- The slow (but perhaps inevitable) death of Borders:
In 2001, Borders would go on to partner with Amazon.com, allowing the online book retailer to handle their internet sales for them, if you can believe it. There’s a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he’s beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz’s superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz’s photo-op-ready grin. It’s the face of someone who’s thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch. [via]
- The slow (and ongoing) death of Wikipedia:
After years at the top result on practically every Google search, Wikipedia has lost its urgency. Kids who were in 8th grade in 2004 have gone through their entire high school and college careers consulting (i.e. plagiarizing) Wikipedia; to them, Wikipedia is a dull black box—editing it seems just a bit more possible than making revisions to Pride and Prejudice. [via]
- Apes From the Future, Holding a Mirror to Today:
But it has to be said that the movie science fiction of the original Apes era, with its now laughably primitive effects, in some ways benefited from its technical crudeness: the spectacle rarely got in the way of the ideas, and when the ideas are engaging, as they are in the first “Planet of the Apes†and “Escape,†the simple effects function like sketches, indications of some greater, not fully realized, narrative and intellectual architecture.
- The Playboy Club as female empowerment? O RLY?
Perhaps the good news is that we’ve now reached the point where it’s considered smart marketing to push a feminist spin on your show about Playboy Bunnies. Perhaps we’ve reached the point, in fact, where you have to try to fit your show into a “we have smart and strong women characters” mold. (Earlier in the tour, we had a panelist argue that Entourage had some of the strongest female characters on television, which raised eyebrows similarly.) Perhaps it’s good news that strength, like sex, presumably sells. Just don’t look for it here.
- And finally, a little late linking this, but: Remembering legendary Cleveland rock critic Jane Scott [via]
sexism
Wednesday various
- Following up on the “there is no Triceratops, only Zuul” story I posted yesterday, here’s Caitlin R. Kiernan’s take on the whole thing:
People are used to looking at species as static entities. But biologists work with species (and all other taxonomic units— the case of Triceratops is a genus-level problem) as hypotheses. And any given hypothesis may be discarded by future discoveries. That is, the name Triceratops is a hypothesis seeking to explain a collection of seemingly related fossils of a Late Cretaceous horned dinosaur. The hypothesis says that all specimens of Triceratops are more closely related to one another than they are they are to any other genus of chasmosaurine dinosaur. But, like all hypotheses, it can be falsified in light of future discoveries. In this case, the discovery of new fossils giving us a more complete picture of Triceratops as a living population of animals, and allowing us to realize that the morph we used to call “Torosaurus” is actually only the very mature form of Triceratops. As an hypothesis, “Torosaurus” appears to have been falsified. Now, it’s possible that Scannella and Horner are wrong, and that future discoveries and/or research of old discoveries will show that Triceratops and “Torosaurus” really are two taxa (though I’ve read the paper, and this seems unlikely). All hypotheses are provisional. Nothing is ever certain. Never. The best argument may be in error. That’s how science works, even if the press seems unable to grasp this.
- Following up on the Gaiman/McFarlane legal battles I also posted about yesterday, Erik Larsen’s defense of McFarlane needs some work [via]:
It’s one thing to start a flame-war, or be a loudmouth, or try to argue that, say, a court ruling was unfair. That, after all, is just another Tuesday on Twitter. It’s a very different thing to blame a judicial ruling you disagree with on sexist caricatures of women as irrational, swooning groupies — especially if you’re starting to make a habit of it.
- FBI wants its seal removed from Wikipedia. Whichever side is right in this, I do like Wikipedia’s official response [via]:
While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section 701 that you forwarded to us…
- Gio Clairval on Lightness: Italo Calvino’s hope for the future of literature. There are some really interesting thoughts here:
Steampunk is often—not always, but often—set during the industrial revolution, a time that revolves around the heaviness of steel. A weighty century, indeed. Too-heavy ships crossed the oceans. Eiffel’s tower represented Man’s victory over iron. The ponderous consciousness of matter—inevitable—dominated until the late eighties. Asimov imagined immense computers. Arthur C. Clarke let enormous steles fall from the sky.
But today, what fascinates us most in Steampunk? Airships pulled upward by light gasses. Impossibly floating cities.
- And finally, for something completely different, a dog mowing the lawn [via]:
Wednesday various
- I think I’m going to make a movie called Vaguely Historical People Killing Things and Shouting at Each Other.
- You know, Jeff VanderMeer is probably right: “in another 40 years lots of folks are gonna be laughing at lots of stuff we think works just fine now.”
- John Seavey makes the argument that Heroes is actually the best Watchmen adaptation ever. Yeah, I’m just not seeing it.
- “French celebrity philosopher” (how’s that for a title!) Bernard-Henri Lévy has come under fire recently for quoting a philosopher who never existed. [via]
- And finally, I didn’t watch this year’s Super Bowl, not even for the ads nor the stirring triumph of the New Orleans Saints. So I luckily missed this Dodge advertisement, though I got a general vibe from the internets that there was sexism aplenty that evening. The internets, they did not lie. So it’s nice to see someone parody the ad so skillfully, simply by reversing the genders.
Tuesday various
- Kurt Busiek: “[L]et’s face it, you never know when someone Peter Parker went to high school with is going to turn into a super-villain.”
- “The gold-coloured convertible turns heads on impoverished Cambodia’s roads — not least because of creator Nhean Phaloek’s outlandish claim that it can be operated telepathically.” Okaaaaayyy…
- Patrick Stewart on the legacy of domestic violence. [via]
- What if you went in search of your birth parents and one of them turned out to be Charles Manson?
- And finally, Toyota develops its own flower species. [via]
Wednesday various
- The most controversial magazine covers of all time [via]
- Meanwhile, and incidentally NSFW, Sean Lennon recreates his parents’ famous Rolling Stone cover. Personally, I find the new photo to be exceptionally boring and actually a weird reversal of John and Yoko’s original. There’s also maybe something a little creepy about their son recreating that photo, especially if the naked woman holding on to him here is some kind of stand-in for, or commentary on, Yoko Ono. But in general, I just find it pretty uninspired.
- The Origin of Glenn Beck. The more things change…
- Hot on the heels of charges of sexism in certain science fiction anthologies comes word that it might also be a problem in the horror genre as well.
- And finally, hey! My sister is going to Mars — I mean Sydney, Australia — for her honeymoon!