A constant quandary that seems to spring up in all sorts of discussion venues is the notion of the Top Five. If you're unfamiliar with this concept, it's the mostly-facetious list of five totally unattainable people that you'd really like to get with, and that your spouse/partner/significant other would actually allow if the opportunity presented itself. Generally, this is actors, musicians, or otherwise celebrities. Something like "the guy who brings our UPS packages" or "the girl two doors down" is against the spirit of the Top Five.
So who's in my Top Five? (Note that you're still allowed to have a Top Five even in the absence of a significant other.)
Ever since I've known that I liked girls, I've had a thing for Natalie Portman. I suspect that a lot of other Star Wars fanboys feel the same way. She seems to be fairly universally recognized, if not a member of a given man's Top Five, as a respectable choice nevertheless.
A tribute to Eva Longoria is that she made it socially acceptable for men to say they watch Desperate Housewives. "I dunno, my mom/sister/girlfriend/wife had it on." "Yeah, so leave the room." "Right, I was about to, then Eva Longoria came on." "Oh."
If she didn't want to be prominent on Top Five lists, then Kate Beckinsale should have stopped inserting herself into guy movies--and geek guy movies, at that. Underworld and its sequel, Van Helsing, and goodness knows what else have catapulted her into virtually all of my friends' Top Fives.
Now, for a bit of an unconventional turn, I'm going to go with Kristen Bell. I never watched Veronica Mars, nor have I gotten into Heroes even though I've been told time and time again that I'm supposed to. Oh, and she's a vegetarian, which is a little weird. But I'll let it slide.
Finally, if Kristen Bell is a little unconventional, Tina Fey blows convention out of the water. Her literate presence and sharp wit go a long way here. Granted, her Weekend Update interpretation didn't exactly top Norm MacDonald's, but whose did?
So what prompted this? Magazines like to push lists of people we're not as attractive as onto us. One recent choice offered as a cover shot was Kate Hudson. This got me thinking, "yes, good job magazine, this woman is legitimately attractive." Usually it's some crap like Angelina Jolie or Katherine Heigl. Now, let's talk a little about Angelina Jolie. During one outing where friends and colleagues were grilling me about my Top Five, someone (a girl) asked "so really, no Angelina Jolie? You don't think she's sexy?" To this, I honestly responded "no, she's more scary than sexy." And sorry, Ms. Heigl, a successful chick flick and a crappy primetime hospital drama does not earn you any respect.
Who else might make the list, given its expansion? Evangeline Lilly would be toward the top--coming from a diehard Lost fan, this should be no surprise. Keira Knightley has dropped several places now that she's looking more and more like a stick every day. The female half of the band Eisley should go without saying. Taking a Wikipedia trail from Kristen Bell -> Heroes -> Hayden Panettiere, she's now up there too. I like both Olivia Wilde and Jennifer Morrison from House, the second best show currently on television.
And now that it's socially acceptable, Emma Watson can join this list. An ending poll, fueled from countless conversations with my roommate last year: what's the youngest a woman can be before you'd feel creepy thinking she's attractive? Obviously, this doesn't apply to guys younger than 18. After 18, I think this is still a function of age, though less strongly. My personal opinion is 16, and I have reasoning to back that up: if she's old enough to go places by herself, she's fair game. My roommate (who, granted, is a year and a half younger than I am) says 15, while our friend and fellow PL Alex says 17. His roommate Jeff says 12, though he's kidding. Hopefully.
Currently listening: "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright," Simon and Garfunkel
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Bière je t'aime
This post is not entirely about alcohol. In fact, rather little of it is. I recognize that college kids are going to drink, and I'm not going to go puritan and say "Now, children, drinking alcohol is bad for your studies." I will express a preference for generally not wanting to get drunk, and I'll act according to that preference. And thus follows one of my biggest pet peeves: people who have little to talk about except for alcohol. Lest I think this is confined only to my experience, the Onion video podcast (highly recommended) a few weeks ago reported that "80% of roommates got 'so wasted' last night."
It's common knowledge that I'm a budding wine snob, or at least I'd like to think of myself as being one. Something about the wine culture and the implied pretentiousness is just amusing to me, yet there has to be something material there if such a developed following of this beverage has existed for thousands of years. In most cases, beer just doesn't have the same sophisticate appeal. What's classier? Drinking a glass of pinot noir, or a can of Miller Lite? More importantly, which tastes better?
The problem with beer, I've come to realize, is that the floor is a lot lower. There's bad wine, to be sure. Take the 1.5 Euro bottle I drank some of over last summer. Horrible. But most wine in the "average" price range of $10-$15 is going to be at least drinkable. The "average" beer is defined less by a specific price and more by popularity--granted a popularity that probably comes from a low price. In other words, the perception of the "average wine" to most people is something along the lines of a $10 or $15 bottle--not necessarily exquisite, but no reason it can't still be delicious. And "average beer" is going to be your Budweisers, your Millers... which to me (and a lot of legitimate sophisticates) are utterly undrinkable.
There is good beer out there, though. It's just harder to find. Hofbrau, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Guinness, and how many others I first had over last summer? So enter Epsilon Upsilon, a friend's plan for a fraternity. Here's the premise: we drink the same obnoxious amounts of beer as any other fraternity, but the critical distinction is that it's good beer. Armed with $50 that may or may not have been from a Housing reimbursement from a fake program, I set off to Whole Foods and bought enough to last a couple months. And I experienced the high-class implementation of this beverage.
This got me and my roommate thinking. We're always looking for ideas for a Campus Movie Fest short film. We actually had a quite good one last year but never got it off the ground. Our latest idea is "Bière je t'aime", a film directed in pretentious foreign-film style but about frat boys drinking beer. This is an obvious reference to "Paris, je t'aime", which I've never actually seen, but I imagine to be in some sort of pretentious foreign film style of its own. We're not entirely sure whether to use English or French, but the line "Ou est le Icehouse?" has to show up at least once.
Our other idea, which I thought was quite good, is as yet untitled. It deals with camping in front of Brittain dining hall, waiting for it to open, in a parody of people camping in front of the stadium for football tickets. The characters in the film would be extremely enthusiastic so they could be the first in line to get the morning's pancakes, be disappointed because there were no bananas... and of course make bright, happy conversation with the Brittain employees.
One final over-the-top artsy fiction setting developed by me and my roommate is this one. Say, in the future, there's a way to induce limited long-term memory loss. In this state, you could remember what you ate for lunch yesterday, but not any of the significant events from your life's past. It would be turned into a game. You'd have this procedure done, be deposited in a site that you could connect to something significant, and win if you found out that significance before the procedure wore off. For instance, pretend there's a man from Atlanta who has just been married. He'd be dropped off in Atlanta, have to ask people to figure out where he was, slowly retrace some of the steps of his life, and if he found his new wife, he'd win the prize.
The idea here is that coming across certain milestone locations would trigger some of the blocked long-term memory. The house where you grew up in is the obvious choice, but also say your high school or college, the place you got married, or even something traumatic, like where you'd gotten into a fight as a kid. As the person successfully traced his way through these places, certain memories would open, leading him eventually to his current life. Significant people would have to be in on it, too... if this guy finds his brother's house, the brother is supposed to be a trigger, not say "hey, you're in this game, go to this address to win."
That's the premise. The conflict comes in when, inevitably, the process goes wrong. Maybe it fails to erase memories of itself, so when the contestant wakes up, his last memory is some people he doesn't know performing a mysterious operation on him. He then ignores his supposed goal of finding his wife and instead seeks revenge on these enigmatic people for destroying his memory. Or possibly it fails to work altogether, leaving an enterprising young man able to do whatever he wishes under the guise of memory loss. It's very Jason Bourne, except a bit more cerebral (and sadly with fewer explosions).
Currently listening: "Saint Simon", the Shins
It's common knowledge that I'm a budding wine snob, or at least I'd like to think of myself as being one. Something about the wine culture and the implied pretentiousness is just amusing to me, yet there has to be something material there if such a developed following of this beverage has existed for thousands of years. In most cases, beer just doesn't have the same sophisticate appeal. What's classier? Drinking a glass of pinot noir, or a can of Miller Lite? More importantly, which tastes better?
The problem with beer, I've come to realize, is that the floor is a lot lower. There's bad wine, to be sure. Take the 1.5 Euro bottle I drank some of over last summer. Horrible. But most wine in the "average" price range of $10-$15 is going to be at least drinkable. The "average" beer is defined less by a specific price and more by popularity--granted a popularity that probably comes from a low price. In other words, the perception of the "average wine" to most people is something along the lines of a $10 or $15 bottle--not necessarily exquisite, but no reason it can't still be delicious. And "average beer" is going to be your Budweisers, your Millers... which to me (and a lot of legitimate sophisticates) are utterly undrinkable.
There is good beer out there, though. It's just harder to find. Hofbrau, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Guinness, and how many others I first had over last summer? So enter Epsilon Upsilon, a friend's plan for a fraternity. Here's the premise: we drink the same obnoxious amounts of beer as any other fraternity, but the critical distinction is that it's good beer. Armed with $50 that may or may not have been from a Housing reimbursement from a fake program, I set off to Whole Foods and bought enough to last a couple months. And I experienced the high-class implementation of this beverage.
This got me and my roommate thinking. We're always looking for ideas for a Campus Movie Fest short film. We actually had a quite good one last year but never got it off the ground. Our latest idea is "Bière je t'aime", a film directed in pretentious foreign-film style but about frat boys drinking beer. This is an obvious reference to "Paris, je t'aime", which I've never actually seen, but I imagine to be in some sort of pretentious foreign film style of its own. We're not entirely sure whether to use English or French, but the line "Ou est le Icehouse?" has to show up at least once.
Our other idea, which I thought was quite good, is as yet untitled. It deals with camping in front of Brittain dining hall, waiting for it to open, in a parody of people camping in front of the stadium for football tickets. The characters in the film would be extremely enthusiastic so they could be the first in line to get the morning's pancakes, be disappointed because there were no bananas... and of course make bright, happy conversation with the Brittain employees.
One final over-the-top artsy fiction setting developed by me and my roommate is this one. Say, in the future, there's a way to induce limited long-term memory loss. In this state, you could remember what you ate for lunch yesterday, but not any of the significant events from your life's past. It would be turned into a game. You'd have this procedure done, be deposited in a site that you could connect to something significant, and win if you found out that significance before the procedure wore off. For instance, pretend there's a man from Atlanta who has just been married. He'd be dropped off in Atlanta, have to ask people to figure out where he was, slowly retrace some of the steps of his life, and if he found his new wife, he'd win the prize.
The idea here is that coming across certain milestone locations would trigger some of the blocked long-term memory. The house where you grew up in is the obvious choice, but also say your high school or college, the place you got married, or even something traumatic, like where you'd gotten into a fight as a kid. As the person successfully traced his way through these places, certain memories would open, leading him eventually to his current life. Significant people would have to be in on it, too... if this guy finds his brother's house, the brother is supposed to be a trigger, not say "hey, you're in this game, go to this address to win."
That's the premise. The conflict comes in when, inevitably, the process goes wrong. Maybe it fails to erase memories of itself, so when the contestant wakes up, his last memory is some people he doesn't know performing a mysterious operation on him. He then ignores his supposed goal of finding his wife and instead seeks revenge on these enigmatic people for destroying his memory. Or possibly it fails to work altogether, leaving an enterprising young man able to do whatever he wishes under the guise of memory loss. It's very Jason Bourne, except a bit more cerebral (and sadly with fewer explosions).
Currently listening: "Saint Simon", the Shins
O GRE, Harbinger of Doom
Coincidence, that "O GRE" spells out "ogre"? I think not.
Most of my peer group is done with this standardized test business by this point in their lives. It probably began fifteen years ago with some nice Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, progressed through all manners of state- and local-mandated curriculum based assessments, a Gateway test to see if you're really ready for the rigors of... 8th grade! Then the PSAT shows up, which really has no bearing on anything except whether or not your college feels like giving you a thousand dollars a year for free.
By that time, you're ready to face the granddaddy of them all, the SAT. Or maybe you're up against his brother, the ACT. Either way, no single test is as critical to so much of the populace as these college-entrance exams. Maybe the driving test, come to think of it. But the DMV doesn't care how many times you have to try before you get a license. Countless hours and dollars go into preparation for the SAT, such that by the time you're ready to take it, there's no way you won't know what's coming. No guarantees as to how you'll do, what score you get, or what super-elite establishments you may have the credentials to join once you take it. But you've at least met the guy before.
My impending endeavor is the GRE. If the SAT is the granddaddy of standardized tests, and to extend the metaphor way too far, the GRE is that guy who's vaguely related to your family somehow. You call him "uncle" despite the dubious at best evidence for blood relation. Maybe by the time you're twenty, twenty-two, you start to ask around about this guy. Your cool uncle Stan (short for Stanford Binet, naturally) pulls you aside and tells you what's up. "Uncle GRE? Sure! He's really a lot like your grandfather, but he's harder to get to know, so a lot of people never bother talking to him in the first place. Such a shame..."
I decided it was high time to orient myself and at least pull together some modicum of preparation for my last test. (Not true, really. I still have plenty of exams, and of course the dreaded Quals once I actually get into grad school. But it's the last standardized test I think I'll ever have to take.) And honestly... this is like the SAT over again, but with harder words. Still two sections that count, verbal and quantitative, plus a writing section that nobody cares about.
Naturally, I assume that the quantitative section matters to me more as an engineer. The one piece of advice I get, common among literally everyone I talk to about the GRE, is "don't fret the math section. If your major at all involves math, there's no way you won't do great on it." That's solid advice; everyone gets the same GRE. Doesn't matter if you're intending to study spectral field applications of tensors in grad school, or if you're pursuing degrees in medieval literature. But I started to get the kernel of doubt: well, I deal with a bit of calculus in my major, and a lot of plug and chug into correlations to calculate dimensionless quantities, but how much straight up math do I know?
When I saw the section in a GRE book about "the two special right triangles in geometry", I knew exactly how little I should worry.
The words are a different matter. I don't think, realistically, that a low verbal score would hurt my chances to get into grad school. I mean, look at the demographics of who exactly becomes engineering grad students, and English isn't even the first language for probably a majority of them. My quantitative score should be high, my grades are good, and I've done some decent research, so I'm probably in okay shape. But as long as I'm taking this test, I'm not going to embarrass myself and completely bomb it. So I invested in a GRE word book.
Some of them, I straight up don't know, like "contumacious", which has such a mess of prefixes and suffixes that there's no way I could have found the root and figured out it meant "rebellious". But I was impressed on an initial skim with the number of words that I did know, from unlikely geeky sources.
First, Latin: I didn't know what "peccadillo" meant, except that it was probably Spanish. But... "pecavi" is Latin for "I have sinned", so maybe it means something about sin? Yep. "Impecunious" clearly reflects the Latin root "pecunia" for money. "Meretricious" needs no introduction except for the Latin "meretrix", prostitute. (For the love of etymology, this further comes from "merere", to earn; literally, a meretrix is a female who earns.) Thank you, Dale Buff.
