Lord of the Rings is spreading like wildfire because it is Just. That. Good. If you click through only one linky this week, make it this one.

Article about a fascinating 19th Century dictionary that traced words from India into British English. (via Damon)

The Folk Ye Bump Intae – charming sketches of people in Glasgow. I can’t help but sound out all the dialogue, it is so well-caught.

Wow, the secret behind this lake full of skeletons genuinely stunned me (Allen Varney)

How did I miss this? In support of the deluxe book collection of Al Jaffee’s Mad Magazine Fold-Ins back in ’08, the NYT created some interactive digital versions. Marvellous. (via Toby Manhire)

There have been many articles on Steven Moffat and gender politics in Doctor Who, but this one is the sharpest I’ve found. (To be honest though it’s his longform plotting that bugs me more.)

Poor people in Manila start living in a cemetery. Fascinating. (via Malc)

Mormon flowchart for your soul – wow.

Facehugger, life-size, in lego.

On Facebook, I share stories about my 2-year-old daughter from time to time. This one rapidly became infamous. I proudly share it further here.

Cal asks a very sad Wee Beastie why I made her sit in the corner.
WB: (crying) Because I didn’t listen.
Cal: I think you should say sorry to him.
WB: (looking down) Sorry daddy.
Cal: You should look at his face and say sorry.
WB: (meeting my eyes, very sad) I’m sorry about your face daddy.

And finally, the last word on Mos Eisley

Missed Meal Linky

There’s one week left of May, which is plenty of time for you to miss a meal. Send the money you saved to the good people at Kaibosh food rescue, a thoroughly splendid local operation that takes food that would be wasted here and delivers it to hungry people there. Worth a few of your dollars, I reckon.

Pikitia Press has more of the delightful early-60s UK girl’s comic about a British girl arriving in New Zealand.

Great Books of the Western World: don’t pay hundreds of dollars to Brittanica, download (most of) them free

I still can’t find a version of that Patton Oswalt Parks & Recreation clip that will play in NZ. Mentioned a few weeks ago, it sees Oswalt improvise the plot of a new Star Wars film. Well, someone has animated it, and it seems like it will play everywhere.

Oh my god this made me laugh: someone compiled every instance they could find where a rapper has referenced former NBA player Alonzo Mourning in their lyrics. Mostly they follow the standard structure for such references: “it’s [meaningful word] like [word that frequently appears close to the first word even if using it here makes no sense at all]”. (They also missed the first ‘Zo reference that popped into my head, from Public Enemy no less.)

Helen Mirren being legendary, this time by inviting a boy to tea in character as the Queen.

For those with an interest in Doctor Who recurring character River Song, here’s the best infographic I’ve seen of her convoluted timeline.

Irish stamp has an entire short story on it. (via Alexis)

Aliens in 60 seconds. Very nicely done. (via David R)

Interesting look behind the scenes of cult hit card game Cards Against Humanity – a true indie production, a megasuccess in a niche that can’t really be colonised or compromised. The question at the end about how long this can be sustained is a good one – it’s real easy for this kind of thing to go sour.

The full McBain movie hidden across many episodes of The Simpsons

Maire pointed me at this great music video – an epic adventure that I really liked until the bit where I started loving it.

Setting up an automated process to buy random presents for yourself from Amazon, as a kind of art project. Finding patterns in chaos. Neat, and ongoing. (via Svend)

Opening scene of Casino Royale recreated in Lego

Lawrence Kasdan’s handwritten screenplay notes for Empire Strikes Back (via Craig Oxbrow)

Photographer takes photos of her 5yo daughter as awesome women from history. (via Sam Hall)

Pitchfork’s Daft Punk article is full of bells and whistles and I found it almost unreadable. This is the first big article since NYT’s Snowfall to try and enhance the reading experience, and I think it’s also the moment that shows how Snowfall isn’t the future after all. (And not for this reason, either.) Just put words on the screen, people. Just put words on the screen.

And finally, via Julian von Sligo:

Future News Linky

No, not Early Edition style future news. I bashed out a new article for the Ruminator, about what news websites are going to look like in a decade. Hint: a lot less like newspapers, a lot more like interactive infographics.

