{"id":3457,"date":"2009-05-31T20:30:11","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T00:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3457"},"modified":"2009-05-31T20:30:11","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T00:30:11","slug":"sunday-various-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3457","title":{"rendered":"Sunday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The idea of cubicle farms kept awake pharmacologically for 20-hour work days is absolutely terrifying. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/blog\/jamais-cascio\/open-future\/me\">this article<\/a> raises some very interesting questions about the value, consequences, and even future necessity of cognitive-enhancing drugs. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.warrenellis.com\/\" title=\"Warren Ellis\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of all things pharmacological, I&#8217;m just going to come right out and say it: <a href=\"http:\/\/xrayspex.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/wait-theres-grant-morrison-doc-in-works.html\">Grant Morrison<\/a> is pretty fucked up.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;&#8230;if the future is about to be rewritten, the big question becomes: How?&#8221; Steven Johnson in the <i>WSJ<\/i> on <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123980920727621353.html\">How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write<\/a>. [<a href=\"http:\/\/gwendabond.typepad.com\/bondgirl\/\" title=\"Gwenda Bond\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Apparently, 3-D animation is the only way to stay true to Charles Dickens&#8217; original intent. <a href=http:\/\/scifiwire.com\/2009\/05\/how-technology-has-caught.php\">So says Robert Zemeckis<\/a>, anyway:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">&#8220;The way he describes the ghosts, the way he describes the environment that these characters move in, has always been unbelievably visual and very descriptive. We&#8217;ve actually been saddled with technology that never really allowed us to present the ghosts, if you will, in a way that is put on the page by Mr. Dickens. So that was the main inspiration as to why we wanted to re-envision the movie in a way that I think is really more true to the novel.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">Having recently read Dickens&#8217; original novel &#8212; a pleasant holiday read, no doubt occasionally thrilling when he recited it on-stage, but not necessarily one of his best &#8212; and having seen plenty of adaptations of it over the years, I&#8217;d say Zemeckis is pretty much full of it. Usually, &#8220;true to the novel&#8221; is a euphemism. In this case, I think plenty of people have been plenty true to Dickens&#8217; novel. I have serious doubts that Carrey in motion-capture 3-D animation is going to be any improvement.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124173896716198603.html#mod=djemITP\">this<\/a> almost sounds like a present-day <i>Canticle for Liebowitz<\/i> [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/\" title=\"Bookslut\">via<\/a>]:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">A Benedictine monk from Minnesota is scouring libraries in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Georgia for rare, ancient Christian manuscripts that are threatened by wars and black-market looters; so far, more than 16,500 of his finds have been digitized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea of cubicle farms kept awake pharmacologically for 20-hour work days is absolutely terrifying. But this article raises some very interesting questions about the value, consequences, and even future necessity of cognitive-enhancing drugs. [via] Speaking of all things pharmacological, I&#8217;m just going to come right out and say it: Grant Morrison is pretty fucked &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3457\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}