And second, role-playing games: "augury", "glibness", and "hoary" are "prediction", "quick-tongued", and "elderly white" respectively. Wouldn't have known those without a bit of D&D.
Currently listening: "Fall: Allegro" from The Four Seasons, Vivaldi
Most of my peer group is done with this standardized test business by this point in their lives. It probably began fifteen years ago with some nice Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, progressed through all manners of state- and local-mandated curriculum based assessments, a Gateway test to see if you're really ready for the rigors of... 8th grade! Then the PSAT shows up, which really has no bearing on anything except whether or not your college feels like giving you a thousand dollars a year for free.
By that time, you're ready to face the granddaddy of them all, the SAT. Or maybe you're up against his brother, the ACT. Either way, no single test is as critical to so much of the populace as these college-entrance exams. Maybe the driving test, come to think of it. But the DMV doesn't care how many times you have to try before you get a license. Countless hours and dollars go into preparation for the SAT, such that by the time you're ready to take it, there's no way you won't know what's coming. No guarantees as to how you'll do, what score you get, or what super-elite establishments you may have the credentials to join once you take it. But you've at least met the guy before.
My impending endeavor is the GRE. If the SAT is the granddaddy of standardized tests, and to extend the metaphor way too far, the GRE is that guy who's vaguely related to your family somehow. You call him "uncle" despite the dubious at best evidence for blood relation. Maybe by the time you're twenty, twenty-two, you start to ask around about this guy. Your cool uncle Stan (short for Stanford Binet, naturally) pulls you aside and tells you what's up. "Uncle GRE? Sure! He's really a lot like your grandfather, but he's harder to get to know, so a lot of people never bother talking to him in the first place. Such a shame..."
I decided it was high time to orient myself and at least pull together some modicum of preparation for my last test. (Not true, really. I still have plenty of exams, and of course the dreaded Quals once I actually get into grad school. But it's the last standardized test I think I'll ever have to take.) And honestly... this is like the SAT over again, but with harder words. Still two sections that count, verbal and quantitative, plus a writing section that nobody cares about.
Naturally, I assume that the quantitative section matters to me more as an engineer. The one piece of advice I get, common among literally everyone I talk to about the GRE, is "don't fret the math section. If your major at all involves math, there's no way you won't do great on it." That's solid advice; everyone gets the same GRE. Doesn't matter if you're intending to study spectral field applications of tensors in grad school, or if you're pursuing degrees in medieval literature. But I started to get the kernel of doubt: well, I deal with a bit of calculus in my major, and a lot of plug and chug into correlations to calculate dimensionless quantities, but how much straight up math do I know?
When I saw the section in a GRE book about "the two special right triangles in geometry", I knew exactly how little I should worry.
The words are a different matter. I don't think, realistically, that a low verbal score would hurt my chances to get into grad school. I mean, look at the demographics of who exactly becomes engineering grad students, and English isn't even the first language for probably a majority of them. My quantitative score should be high, my grades are good, and I've done some decent research, so I'm probably in okay shape. But as long as I'm taking this test, I'm not going to embarrass myself and completely bomb it. So I invested in a GRE word book.
Some of them, I straight up don't know, like "contumacious", which has such a mess of prefixes and suffixes that there's no way I could have found the root and figured out it meant "rebellious". But I was impressed on an initial skim with the number of words that I did know, from unlikely geeky sources.
First, Latin: I didn't know what "peccadillo" meant, except that it was probably Spanish. But... "pecavi" is Latin for "I have sinned", so maybe it means something about sin? Yep. "Impecunious" clearly reflects the Latin root "pecunia" for money. "Meretricious" needs no introduction except for the Latin "meretrix", prostitute. (For the love of etymology, this further comes from "merere", to earn; literally, a meretrix is a female who earns.) Thank you, Dale Buff.
And second, role-playing games: "augury", "glibness", and "hoary" are "prediction", "quick-tongued", and "elderly white" respectively. Wouldn't have known those without a bit of D&D.
Currently listening: "Fall: Allegro" from The Four Seasons, Vivaldi
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Everyone needs an excuse to use the phrase "Wii Wheel" in conversation
And now we all get one!
Review: Mario Kart Wii
A motif that's developing in Nintendo's big flagship first-party games is a near-reverence for its old big flagship first-party games. It makes a deal of sense, really. If it got them this far, why not milk every drop out of each and every series? They've turned out brilliant games a decade ago (Ocarina of Time, Mario 64) and brilliant games within the past year or two (Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy).
And it's the duty of Nintendo's multiplayer party game trinity--Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Brothers--to tie all these games together. In past generations, they've been content to incorporate Nintendo characters and settings and thematic elements in general. But in the Wii incarnations of these games, we get not only the Wii interpretation of the Nintendo stock history, but the Wii renditions of previous interpretations of Nintendo's annals.
That's usually a good thing. Previous games has shown what's worked and what hasn't. That makes the later version doubly good, as it can use the elements that do work for its original content, and it can appropriate the best of the old content. And that's exactly what Mario Kart Wii has done. To date, every Mario Kart game has invented sixteen new levels. Most of these levels were entirely new content, and each game featured a remake of two iconic Mario Kart levels: Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road.
The Wii version does the same thing: fourteen completely original levels, some of them rooted in the larger Nintendo culture and some of them made up for the game, plus the obligatory Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road. But Wii doesn't stop there. We get sixteen of the best levels from Mario Karts past--including, yes, two Bowser's Castle incarnations. So from the start, Mario Kart Wii succeeds in exactly the same place that Smash Brothers Brawl did: in evoking a nostalgia and appreciation for the old days of Nintendo gaming. I played Mario Kart on the SNES when I was 8 yeard old and first got a game console, so I'm on the tail end of the gamers that would actually appreciate each and every one of the references in the game, from the lowly SNES Ghost Valley 2 to the grand and storied DK Mountain from the Gamecube version.
The biggest, most apparent addition to this game is the inclusion of bikes--and tricks. I was skeptical of the bikes at first--after all, this is Mario Kart, not Mario BMX or something like that. They grew on me, and fast. It adds a sliver of complexity to the game that it didn't per se need, but turns out to enhance it a lot. New characters, excellent as always: I'm a Dry Bones fanboy myself, and Funky Kong is another nice throwback to the SNES glory days. And the aforementioned Wii Wheel may never be used in another Wii game again, but it's what the Wii is supposed to be: clever and intuitive.
Pursuant to the Nintendo tradition, of course, were a few missteps. I'll never understand why a sequel to a game should ever be worse than the original, or fail to include elements from the original that made the original so good in the first place (eg, Oblivion). Here, there's a bizarre turn on the battle system, where it's not the last-man-standing that we've become accustomed to from the previous games. But that's not even the problem. The real issue here is that there were incredibly fun modes of battle from the Gamecube version (I was a huge fan of the "bomb the crap out of everyone" mode) that were merely left out of the Wii version.
Finally, it's good marketing to allow the use of the Gamecube controller in these multiplayer games. After all, if someone has, say, two Wiimotes but a lot of friends who may want to play, this person may get discouraged from buying a game that mandates the use of the Wiimote. But a considerable fraction of the people who own a Wii are also going to own a couple Gamecube controllers... problem solved! The place where this becomes a problem is in the ultra-hardcore gamers, the ones who care enough to test every controller configuration and are willing to sacrifice the spirit of the game (and the console for that matter) for a few extra seconds' speed. These people have way too much time on their hands anyway; the least Nintendo could do is level the online playing field by standardizing a controller configuration.
All in all, Mario Kart Wii is an excellent game, absolutely recommended for a fun multiplayer game. If you're a casual gamer, don't expect too much out of the online mode except for last place, but that's the beauty of the Wii: the ability to simultaneously appeal to anyone from the most apathetically casual to the most obsessive hardcore gamer.
Currently listening: "Joggin Gorgeous Summer", Islands
Review: Mario Kart Wii
A motif that's developing in Nintendo's big flagship first-party games is a near-reverence for its old big flagship first-party games. It makes a deal of sense, really. If it got them this far, why not milk every drop out of each and every series? They've turned out brilliant games a decade ago (Ocarina of Time, Mario 64) and brilliant games within the past year or two (Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy).
And it's the duty of Nintendo's multiplayer party game trinity--Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Brothers--to tie all these games together. In past generations, they've been content to incorporate Nintendo characters and settings and thematic elements in general. But in the Wii incarnations of these games, we get not only the Wii interpretation of the Nintendo stock history, but the Wii renditions of previous interpretations of Nintendo's annals.
That's usually a good thing. Previous games has shown what's worked and what hasn't. That makes the later version doubly good, as it can use the elements that do work for its original content, and it can appropriate the best of the old content. And that's exactly what Mario Kart Wii has done. To date, every Mario Kart game has invented sixteen new levels. Most of these levels were entirely new content, and each game featured a remake of two iconic Mario Kart levels: Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road.
The Wii version does the same thing: fourteen completely original levels, some of them rooted in the larger Nintendo culture and some of them made up for the game, plus the obligatory Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road. But Wii doesn't stop there. We get sixteen of the best levels from Mario Karts past--including, yes, two Bowser's Castle incarnations. So from the start, Mario Kart Wii succeeds in exactly the same place that Smash Brothers Brawl did: in evoking a nostalgia and appreciation for the old days of Nintendo gaming. I played Mario Kart on the SNES when I was 8 yeard old and first got a game console, so I'm on the tail end of the gamers that would actually appreciate each and every one of the references in the game, from the lowly SNES Ghost Valley 2 to the grand and storied DK Mountain from the Gamecube version.
The biggest, most apparent addition to this game is the inclusion of bikes--and tricks. I was skeptical of the bikes at first--after all, this is Mario Kart, not Mario BMX or something like that. They grew on me, and fast. It adds a sliver of complexity to the game that it didn't per se need, but turns out to enhance it a lot. New characters, excellent as always: I'm a Dry Bones fanboy myself, and Funky Kong is another nice throwback to the SNES glory days. And the aforementioned Wii Wheel may never be used in another Wii game again, but it's what the Wii is supposed to be: clever and intuitive.
Pursuant to the Nintendo tradition, of course, were a few missteps. I'll never understand why a sequel to a game should ever be worse than the original, or fail to include elements from the original that made the original so good in the first place (eg, Oblivion). Here, there's a bizarre turn on the battle system, where it's not the last-man-standing that we've become accustomed to from the previous games. But that's not even the problem. The real issue here is that there were incredibly fun modes of battle from the Gamecube version (I was a huge fan of the "bomb the crap out of everyone" mode) that were merely left out of the Wii version.
Finally, it's good marketing to allow the use of the Gamecube controller in these multiplayer games. After all, if someone has, say, two Wiimotes but a lot of friends who may want to play, this person may get discouraged from buying a game that mandates the use of the Wiimote. But a considerable fraction of the people who own a Wii are also going to own a couple Gamecube controllers... problem solved! The place where this becomes a problem is in the ultra-hardcore gamers, the ones who care enough to test every controller configuration and are willing to sacrifice the spirit of the game (and the console for that matter) for a few extra seconds' speed. These people have way too much time on their hands anyway; the least Nintendo could do is level the online playing field by standardizing a controller configuration.
All in all, Mario Kart Wii is an excellent game, absolutely recommended for a fun multiplayer game. If you're a casual gamer, don't expect too much out of the online mode except for last place, but that's the beauty of the Wii: the ability to simultaneously appeal to anyone from the most apathetically casual to the most obsessive hardcore gamer.
Currently listening: "Joggin Gorgeous Summer", Islands
Saturday, May 10, 2008
It's May, and everyone knows what that means
The Summer Blockbuster, of course. Or rather, the first of many. This year promises wonders like a new Indiana Jones movie, and all manner of big comedies with huge stars. First on this summer's list, though, was Iron Man.
Review: Iron Man
How in the heck many superhero movies have we been subjected to over the past few years? Three Spidermans, three X-Mens, a Hulk and a Batman with more of each coming this summer, a Catwoman (that most people would perhaps rather forget), a Superman, and doubtless others that I'm neglecting to mention. Add Sin City and 300 and V for Vendetta if we want to extend the category to "comic book and/or graphic novel movies".
Most of them are decent. Not excellent, not hideous, but entertaining. And that's what you expect. The Spiderman movies and the X-Men movies have both gotten worse as the series have dragged on, but let's face the fact that most people interested in this sort of movie aren't going to fashion themselves into playing movie critic.
So with a healthy dose of skepticism, I followed those Movie People friends of mine into a theater to see the latest in the flood. And to my surprise, I actually could play movie critic on this one and not have it destroy my opinion of the movie. The characterization was excellent, especially with respect to Tony Stark himself. Nearly every other superhero movie features either 1) some emo guy who accidentally acquired superpowers and has Internal Conflicts about how to use them (eg Spiderman), or 2) some mystical, otherworldly Force of Good must battle Forces of Evil to save men (eg X-Men). Tony Stark is neither.
In fact, he's something of a douchebag. Billionaire weapons dealer, doesn't give a crap about anyone but himself, and downright hilarious to watch. When he's captured by al Qaeda-esque terrorists, he naturally becomes a lot less of a douchebag--though his personality doesn't immediately and completely swing to implausibility. The best part, though, is that his superhero status doesn't emerge as the result of any powers. It's his own cunning that allows him to become Iron Man. And that's a refreshing shift from "ooh, I have superpowers, but I don't know how to handle them, whine whine whine."
Of course, Stark goes to exact some revenge on the terrorists, the leader of whom bears a striking resemblance to any number of 24 villains, but not before he realizes that... guess what? His "loyal number 2 guy" has been in league with the terrorists the whole time. Okay. Just once, is is too much to ask for the "loyal number 2 guy" to be legitimately loyal? That has to be the most overused plot device in the history of storytelling: the hard working protagonist eventually attains success, only to be betrayed by his deputy. In a slight variation on the theme, the protagonist comes to deal with an honorable guy in charge, only to be rebuffed by the guy-in-charge's vizier, who of course happens to be not only evil but also diametrically opposed to the protagonist's goals.
And like in every other story, in the Climactic Battle, Tony Stark defeats his betrayer, manages to survive himself, and maybe learns a lesson from it? Another distinction from your run-of-the-mill superhero movie, though, is the obligatory "love interest" subplot. In the majority of other superhero movies, you'd have to lump "gets with the girl he's been after the whole time" in with the list of climactic plot devices. Not here.
The one scene that sticks out in the movie is Stark's interaction with his half-love interest and half-assistant Pepper at a party. It's appropriately awkward, with both Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow cutting each other off at exactly the right time to make it seem unscripted. Making the two of them get together at the end of the movie would have been disappointingly cliche enough to devalue the believable predicate that the movie had worked hard to achieve to that point. Fortunately, it didn't. Superheros, like the rest of us, have relationships with shades of gray to them.
And I have to give credit to the writers for the delayed gratification of not having Stark utter the line "I am Iron Man" until the very end, and having the possibly-eponymous Black Sabbath song roll over the credits. Any earlier in the movie would have been unnecessarily cheesy.