The alternate moose just tipped me off to the existence of some weird, interesting group creation thingamies at Reddit. You’ve heard of “first world problems”, right? Reddit has developed that concept somewhat, in some pretty bizarre ways. Find out more about the screaming and the tower and the giant wasps.

Very tangentially related: middle class movie posters

Mail order husbands (via Gator)

Deep Throat in the 21st century: Wired has a guide on how to leak something and not get nailed for it.

An interactive visualisation of every running joke in Arrested Development. (via David Ritchie, and then the entire AD-loving internets.) AD has to be the densest TV show ever, right? There’s just so much stuff in every episode. And with new episodes almost due, AD lovers really need to check out this delightful taster: Insert Me Anywhere

GeoGuesser is a fantastic browser game and destroyer of productivity. It lands you in a random Google Maps Street View spot, and you have to guess where in the world you are. (again via David Ritchie then everybody.)

I’ve made it about a quarter of the way through Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story audiobook. Really good stuff, full of things I didn’t know and vital connecting tissue linking things I did know. The author has supported the book with a marvellous tumblr full of scanned original art, period photos, and other bits and pieces. Here’s one that deserves a wider audience than the comics geekery, though: four young Japanese Americans, reading comics in an internment camp; Howe adds some poignancy by working out exactly what was going on in the comic stories they were reading.

The Battle of Helm’s Deep, in Lego. The scale of this model freaks me out.

You’ve tried typing “Atari Breakout” into Google image search, right?

All right. There have been some impressive home-built Iron Man costumes over the last couple years, but this GW Space Marine is outright scary:

Moth City, which has been featured on this linky several times before, is an online comic by a Kiwi creator. Now it’s free to read on Thrillbent, which is fast becoming the hottest place around for online comics presentations. Tim Gibson’s creation is just picking up more and more steam as it goes, which delights me.

What if Point Break was remade by David Lynch? Or Wes Anderson? Or Tommy Wiseau?

Ordinary American investing in Blue Chip stock gets 11% return on investment. Pharmaceutical industry investing in lobbyists to prevent drug price negotiation gets… more. No, more than that. Nope, still more. No, even more than that. Er.

A photographer visits the crumbling remnants of the Star Wars Tatooine sets.

Matt Taibbi continues to justify the existence of Rolling Stone magazine: Everything is rigged: the biggest price-fixing scandal ever

An 1809 depiction of an alien invasion by Washington Irving (he of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow & Rip van Winkle fame) (via Svend)

And finally, a copy of the weird Doctor Who/Eastenders crossover – this version complete with production notes. (Yes, this crossover was a real thing. It is… not good.)

in move (part 3)

in move, my novel about friendship under pressure, starts Part Three today. It’s a good time to jump on board!

in move has four main characters. (Pro tip: it is dumb to have four main characters in your first attempt at writing a novel.) Part Three has a focus on Adam, the goofy tall one without a great deal of confidence. He is, you could say, the nice one.

Reading along with the story as it has gone live, I’ve been struck by just how unpleasant the characters can be. It’s meant to be that way of course – I was trying to capture something of how life actually felt, and this sort of behaviour was everywhere. Teenage boys possess great nobility and kindness, but their world rewards a different register of behaviour.

Related: the scale of the distance between what the characters say and do, and what’s going on inside their heads. The size of the gulf here is part of NZ male culture. We blokes are famous for retreating from any kind of genuine emotional expression. (We all go off pig hunting or hide in our sheds, apparently.) This isn’t exactly healthy, and our high rates of alcohol abuse and suicide are both regularly linked to this tendency, but there remains a certain kind of pride in it – watch any of our television advertisements for beer and you’ll see this kind of behaviour quietly rewarded.

This story’s main characters were assembled in a particular way, to demonstrate contrasting approaches to key concerns that were part of the world for me and my friends. Reading it now, I guess they also demonstrate different approaches to interiority. This shows up most clearly in their unpleasant moments; also their most vulnerable ones.
That’s how it works.

I’m curious to note a change in myself, as well. For better or worse, I judge these character flaws more harshly than I used to. I’m two decades older than them, and I suppose this means I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be them. A future of being yelled at by my teenage daughter awaits?

Anyway. Adam’s the nice one. You can read about his life starting here. He’s been sitting at the bottom of the pecking order for a long time, and things are due for a shake-up.

