Someone stole a whole bunch of emails and data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Bu... Anglia, and posted it all online. Apparently it contains any number of 'smoking guns' and the revelation that in private correspondence, climate scientists tend to say uncharitable and hurtful things about AGW skeptics.
Sounds like pre-Copenhagen desperation, although you do wonder why they would bother given a deal was all but taken off the table in Singapore. Of course, the worst thing about it is it gives the University of East Bumcrack more hot air (read that comments thread at your peril, seriously). 'Cause I'm sure you couldn't get some incriminating stuff from the servers of Big Oil or Coal or whoever is funding the anti-AGW astroturf groups...
Some creative writing lecturer wrote a "Mundane Manifesto" about using Rool Science in fiction, got a bunch of writers together with practicing scientists, the former wrote something inspired by the latter and the scientists then wrote afterwords about how they felt about the whole thing.
I think it's an interesting exercise although the results could be execrable of course, I haven't read it so I don't know. But the way that the 'future' is being reeled gradually back from the far-flung space operatics of a few decades ago is interesting. Perhaps the way that technology is becoming ever more pervasive is leading to more sci-fi that explicitly deals with contemporary settings. Linked in a way to the 'coming out' of supernatural creatures in other texts... the 20th century obsession with clandestine societies and conspiracies doesn't really wash in when capitalism's nightmarish aspects are hailed as features, not bugs.
Although those of you in science research... how cool would it be to have a story written riffing on your stuff!
Vol 19, 2009 of The Refractory, ‘All Your Base Are Belong to Us’: Videogames and Play in the Information Age is out, and puts me in some pretty fine company.
Mine is here. I'm actually pretty happy with it. Hooray for publications, they're kind of like doves aloft over the dark flood of marking.
I just got to use the phrase "Buridan's ass" in my thesis:
the inclusion of multiple levels within the same message involves an analytic paradox. This class of problems in general can be termed paradoxes of self-reference. Such problems arise when, for example, the Cretan poet Epimenides asserts that 'All Cretans are liars', when Kierkegaard confesses that he wants to be like Abraham even though he knows this to be perfectly unachievable and in Bertrand Russell’s famed meditation on whether the class of all classes that are not members of themselves is a member of itself. All of these problems are to a degree double-bound and must oscillate between either and or, yes and no, affirmative and negative. The primary source of such paradoxes is their self-referentiality: which is to say, their inclusion of a rule about communication within the message it communicates about. A paradox arises because when he refers to Cretans, Epimenides also refers to himself. An observer analysing the statement cannot decide between the two possibilities, is double-bound like Buridan's ass by the impossibility of choosing between them. However, it should be remembered that we refer to ourselves constantly in everyday life – some more than others, of course – and people don’t tend to collapse into fear and trembling from inability to process the paradox.
Sometimes it's the little things that help you get by.
A recently-released study from the New America Foundation finds that after inheriting the drone program from President George W. Bush, President Obama has dramatically escalated the number of unmanned air strikes in Pakistan by U.S. Predator and Reaper drones. The U.S. has made 43 strikes in Pakistan in 2009 -- only two of which occurred while Bush was still in office -- compared to 34 in all of 2008. While the drones have eliminated some top terrorist targets, there is concern that the robotic strikes are alienating Pakistani citizens and handing devastating propaganda victories to the Taliban, which uses each strike, and its associated killing of innocent civilians -- to drive up popular outrage against the U.S. The Foundation's study estimates that since 2006, drone strikes have killed between 750 and 1,000 Pakistani civilians. America's top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, in his August assessment of the war, wrote, "Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us -- physically and psychologically -- from the people we seek to protect. ... In addition, we run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily, but we can defeat ourselves."
Because of course, the major concern in killing 1000 innocent people is the bad press.
An Australian summer is just around the corner and I'm living in a house that has East/West doors which means lots of air going through.
And I have an EeePC which means writing can go on when and where I please.
I've realised that I couldn't possibly have finished this thesis when I was younger. Now is the time. It will be done in the next few months. It won't be perfect. But it will be good. It's hard to do. It's hard not to do.
In point of fact, I am the only person in the entire world who can write what I'm writing.
That doesn't mean that it needs to be written.
It's very hard to explain, but it's good in a way that works in itself. And it will be done. In that way.
One Low short into EX legs. Two low short into EX legs. It's true that Chunners' grab range is disgusting. Double fierce in the air is also real great, despite her damage handicap it puts them in a juggle state.
