various

Thursday various

  • Earlier today via Twitter, I wrote, “People always complain that MTV doesn’t show videos anymore, but is this really a bad thing? Were music videos really so good for music?” This was in response (sort of) to John Scalzi’s thoughts on ’80s pop music. He writes:

    • The way to most accurately judge the quality of a pop music era, in my opinion, is not by the stuff universally acknowledged as the high points of era, but by all the other stuff that happened to be popular too, and whether it’s better or worse than the average pop song of any other era one might think of.

    Although he also makes the frightening prediction of “a whole lot of N*Sync references come 2029,” when the tweens and teens who listened to that music come into their own. I shudder even to think.

    My own question still stands.

  • Gerry Canavan asks an interesting question: “How could the Romans think in terms of centuries but we can’t think past a single business cycle?”

  • I was pretty sure Fox’s new no extras on rented DVDs policy would come back to bite them, but who knew it would be so soon? Apparently, many customers who have bought DVDs of Slumdog Millionaire have received the extras-free rental version.
  • Speaking of DVDs, apparently there are some problems with the subtitles for Let the Right One In, that feel-good Swedish vampire movie of last year. I have a copy on its way right now from Netflix, so I’ll have to see how it compares.

  • And finally, a double-shot of disturbing. First, Justine Lai’s oil paintings of herself having sex with each US President. (Not overly pornographic, and strangely fascinating in concept, but still not remotely SFW. [via]) And second, the Peekaru, which John Scalzi describes as “a Snuggie and a chestburster from Alien all in one.”

Wednesday various

  • Okay, I’ll admit it: I was fooled by Improv Everywhere’s April Fool’s Day joke. Well played, sirs. [via]
  • I’m not so sure anyone should be encouraged to dress up like the characters from Watchmen, much less like Dr. Manhattan. Presumably blue body paint and Speedo are not included…?
  • Cory Doctorow on the real problem with Amazon’s Kindle [via]:

    If we want to talk about potential outcomes for Amazon, then one in which the company disappears, changes hands, or loses its mind should get far more consideration from us than the possibility that it will mastermind major technological breakthroughs in machine-speech synthesis.

  • A fascinating story about DNA evidence and, more remarkably, how Germany’s Phantom of Heilbronn serial killer…never existed [via]:

    This raised suspicions that the DNA found at all the Phantom’s crime scenes might be traced to a single innocent factory worker, probably employed to package the swabs. Cotton swabs are sterilized before being used to collect DNA samples, but while sterilizing removes bacteria, viruses and fungi, it does not destroy DNA.

  • Yahoo Movies posts 100 Movies to See Before You Die, no doubt to stir up controversy about movies included or not. Still, it seems like a pretty decent list, with a lot of very good and/or important movies. With In the Mood for Love, which I watched this past weekend — and about which more, maybe, later — I’ve seen sixty-six of these. [via]

Thursday various

  • Today is my thirty-second birthday. Among others, I have outlived “Grigori Nelyubov by more than a month. He was an a skilled pilot and Soviet cosmonaut who was expelled for drunkenness. He died of suicide by stepping in front of a train on February 18, 1966…” Good to know. [via]

  • Of course, if you went by today’s Writer’s Almanac, you might assume nobody but Joseph Campbell had been born today. I don’t know why, but I’m always intrigued when Keillor devotes the entire daily program to one single person. Campbell’s influence is arguably still deep enough to warrant it — though I’ve never read anything by him or seen the Bill Moyers PBS specials. Does anyone recommend them?

  • Speaking of growing up/not growing up: every time I watch this trailer for Where the Wild Things Are, all I want to do is watch it again. I have no particular attachment to Maurice Sendak’s original book — I’m not even sure I’ve ever read it — but the movie looks incredible. (Lucius T. Sheppard doesn’t think so, but that’s possibly a good sign. Seriously, his curmudgeonly scorn for all things pop cultural is getting rather tired.) [via]

  • My favorite story of the day? Easily a toss-up between this story of an Australian coach who uses a live crocodile to encourage speedy swimmers — or at least did back in 1998. I couldn’t find anything more recent than this 2001 Telegraph article, which suggests it was no fun for the crocodile either — and this story about the Egyptian government being forced to dispel rumors that a text message can kill anybody who receives it. At least, they say they’re only rumors… [via and via]

  • My least favorite? Easily this story about a massive “space storm” that could any day now wipe out civilization as we know it. I think I’m going to go back to thinking happy birthday thoughts. [via]

Wednesday various

  • Bookslut reports that both candy and writing groups are weathering the recession well. One is almost tempted to find parallels between those two…
  • People continue to try to make Garfield funny. It doesn’t work, but this is amusing. I’ve always been a sucker for a bad translation. [via]
  • The Peekaboo Paradox: a surprisingly very interesting story about a $100,000-a-year clown. [via]
  • And at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a truly horrific yet powerful article on infant deaths in hot cars, looking at how it happens and why, even to good parents. A brutal read — I imagine even more so for anyone with kids. [via]
  • And just so I don’t leave you on a down note, here’s 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes.

Tuesday various

  • I think there are a lot of advantages to the print-on-demand publishing model, but it’s still weird to see it applied to other products like DVDs. Still, I think this is the way to go. Studios like Warner Brothers can avoid the high cost of mass producing a disc with limited sales appeal, while at the same time making DVD-quality copies available to the collectors and film buffs who really want them.

  • Then again, if you listen to Clay Shirky, maybe there’s no publishing model that really makes sense in our new Internet age:

    • It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

    What I think what a lot of Shirky’s critics (like Charlie Gibson) are missing, however, is that his analysis is very well considered — seriously, read his whole article — and ultimately quite hopeful. Shirky is pro-journalism, even while he acknowledges that newspapers (and by extension publishing) is in a state of transition and flux, and some old ways of doing business are likely to fall by the wayside. [via]

  • Until that point, however, the publishing industry still exists. And personally, I’m with Jay Lake in thinking the terms of the new Google Books/Authors’ Guild settlement are pretty dire for the writers who create that industry’s content. Whatever you think of Google Books — Lake himself is a stockholder and supporter — it sets a dangerous precedent for copyright. [via]

  • Abigail Nussbaum on tired fantasy criticisms:

    • Most fantasy readers go through a phase where they realize that The Lord of the Rings is conservative, reactionary and, by certain very real yardsticks such as, to take Morgan’s example, realistic characterization, not very good. It’s like figuring out that Narnia is a Christian allegory. You take a deep breath, pick your jaw up from the floor, and decide if you can go on liking the book in spite of these flaws–because it has other qualities that you value, and because a genuinely good work of fiction is one that you can enjoy even if you disagree with the attitudes it expresses.

    She makes a lot of good points. Still, as some of the commenters there note, it’s sometimes worth repeating things for those who have not heard them before.

  • And finally, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to survive one atomic blast may be regarded as a misfortune; to survive both looks like carelessness.