The Asian is the Martial Arts Expert

agents-of-shield-abc

Agents of Shield, the Whedon-crew TV series spun out of the Marvel superhero film universe has been picked up for series. Lots of people are very excited! I’m quite excited too actually. But take a look at this:

Back in October, Bleeding Cool was one of many places with the casting notes for the five characters:

SKYE: This late-20s woman sounds like a dream: fun, smart, caring and confident – with an ability to get the upper hand by using her wit and charm.

AGENT GRANT WARD: Quite the physical specimen and “cool under fire,” he sometimes botches interpersonal relations. He’s a quiet one with a bit of a temper, but he’s the kind of guy that grows on you.

AGENT ALTHEA RICE: Also known as “The Calvary,” this hard-core soldier has crazy skills when it comes to weapons and being a pilot. But her experiences have left her very quiet and a little damaged.

AGENT LEO FITZ and AGENT JEMMA SIMMONS: These two came through training together and still choose to spend most of their time in each other’s company. Their sibling-like relationship is reinforced by their shared nerd tendencies – she deals with biology and chemistry, he’s a whiz at the technical side of weaponry.

About three weeks later, Ming-Na Wen was cast as Agent Melinda May:

Soulful and slightly damaged by her combat experiences, Melinda is an ace pilot, a weapons expert and a soldier who can – and has – gone beyond the call of duty… In the original casting call, Agent May was listed as Agent Althea Rice, aka The Calvary.

Then the announcement of the series pickup, as reproduced at Bleeding Cool included character descriptions:

Coulson’s team consists of Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), highly trained in combat and espionage, Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) expert pilot and martial artist, Agent Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker); brilliant engineer and Agent Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) genius bio-chemist. Joining them on their journey into mystery is new recruit and computer hacker Skye (Chloe Bennet).

So Althea Rice, a weapons expert and pilot, morphed into Melinda May, martial artist and pilot, somewhere around the time an Asian actress was cast in the part. Is this another instance of that All Asians Are Martial Artists trope? (No other characters appear to have changed names or basic descriptions.)

No point jumping to conclusions – this might be a PR flack writing a press release and making assumptions, for a start. But it’s a curious change nonetheless. File it away for now.

(Big nod to Mike Foster and Steve Hickey, who spotted the Asian martial artist trope in the announcement and talked about it, sparking my interest.)

X-Ray Specs Linky

The truth behind all those amazing novelty items advertised in every comic for decades, by someone who went to the effort of tracking them all down. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard how the X-Ray Specs “worked”, complete with a photo reproducing the view through those magical glasses!

Chomsky & Foucault debate, in 1971, about whether human nature exists and what that means. No, I haven’t watched this yet. (via Nic Sando)

Here’s a salutary lesson for those in the museum & exhibition fields (including, from time to time, me): the Met tries to recreate the legendary bathroom at CBGB’s, demonstrating that some things cannot be recreated in any meaningful way.

How to draw sexy without being sexist: fascinating little discussion spinning out of the recent redesign of some superhero costumes. (Don’t read the comments, of course.)

Spock vs Spock in a car ad – extremely well done. Worth watching even though it’s an ad.

Star Trek Fashion Blog (via Hamish)

So it turns out that crazy creationist science homework was a real thing. And the second page of the worksheet is even more revelatory than the first. More info at snopes, of course.

Scroobius Pip merch t-shirt has in-built Scroobius Pip mask. Genius.

Aussie Star Wars (via Mike F)

Also via Mike F, another Cat Friend & Dog Friend video, again executed perfectly.

Judge Dredd gets a polished half-hour fan film, Judge Minty – haven’t watched this yet but Jet is the man to ask about such things, so linking his way.

Webcomic with Conan the Barbarian as a life coach

Kids, the highly controversial and provocative indie movie about young teenagers getting up to mischief in NYC, is twenty years old. Here’s a fantastic article that tells some of the story behind the scenes and tracks down what happened to the featured players. Yep, one of them ended up on The Wire. (I remember walking out of the cinema after watching Kids, and feeling like I was really glad I’d seen it, but I sure hadn’t “enjoyed” it and I didn’t think I’d ever want to sit through it again. This many years on, some of the impact it had on me – the rawness of the content and the style – is still fresh. But I do want to watch it again, after all.) (via @auchmill)

Flipping around gendered book covers – some neat designs.

