02.10.10
And under our blue skies – marble movie skies – I found a home in your eyes… but blue cat aliens might upset other people
When seeing their favourite scifi hero has travelled light years to a distant planet which has sent out an audio-visual distress signal in English to help the locals, nerds get distressed.
They don’t whine that faster-than-light travel is impossible. They don’t mention that faster-than-light communication is impossible. They don’t mention that audio-visual distress signals are impractical or that English as a universal language suggests that colonialism has a bright future ahead of it.
For all the problems that they could highlight, a small amount of angst has popped up on the internets once again about scifi aliens that are basically humanoid Earth animals.
Boohoo, the Na’vi look like cats, Gamorreans look like hogs, and everybody in Star Trek looks like a human with a silly forehead. It’s all so terrible.
The problem with this whining is that it assumes — from the outset — that alien life forms are not going to resemble Earth lifeforms. Philosophically, that’s a bad way to go.
In ‘Where are the dolphins?‘ (Nature 409, 1119-1122 (22 February 2001)), Jack Stewart and Ian Cohen note that alien life will resemble ours in universals but not in parochials. Universals are those characteristics which have evolved several times independently of each other (for example, fins for swimming through water have evolved in fish, in mammals, and in birds). Parochials have evolved once and any creature expressing that trait is related to a common ancestor which had that trait (the backwards pouch, for example, is an easy example and it shows that koalas and wombats had a common ancestor who first made the backwards pouch fashionable).
This means that, in space, we can expect to find fins, wings, fangs, claws, &c., &c., &c.
And that’s all well and good but we can go a few steps further!
If the alien race has sent out a faster-than-light distress signal then they must have the ability to purposefully and precisely manipulate the physical world around them (probably with magic if they’re sending faster-than-light signals, but let that go). That means that they’re going to have something awfully similar to hands (perhaps very precise tentacles, for example).
Finally, talking animals in space have an authenticity that, say, the xenomorphs from Alien don’t. We know that feline characteristics are possible. Why do we know that they’re possible? Because feline characteristics have evolved at least once in the universe already (Earth). We know that humanoid creatures are possible. Why do we know that they’re possible? Because humanoid creatures have evolved at least once in the universe already (Earth). We know that the xenomorphs are impossible (which isn’t that shocking, given that it’s just Giger’s fear of sex personified) and yet the xenomorphs will attract less scorn than Hepzibah the Mephitisoid.
In other news, you can apparently get to this backwater blog by searching for “evil robot”. While I’m certain that robots will bring about our destruction, I’m not sure that I’ve expressed that sentiment anywhere in this blog. Weird.
02.05.10
I was born in a factory, far away from the milky teat… but my school was okay
They’ve unleashed MySchool upon the world and, like the data hoarding freak that I am, I immediately set about working out what all the funny little numbers were, what they meant, and — most importantly — whether or not the kids who went to my schools after me were any good at answering questions on the NAPLAN test correctly.
It turns out they aren’t.
A quick search of the internet will bring up all kinds of not-at-all-hysterical criticisms of the website. I’m going to do something slightly different and compare it to another story that rampaged across the blogonerds this week:
The Australian Government Hates Small Breasts
According to the intellectually reputable and very balanced website SomebodyThinkoftheChildren, the Australian Sex Party said that the Australian Classification Board said that pr0n depicting small-breasted women is now banned. Hark! Lest you think that this was merely Chinese Whispers, SomebodyThinkoftheChildren have even used their super-sleuthing skills to discover that — and hold on to your hats, peoples! — the ACB dares to use ‘a person’s overall appearance is used by the Board to determine whether someone appears to look under the age of 18‘. I’m not entirely sure how else a person determines whether a person appears to be under 18 except by judging their appearance. That’s usually what the word ‘appears’ means — they have an appearance.
Nevertheless, get out your pitchforks! This is an outrage!
Ignore the fact that the entire story was made up by the Australian Sex Party. No, wait. Don’t forget that fact. The reason why this took off over the internet is that it:
a) Confirmed people’s prejudices; and
b) Was time-consuming to disprove.
The prejudice confirmed was ‘Government is anti-fun and absurd’.