Currently listening: "Sweet and Low", Augustana
Review: Iron Man
How in the heck many superhero movies have we been subjected to over the past few years? Three Spidermans, three X-Mens, a Hulk and a Batman with more of each coming this summer, a Catwoman (that most people would perhaps rather forget), a Superman, and doubtless others that I'm neglecting to mention. Add Sin City and 300 and V for Vendetta if we want to extend the category to "comic book and/or graphic novel movies".
Most of them are decent. Not excellent, not hideous, but entertaining. And that's what you expect. The Spiderman movies and the X-Men movies have both gotten worse as the series have dragged on, but let's face the fact that most people interested in this sort of movie aren't going to fashion themselves into playing movie critic.
So with a healthy dose of skepticism, I followed those Movie People friends of mine into a theater to see the latest in the flood. And to my surprise, I actually could play movie critic on this one and not have it destroy my opinion of the movie. The characterization was excellent, especially with respect to Tony Stark himself. Nearly every other superhero movie features either 1) some emo guy who accidentally acquired superpowers and has Internal Conflicts about how to use them (eg Spiderman), or 2) some mystical, otherworldly Force of Good must battle Forces of Evil to save men (eg X-Men). Tony Stark is neither.
In fact, he's something of a douchebag. Billionaire weapons dealer, doesn't give a crap about anyone but himself, and downright hilarious to watch. When he's captured by al Qaeda-esque terrorists, he naturally becomes a lot less of a douchebag--though his personality doesn't immediately and completely swing to implausibility. The best part, though, is that his superhero status doesn't emerge as the result of any powers. It's his own cunning that allows him to become Iron Man. And that's a refreshing shift from "ooh, I have superpowers, but I don't know how to handle them, whine whine whine."
Of course, Stark goes to exact some revenge on the terrorists, the leader of whom bears a striking resemblance to any number of 24 villains, but not before he realizes that... guess what? His "loyal number 2 guy" has been in league with the terrorists the whole time. Okay. Just once, is is too much to ask for the "loyal number 2 guy" to be legitimately loyal? That has to be the most overused plot device in the history of storytelling: the hard working protagonist eventually attains success, only to be betrayed by his deputy. In a slight variation on the theme, the protagonist comes to deal with an honorable guy in charge, only to be rebuffed by the guy-in-charge's vizier, who of course happens to be not only evil but also diametrically opposed to the protagonist's goals.
And like in every other story, in the Climactic Battle, Tony Stark defeats his betrayer, manages to survive himself, and maybe learns a lesson from it? Another distinction from your run-of-the-mill superhero movie, though, is the obligatory "love interest" subplot. In the majority of other superhero movies, you'd have to lump "gets with the girl he's been after the whole time" in with the list of climactic plot devices. Not here.
The one scene that sticks out in the movie is Stark's interaction with his half-love interest and half-assistant Pepper at a party. It's appropriately awkward, with both Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow cutting each other off at exactly the right time to make it seem unscripted. Making the two of them get together at the end of the movie would have been disappointingly cliche enough to devalue the believable predicate that the movie had worked hard to achieve to that point. Fortunately, it didn't. Superheros, like the rest of us, have relationships with shades of gray to them.
And I have to give credit to the writers for the delayed gratification of not having Stark utter the line "I am Iron Man" until the very end, and having the possibly-eponymous Black Sabbath song roll over the credits. Any earlier in the movie would have been unnecessarily cheesy.
Currently listening: "Sweet and Low", Augustana
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Revamping the Freshman Experience
First week of my mini-summer vacation, and I have lots to talk about. First, an update about what's going on with me. Two and a half weeks from now, I head to lovely Roxana, IL to, as I put it, refine the crap out of some oil. I really have no idea what to expect... first internship, first chance to do some real chemical engineering.
"Wow, sounds interesting. What are you actually going to be doing?" Answer: "operations". You have as good an idea as I do about what that means.
"Ooh, big oil. Really?" Answer: yep. I'm not sold on working for oil for a career--though I'd have to think it's better than working in some Lyondell plant--but it's experience, and they're paying my a crap ton of cash. Seeing as how I do not have a degree in anything as this point, that's all I can ask for.
"What do you do in Roxana?" Answer: ...well, I don't really have one. If anyone knows the St. Louis area, I'd love some input on this.
Before I go, I have a lot to talk about. This first one is a carryover from the school year, and a bit of a reflection on the housing job that I've had for the past two years, and I'm finally retiring from now that this year is done. The biggest question that people ask me is if I liked the job, or if I'd recommend it to others. I don't know if I can give that a straight answer. It's too complex, and it's been tied too directly to my Tech experience, to answer with a mere yes or no.
A better answer is something along the lines of "it takes a very specific person to do this job well." I'm not one for small talk. I don't know if I necessarily want to compare myself to Hu Jintao, but I read an article about him in a Time magazine as I was waiting for the dentist today. It remarked that Hu doesn't make small talk either, because his knowledge of relevant subject material is so masterful. I won't go so far as to make that claim myself, but given the choice I would much rather talk about something rather than nothing.
The point here is that this is actually a critical aspect of the job that you don't necessarily find out about until you're already in over your head. You need to be both willing and able to chat with your residents about whatever degree of irrelevancy they want. That usually surpasses Seinfeld in terms of sheer "nothing" potential. There's nothing wrong with this, or at least there ought not to be if you're doing this job. I found myself with less and less patience for this sort of thing as my two years ran on, which is one of the important reasons I needed to leave.
I could sit here and complain about training, and the facilities, and the unfortunate responsibilities you find yourself having to exercise. But that's not going to change anything. There are, however, two areas that I can offer material and useful insight on: resident assignment and the Freshman Partner program.
One of the primary challenges in any housing environment is diversity. Maybe that can mean racial/ethnic/national diversity, but I don't think that ever presents a big problem at Tech. I find international students among the biggest attendees of programs, the most conscious about following directions, and the most excited about Georgia Tech in general. Besides, I've always said that ethnicity is but one dimension of diversity, and probably the least important one. A much more important measure is diversity of thought and belief. And along that axis, Tech is relatively homogeneous anyway.
A significant subset of the population that does exhibit this diversity, however, is the Greek community. That's PC for "frat boys". Doesn't matter what nationality they are, these are simply a different sort of resident than non-Greeks. Much less willing to be part of the hall, to come to programs, and to care about anything outside the fraternity. Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone who's in a fraternity, and I would guess that it's more prevalent among freshmen than anyone else. And plenty of fraternity people do contribute a whole lot to the hall. But it is frustrating as a staff member when your perceived relative success is partially a function of not your own skill, but of who you happened to get in your section.
My answer for this, developed in conjunction with my friend Alex (a fellow staff member), is to have designated Greek and non-Greek housing. Or, more to the point, exclude future Greeks from the Freshman Experience. Add a simple question to the housing application for entering freshmen: "Do you intend to participate in IFC rush with the goal of joining a fraternity?" (I say fraternity and guys simply as a reflection of the population of Tech, but the principle applies to girls as well.) People who say yes still get housing with student staff, but it's not as elaborate as the FE.
Yes, it smacks of segregation. And no, there's no way to enforce this. Maybe you rush and want a bid, but don't get any. Maybe you get bids but don't like where you got them from. On the other hand, maybe you rush for the free food and don't have any intention of pledging, but meet a bunch of guys you really get along well with. But this would accomplish at least three goals. First, it would allow staff in freshmen dorms to have a better chance of getting residents who actually cared. Second, it would relieve some of the burden on housing, as the residents who lived in "pledge housing" would require less attention than the normal FE. Finally, it would allow staff who were themselves Greek or were particularly comfortable dealing with Greeks to interact with residents they liked.
The other fix is to entirely remove the Freshman Partner program. The goal here is to make some sort of connection between Tech academics and Tech residence life. That's admirable. But somewhere along the line, it turned into "get some yahoo who works in the Global Learning Center to come to the cheesy post-Convocation Caribbean party." Residents don't necessarily care about this initiative, either. The Assistant Dean of Students came to Glenn last month to talk about demographics at Tech, which was actually a reasonably informative talk. The only thing keeping residents in the room? The free Quizno's.
In coming attractions: opinions on who is pretty, and reviews of Iron Man and Mario Kart Wii.
Currently listening: "Summer House", the Lady Sails
"Wow, sounds interesting. What are you actually going to be doing?" Answer: "operations". You have as good an idea as I do about what that means.
"Ooh, big oil. Really?" Answer: yep. I'm not sold on working for oil for a career--though I'd have to think it's better than working in some Lyondell plant--but it's experience, and they're paying my a crap ton of cash. Seeing as how I do not have a degree in anything as this point, that's all I can ask for.
"What do you do in Roxana?" Answer: ...well, I don't really have one. If anyone knows the St. Louis area, I'd love some input on this.
Before I go, I have a lot to talk about. This first one is a carryover from the school year, and a bit of a reflection on the housing job that I've had for the past two years, and I'm finally retiring from now that this year is done. The biggest question that people ask me is if I liked the job, or if I'd recommend it to others. I don't know if I can give that a straight answer. It's too complex, and it's been tied too directly to my Tech experience, to answer with a mere yes or no.
A better answer is something along the lines of "it takes a very specific person to do this job well." I'm not one for small talk. I don't know if I necessarily want to compare myself to Hu Jintao, but I read an article about him in a Time magazine as I was waiting for the dentist today. It remarked that Hu doesn't make small talk either, because his knowledge of relevant subject material is so masterful. I won't go so far as to make that claim myself, but given the choice I would much rather talk about something rather than nothing.
The point here is that this is actually a critical aspect of the job that you don't necessarily find out about until you're already in over your head. You need to be both willing and able to chat with your residents about whatever degree of irrelevancy they want. That usually surpasses Seinfeld in terms of sheer "nothing" potential. There's nothing wrong with this, or at least there ought not to be if you're doing this job. I found myself with less and less patience for this sort of thing as my two years ran on, which is one of the important reasons I needed to leave.
I could sit here and complain about training, and the facilities, and the unfortunate responsibilities you find yourself having to exercise. But that's not going to change anything. There are, however, two areas that I can offer material and useful insight on: resident assignment and the Freshman Partner program.
One of the primary challenges in any housing environment is diversity. Maybe that can mean racial/ethnic/national diversity, but I don't think that ever presents a big problem at Tech. I find international students among the biggest attendees of programs, the most conscious about following directions, and the most excited about Georgia Tech in general. Besides, I've always said that ethnicity is but one dimension of diversity, and probably the least important one. A much more important measure is diversity of thought and belief. And along that axis, Tech is relatively homogeneous anyway.
A significant subset of the population that does exhibit this diversity, however, is the Greek community. That's PC for "frat boys". Doesn't matter what nationality they are, these are simply a different sort of resident than non-Greeks. Much less willing to be part of the hall, to come to programs, and to care about anything outside the fraternity. Obviously, this doesn't apply to everyone who's in a fraternity, and I would guess that it's more prevalent among freshmen than anyone else. And plenty of fraternity people do contribute a whole lot to the hall. But it is frustrating as a staff member when your perceived relative success is partially a function of not your own skill, but of who you happened to get in your section.
My answer for this, developed in conjunction with my friend Alex (a fellow staff member), is to have designated Greek and non-Greek housing. Or, more to the point, exclude future Greeks from the Freshman Experience. Add a simple question to the housing application for entering freshmen: "Do you intend to participate in IFC rush with the goal of joining a fraternity?" (I say fraternity and guys simply as a reflection of the population of Tech, but the principle applies to girls as well.) People who say yes still get housing with student staff, but it's not as elaborate as the FE.
Yes, it smacks of segregation. And no, there's no way to enforce this. Maybe you rush and want a bid, but don't get any. Maybe you get bids but don't like where you got them from. On the other hand, maybe you rush for the free food and don't have any intention of pledging, but meet a bunch of guys you really get along well with. But this would accomplish at least three goals. First, it would allow staff in freshmen dorms to have a better chance of getting residents who actually cared. Second, it would relieve some of the burden on housing, as the residents who lived in "pledge housing" would require less attention than the normal FE. Finally, it would allow staff who were themselves Greek or were particularly comfortable dealing with Greeks to interact with residents they liked.
The other fix is to entirely remove the Freshman Partner program. The goal here is to make some sort of connection between Tech academics and Tech residence life. That's admirable. But somewhere along the line, it turned into "get some yahoo who works in the Global Learning Center to come to the cheesy post-Convocation Caribbean party." Residents don't necessarily care about this initiative, either. The Assistant Dean of Students came to Glenn last month to talk about demographics at Tech, which was actually a reasonably informative talk. The only thing keeping residents in the room? The free Quizno's.
In coming attractions: opinions on who is pretty, and reviews of Iron Man and Mario Kart Wii.
Currently listening: "Summer House", the Lady Sails
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Spring Sports Update
A mere few weeks into the Atlanta Braves season, and we're already seeing some patterns emerge. "Patient" is the word one day, as in hitters are too eager to swing at the ball. Then it's "depth", looking at whether the bullpen can sustain enough innings. (This was a horrible issue last year.)
Everyone's always said baseball is a game of statistics. It used to be benign things like ERA and batting average. Within the past few years, OPS has become a staple of analysis. That stands for on-base plus slugging percentage, and it somewhat intuitively gives a picture of total offensive power of a player. However, whenever the formula to calculate a statistic includes "hit by pitch" not once but three times (see Wikipedia if you don't believe me) then it's far too complicated. Now, with the advent of the internet, we've got wonderful things like "this guy has a .402 average with runners in scoring position when there are less than two outs and his team is playing a night game at home." Utterly ridiculous.
That being the case, I'll stick with things that make sense. Braves starters are among the league best in ERA and home runs allowed, but among the worst in innings pitched. That shows that we need to get more innings out of these guys... and more innings out of Smoltz and Glavine and Hudson is never a bad thing. Oh, and how about this Jair Jurrjens guy? Before the season started, the only thing I knew about this guy was a particularly insightful comment from my mom, who pondered whether Jurrjens might be Dutch. (He's not; he's from the Islands, but that probably means he has some Dutch in him somewhere.) Now he's one of the team's most promising starters. And is there any way this guy can pitch more?
An announcing theme I've had to sit through lately has been "feast or famine", as in, why is the offense so wonderful during wins and so horrendous during losses? That may not seem like any huge insight, but it is remarkable how a team that scores seven runs one day and gives up four can score two runs the next--and still give up four.
Finally, speaking of announcing, I really miss Skip Caray. He's only on the radio now (except for a slim few on Peachtree TV), and seeing as how I always watch the games on TV, I never get to hear Skip anymore. This move toward "neutral broadcasting" is complete crap. If he's my team's announcer, he gets to root for my team, plain and simple.
Last weekend, I went to see the T-Game, which is the traditional spring football game for Georgia Tech. It was rough. I want to say a dozen fumbles, but that might be an exaggeration. Or, it might be a conservative estimate, because I was hiding my head in my hands so much. The first half had about ten points scored in it, total, which has both positive and negative implications. Of course, it speaks well to the defense; the very best thing I saw was the defense, true to Tenuta's legacy. Michael Johnson looked wonderful and had some excellent plays. But can this offense score points?