Soviet posters from before Stalin constrained the range of approved visual styles (via Joshua Newman)

Debt – the first five thousand years, in Mute. The only issue of Mute I have is full of marginal notes where I argue with the writers (at least it is on the articles I actually read) – this one is just as full of assertions and angles that seem wrong to me, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff here too. I recommend it, but go in with your brow pre-furrowed to save time. (via Svend)

Making Mordor’s economy work (via Allen Varney)

Have I linked to Scarfolk Council before? It’s worth a second go even if I have. An alternate 1970s English county, as seen through its posters, recordings and other documentation. Marvellous, weird, frequently hilarious.

And finally: here’s your Halloween costume sorted

Replication Linky

This New Yorker article is one that makes me happy. Social psychology, for better or worse, is my discipline, and it seems like it’s finally sorting out one of its ongoing weaknesses. There’s a problem across all sciences around replication – the most prestigious journals demand new research, and academic careers demand publication in prestigious journals, so there’s a strong incentive against spending time on double-checking previous findings. The replication problem has always been particularly acute in social psychology, because it’s so hard to zoom down into fuzzy social complexity and figure out exactly what’s going on in a situation. Bring it on, folks. Also contains some other fascinating stuff – I didn’t know the famous Milgram electric shocks experiment was replicated in 2008!

For the last few years, Philip Sandifer has been writing amazing, fascinating essays about Doctor Who, tracking it across its history from the 60s on, linking it to social movements and literary criticism and alchemy and more. He has just reached the new series, and begins with an incredible close reading of the first episode for Chris Eccleston and Billie Piper. It’s lovely stuff, thoroughly readable and full of great little jokes and insightful turns of phrase, but adding up to something even greater than the sum of its considerable parts. If you are interested in Doctor Who at all you need to read this, but if you care at all about television as a medium then you’ll get something out of it. You probably do need to have watched the episode though. Jump in: Rose

Tea is the fashion! Stunning 60s marketing campaign by the NZ Tea Council to get the Yoof drinking tea. (via the Pikitia Press NZ/Aus comics blog)

Also at Pikitia: a UK girls comic story about a British orphan who inherits a sheep farm in New Zealand. Fascinating!

Holy cow, there’s someone who is so passionate in their defence of Alien3 that even I think they’re going a bit far.

Making sense of Syria’s conflict: six separate things are going on there

A writer at games site Kotaku records every instance of sexism she encounters for a month.

Going viral for all the right reasons: Reddit users discuss which Muppet would be best placed to assassinate Hitler.

Those beautiful bootleg movie posters from Ghana have been turning up all over the place again; there’s a bunch in the new selection that I hadn’t seen before (via Luke W). Here’s another site that finds other, similarly wonderful movie posters from other places. (via Andrew S)

Also all over the place right now: great behind-the-scenes pics from Empire Strikes Back, again most of these are new to me.

Sexy pool party! This has also been going viral for good reason. The woman in the bikini really commits to the bit.

Not safe for work, or for my mum: 8 other animal-style sex positions (Isabella Rossellini did the bug ones better though)

Also NSFW: Milo Manara’s history of humanity – quite breathtaking, but full of the stylised sexy nakedness Manara is known for.

Cosmarxpolitan

Bertrand Russell writes to Oswald Mosley (via RodgerD)

Mapping New Zealand by where people live. Gosh, my country has a lot of uninhabited space.

Via felicia day: One tiny hand

Ooh, linguists gonna love this. The punctuation mark “slash” is being verbalised in speech. You hear it the same way you’d expect e.g. “Can she visit slash stay over?” which is the same as “visit/stay over”. But language is always changing, and changing fast – and the meaning and use of “slash” has already drifted in some fascinating new directions. How invigorating!

Teaching intersectionality through the game Halo (via Jamie)

Four sisters take a group photo every year for over three decades.

A couple of things I really liked at The Ruminator: vintage photos of creepy window displays and a piece about the flak you get when you’re taking meds for mental health

A profile of my friend Warren, who is a full-time professional maker of Lego structures. (He has a book out.)

The best anti-piracy measure ever taken?

And finally, via Hugh Dingwall: cut me off mid-funk. (Freaks & Geeks people should definitely click.)