A similar thing happened with the MySchool website. There were two prejudices this time around for two different kinds of people. The first was ‘The government doesn’t care about teachers’. The other was ‘The public has a Right To Know’. Due to the lack of benchmarking and the relative scoring against other schools, the vast majority of schools end up slightly in the green, slightly in the red, or white. It doesn’t actually provide any information at all because the overall results of the NAPLAN tests were not divulged.
So you don’t need to put in that much effort to assert that ‘MySchool proves the government doesn’t care about teachers/MySchool is providing the information which the public has a Right To Know’ because nobody will question the claims.
It’s rather cynically brilliant in a way. If you want to whip a large number of people into a frenzy over absolutely nothing, just make sure your claim obeys those two rules then create a press release.
02.01.10
Blood runs through your veins, that’s where our similarity ends… And there are things which should not be difficult
In 2010, I’ve resolved to do a few things. One of those is to get into Augustinian theology. I sort of have a peripheral understanding of it but I have never sat down and dedicated any time to really getting it. I went to the local Borders and, for the life of me, I couldn’t find a copy of any of his works. I couldn’t even find it in the self help section (where the computer said his works dwell…).
Another of those things is to listen — at least once — to the entire Ring Cycle of Wagner. I’ve hunted CD shops all over the territory: nothing.
I’ve also been on the look out for prints of Varo and Magritte. Again, fruitless endeavours.
This is what’s wrong with society.
01.24.10
God save the Queen, she’s not a human being… but she’s better than a president
Over on The Drum, Greg Barnes has a whine that Prince William is attractive and, as such, might seduce fickle members of the republican movement into becoming monarchists… or something. The whole article is a bit weird, to be perfectly blunt. The monarchists suggest (quite rightly) that personality will be more persuasive to the average Australian than theory. Barnes takes this to mean that monarchists want Prince William to be next in line to the throne… or that monarchists don’t know how succession works… or something.
It’s not hard to see why the republican referendum was so easily hijacked when you realise that this rather vapid chap ran the campaign.
His biggest problem with the constitutional monarchy we have at the moment is that it ‘den[ies] the right of Australians to have a Head of State who is a citizen of this country’.
Put in these terms, it’s easy to see how wrongheaded the whole republican movement was. Do we have the right to have a Head of State who is a citizen of this country? It certainly doesn’t seem to be a natural right and the law makes it quite clear that it’s not a legal right. It’s fairly obvious that Barnes is attempting some sort of bellyfeel argument for having our own head of state.
In doing so, it shows that he hasn’t really thought this through very well. The problem with the current arrangement is not that we have an English head of state who gets the role through a stone age ritual. The problem with the current arrangement is that our current system of government was designed with incentives for individual states to create a commonwealth. You’d think that this would be a good thing, but when those incentives were designed, there was no concept of ‘Australian’ — until relatively recently, Australians considered themselves English. The States were not joining out of a common Australian bond (which most Australians now feel): they were joining to protect Australia from Asians.
As such, the Senate is a hopelessly flawed system (‘unrepresentative swill’) and the States are frequently holding out their caps for more cash from the Commonwealth (because resource prosperity in one State doesn’t have direct benefits for Australians in the others).
So despite the fact that we’ve got a flawed system of government, republicans want to throw more representation hazards into the mix because they get teary-eyed about having an Australian head of state? Give me a break.
If you can already get into the Senate with less than votes than the population of a one pub town, how do republicans think that we’re going to get a balance and sane system for electing a president? The precedents of other republics is not promising. Even the U.S. — the usual gold standard for the republican movement in Australia — limits its presidential race to those who can afford to publicise themselves — if they get nominated by their vested interest parties first, of course.
Our head of state is apolitical. It’s a wonderful system. We don’t have a lot of trust for politicians in this country. Why should we trust them to occupy both the role of head of state and the role of head of government? It doesn’t make any sense.
I have no doubt that we will one day end up as a republic. I would prefer that day to be after we’ve fixed the other (more urgent) political problems of the current system.