More critically, is it interesting to watch? There's a bias in the viewership of football in general against running offenses. We want to see pass plays, exciting Calvin Johnson-style ones. "Three yards and a cloud of dust" is just not that much fun. That's not what our new coach, Paul Johnson, uses per se, but I'm afraid that's what it might turn into. And that's not to say that the running game can't be exciting. Lucas Cox, Mike's younger brother, looked decent. Dwyer is underrated. But we just don't have Tashard anymore, and that's going to hurt.
And that touches on the biggest problem that Tech football is looking at in 2008. Our best players all graduated, with the exceptions of Johnson and Dwyer. But look who's gone... Tashard Choice, who netted thousands of yards for Tech. Mike Cox, one of the best college fullbacks I've ever seen. Durant Brooks, the nation's best punter last year. Travis Bell, a solid kicker for Tech for several years. Philip Wheeler, an all-around amazing linebacker. Let's hope we can scrape together some talent and whip it into a respectable team.
Currently listening: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the Beatles
Everyone's always said baseball is a game of statistics. It used to be benign things like ERA and batting average. Within the past few years, OPS has become a staple of analysis. That stands for on-base plus slugging percentage, and it somewhat intuitively gives a picture of total offensive power of a player. However, whenever the formula to calculate a statistic includes "hit by pitch" not once but three times (see Wikipedia if you don't believe me) then it's far too complicated. Now, with the advent of the internet, we've got wonderful things like "this guy has a .402 average with runners in scoring position when there are less than two outs and his team is playing a night game at home." Utterly ridiculous.
That being the case, I'll stick with things that make sense. Braves starters are among the league best in ERA and home runs allowed, but among the worst in innings pitched. That shows that we need to get more innings out of these guys... and more innings out of Smoltz and Glavine and Hudson is never a bad thing. Oh, and how about this Jair Jurrjens guy? Before the season started, the only thing I knew about this guy was a particularly insightful comment from my mom, who pondered whether Jurrjens might be Dutch. (He's not; he's from the Islands, but that probably means he has some Dutch in him somewhere.) Now he's one of the team's most promising starters. And is there any way this guy can pitch more?
An announcing theme I've had to sit through lately has been "feast or famine", as in, why is the offense so wonderful during wins and so horrendous during losses? That may not seem like any huge insight, but it is remarkable how a team that scores seven runs one day and gives up four can score two runs the next--and still give up four.
Finally, speaking of announcing, I really miss Skip Caray. He's only on the radio now (except for a slim few on Peachtree TV), and seeing as how I always watch the games on TV, I never get to hear Skip anymore. This move toward "neutral broadcasting" is complete crap. If he's my team's announcer, he gets to root for my team, plain and simple.
Last weekend, I went to see the T-Game, which is the traditional spring football game for Georgia Tech. It was rough. I want to say a dozen fumbles, but that might be an exaggeration. Or, it might be a conservative estimate, because I was hiding my head in my hands so much. The first half had about ten points scored in it, total, which has both positive and negative implications. Of course, it speaks well to the defense; the very best thing I saw was the defense, true to Tenuta's legacy. Michael Johnson looked wonderful and had some excellent plays. But can this offense score points?
More critically, is it interesting to watch? There's a bias in the viewership of football in general against running offenses. We want to see pass plays, exciting Calvin Johnson-style ones. "Three yards and a cloud of dust" is just not that much fun. That's not what our new coach, Paul Johnson, uses per se, but I'm afraid that's what it might turn into. And that's not to say that the running game can't be exciting. Lucas Cox, Mike's younger brother, looked decent. Dwyer is underrated. But we just don't have Tashard anymore, and that's going to hurt.
And that touches on the biggest problem that Tech football is looking at in 2008. Our best players all graduated, with the exceptions of Johnson and Dwyer. But look who's gone... Tashard Choice, who netted thousands of yards for Tech. Mike Cox, one of the best college fullbacks I've ever seen. Durant Brooks, the nation's best punter last year. Travis Bell, a solid kicker for Tech for several years. Philip Wheeler, an all-around amazing linebacker. Let's hope we can scrape together some talent and whip it into a respectable team.
Currently listening: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the Beatles
Sunday, April 13, 2008
A Plan for Local Government
I'm a big advocate of local government. I believe that one of the reasons so many people are so down on government is the fact that someone, somewhere who is supposed to be representing your interests does not care about you. They care about their parties, about their special interests, and about keeping their job. What really ought to be a government "by the people" is now government from the government; "consent of the governed" is in many cases "apathy of the governed". By straying away from the representative-constituent system, we now have untold layers of bureaucratic nonsense. That's something anyone can disagree with, regardless of your dot on the Nolan chart.
Two options exist here: either wipe the slate and make a new system, or re-energize people about their local government, and demand that control be returned to somewhere resembling "the governed". The first is clearly non-practical. But I think there's a decent shot at the second.
The term "county" was originally the demesne of a count, just as a "kingdom" belonged to a king and a "duchy" belonged to a duke. My plan is simple: reinstate the office of count. Some counties have commissioners, some have chairmen, some merged city-counties might have mayors. Who actually knows who their commissioner is? I consider myself reasonably well informed about politics at all levels, and I have no idea who the chairman of the board of commissioners of Gwinnett is. Under this proposal, not only would everyone in the county know who the count was, they'd have a sworn allegiance to him or her.
One clarification: the count is an elected position. I'm advocating federalism with a local emphasis, not feudalism. The populace elects its count and can get rid of him when it so chooses. It can use two means to accomplish this: a simple vote of no confidence, or a march on city hall with picks and shovels. If it uses the latter, the populace can then install its choice for count immediately and pillory the old count in the stocks outside city hall.
What are the duties of the count? A lot of administrative stuff, of course. But also to rally his constituents around him. If the county government wants to get something done at the state or federal level, it's up to the count to get the people to support it. That means making a circuit around the county, showing up to and organizing meetings, and delivering impassioned speeches defending his actions.
The count would have a symbol of office, a cape, that he would have to wear when conducting any official business.
Most entertainingly, and most likely to rally the masses, is the way the count deals with inter-county disputes. Under the current system, if Gwinnett and Dekalb have a fight over some trees, they bring their cases to the state government, some surveyors get sent out a few weeks later, and an appellate judge draws lines on a map, along with the aid of some civil engineer. Yawn.
Under the count system, things would be drastically different. It would be up to the count to defend both the interests and honor of the county. This means a duel with the disputant count. Rapiers, first blood wins the day and the dispute.
If this won't get people enthusiastic, I don't know what will.
Currently listening: "Desecration Smile", Red Hot Chili Peppers
Two options exist here: either wipe the slate and make a new system, or re-energize people about their local government, and demand that control be returned to somewhere resembling "the governed". The first is clearly non-practical. But I think there's a decent shot at the second.
The term "county" was originally the demesne of a count, just as a "kingdom" belonged to a king and a "duchy" belonged to a duke. My plan is simple: reinstate the office of count. Some counties have commissioners, some have chairmen, some merged city-counties might have mayors. Who actually knows who their commissioner is? I consider myself reasonably well informed about politics at all levels, and I have no idea who the chairman of the board of commissioners of Gwinnett is. Under this proposal, not only would everyone in the county know who the count was, they'd have a sworn allegiance to him or her.
One clarification: the count is an elected position. I'm advocating federalism with a local emphasis, not feudalism. The populace elects its count and can get rid of him when it so chooses. It can use two means to accomplish this: a simple vote of no confidence, or a march on city hall with picks and shovels. If it uses the latter, the populace can then install its choice for count immediately and pillory the old count in the stocks outside city hall.
What are the duties of the count? A lot of administrative stuff, of course. But also to rally his constituents around him. If the county government wants to get something done at the state or federal level, it's up to the count to get the people to support it. That means making a circuit around the county, showing up to and organizing meetings, and delivering impassioned speeches defending his actions.
The count would have a symbol of office, a cape, that he would have to wear when conducting any official business.
Most entertainingly, and most likely to rally the masses, is the way the count deals with inter-county disputes. Under the current system, if Gwinnett and Dekalb have a fight over some trees, they bring their cases to the state government, some surveyors get sent out a few weeks later, and an appellate judge draws lines on a map, along with the aid of some civil engineer. Yawn.
Under the count system, things would be drastically different. It would be up to the count to defend both the interests and honor of the county. This means a duel with the disputant count. Rapiers, first blood wins the day and the dispute.
If this won't get people enthusiastic, I don't know what will.
Currently listening: "Desecration Smile", Red Hot Chili Peppers
Monday, March 24, 2008
Stars Concert (and Various Other Sundries)
At Tech, pursuant to all that I've noticed about the population and related behaviors, there's something fishy about the weekends. Either people shut themselves in their rooms or flee campus like Abaddon himself brought the keys to the Pit of Fire and unleashed it upon the Kessler Campanile. (There is something shady about that place...) In downtown Athens, this is not the case. People are out, walking around, doing things, and not wearing a perpetual "the world is out to screw me" frown.
I was later assured that no, it's not some sort of fantastical paradise, just an extension of the UGA bubble. That's in much the same way, for instance, that Atlantic Station or the Howell Mill Kroger seems like an extension of the Tech bubble at times. (Tangent: that Howell Mill Kroger has been very, very good to me, on at least three occasions. They carry Stewart's Key Lime, for goodness' sake.) Essentially, it's yet another "grass is greener" case. But I do need to go back sometime.
My reason for being in Athens in the first place was to go to a concert by the band Stars. They're a bit on the obscure side, so I'll try to elucidate their music a bit. They're Canadian, and they describe their own music as "indie rock", but if you really want to pick and call it "indie pop" you wouldn't be off-base either. The first description of their music I heard was "like the Postal Service" which isn't incorrect, but I think a more apt description is "like the Postal Service, but a bit less electronic." Or, if you wanted to go further on a limb, "a bit like Rilo Kiley but less folksy." Even "sort of like Metric but a lot more melodic." If you can get those three to converge into a consistent sound, that's Stars. Last.fm also lists similar bands to be The New Pornographers and the Most Serene Republic, both bands that I have heard of and would probably like but am unfamiliar with.
One thing I feel like I need to bring up even before the concert itself: timing. Given "doors open at 8 pm" and "two opening bands", Matt logic would go something like this. Give people half an hour to straggle in, and for the opening bands to get their crap together. Start playing at 8:30, allot half an hour for each band, stop at 9:30. Allow 30 minutes for a set change (in my opinion, those things never need to take longer than 15 minutes, but I'll be generous here). No reason Stars should start playing any later than 10. Matt logic would have been incorrect. My intrepid band of concertgoers rolls in at 10:40 or so, and we still have to wait a few minutes to hear the main attraction. (That said, our timing was downright impeccable.) Perhaps this is too harsh, but I'd really like it if bands gave a reasonable approximation of their start time, not some wishful thinking to get everyone milling about for the better part of an hour.
The concert itself didn't disappoint. Like every show, it had its strong and weak points. One of the less-than-stellar (ha! pun!) points of the concert was the tendency to turn backs to the audience at otherwise-impressive technical moments. Big guitar solo? Better hide my guitar. Crucial riff on some synthesizer? Can't make eye contact with the people listening to it. That's not unique to Stars--it happens at just about every concert I've been to recently. And it's sort of irritating.
Some Stars fans would add another weak point was "anything that came off the most recent album". I've had that one since it came out (okay, since I got to the US after it came out), and I wrote a largely positive review of it. Yet several people I've talked to that have been Stars fans for a while disliked it. Why the negativity?
First, I believe that Heart and Set Yourself on Fire are sort of similar in character (the two albums before the most recent), and that Set Yourself on Fire and In Our Bedroom After the War are sort of similar too. If you're a Stars fan who's been listening to the early stuff since 2005, and this comes along in mid-2007, it's probably tougher to reconcile than for someone like me.
Second, the album contains a lot of what I've started calling "tofu songs". That is, they're neither remarkably good nor bad on their own. Instead, they take on the flavor of the rest of the album. And the rest of the album is gimmicky in parts. "Genova Heights", "Life 2", "Personal", "Barricade", and the title track all have some amount of gimmick to them. If you don't buy into the gimmick, you're probably going to hate these songs. Then, even give the strength of the truly good songs, the filler "tofu" is going to seem that much worse.
And finally, something I touched on back in August, the track placement is bad. You hear "The Night Starts Here" and "Take Me to the Riot" and think "yes, this is good music." Then, when the rest of the album fails to deliver to that standard, you naturally get disappointed.
While a lot of Stars' unique sound comes from the female vocalist Amy Millan, it's clear that the real showmanship comes from the male frontman Torquil Campbell (hey, he's Canadian). He was the one behind all the audience interaction, the one really getting us into the act. Even more impressively, he showed talent in both tenor and falsetto ranges, in addition to key harmonica, the mini Korg that so plagued Stars all night, and even the trumpet. I'd always assumed that the trumpet licks were studio jobs, and maybe on the CDs they were. But when Campbell pulled out a trumpet and did a surprisingly credible job, that pretty much made the concert for me.
Add that to a chance to break the Tech bubble (albeit entering the UGA one) and some excellent company, and it ended up being a great time. And as always after a concert, I have some awful amalgamation of the collective works of Stars stuck in my head.
Another concert alert: Eisley is headlining a tour, and they're coming to Atlanta. I'm not missing this one. But exactly one of three hundred-something people whom I'm friends with on Facebook proclaims to like them.... it's going to be a tough sell to get people to come along.
Currently listening: "What I'm Trying to Say," Stars, and "Listen," Chicago
I was later assured that no, it's not some sort of fantastical paradise, just an extension of the UGA bubble. That's in much the same way, for instance, that Atlantic Station or the Howell Mill Kroger seems like an extension of the Tech bubble at times. (Tangent: that Howell Mill Kroger has been very, very good to me, on at least three occasions. They carry Stewart's Key Lime, for goodness' sake.) Essentially, it's yet another "grass is greener" case. But I do need to go back sometime.
My reason for being in Athens in the first place was to go to a concert by the band Stars. They're a bit on the obscure side, so I'll try to elucidate their music a bit. They're Canadian, and they describe their own music as "indie rock", but if you really want to pick and call it "indie pop" you wouldn't be off-base either. The first description of their music I heard was "like the Postal Service" which isn't incorrect, but I think a more apt description is "like the Postal Service, but a bit less electronic." Or, if you wanted to go further on a limb, "a bit like Rilo Kiley but less folksy." Even "sort of like Metric but a lot more melodic." If you can get those three to converge into a consistent sound, that's Stars. Last.fm also lists similar bands to be The New Pornographers and the Most Serene Republic, both bands that I have heard of and would probably like but am unfamiliar with.
One thing I feel like I need to bring up even before the concert itself: timing. Given "doors open at 8 pm" and "two opening bands", Matt logic would go something like this. Give people half an hour to straggle in, and for the opening bands to get their crap together. Start playing at 8:30, allot half an hour for each band, stop at 9:30. Allow 30 minutes for a set change (in my opinion, those things never need to take longer than 15 minutes, but I'll be generous here). No reason Stars should start playing any later than 10. Matt logic would have been incorrect. My intrepid band of concertgoers rolls in at 10:40 or so, and we still have to wait a few minutes to hear the main attraction. (That said, our timing was downright impeccable.) Perhaps this is too harsh, but I'd really like it if bands gave a reasonable approximation of their start time, not some wishful thinking to get everyone milling about for the better part of an hour.