Damn, I've become such a boring shoto player. When I was a kid I dominated my local Milk Bar's Street Fighter 2 machine with Chun Li. This girl is so fine, the range on her pokes make her one of a kind as long as you don't waste your meter on a Super and stuff. Juggle with EX legs and EX bird into Ultra. Don't pretend you haven't heard.
I give this Lil Wayne/SF4 remediation two Metsu Hadoukens.
One thing about the Hey Hey skit getting blown to such proportions is that Australians are being confronted with the fact that other nations see us (when they think about us at all) as gauche, lumpen buffoons.
People are complaining about Obama not having done enough for the Peace Prize. He's done plenty. Expanded unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan, escalated a war of choice in Afghanistan while supporting an egregious vote-rigger and a bunch of thuggish warlords, retained hawkish Bush-and-Clinton era staff in senior administration positions, stonewalled any investigation of war crimes committed by the previous administration or sending the Goldstone Report to the Hague, rolled over on settlement expansion in the West Bank, spun a completely legal disclosure to the IAEA into evidence of a 'sekrit Iranian nukular facility' preparatory to a new war of choice, squandered his immense political momentum by emboldening conservatives and outraging the liberal base that voted him in... you know, the sorts of things people usually get the Nobel Peace Prize for.
My (white) housemate went to see a GP the other day. She was carrying a magazine with an article about a member of the Family First Political Party which I believe supports the return of the White Australia Policy. The doctor in question looked like a hip young Brunswick type, wearing funky jewellery and taking a casual approach to doctoring.
GP: So what do you think about the White Australia Policy?
Housemate: Um... I... don't support it.
GP: Hmm. Well that's too bad. I don't want to sound elitist or anything, but I have a 22 year old Asian female living above me. You just can't trust their appetites. The lust for money in her eyes is just disgusting. She sits exams for overseas students and charges them $5000, did you know that?
H: No.
GP: Yes well. They come over here and use our universities and take our men. They'll be running the country soon, you, me, our children. All the guys I know who are going out with Asians are losers, but still. They're our men.
H: I'm going now.
The clinic is just down the road - I need a new local GP, so I'm thinking of heading down. This doc seems like a riot. If her medical diagnoses are as interesting as her political ones there's no telling what prescriptions I could get away with.
I'm in the beta for www.anyclip.com which is basically an attempt to mark up film so that it's searchable. This would obviously be a major boon for film academics and artists interested in database aesthetics. I'm not entirely familiar with their methodology but given that my thesis is basically looking at the transforming relation between visual and discursive modes of signification I thought I should get up on this.
Trying to make an account I forgot to tick the tickybox which indicated my agreement to their terms of service, due to which oversight I was informed: "Agrees tos must agree to the tos".
Seems they have some teething issues - the tagline "Find any moment from any film, instantly" seems a bit bullish. First of all there are only a few hundred films there at the moment, and it's all Hollywood shite so don't hold your breath for Godard, Fuller or Pasolini. I'm not sure if they have a team of monkeys furiously marking up film segments or they have some more savvy method, but if it's the former it will take them forever and ever.
I did some searches:
"Ark of the Covenant" yielded a few random clips from Raiders of the Lost Ark. B-
"Bantha Poodoo" (sp?) turned up a few scenes in Star Wars involving those poor elephants in the shaggy costumes, but also the scene where Jabba actually says the phrase. Nice! A
"Salacious Crumb" gave results from Glengarry Glenross, Shrek 2, Over the Hedge, Lord of the Rings and The Mummy 2. Hmmm... F
"Show me the money" returned a scene from The Truman Show. F
So they obviously have a bit of work to do. If anyone's interested in checking out the beta, let me know.
Well, the long-distance relationship thing didn't work out. I guess it was never going to really... the person moved OS for a year-long degree and that's just too long given we only met a little bit before that. No doubt the fact that I'm not terribly bummed about it is a sign in itself. She's totally awesome but yeah proximity fail.
That's OK! The world came pre-installed with a myriad population of amazing and attractive women, after all. Having been to many nuptial-themed events recently (including one in VEGAS) has got me thinking about finding a keeper.
Charlie Brooker (whose Gamewipe series can't arrive soon enough) pretty much sums up how I feel about the Windows/Mac thing, and those ads, at The Guardian.
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