Take my money, twist of paper… I’m still in shock
So it turns out that Batman: Arkham Asylum was exceedingly excellent. I’ve finished the story mode (I’m finding it difficult to be interested in the ‘challenge’ mode) and enjoyed absolutely every moment of it.
I don’t play many plot-driven games, truth be told. The plot is usually an excuse for huge amounts of fun (see: ‘Bowser stole the princess’, ‘Ganondorf stole the princess’, &c.). The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was about as plot-heavy as I’d ever been (and even that story was only an excuse to go explore insanely awesome dungeons). It was like playing your way through a movie. Apart from a few awful moments (including The Riddler asserting that you must be cheating when you solve his puzzles, even though he left a map solving his puzzles right next to the entrance), this was a beautiful plot, with a variety of interesting characters and all the good things that people like.
Which makes it a shame to point out its faults.
I often got stuck because Batman can not jump. And I don’t mean superhuman jumping ability. I mean: ‘Why! There is a small amount of rubble on the floor. I will have to walk around it.’
The other problem is linked to one of its biggest strengths. Because it’s story-heavy, there are a huge number of cut scenes to progress the tale. You open a door? Cut scene. You fall over? Cut scene. You die? Cut scene.
Oh, and Batman also has a weird habit of getting on the radio to Oracle (thus cutting out all of your abilities save walking) when you’re leaping from on high. That kind of got annoying.
The very worst thing has to do less with the game and more with the game’s awesomeness. It’s massively time-draining and it encourages a very specific set of reasoning patterns for problem solving. After playing hours of the same sorts of problem solving, you unleash yourself on a world filled with problems which do not match those reasoning patterns… Thus, when I was stuck in a crowd of bogans at the local Westfield, I noticed a ledge to which Batman could have jumped…
You also can’t kick the bogans in the back of the head.
01.17.10
Sleep for days. Don’t ever change. You’ll be here in the morning just to hear me say… read the Canon
In order to maintain the pretence that I’m in any way a social creature, I joined a bookclub (see WriteronWriter for the blog of one of the co-clubbers). In response to a recent article in The Australian (and see the replies), a short disagreement arose about the merits of Dead White Guy Lit.
There is obviously a difference between ‘popular culture’ and ‘culture’ simpliciter. If there weren’t, those two words would mean the same thing. We understand intuitively that there is a difference between ‘That which I find enjoyable’ and ‘That which I recognise as good’. Note, this distinction has not always been appreciated. Even somebody as elite as Immanuel Kant argued that, if there were a disagreement between the conventions of style and taste and that which he found pleasing, he would tell the advocate of the conventions to utter not a word more. Cultural excellence was, somehow, immediate: it did not require further reasoning. That Kant dedicates a book to the subject suggests that, perhaps, further reasoning was needed…
‘It’s very good but I did not enjoy it’ would be incoherent if there were not a divide between pleasurable and excellent. As it is not incoherent, there is a divide.
So how can we distinguish between the excellent and the pleasurable? The obvious answer is cultivation.
In The Ode Less Travelled, Stephen Fry remarks upon the manner in which most children are introduced to poetry: ‘Everybody can do it, so why can’t you?’
I’ve always loved Coleridge. The words were enjoyable – wonderful. It took me a very long time before I’d realise exactly why they were so enjoyable and so wonderful. More, it would take me even longer before I’d realise exactly why Coleridge’s poetry was so excellent. In order to do that, I had to read a lot of poetry which introduced Coleridge to the world and a lot of poetry which was written in response to Coleridge.
I wrote absolutely asinine poetry as a kid. Holy crap, it was crap. Fortunately, it was never about my feelings or about girls (two subjects about which no poetry should be written — or, rather, two subjects about which I should be forbidden from ever writing: ‘Lust! — Sing, Muse! The Lust for that hot blue chick from that video game…’). The problem I faced was that I didn’t have the toolkit to write good poetry.
It would be false to say that there is more dreck in the public sphere today than there has been in the past. The horrors of Harry Potter, Dan Brown, and Twilight seem large because they are closer to us. What they all have in common is a complete blindness to the cultural history which has generated them. Being blind, they don’t seek the tools that our cultural toolkit could provide them. Harry Potter would be thoroughly more enjoyable if it didn’t seem like it was written by a twelve-year old.