The concert itself didn't disappoint. Like every show, it had its strong and weak points. One of the less-than-stellar (ha! pun!) points of the concert was the tendency to turn backs to the audience at otherwise-impressive technical moments. Big guitar solo? Better hide my guitar. Crucial riff on some synthesizer? Can't make eye contact with the people listening to it. That's not unique to Stars--it happens at just about every concert I've been to recently. And it's sort of irritating.
Some Stars fans would add another weak point was "anything that came off the most recent album". I've had that one since it came out (okay, since I got to the US after it came out), and I wrote a largely positive review of it. Yet several people I've talked to that have been Stars fans for a while disliked it. Why the negativity?
First, I believe that Heart and Set Yourself on Fire are sort of similar in character (the two albums before the most recent), and that Set Yourself on Fire and In Our Bedroom After the War are sort of similar too. If you're a Stars fan who's been listening to the early stuff since 2005, and this comes along in mid-2007, it's probably tougher to reconcile than for someone like me.
Second, the album contains a lot of what I've started calling "tofu songs". That is, they're neither remarkably good nor bad on their own. Instead, they take on the flavor of the rest of the album. And the rest of the album is gimmicky in parts. "Genova Heights", "Life 2", "Personal", "Barricade", and the title track all have some amount of gimmick to them. If you don't buy into the gimmick, you're probably going to hate these songs. Then, even give the strength of the truly good songs, the filler "tofu" is going to seem that much worse.
And finally, something I touched on back in August, the track placement is bad. You hear "The Night Starts Here" and "Take Me to the Riot" and think "yes, this is good music." Then, when the rest of the album fails to deliver to that standard, you naturally get disappointed.
While a lot of Stars' unique sound comes from the female vocalist Amy Millan, it's clear that the real showmanship comes from the male frontman Torquil Campbell (hey, he's Canadian). He was the one behind all the audience interaction, the one really getting us into the act. Even more impressively, he showed talent in both tenor and falsetto ranges, in addition to key harmonica, the mini Korg that so plagued Stars all night, and even the trumpet. I'd always assumed that the trumpet licks were studio jobs, and maybe on the CDs they were. But when Campbell pulled out a trumpet and did a surprisingly credible job, that pretty much made the concert for me.
Add that to a chance to break the Tech bubble (albeit entering the UGA one) and some excellent company, and it ended up being a great time. And as always after a concert, I have some awful amalgamation of the collective works of Stars stuck in my head.
Another concert alert: Eisley is headlining a tour, and they're coming to Atlanta. I'm not missing this one. But exactly one of three hundred-something people whom I'm friends with on Facebook proclaims to like them.... it's going to be a tough sell to get people to come along.
Currently listening: "What I'm Trying to Say," Stars, and "Listen," Chicago
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Ecce gratum!
The spring break post has turned into a fortunate tradition... I finally have the time to collect a few thoughts, sit down, and shape them into something hopefully readable. This one is brought on by my third-favorite Wikipedia article as of late.
My favorite article is the one about A Dance with Dragons, the fifth installment in George R.R. Martin's brilliant epic fantasy series. (I've already commented and theorized on this brilliant series, in a reaction to the fourth book.) It reports progress in slow, measured trickles, taunting fans with its promises of some far-off release date. (September 30?)
The second-favorite honors at this point go to the article about Death Cab's upcoming album. It's safe to say that I'm... skeptical about this release. Combine Death Cab with words and phrases like "lunar" and "dissonant" and "sludgy slow metal" and I can't help but get a really unpleasant picture. Isn't Death Cab suppose to be sensitive, genuine, and, yes, emo? If we get something that ends up sounding like 1960s band music, I don't care how wonderful the art-music community thinks it is, I'm not going to enjoy it.
But the third-favorite, the one this post owes its inspiration to, details the saga of the end of the Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan's seminal work in the same epic fantasy genre that Martin has become the current master of. The Wheel of Time used to be really, really good. It was, up until the third book. I've said before that edit a few details of the end of The Dragon Reborn (and perhaps beef up the already-exciting climax of The Great Hunt a bit) and you have the best fantasy trilogy ever written, solidly beating even Lord of the Rings. But Jordan didn't stop there.
The series continued to be excellent through the sixth, perhaps seventh, book. By that time, though, Jordan was in over his head. It was clear that there wouldn't be any nice ending--it would take twelve, maybe thirteen books before this could wrap itself up. That would be just fine, provided that the second half of the series was any good. That provision didn't necessarily carry through.
By book ten, the series was so bogged down in itself that we got things like pages upon pages dedicated to buying fabric. Really, Robert Jordan? (If you're into this sort of thing, look up the Wikipedia plot summary for Crossroads of Twilight, book number 10. It's literally a few paragraphs long.) But I was willing to stick with it, along with probably thousands upon thousands of other fans. I've been at this since 2000 (and some, the ones who have been with it since the very beginning, have been at this since 1990), and damned if I'm going to let crappy books 7-11 get in the way of knowing how all this business eventually resolves.
Then Mr. Jordan got amyloidosis.
I have a tough time bashing Jordan's series, given that the man has since passed away. One of his final resolves with respect to the monster of a series that he created was that the series absolutely would end with book number 12. No more stretching things out, no more books-long political intrigue, no more "signs that really, the last battle is totally upon us this time!" Instead, we were promised answers and resolutions and nice things like that that generally go along with ending a series.
Is all that in jeopardy now that that series no longer has an author? Happily, no. For as my third-favorite Wikipedia article reports, one Brandon Sanderson has been chosen by Tor Books (The Wheel of Time's publisher) to finish the series. He's going to use Jordan's notes, dispatches from Jordan's communications with his wife, and his own fantasy author's intuition to craft A Memory of Light into a coherent novel that's supposed to wrap up two decades.
Mr. Sanderson's first order of business is to re-read the first eleven books. Sounds like a fine idea. But it's making we wary, or at least his blog-posted reactions to the books are making me wary. I would assert that in his position as quasi-ghostwriter, Sanderson's primary responsibility is to be true to what Jordan would have wanted. Maintain his plot, his characterizations, and also his style. Sanderson's research appears to be pointing him in this direction. But his second responsibility is impartiality. He ought to be evaluating the first eleven books objectively, seeing what devices and settings worked, and what didn't. Taking Jordan's mistakes and triumphs in the same breath, and synthesizing them all into a book that reflects all of it.
Instead, Sanderson comes across as nothing more than a Jordan apologist at best and a sycophant at worst. Where a disappointed fan would say "Book 8 was bad because..." an unbiased critic would say "Book 8 was paced differently from the rest of the series, which literarily would have worked better if..." Mr. Sanderson, on the other hand, makes comments like "Well, I really don't think book 8 was bad at all! Here, you see Jordan's masterful handling of..."
As a caveat, I haven't read any of Sanderson's other books. Maybe I should. Maybe I will this summer, when I have little else to do. But from an author who doesn't realize that there were problems with books 7-11, I'm not sure whether or not to be excited by book 12.
Currently listening: "Fortune plango vulnera" from Carmina Burana
My favorite article is the one about A Dance with Dragons, the fifth installment in George R.R. Martin's brilliant epic fantasy series. (I've already commented and theorized on this brilliant series, in a reaction to the fourth book.) It reports progress in slow, measured trickles, taunting fans with its promises of some far-off release date. (September 30?)
The second-favorite honors at this point go to the article about Death Cab's upcoming album. It's safe to say that I'm... skeptical about this release. Combine Death Cab with words and phrases like "lunar" and "dissonant" and "sludgy slow metal" and I can't help but get a really unpleasant picture. Isn't Death Cab suppose to be sensitive, genuine, and, yes, emo? If we get something that ends up sounding like 1960s band music, I don't care how wonderful the art-music community thinks it is, I'm not going to enjoy it.
But the third-favorite, the one this post owes its inspiration to, details the saga of the end of the Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan's seminal work in the same epic fantasy genre that Martin has become the current master of. The Wheel of Time used to be really, really good. It was, up until the third book. I've said before that edit a few details of the end of The Dragon Reborn (and perhaps beef up the already-exciting climax of The Great Hunt a bit) and you have the best fantasy trilogy ever written, solidly beating even Lord of the Rings. But Jordan didn't stop there.
The series continued to be excellent through the sixth, perhaps seventh, book. By that time, though, Jordan was in over his head. It was clear that there wouldn't be any nice ending--it would take twelve, maybe thirteen books before this could wrap itself up. That would be just fine, provided that the second half of the series was any good. That provision didn't necessarily carry through.
By book ten, the series was so bogged down in itself that we got things like pages upon pages dedicated to buying fabric. Really, Robert Jordan? (If you're into this sort of thing, look up the Wikipedia plot summary for Crossroads of Twilight, book number 10. It's literally a few paragraphs long.) But I was willing to stick with it, along with probably thousands upon thousands of other fans. I've been at this since 2000 (and some, the ones who have been with it since the very beginning, have been at this since 1990), and damned if I'm going to let crappy books 7-11 get in the way of knowing how all this business eventually resolves.
Then Mr. Jordan got amyloidosis.
I have a tough time bashing Jordan's series, given that the man has since passed away. One of his final resolves with respect to the monster of a series that he created was that the series absolutely would end with book number 12. No more stretching things out, no more books-long political intrigue, no more "signs that really, the last battle is totally upon us this time!" Instead, we were promised answers and resolutions and nice things like that that generally go along with ending a series.
Is all that in jeopardy now that that series no longer has an author? Happily, no. For as my third-favorite Wikipedia article reports, one Brandon Sanderson has been chosen by Tor Books (The Wheel of Time's publisher) to finish the series. He's going to use Jordan's notes, dispatches from Jordan's communications with his wife, and his own fantasy author's intuition to craft A Memory of Light into a coherent novel that's supposed to wrap up two decades.
Mr. Sanderson's first order of business is to re-read the first eleven books. Sounds like a fine idea. But it's making we wary, or at least his blog-posted reactions to the books are making me wary. I would assert that in his position as quasi-ghostwriter, Sanderson's primary responsibility is to be true to what Jordan would have wanted. Maintain his plot, his characterizations, and also his style. Sanderson's research appears to be pointing him in this direction. But his second responsibility is impartiality. He ought to be evaluating the first eleven books objectively, seeing what devices and settings worked, and what didn't. Taking Jordan's mistakes and triumphs in the same breath, and synthesizing them all into a book that reflects all of it.
Instead, Sanderson comes across as nothing more than a Jordan apologist at best and a sycophant at worst. Where a disappointed fan would say "Book 8 was bad because..." an unbiased critic would say "Book 8 was paced differently from the rest of the series, which literarily would have worked better if..." Mr. Sanderson, on the other hand, makes comments like "Well, I really don't think book 8 was bad at all! Here, you see Jordan's masterful handling of..."
As a caveat, I haven't read any of Sanderson's other books. Maybe I should. Maybe I will this summer, when I have little else to do. But from an author who doesn't realize that there were problems with books 7-11, I'm not sure whether or not to be excited by book 12.
Currently listening: "Fortune plango vulnera" from Carmina Burana
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Georgia Tech in Two Microcosms
Recently, I had the pleasure of judging some high schoolers at a Science Olympiad competition. Luckily, I got an interesting event, in which the kids made robots and used remote controls to pick up things and drop them in boxes. It was very OM, very reminiscent of weirdly creative problem solving and contraptions, and an entire years' work dissolved in a left wheel's detachment at just the wrong time. (OM never had competitors yell obscenities when that happened, though, at least not my elementary school teams.)
And seeing this from the other side now, it's also a remarkable microcosm of kids that are destined for Georgia Tech. A sort of Yellow Jacket funnel, if you will. All of the dramatis personae were there. You had the cocky Asian kid, the one who six days out of the week resents his overbearing parents for making him keep at his studies so hard, but come Science Olympiad time on the seventh day, he comes to accept his burden to boss around all the lesser competitors.
The uber-geek, who can give you a ten minute thesis about how his robot works, or launch into a nuanced debate about how to beat the expert levels on Guitar Hero. But at the same time, he is so withdrawn from conventional social interaction that he finds it difficult to ask you when the competition starts.
The Abercrombie-wearing white kid, who seems just a little apathetic, a little jaded, and far out of place in this world of obsessive love for physics. Perhaps it's a secret passion of his, having to hide his scientific excursions from his beer-guzzling friends and provide an excuse why this weekend is a bad one to go to the lake house and chill. Far more likely, he's here just for the extra credit.
Two girls.
All of these people will probably get accepted into Georgia Tech. "Wow!" says some admissions officer. "A 700 SAT math! And he was involved in Science Olympiad back in high school. He will make a fantastic aerospace engineer." Probably he will. But what this admissions person fails to see (surprising, in the day of student body diversity) is that this only encourages the homogeneity that already pervades this campus. The very fact that an average Tech student can enter this subculture and see not just hints but strong streaks of his own community in them... Tech's stereotypes are self-perpetuating.
The other situation, merely a day after the Olympiad, was an event called Connect with Tech came through. CWT is officially the program that you can be invited to if you're reasonably good at high school, so you can see Tech and Tech in turn can recruit you. More significantly, CWT is known throughout housing staff as the one day besides holidays when the dining hall serves edible food. (Lately, that's been more of a myth than an actual truth, but at least it's something to get excited about.) This group of people was completely different than the Science Olympiad kids.
The cute and now sort of average girl, who's into theater and maybe a couple of generic service clubs in her high school. Little does she know (or maybe well does she know) that by virtue of being female and at all extroverted, she's about to become ridiculously sororitied up.
The apathetic dude without a shred of charisma or conversational ability who's used to getting good grades because high school is so damn easy. But when he gets to Tech, he'll suddenly find that school can indeed be tough. The only question that remains for him is whether he'll notice he's failing under all the pot he'll smoke.
The guy who's actually a decent human being, who you'd feel comfortable hanging out with and becoming friends with, but who takes one look at Tech, and decides against it. The rigor, the reputations... and all the odd people.
With no foreseeable end to any of it.
Currently listening: Billy the Kid, Aaron Copland
And seeing this from the other side now, it's also a remarkable microcosm of kids that are destined for Georgia Tech. A sort of Yellow Jacket funnel, if you will. All of the dramatis personae were there. You had the cocky Asian kid, the one who six days out of the week resents his overbearing parents for making him keep at his studies so hard, but come Science Olympiad time on the seventh day, he comes to accept his burden to boss around all the lesser competitors.
The uber-geek, who can give you a ten minute thesis about how his robot works, or launch into a nuanced debate about how to beat the expert levels on Guitar Hero. But at the same time, he is so withdrawn from conventional social interaction that he finds it difficult to ask you when the competition starts.
The Abercrombie-wearing white kid, who seems just a little apathetic, a little jaded, and far out of place in this world of obsessive love for physics. Perhaps it's a secret passion of his, having to hide his scientific excursions from his beer-guzzling friends and provide an excuse why this weekend is a bad one to go to the lake house and chill. Far more likely, he's here just for the extra credit.
Two girls.
