- Steve Bissette on horror:
Horror is one of the few genres—romance and comedy are the other two that come to mind—that’s all emotion-driven. It’s not a rational genre, like science fiction is. It’s irrational by nature. And it is capable of exploring all aspects of human experience.
The rest of the interview is pretty interesting, too.
- I find it tough to mourn the death of cursive handwriting. [via]
- Brazil TV host turned politician ‘ordered killings to boost ratings’. American TV executives are no doubt furiously taking notes. [via]
- Ten things we don’t understand about humans [via]
- And finally, a game: This is the Only Level. (Also of interest, You Only Live Once.) [via]
tv
Friday various
- I haven’t yet been to Manhattan’s new High Line park, but now I see what I’ve been missing:
Some guests at The Standard Hotel have stripped off to frolic naked in front of their rooms’ floor-to-ceiling windows, which are easily viewed from the newly-opened elevated High Line park.
I particularly like how the hotel promises “to ‘remind guests of the transparency’ of the windows.” Who knew windows were transparent?!
- In all the talk about saving Reading Rainbow, which is going off the air after 26 years, I’ve been sort of amazed that no one’s remarked on one simple thing: the show actually went off the air three years ago. At least, that’s when Burton quit, disappointed with the direction the show’s news owners wanted to take it. New episodes haven’t been made since 2006. It’s disappointing there isn’t money in anybody’s pockets to keep repeats on the air — it really was a terrific program — but it’s also a little disingenuous (or only half the story) to call this the show’s end.
- If you’re really feeling nostalgic for PBS children’s programming, why not check out the original pitch for Sesame Street?
- I didn’t find TinEye particularly useful myself, but I do kind of like the idea of a “reverse search engine.” [via]
- And finally, Warren Ellis on the smallness of the future:
I miss vast, mad underground bases as much as the next person, possibly more, because deep down I feel like I always should have been a James Bond villain – but I adore the fact that the Jet Propulsion Lab appears to control the Mars rovers from a Portakabin somewhere outside Pasadena. And there’s great appeal in the notion that today’s architecture students will be faced with problems involving not great stupid boondoggles like Olympic stadia that in six years’ time will be nothing more than receptacles for the foaming, incandescent urine of meths-drinking tramps, but instead will be asked for solutions to concepts like the intron depot. From rust-prone compression rings and precast concrete sections for a tumour of idiocy, to atomic-scale cathedral stations for organising the blood-borne trajectories of rot-proof buckytube bullet-trains. This is beautiful to me.
Tuesday various
- J.R. Blackwell on high school:
If my life now was like high school, if my “real life” as they say, was at all like the lack of freedom and harassment I experienced while in high school, then things wouldn’t be going well for me at all. Perhaps then, that is how high school prepares you for real life – but showing you what you have to work hard to stay away from – how your earning power gives you freedoms that if you lost, you would lose your freedoms as well. Perhaps high school is a warning for the young mind – fail, and you will go someplace very much like here, except in that place, there isn’t a prom.
- Frederik Pohl, who at 89 was just awarded his high school diploma would seem to agree:
Pohl speculates that perhaps, if he had finished high school, he might have gone on to spend the rest of his career at American Car and
Foundry, instead of writing multiple science fiction classics.”Just quit school, kids!
- A contest to pick the funniest joke and, surprisingly, none of them are terrible? What are the odds? Obviously your mileage may vary, and some — like the winner, I think — are maybe more drolly amusing that laugh-aloud funny, but in any “ten best” list, you expect at least some real clunkers. [via]
- Just how ridiculous are the “birthers”? Well… [via]
- And finally, while I debate buying this
G.I. Joe Complete Collector’s Set (no, seriously. I am honestly tempted), here’s…
That’s one way of putting it
Noel Murray on Torchwood: Children of Earth:
Mostly, this run of Torchwood is concerned with how evil both large and small plays out in a series of selfish acts and procedural moves. In that way, Children Of Earth is like The Wire of science fiction.
Sunday various
- Well here’s a shocker: a zombie apocalypse really would wipe out mankind. So say Canadian researchers, anyhow, and I’ve learned to trust Canadians on matters zombie-related. [via]
- From the “Are You Sure That Isn’t from The Onion Department”: “College Grad Sues College Because She Can’t Find a Job.” [via]
- I had real problems with Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica near the end — not as much as some people, maybe, but still enough that I have yet to finish watching the final season. (It’s telling how much I wasn’t enjoying it that I was able to stop, months ago, midway through the cliffhanger mutiny episodes, and not really feel compelled to continue.) But how can it not be too early for yet another remake? The elements that Moore didn’t adapt were the cheesy Star Wars-ripoffs of the original show. Who, besides maybe Glen Larson and Dirk Benedict, is crying out for that? And so soon?
- Fox News gets okay to misinform public:
In its six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission position against news distortion is only a “policy,” not a promulgated law, rule, or regulation.
Well that’s reassuring.[via]
- And finally, uniting all robots under a single operating system? Yeah, that couldn’t possibly go wrong… [via]