It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world. [Rowling, HP&HBP]
Yawnity yawn.
While it would be fun to wail on Rowling’s inability to write (and I’m sorely, sorely tempted to do exactly that), it would distract me from my point: this isn’t good writing. This is barely mediocre writing. It’s not writing; it’s typing (to quote Capote).
It’s hard to see Rowling take a seat next to Austen or Bronte at the table of English female writers. It’s hard to see Rowling take a seat next to Tolkien and Lewis at the table of English fantasy writers. It’s hard to see Rowling take a seat next to Carroll and Milne at the table of English childrens writers. Where does she fit? Sure, she’s made an enormous amount of money — but this seems to emphasise the point that thereis a sharp difference between good and excellent.
The same goes for the others. Is Brown a modern Conan Doyle? Suetonius? Whoever wrote the Infancy Gospel of St Thomas?
To return to Fry, the problem appears to be the belief of these authors (and the people profiteering on the back of them) that everybody has a novel inside them and that all you need is a blank page and some ink. While everybody might have a novel inside them, unless they have the tools cultivated by our cultural background, they’re going to write crappy, crappy novels (which they did). On the other side, in order to understand the texts — and, more importantly, understand the severe shortcomings of these authors — the reader has to have a familiarity with the cultural backdrop of these texts.
And this is why the Canon is essential. It cultivates our senses to understand and intuit the difference between that which we enjoy and that which is excellent.
01.12.10
Oh Lordy, you’ve been stealing from the thieves and you got caught… Welcome to the future of banks
I’m watching The Colbert Report on ABC2 and listening to Eugene Jarecki get very passionate about how we should shun the larger banks in favour of community banks. In fairness to him, his argument is specifically about the USian banking system and the problems with their financial sector are complex and diverse.
In Australia, we have a different question facing us: is our current banking system doing what we want it to do? Over on The Drum, Patrick McConnell has argued that the Four Pillar system we have here won’t meet our future expectations and so we should dismantle the current system with a national bank. The idea is that we don’t need the physical infrastructure necessary to banking establishments of the past. Instead, the national bank could be mostly web-based, supplemented with light support from the Australia Post offices already scattered across the country.
It’s not a bad idea.
The government took up the opportunity of the Silly Season to announce that they were going to create one stop shops for client service offices (like Medicare and Centrelink). Provided they adjust the infrastructure to cope with the increased traffick for those offices, this is a brilliant idea. It also provides an excellent framework into which you could add a nationalised banking system. Instead of taxing the already stretched post system, McConnell’s idea would find a much better home in these one stop shops.
Must be love, love, love… and this game is absolutely beautiful
There’s a bit of a backstory to this. Bear with me.
I am completely rubbish at making decisions. I much prefer waiting until the last possible moment before settling my plans.
This year, I’ve decided that I need to be better at making decisions, even if this means making a couple of silly decisions along the way. For Christmas, I bought my younger brother a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum. It was an absolutely stunning game. It was so good that even Yahtzee gave it a good review. After seeing the sibling play it and Yahtzee giving it a favourable review, I decided that this was a game I should play.
At the same time, I’d decided that I needed a new DVD player for my room. For a few extra quid, I ended up with an XBox. Look at me in my swanky decision-making pants. Amn’t I Lord of Decisiveness?
Anyhoo, it was a good decision. I’m having far too much fun playing it.
In other news, I check out the statistics of this blog every so often. 30 of you don’t seem to understand how RSS feeds work and, for that, my self esteem thanks you.
Apart from the vanity benefit, it’s showing me who is linking to my mostly incoherent ramblings. This has resulted in more than a few flamewars with people who think the new internet filter is totally just like Nazi Germany all over again.
It’s also resulted in the discovery that I’m Googlable. If you type “freak me sideway” (with quotation makrs) into Google, I appear a few after Shaun Micallef. Hooray, hoorah. My parents must be so proud.
Today’s discovery was that the phrase “you ask me to enter and then you make me crawl” (with quotation marks) lists me as the second hit. In your face, Bono. In your face.