All of these people will probably get accepted into Georgia Tech. "Wow!" says some admissions officer. "A 700 SAT math! And he was involved in Science Olympiad back in high school. He will make a fantastic aerospace engineer." Probably he will. But what this admissions person fails to see (surprising, in the day of student body diversity) is that this only encourages the homogeneity that already pervades this campus. The very fact that an average Tech student can enter this subculture and see not just hints but strong streaks of his own community in them... Tech's stereotypes are self-perpetuating.
The other situation, merely a day after the Olympiad, was an event called Connect with Tech came through. CWT is officially the program that you can be invited to if you're reasonably good at high school, so you can see Tech and Tech in turn can recruit you. More significantly, CWT is known throughout housing staff as the one day besides holidays when the dining hall serves edible food. (Lately, that's been more of a myth than an actual truth, but at least it's something to get excited about.) This group of people was completely different than the Science Olympiad kids.
The cute and now sort of average girl, who's into theater and maybe a couple of generic service clubs in her high school. Little does she know (or maybe well does she know) that by virtue of being female and at all extroverted, she's about to become ridiculously sororitied up.
The apathetic dude without a shred of charisma or conversational ability who's used to getting good grades because high school is so damn easy. But when he gets to Tech, he'll suddenly find that school can indeed be tough. The only question that remains for him is whether he'll notice he's failing under all the pot he'll smoke.
The guy who's actually a decent human being, who you'd feel comfortable hanging out with and becoming friends with, but who takes one look at Tech, and decides against it. The rigor, the reputations... and all the odd people.
With no foreseeable end to any of it.
Currently listening: Billy the Kid, Aaron Copland
Sunday, February 10, 2008
If it has half the cast of Arrested Development...
then it has to be good, right? Juno shows us that's clearly true.
Review and Analysis: Juno and Little Miss Sunshine
So Juno doesn't actually have half the cast of television's best comedy of the decade. But it has two, and that's good enough for me. Although, before getting too deep into the discussion, imagine a universe where Juno's father is played by Jeffrey Tambor, who played George (and Oscar) Bluth, and tell me it wouldn't be wonderful.
Oddly, for all the character permutations present in the movie, the Arrested Development reunion of Michael Cera and Jason Bateman never actually showed up. The character permutations that did show up were very good. Orson Scott Card, an author to whom a big part of the inspiration credit for this blog goes, once told a trick for effective characterization. Good characters necessarily become exponentially more complex as the number of characters increases. With only two, you have to write two personalities, and define how the two of them interact. With three, you have three personalities, three sets of interactions, plus any modifications to the interactions if the three of them ever showed up as a group. Some set theorist could probably define this mathematically for large numbers of characters; Card maintains it's a bad choice to include more characters than definable interactions.
And honestly, think of the best literature and movies and television shows. Either they're incredibly complex to the point where using Card's definition rule would merely bog things down, or they truly do focus on a completely defined network of characters. House, at least for the first three seasons, had essentially six characters. You could always describe the relationship between, say, House and Wilson; between Cuddy and Foreman; between Chase and Cameron. One of the reasons that Alien was so classic wasn't necessarily its command of science fiction, but the fact that it had only eight characters, most of whom had distinct relationships to each other. The list could go on.
Ultimately, the Card relationships are impressive in Juno--and something approaching perfection in Little Miss Sunshine, which I'll hit on again later. I'm not sure why it makes so much sense to review these two movies together, except that I read somehow that they were connected in an AJC article a month ago. I think that Movie People could probably explain some better reasons they're connected.
After doing my homework, Wikipedia reports that both are the products of Fox Searchlight.
Another similarity I can immediately identify is that, in the Garden State vein, they're both Soundtrack Movies. That is, they're movies whose soundtracks that people can actually reasonably want to buy, and whose music lends character to the movie rather than just providing background noise. One of the guys I watched Juno with remarked that "this soundtrack is supposed to be like living in Zach Braff's earwax." Of course. Because every work of art in this genre has to be incestuously related to each other, and if I like one of them, I must like them all. But that's a discussion for a different day.
The soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine was pleasantly Sufjan-ed up, but otherwise not especially remarkable. My dad hit the nail on the head when he described Juno's as "trying a little too hard". Juno tries too hard in a lot of respects. It makes a lot of minor missteps. And yet, I think that's almost intentional. Juno herself says to Bleeker that he's cool and he "doesn't have to try hard". He responds "I try really hard." That could just as easily be an admission, or a wink and a nudge to the audience trying to tie a massive motif together.
Juno herself is the ultimate in trying too hard. Whether it's the writers trying too hard to make her an indie kid, or intentionally going over the top and establishing her character as one that tries too hard to be an indie kid (I prefer to think it's the latter), she's crafted to seem halfway between exquisitely organic and meticulously assembled. Sure, everyone knows someone who uses the same idiosyncratic turns of phrase that she does, that wears Slinky shirts like she does, that guzzles 52-oz blueberry slushies, that has a penchant for obscure 70s punk and slasher movies, that speaks with the same consistently sarcastic timbre. But is there anyone who's that intensely individual... does a Juno actually exist, or is she an amalgamation of every trait held in high regard by a certain demographic? I maintain that nobody is really quite like Juno, and that forcing every one of these attributes into her makes her seem a little alien, something where the whole is not greater or less than the sum of the parts, merely a little off.
She is the sort of character who can make you develop an instant crush on Ellen Page, or who can instantly make you enter super-movie-critic mode, and talk about things like "motifs" and "character relationships" and "traits". But whatever way you look at it, this a movie about trying too hard. The characters, the characterizations, the movie itself. Happily, all of them, especially the movie itself, prevail in the end. Juno takes stale ideas and plots--things like Growing Up Versus Childhood, and Responsibility Versus What Feels Right--and makes them into a story that's not only coherent but engaging. The resolution of those themes is well done, with each supporting character (Bleeker, Mark, Vanessa) not exactly developing as the movie goes on: each remains essentially a static character. The truly interesting approach here is that they seem to be developing, but that's really an illusion, more of a function of Juno's perception of them as they react to her situation than any actual divergence in character. It's an interesting cinematic device, and it works beautifully given what else is going on in the movie.
Ultimately, Juno is excellent, a movie that actually delivers comedy, drama, and characters you care about. It's highly recommended, and punctuated by a wonderful performance from Ellen Page, and nearly equally good showings from Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Garner. However, if you could choose just one movie to see, it would have to be Little Miss Sunshine.
Most movies, when I'm done with them, I sort of nod, and think okay, that was fun. A select few, like Juno, I actually recommend as something that's entertaining and worth seeing. After I finished Little Miss Sunshine, I had one thing to say: "what a wonderful movie."
I mean it. If you can only see one movie over the next (arbitrary length of time) make it Little Miss Sunshine. The first thing I noticed about this movie, and the thing that inspired my Card analysis of Juno, was that every single one of the characters interacts with every single other character remarkably. Grandpa has a character that shines through all his interactions. But that interaction changes subtly (yet believably) when he talks to Olive, or to either of her parents.
The quirks that pervade Juno's character are here distilled and selectively inserted into every character in the movie. Dwayne? You swear you knew a guy like that in college. Frank? If that guy doesn't show up to your family reunion, that's the exception rather than the norm. Every moment following these characters, and every moment delicately probing the unique relationship that each character has with the next, is nothing short of delightful. And the climax of the movie, with Olive dancing to "Superfreak" and drawing the ire of every other pageant-goer? Anton Chekhov wishes he could write irony that brilliant.
Currently listening: "Just Give Me the Damn Sepak Tekraw Ball," from the Onion News Network podcast
Review and Analysis: Juno and Little Miss Sunshine
So Juno doesn't actually have half the cast of television's best comedy of the decade. But it has two, and that's good enough for me. Although, before getting too deep into the discussion, imagine a universe where Juno's father is played by Jeffrey Tambor, who played George (and Oscar) Bluth, and tell me it wouldn't be wonderful.
Oddly, for all the character permutations present in the movie, the Arrested Development reunion of Michael Cera and Jason Bateman never actually showed up. The character permutations that did show up were very good. Orson Scott Card, an author to whom a big part of the inspiration credit for this blog goes, once told a trick for effective characterization. Good characters necessarily become exponentially more complex as the number of characters increases. With only two, you have to write two personalities, and define how the two of them interact. With three, you have three personalities, three sets of interactions, plus any modifications to the interactions if the three of them ever showed up as a group. Some set theorist could probably define this mathematically for large numbers of characters; Card maintains it's a bad choice to include more characters than definable interactions.
And honestly, think of the best literature and movies and television shows. Either they're incredibly complex to the point where using Card's definition rule would merely bog things down, or they truly do focus on a completely defined network of characters. House, at least for the first three seasons, had essentially six characters. You could always describe the relationship between, say, House and Wilson; between Cuddy and Foreman; between Chase and Cameron. One of the reasons that Alien was so classic wasn't necessarily its command of science fiction, but the fact that it had only eight characters, most of whom had distinct relationships to each other. The list could go on.
Ultimately, the Card relationships are impressive in Juno--and something approaching perfection in Little Miss Sunshine, which I'll hit on again later. I'm not sure why it makes so much sense to review these two movies together, except that I read somehow that they were connected in an AJC article a month ago. I think that Movie People could probably explain some better reasons they're connected.
After doing my homework, Wikipedia reports that both are the products of Fox Searchlight.
Another similarity I can immediately identify is that, in the Garden State vein, they're both Soundtrack Movies. That is, they're movies whose soundtracks that people can actually reasonably want to buy, and whose music lends character to the movie rather than just providing background noise. One of the guys I watched Juno with remarked that "this soundtrack is supposed to be like living in Zach Braff's earwax." Of course. Because every work of art in this genre has to be incestuously related to each other, and if I like one of them, I must like them all. But that's a discussion for a different day.
The soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine was pleasantly Sufjan-ed up, but otherwise not especially remarkable. My dad hit the nail on the head when he described Juno's as "trying a little too hard". Juno tries too hard in a lot of respects. It makes a lot of minor missteps. And yet, I think that's almost intentional. Juno herself says to Bleeker that he's cool and he "doesn't have to try hard". He responds "I try really hard." That could just as easily be an admission, or a wink and a nudge to the audience trying to tie a massive motif together.
Juno herself is the ultimate in trying too hard. Whether it's the writers trying too hard to make her an indie kid, or intentionally going over the top and establishing her character as one that tries too hard to be an indie kid (I prefer to think it's the latter), she's crafted to seem halfway between exquisitely organic and meticulously assembled. Sure, everyone knows someone who uses the same idiosyncratic turns of phrase that she does, that wears Slinky shirts like she does, that guzzles 52-oz blueberry slushies, that has a penchant for obscure 70s punk and slasher movies, that speaks with the same consistently sarcastic timbre. But is there anyone who's that intensely individual... does a Juno actually exist, or is she an amalgamation of every trait held in high regard by a certain demographic? I maintain that nobody is really quite like Juno, and that forcing every one of these attributes into her makes her seem a little alien, something where the whole is not greater or less than the sum of the parts, merely a little off.
She is the sort of character who can make you develop an instant crush on Ellen Page, or who can instantly make you enter super-movie-critic mode, and talk about things like "motifs" and "character relationships" and "traits". But whatever way you look at it, this a movie about trying too hard. The characters, the characterizations, the movie itself. Happily, all of them, especially the movie itself, prevail in the end. Juno takes stale ideas and plots--things like Growing Up Versus Childhood, and Responsibility Versus What Feels Right--and makes them into a story that's not only coherent but engaging. The resolution of those themes is well done, with each supporting character (Bleeker, Mark, Vanessa) not exactly developing as the movie goes on: each remains essentially a static character. The truly interesting approach here is that they seem to be developing, but that's really an illusion, more of a function of Juno's perception of them as they react to her situation than any actual divergence in character. It's an interesting cinematic device, and it works beautifully given what else is going on in the movie.
Ultimately, Juno is excellent, a movie that actually delivers comedy, drama, and characters you care about. It's highly recommended, and punctuated by a wonderful performance from Ellen Page, and nearly equally good showings from Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Garner. However, if you could choose just one movie to see, it would have to be Little Miss Sunshine.
Most movies, when I'm done with them, I sort of nod, and think okay, that was fun. A select few, like Juno, I actually recommend as something that's entertaining and worth seeing. After I finished Little Miss Sunshine, I had one thing to say: "what a wonderful movie."
I mean it. If you can only see one movie over the next (arbitrary length of time) make it Little Miss Sunshine. The first thing I noticed about this movie, and the thing that inspired my Card analysis of Juno, was that every single one of the characters interacts with every single other character remarkably. Grandpa has a character that shines through all his interactions. But that interaction changes subtly (yet believably) when he talks to Olive, or to either of her parents.
The quirks that pervade Juno's character are here distilled and selectively inserted into every character in the movie. Dwayne? You swear you knew a guy like that in college. Frank? If that guy doesn't show up to your family reunion, that's the exception rather than the norm. Every moment following these characters, and every moment delicately probing the unique relationship that each character has with the next, is nothing short of delightful. And the climax of the movie, with Olive dancing to "Superfreak" and drawing the ire of every other pageant-goer? Anton Chekhov wishes he could write irony that brilliant.
Currently listening: "Just Give Me the Damn Sepak Tekraw Ball," from the Onion News Network podcast
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Transition States (and a game review, too)
One theme that runs throughout discussions of college is change. Learning to learn. Figuring out where you actually want to go with your life. "Finding yourself" (and we all know how I feel about that). Experimentation, if that's your cup of tea. I don't doubt that certain people change; many of my friends certainly have. But I sort of don't know that I've changed much at all since I started school. Granted, I can now watch House and get the meaning of "allosteric inhibitor" or watch the French station on GTCN and catch about every tenth word, but that seems like a pure function of learning, not of personality development.
I recently clicked on the wrong button in Gmail, one that sent me hurtling back to summer 2005 (that strange, strange time between high school and college), and I decided to read some of my correspondence from that era. My writing style is essentially the same. The things I talk about are the same--at least the topics are; the amount of experience I can draw on is something like fifteen percent greater now. The only major change, as far as I can tell, is the people I talk to now.
I think everyone I'm friends with or who may read Isoceleria is, by this point, out of high school. They're out of high school to varying degrees, ranging from less than a year to decades. Think back to your Summer 2005 (whether it be summer 2007 or summer 1976 or anywhere in between) and try and recall your promises to keep in touch with high school friends. How many of them did you contact once you got to college? How many of them did you see again? How many did you actually make a continuous effort through college (and beyond) to stay in touch with? Two and a half years into college, I can say that there are less than ten people from high school I talk to regularly--and that number would probably be even lower if a few of them didn't go to my college.
The best way to measure anything--anything--relating to college is Facebook. That place is a data miner's dream, something that people like my dad can only dream about having unmitigated access to. You can gauge across people--popular culture, or counter culture; when projects are due and tests are scheduled. Or you can find out very important things about an individual person--a relationship just isn't "official" until it's on Facebook, after all. Looking at who sends me messages, it's shifted gradually over the last few year from people I knew from high school to people I know from college.
And now, friends and acquaintances are threatening to do things like "get a job" and "go to grad school". What's going to happen to college friendships once that happens? Does it all dry up, except for a select few, like high school friendships mostly seemed to do? I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (it doesn't seem like a good thing; the best thing we can hope for is neutral).
One major change that I definitely have noticed, and that definitely does seem like a good thing, is that I'm a lot more confident in my personal aesthetic. I know what I think looks good, sounds good, tastes good, is worth spending time on. As a corollary, I'm increasingly impressed with (or attracted to, in a select few cases) people who also have strongly defined aesthetics, and impatient with people who don't have them.
That hasn't changed me from liking good video gaming, though. The usual cycle of "let's all play World of Warcraft" is back in full swing, so I've retreated to some games of my own.
Review: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
I'm one of those Nintendo fanboys who believes that Twilight Princess's predecessor, Ocarina of Time, was brilliant, possibly the best video game ever. Twilight Princess might just surpass it. I'm not done with it--probably about a third to halfway, knowing Zelda games--and I'm already this impressed.
Twilight Princess relies on the Zelda mainstays of sequential dungeoneering, progressive item upgrades, delightfully frustrating item collection side-quests, and a strangely dressed man with pointy elf ears saving a mystical princess. So I won't go into those details.
Where Twilight Princess really shines, though, is in its storyline. The one knock on Ocarina of Time--the part that made people give it A's instead of A+'s--was that the downtime between dungeons was clearly the throwaway part of the game, merely designed as a linear railroad until the next part of the Item Collection Main Quest. In Twilight Princess, however, there are things like plot twists. Important NPCs with memorable character traits. Epic mounted combat. Even a bit of intrigue. Add all of that to everything good about Ocarina of Time, don't make the Oblivion mistake of getting rid of good things from the original game, and you have something truly spectacular.
Currently listening: The Execution of All Things, Rilo Kiley
I recently clicked on the wrong button in Gmail, one that sent me hurtling back to summer 2005 (that strange, strange time between high school and college), and I decided to read some of my correspondence from that era. My writing style is essentially the same. The things I talk about are the same--at least the topics are; the amount of experience I can draw on is something like fifteen percent greater now. The only major change, as far as I can tell, is the people I talk to now.
I think everyone I'm friends with or who may read Isoceleria is, by this point, out of high school. They're out of high school to varying degrees, ranging from less than a year to decades. Think back to your Summer 2005 (whether it be summer 2007 or summer 1976 or anywhere in between) and try and recall your promises to keep in touch with high school friends. How many of them did you contact once you got to college? How many of them did you see again? How many did you actually make a continuous effort through college (and beyond) to stay in touch with? Two and a half years into college, I can say that there are less than ten people from high school I talk to regularly--and that number would probably be even lower if a few of them didn't go to my college.
The best way to measure anything--anything--relating to college is Facebook. That place is a data miner's dream, something that people like my dad can only dream about having unmitigated access to. You can gauge across people--popular culture, or counter culture; when projects are due and tests are scheduled. Or you can find out very important things about an individual person--a relationship just isn't "official" until it's on Facebook, after all. Looking at who sends me messages, it's shifted gradually over the last few year from people I knew from high school to people I know from college.
And now, friends and acquaintances are threatening to do things like "get a job" and "go to grad school". What's going to happen to college friendships once that happens? Does it all dry up, except for a select few, like high school friendships mostly seemed to do? I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (it doesn't seem like a good thing; the best thing we can hope for is neutral).
One major change that I definitely have noticed, and that definitely does seem like a good thing, is that I'm a lot more confident in my personal aesthetic. I know what I think looks good, sounds good, tastes good, is worth spending time on. As a corollary, I'm increasingly impressed with (or attracted to, in a select few cases) people who also have strongly defined aesthetics, and impatient with people who don't have them.
That hasn't changed me from liking good video gaming, though. The usual cycle of "let's all play World of Warcraft" is back in full swing, so I've retreated to some games of my own.
Review: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
I'm one of those Nintendo fanboys who believes that Twilight Princess's predecessor, Ocarina of Time, was brilliant, possibly the best video game ever. Twilight Princess might just surpass it. I'm not done with it--probably about a third to halfway, knowing Zelda games--and I'm already this impressed.
Twilight Princess relies on the Zelda mainstays of sequential dungeoneering, progressive item upgrades, delightfully frustrating item collection side-quests, and a strangely dressed man with pointy elf ears saving a mystical princess. So I won't go into those details.
Where Twilight Princess really shines, though, is in its storyline. The one knock on Ocarina of Time--the part that made people give it A's instead of A+'s--was that the downtime between dungeons was clearly the throwaway part of the game, merely designed as a linear railroad until the next part of the Item Collection Main Quest. In Twilight Princess, however, there are things like plot twists. Important NPCs with memorable character traits. Epic mounted combat. Even a bit of intrigue. Add all of that to everything good about Ocarina of Time, don't make the Oblivion mistake of getting rid of good things from the original game, and you have something truly spectacular.
Currently listening: The Execution of All Things, Rilo Kiley
Monday, January 21, 2008
We All Strike On
A couple of years ago, I probably would have make a comment on how surprisingly good television is lately. We were looking at a universe where, every night, there was a virtual certainty of running into CSI, a CSI spinoff, or a CSI clone. And how do you say no to that? (I suppose pretty easily, if you're not into CSI.) The pre-strike universe lent itself well to my tastes in television: quasi-intellectual suspenses that put the focus squarely on the action, or the mystery, or the intrigue rather than petty inter-character relationships. That doesn't mean they're stagnant two-dimensional characters, and that doesn't mean there's no development. It just means that the writers are clever enough to put those personalities to use in the midst of something worth following.
That "something worth following", just a few years beforehand, was drivel: the reality television boom of the early 2000's. Remember that? Those paleolithic days of dating shows, or dating shows in the city, or dating shows on the beach, or dating shows in Europe? (The similarities of those permutations to those of my supposed television halcyon are of course irrelevant.) That's not even to mention a veritable waste land of sometimes goofy, sometimes sappy "dromedies" of which Friends is the most recognizable and watchable example. That's saying something. (Recently, I decided to give it a chance and watch some of the show, around half of the first season. It wasn't all that bad, but there is much better out there.)
Now maybe that's not everybody's cup of tea. Perhaps you are into complex, character-y dramas. Maybe they're set on the stages of television sketch comedy production. Maybe they're about attractive suburbanite moms. Maybe it's some crap about people screwing each other in a hospital. Maybe it's a bunch of people stranded from a plane crash on some weird deserted (or not-so-deserted) island. (...okay, so Lost actually is really good.) Point is, if you're into that sort of thing, it was out there, at least until a few months ago. Honestly, I think there was something out there for anyone, at least anyone who was looking. Nearly every would-be critic agreed that things were better than they were at the beginning of the decade, whatever they preferred. Even reality TV holdouts couldn't complain, as electronic Darwinism had taken its toll on the worst and kept the last bad (eg, The Amazing Race).
I turn to three examples to exhibit how dreadfully dependent Hollywood has been on the writers. I first feel like I need to admit that I have watched all of these shows, and I'm not too proud to watch them again, at some point. Deal or No Deal was around even when Jay Leno was allowed by contract to make notes on cards (he's not, as of January 2008), and it's the least objectionable of what currently passes for watchable television. In case you haven't heard of this one, it centers around someone picking a number at random, computing probability so simple a high school statistics student could figure it out, and essentially seeing how greedy (or merely bad at mathematics) the contestant is. Despite Howie Mandel and twenty-something provocatively-clad models clutching numbers, the show realizes it faces a big problem here. There is no variation. On nearly every other show that gives out free money, there's some device to vary the scheme. Perhaps it's trivia questions, or contestant interaction, or a contrived physical competition.
Deal or No Deal, though, is faced with the same expected-value problem every time the show airs. And until people decide to start writing again, it's minor tweaks in concept, or additions of extra cash, or reliance on the short attention span of the general populace, to keep the same old thing afloat.
For sheer absurdity value, it's tough to beat American Gladiators. That one's become a weekly favorite in the dorm, not because it's actually a good show, but to make fun of how absolutely ridiculous it is. Six-foot, five-inch dudes who call themselves "Wolf" and toss hundred-pound swinging weights at muscled guys in Spandex? Swimming under real live flames? Hundred mile an hour Nerf cannons? How can you possibly go wrong? The real puzzle is trying to figure out who greenlit bringing this show back, fifteen years later. Truly, our desperation from having no writing can't get any lower than this, right?
Or so you might think, unless you're lucky enough to catch a glimpse of MTV's The X Effect. Premise: take a couple that used to be together, but is now broken up. Both the guy and girl have long since moved on and found themselves new significant others. Now, take the two exes, put them in the same hotel room for a weekend, and surprise! Turns out they still have feelings for each other! Why not let their current partners watch and get jealous? Seriously, MTV? Breaking up otherwise happy couples by throwing in some potent "ex" catalyst?
A girl I know wrote an article in Georgia Tech's local fishwrapper The Technique about the writer's strike opening up all sorts of lovely political discussion, prompting people to watch C-Span and discuss issues. Maybe so. I've personally heard more discussion of how that one dude totally knocked Titan off the platform in Joust yesterday.
I live in fear of seeing what's going to happen to American mainstream culture once the writer's strike hits movie theaters.
Currently listening: "Empty", Metric
That "something worth following", just a few years beforehand, was drivel: the reality television boom of the early 2000's. Remember that? Those paleolithic days of dating shows, or dating shows in the city, or dating shows on the beach, or dating shows in Europe? (The similarities of those permutations to those of my supposed television halcyon are of course irrelevant.) That's not even to mention a veritable waste land of sometimes goofy, sometimes sappy "dromedies" of which Friends is the most recognizable and watchable example. That's saying something. (Recently, I decided to give it a chance and watch some of the show, around half of the first season. It wasn't all that bad, but there is much better out there.)
Now maybe that's not everybody's cup of tea. Perhaps you are into complex, character-y dramas. Maybe they're set on the stages of television sketch comedy production. Maybe they're about attractive suburbanite moms. Maybe it's some crap about people screwing each other in a hospital. Maybe it's a bunch of people stranded from a plane crash on some weird deserted (or not-so-deserted) island. (...okay, so Lost actually is really good.) Point is, if you're into that sort of thing, it was out there, at least until a few months ago. Honestly, I think there was something out there for anyone, at least anyone who was looking. Nearly every would-be critic agreed that things were better than they were at the beginning of the decade, whatever they preferred. Even reality TV holdouts couldn't complain, as electronic Darwinism had taken its toll on the worst and kept the last bad (eg, The Amazing Race).
I turn to three examples to exhibit how dreadfully dependent Hollywood has been on the writers. I first feel like I need to admit that I have watched all of these shows, and I'm not too proud to watch them again, at some point. Deal or No Deal was around even when Jay Leno was allowed by contract to make notes on cards (he's not, as of January 2008), and it's the least objectionable of what currently passes for watchable television. In case you haven't heard of this one, it centers around someone picking a number at random, computing probability so simple a high school statistics student could figure it out, and essentially seeing how greedy (or merely bad at mathematics) the contestant is. Despite Howie Mandel and twenty-something provocatively-clad models clutching numbers, the show realizes it faces a big problem here. There is no variation. On nearly every other show that gives out free money, there's some device to vary the scheme. Perhaps it's trivia questions, or contestant interaction, or a contrived physical competition.
Deal or No Deal, though, is faced with the same expected-value problem every time the show airs. And until people decide to start writing again, it's minor tweaks in concept, or additions of extra cash, or reliance on the short attention span of the general populace, to keep the same old thing afloat.
For sheer absurdity value, it's tough to beat American Gladiators. That one's become a weekly favorite in the dorm, not because it's actually a good show, but to make fun of how absolutely ridiculous it is. Six-foot, five-inch dudes who call themselves "Wolf" and toss hundred-pound swinging weights at muscled guys in Spandex? Swimming under real live flames? Hundred mile an hour Nerf cannons? How can you possibly go wrong? The real puzzle is trying to figure out who greenlit bringing this show back, fifteen years later. Truly, our desperation from having no writing can't get any lower than this, right?
Or so you might think, unless you're lucky enough to catch a glimpse of MTV's The X Effect. Premise: take a couple that used to be together, but is now broken up. Both the guy and girl have long since moved on and found themselves new significant others. Now, take the two exes, put them in the same hotel room for a weekend, and surprise! Turns out they still have feelings for each other! Why not let their current partners watch and get jealous? Seriously, MTV? Breaking up otherwise happy couples by throwing in some potent "ex" catalyst?
A girl I know wrote an article in Georgia Tech's local fishwrapper The Technique about the writer's strike opening up all sorts of lovely political discussion, prompting people to watch C-Span and discuss issues. Maybe so. I've personally heard more discussion of how that one dude totally knocked Titan off the platform in Joust yesterday.
I live in fear of seeing what's going to happen to American mainstream culture once the writer's strike hits movie theaters.
Currently listening: "Empty", Metric
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Stoning Adulterers and Killing Magicians
Review and Discussion: The Year of Living Biblically
So I've gotten to do this strange thing lately, which I haven't had the time for in several months, and that's "read a book". Among what I got for Christmas was The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (author of another book about reading the entire encyclopedia, cover-to-cover, which I'll certainly be picking up as soon as I can). In a double attempt to 1) pay homage to his crazy Uncle Gil, who in his second spurt of ultra-Orthodox Judaism has decided to tie tassels to all his clothing, and 2) give an agnostic New York moderate-liberal "ha! gotcha!" to fundamentalist Jew or Christian who would claim to follow every mandate of their holy text to the letter.
Two main themes arise in Jacobs' book: first, that it's actually impossible to follow every word literally, and second, that even for a non-believer, the Bible contains moral teachings that can be worthwhile to follow.
For anyone in modern times trying to interpret every word of every sentence as true and literal, several conflicts show up. These might be conflicts between different parts of the Bible itself, or situational circumstances that essentially mandate a conflict. (How many times has "keeping holy the Sabbath" conflicted with, say, "honor thy father and mother"?)
Then there are the clearly old-fashioned laws, like the ones about sacrificing, who it's okay to stone, and what you're allowed to do to and with your slave under various circumstances. Most of these rules don't have any place anymore... but where's the religious justification of that? If the Bible is the literal word of God, why should the workings of man abolish your duty to abide by those laws?
Literalist Jews and literalist Christians have different answers to that. Jews say that most of the laws they no longer follow (for instance, those nasty bits about animal sacrifice) are because they were only designed to be observed at the Temple in Jerusalem. With that temple no longer around, the Jews aren't bound by those rules anymore. As for Christians, with Jesus' death and resurrection came discarding the so-called "ritual laws" (which encompass sacrifice, not eating shellfish, not wearing mixed linen/cotten clothing, etc.). The tricky thing is, Christians are still supposed to abide by the "moral laws" (such as respecting your elders, etc.). What counts as "moral" versus "ritual" law? Well, there's yet more interpretation, because it's not like Jesus ever made a list.