01.11.10
And I’ll gamble away my time… and I’m pimping the awesome
A friend of mine linked me to this supertacular awesomeness. You should be aware of this awesomeness. You can thank me later.
Are you dead or are you sleeping? … The TiVo wins again
Behold, dear Canberrans! We now have 7Two on Prime.
Unfortunately, it’s a bit shit. I was really expecting more. I even had a bit of a whine that the start of broadcast was going to be significantly delayed. Instead, it’s only showing the very worst of Seven’s mediocre line-up. It feels like the channel of things which got bumped of the analogue station on account of being a little bit too crap.
6pm – Jay Leno Show
6:30 – Mother and Son
7:30 – Heartbeat
8:30 – The Benny Hill Show… and so on and so forth.
In fact, the only place it excels is with the so-bad-it’s-hilarious-stuff. Today, TiVo decided that I might like to watch Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive. Holy frijoles, it was bad. So bad, in fact, that I’m going to watch it regularly.
I don’t think words can actually describe how excruciatingly terrible it was. It was so terrible that it inspired the feeling that I was doing something thoroughly despicable by watching it. Like watching a trainwreck. My eyes could not believe that I was watching something this dreadful.
The acting was thoroughly horrible. The only thing worse than the horrible acting was the girl who could act (whom IMDB informs me is Beth Allen). As if playing a cruel joke on the audience, the producers thought that they’d put the girl who could act next to the single worst actor I have ever seen on a television show (whom IMDB informs me is Dwayne Cameron). Honest to God, it seemed like the gap in acting talent merely amplified the atrocity that was his acting ’skill’.
Nothing made any sense. While that’s probably par for course with the Power Rangers franchise, I really don’t understand why the enemies become easier when the odds (theoretically) tilt towards them. For example, four good guys were taking on an army of mooks. Two good guys had to leave in order to do something or other. The two good guys slaughter the mooks en masse.
But the very worst bit was the unintentional misogyny of the show. It is probably for good reason that I can’t find details on who wrote the episodes. Over on The Savage Critic(s), there was an analysis of the concerning gender themes appearing in Marvel storylines. It’s a good read.
The obvious conclusion to draw from DARK REIGN: THE LIST– X-MEN #1 is that at the close of 2009, a woman with an appetite for sex is apparently the very definition of fear and horror for Marvel comic creators and their audience.
I would diagnose such a belief as gynophobia.
This is not a metaphor; this is not sub-text. This is the explicit text of the comic: “We’ve modified her to keep her perpetually in estrus which explains her rotten attitude… but the result is a genetic W.M.D.” This is page one. This is the establishing shot. Here’s a line of dialogue from page 2: “Her gonadotropic hormones make her so hungry she’s been driven insane.”
Later in the comic, the arrival of the giant vagina is heralded as follows: “There’s nothing to her but hunger and rage and… and hate.” [Abhay, The Savage Critic(s)]
The villain line-up on Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive consists of:
- Flurious, some sort of ice monster.
Flurious - Some sort of ice monster
- Moltor, some sort of fire monster
Moltor - Some sort of fire monster
- Kamdor, some sort of evil robot
Kamdor - Evil robot
- Miratrix, a girl
Miratrix - A girl
Yup, the scourge of the universe is a girl. Beware, ye mostly male superhero crew. Evil girls will beat you up unless you take out your swords and clobber them. There is nothing Freudian about this at all.
In other news, tonight on SBS2 (8:30) is The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. It is a wonderful short film (I didn’t realise it was a part of a series. Hooray for new knowledge!) which explores the nature of monstrosity. It is an utterly splendid film and I cannot recommend it enough.
In entirely different news, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has launched a new statistical literacy website. As the acronym for the Bureau is the name of a group of muscles, the ABS are able to do all kinds of funky cool things. They introduced Creative Commons Licensing for the website content. In theory, this allows people to do what they were already doing in practice (i.e. use the data). Okay, it’s not leaps and bounds but it’s certainly a fascinating step into the world of interactivity. Now it has blogs and online tutorials. Verily, it’s a brave new world.