But whether moral or ritual, whether abolished by the temple's destruction or not, Jacobs follows them all. At least, all of the ones that aren't downright illegal by modern standards. And through them, he actually starts to live Biblically, as opposed to merely according to the rules of the Bible. He's not sure whether to attribute this to cognitive dissonance theory, which in part says that if you act as if something is true, you begin to believe it's true. Maybe it's that, and maybe it's a genuine effect, through studying the teachings of God, to become closer to God.
In the end, Jacobs isn't quite sure what he learned, and I think that's sort of the point of the book. The lengths that Jacobs goes to understand the exact message behind everything described in the Bible are astounding, and if you're a religious person anyway, you probably believe that this isn't the sort of thing that can merely be reduced to a set of words. He settles on the Jeffersonian belief that the Bible contains a worthwhile set of moral guidelines, but can't pull himself toward belief in a personal, interactive God.
Most Jews and Christians would retort that this is the very crux of living Biblically.
Despite this apparent fatal flaw, Jacobs' book is fascinating, and highly recommended. His discussion of almost all of the prominent Biblical issues is balanced and thorough. Furthermore, he tries very hard to understand cultural, historical, and societal contexts of all the Biblical laws, and explain to the reader exactly why that rule existed. The thing Jacobs does best is avoid bias, acknowledging the possibility of truth and "rightness" in every possibility he encounters.
Interestingly, that lack of bias that Jacobs is able to pull off so effortlessly shows that it really does take an agnostic to write a book this Biblical. A fundamentalist evangelical would take a different perspective as a Hasid, and both points of view would be vastly different from a mainline Protestant, or Catholic, or Reform Jew. Jacobs is able to take his lack of perspective--something that any of those religious groups would criticize--and turn it into something utterly spiritual anyway.
Currently listening: Drastic Fantastic, KT Tunstall
So I've gotten to do this strange thing lately, which I haven't had the time for in several months, and that's "read a book". Among what I got for Christmas was The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (author of another book about reading the entire encyclopedia, cover-to-cover, which I'll certainly be picking up as soon as I can). In a double attempt to 1) pay homage to his crazy Uncle Gil, who in his second spurt of ultra-Orthodox Judaism has decided to tie tassels to all his clothing, and 2) give an agnostic New York moderate-liberal "ha! gotcha!" to fundamentalist Jew or Christian who would claim to follow every mandate of their holy text to the letter.
Two main themes arise in Jacobs' book: first, that it's actually impossible to follow every word literally, and second, that even for a non-believer, the Bible contains moral teachings that can be worthwhile to follow.
For anyone in modern times trying to interpret every word of every sentence as true and literal, several conflicts show up. These might be conflicts between different parts of the Bible itself, or situational circumstances that essentially mandate a conflict. (How many times has "keeping holy the Sabbath" conflicted with, say, "honor thy father and mother"?)
Then there are the clearly old-fashioned laws, like the ones about sacrificing, who it's okay to stone, and what you're allowed to do to and with your slave under various circumstances. Most of these rules don't have any place anymore... but where's the religious justification of that? If the Bible is the literal word of God, why should the workings of man abolish your duty to abide by those laws?
Literalist Jews and literalist Christians have different answers to that. Jews say that most of the laws they no longer follow (for instance, those nasty bits about animal sacrifice) are because they were only designed to be observed at the Temple in Jerusalem. With that temple no longer around, the Jews aren't bound by those rules anymore. As for Christians, with Jesus' death and resurrection came discarding the so-called "ritual laws" (which encompass sacrifice, not eating shellfish, not wearing mixed linen/cotten clothing, etc.). The tricky thing is, Christians are still supposed to abide by the "moral laws" (such as respecting your elders, etc.). What counts as "moral" versus "ritual" law? Well, there's yet more interpretation, because it's not like Jesus ever made a list.
But whether moral or ritual, whether abolished by the temple's destruction or not, Jacobs follows them all. At least, all of the ones that aren't downright illegal by modern standards. And through them, he actually starts to live Biblically, as opposed to merely according to the rules of the Bible. He's not sure whether to attribute this to cognitive dissonance theory, which in part says that if you act as if something is true, you begin to believe it's true. Maybe it's that, and maybe it's a genuine effect, through studying the teachings of God, to become closer to God.
In the end, Jacobs isn't quite sure what he learned, and I think that's sort of the point of the book. The lengths that Jacobs goes to understand the exact message behind everything described in the Bible are astounding, and if you're a religious person anyway, you probably believe that this isn't the sort of thing that can merely be reduced to a set of words. He settles on the Jeffersonian belief that the Bible contains a worthwhile set of moral guidelines, but can't pull himself toward belief in a personal, interactive God.
Most Jews and Christians would retort that this is the very crux of living Biblically.
Despite this apparent fatal flaw, Jacobs' book is fascinating, and highly recommended. His discussion of almost all of the prominent Biblical issues is balanced and thorough. Furthermore, he tries very hard to understand cultural, historical, and societal contexts of all the Biblical laws, and explain to the reader exactly why that rule existed. The thing Jacobs does best is avoid bias, acknowledging the possibility of truth and "rightness" in every possibility he encounters.
Interestingly, that lack of bias that Jacobs is able to pull off so effortlessly shows that it really does take an agnostic to write a book this Biblical. A fundamentalist evangelical would take a different perspective as a Hasid, and both points of view would be vastly different from a mainline Protestant, or Catholic, or Reform Jew. Jacobs is able to take his lack of perspective--something that any of those religious groups would criticize--and turn it into something utterly spiritual anyway.
Currently listening: Drastic Fantastic, KT Tunstall
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Holiday Spirit, part II: Cinema
To wrap up the holiday season, it seems appropriate to discuss the movies. After all, that's where Isoceleria got its start, and that's when you have a much better chance than the rest of the year to see me in a movie theater.
Before I forget, when in the hell did cheesy little Carmike 12 in Snellville start thinking it was a good choice to charge $10 to see a movie? That's as much as or more than much nicer theaters, like the ones at Atlantic Station ($10, but $9 for a student) or Stonecrest Mall ($9.50).
Holiday-season movies tend to fall into one of three camps: 1) Holiday movies, 2) Oscar-y movies, and 3) Movies that really wish they could be Oscar-y. Holiday movies I'm generally sort of skeptical of, as there's no way they can really compete with what's become the holy trinity of Christmas movies: Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, and of course It's a Wonderful Life. Those movies are wonderful enough to merit their own discussion, which I sort of missed the boat on this year. (December 2008, here I come.)
Oscar-y movies, on the other hand, are ones specifically designed to rake in awards. For whatever reason, there's a perception that these movies are only allowed to be released in the month of December. Think of the movies that advertise themselves with phrases like "Nominated for n Golden Globes!" and the higher n is, the higher propensity it has for association with this category. These movies aren't necessarily bad, but they seems to have a sort of "popular opinion be damned, we're going to pander to what the critics have expressed they're looking for this awards season."
And the "movies that really wish they could be Oscar-y" category turns out to be the one that I often find myself exposed to come late December. I've said it before, that I'm not so much a movie person as a movie-neutral person with movie-person friends. And when I'm hanging out with those people, as I have time to do every late December, it usually turns out that that means going to see one of these movies.
Review: I Am Legend
I respect Will Smith a lot as an actor. Maybe not so much as a rapper--I think the world wouldn't necessarily be worse off for having missed out on getting jiggy with anything. But the man can act. Recently, The Pursuit of Happyness was entertaining if not brilliant, and a welcomed sink of two hours out of an eight hour trans-Atlantic flight. Interestingly, he's really created a name for himself as a science fiction actor: Men in Black, I, Robot, and now I Am Legend.
The general consensus concerning this movie is "it was really good until the zombies showed up." Sure, I'll go along with that. But making that observation would be like saying that Star Wars was really good until the Jedi showed up. First, it doesn't take long at all for them to enter the movie, and secondly (and more seriously), they're such an integral part of the story that getting rid of them is essentially stripping the setting of its originality. Jedi define Star Wars the same way that zombies define I Am Legend. And that's sort of unfortunate.
On the surface, this movie is science fiction. Problem is, there's hardly any science mixed in with the fiction. The prologue to the movie explained the proximate cause of humanity's downfall with a tantalizing bit of genetics and immunology. As someone with more than a passing interest (three quarters of the way to a degree, in fact) in the life sciences, to me, this was one of the most intriguing parts of the movie. I was really hoping for the plausible-sounding science to be a continuing motif throughout the movie, and instead we get a single minute of Will Smith synopsis about two thirds of the way in. I understand that the thread of science is one of the least important parts of "science fiction" to a lot of people out there, but is it too much to ask to pay lipservice to it for more than a sliver of the film?
Devoid of its scientific content, I Am Legend is, at its core, still a zombie movie. Will Smith hides from the zombies. Then he kicks some zombie ass. Then things start to go downhill. Then he discovers a magical cure for zombie-ism! Then zombies invade, and he dies. Something we've seen how many dozen times already? I Am Legend had a golden opportunity to distinguish itself that it never really took. Bottom line: if you're really into zombie action movies, this isn't an awful movie. I just can't promise that you'll get anything out of it.
Caveat to everything I just said: this applies strictly to the movie. I haven't read the book. I gather that, like virtually every book-come-movie, the book is measurably better. I can't verify that's true. I think it probably makes sense that it is. One supposedly significant change is that in the book, the evil monster creatures are closer to vampires than zombies. To me, that's no big deal. But hey, maybe there might even be science in the book, and that probably isn't a big deal to some people either.
Review: Alien Versus Predator: Requiem
Or: "Because the first one was so good that they really needed a sequel, right?"
Recently, my friend Nick asked me if I'd seen the first AvP movie. Yes, I have. He told me he'd watched it on TV, and that there was probably some content editing going on to make the film less comprehensible than it should have been. I assured him that it was almost certainly exactly as comprehensible as it would have been, should he have seen it in the theater.
The answer to "did we really need a sequel?" is absolutely no, we did not. This is one of those movies that just begs for the Mystery Science Theater treatment. Character development is nil. Scientific intrigue, where it at least showed potential in I Am Legend is more of the same ridiculousness. Even the title doesn't make any sense: who is it who's getting laid to rest, anyway?
Not that you were necessarily expecting character development, or science, or... sense from this movie. You were probably expecting lots of stuff blowing up, and heads getting blown off, and a movie that you don't at all have to take seriously. And that's exactly what you're going to get.
Currently listening: "Here It Goes Again," OK Go (via our friends at Rock Band)
Before I forget, when in the hell did cheesy little Carmike 12 in Snellville start thinking it was a good choice to charge $10 to see a movie? That's as much as or more than much nicer theaters, like the ones at Atlantic Station ($10, but $9 for a student) or Stonecrest Mall ($9.50).
Holiday-season movies tend to fall into one of three camps: 1) Holiday movies, 2) Oscar-y movies, and 3) Movies that really wish they could be Oscar-y. Holiday movies I'm generally sort of skeptical of, as there's no way they can really compete with what's become the holy trinity of Christmas movies: Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, and of course It's a Wonderful Life. Those movies are wonderful enough to merit their own discussion, which I sort of missed the boat on this year. (December 2008, here I come.)
Oscar-y movies, on the other hand, are ones specifically designed to rake in awards. For whatever reason, there's a perception that these movies are only allowed to be released in the month of December. Think of the movies that advertise themselves with phrases like "Nominated for n Golden Globes!" and the higher n is, the higher propensity it has for association with this category. These movies aren't necessarily bad, but they seems to have a sort of "popular opinion be damned, we're going to pander to what the critics have expressed they're looking for this awards season."
And the "movies that really wish they could be Oscar-y" category turns out to be the one that I often find myself exposed to come late December. I've said it before, that I'm not so much a movie person as a movie-neutral person with movie-person friends. And when I'm hanging out with those people, as I have time to do every late December, it usually turns out that that means going to see one of these movies.
Review: I Am Legend
I respect Will Smith a lot as an actor. Maybe not so much as a rapper--I think the world wouldn't necessarily be worse off for having missed out on getting jiggy with anything. But the man can act. Recently, The Pursuit of Happyness was entertaining if not brilliant, and a welcomed sink of two hours out of an eight hour trans-Atlantic flight. Interestingly, he's really created a name for himself as a science fiction actor: Men in Black, I, Robot, and now I Am Legend.
The general consensus concerning this movie is "it was really good until the zombies showed up." Sure, I'll go along with that. But making that observation would be like saying that Star Wars was really good until the Jedi showed up. First, it doesn't take long at all for them to enter the movie, and secondly (and more seriously), they're such an integral part of the story that getting rid of them is essentially stripping the setting of its originality. Jedi define Star Wars the same way that zombies define I Am Legend. And that's sort of unfortunate.
On the surface, this movie is science fiction. Problem is, there's hardly any science mixed in with the fiction. The prologue to the movie explained the proximate cause of humanity's downfall with a tantalizing bit of genetics and immunology. As someone with more than a passing interest (three quarters of the way to a degree, in fact) in the life sciences, to me, this was one of the most intriguing parts of the movie. I was really hoping for the plausible-sounding science to be a continuing motif throughout the movie, and instead we get a single minute of Will Smith synopsis about two thirds of the way in. I understand that the thread of science is one of the least important parts of "science fiction" to a lot of people out there, but is it too much to ask to pay lipservice to it for more than a sliver of the film?
Devoid of its scientific content, I Am Legend is, at its core, still a zombie movie. Will Smith hides from the zombies. Then he kicks some zombie ass. Then things start to go downhill. Then he discovers a magical cure for zombie-ism! Then zombies invade, and he dies. Something we've seen how many dozen times already? I Am Legend had a golden opportunity to distinguish itself that it never really took. Bottom line: if you're really into zombie action movies, this isn't an awful movie. I just can't promise that you'll get anything out of it.
Caveat to everything I just said: this applies strictly to the movie. I haven't read the book. I gather that, like virtually every book-come-movie, the book is measurably better. I can't verify that's true. I think it probably makes sense that it is. One supposedly significant change is that in the book, the evil monster creatures are closer to vampires than zombies. To me, that's no big deal. But hey, maybe there might even be science in the book, and that probably isn't a big deal to some people either.
Review: Alien Versus Predator: Requiem
Or: "Because the first one was so good that they really needed a sequel, right?"
Recently, my friend Nick asked me if I'd seen the first AvP movie. Yes, I have. He told me he'd watched it on TV, and that there was probably some content editing going on to make the film less comprehensible than it should have been. I assured him that it was almost certainly exactly as comprehensible as it would have been, should he have seen it in the theater.
The answer to "did we really need a sequel?" is absolutely no, we did not. This is one of those movies that just begs for the Mystery Science Theater treatment. Character development is nil. Scientific intrigue, where it at least showed potential in I Am Legend is more of the same ridiculousness. Even the title doesn't make any sense: who is it who's getting laid to rest, anyway?
Not that you were necessarily expecting character development, or science, or... sense from this movie. You were probably expecting lots of stuff blowing up, and heads getting blown off, and a movie that you don't at all have to take seriously. And that's exactly what you're going to get.
Currently listening: "Here It Goes Again," OK Go (via our friends at Rock Band)
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
If I'm too good to discuss hubris...
An interesting trend that I'm noticing as I move through the collegiate ranks is the transition from the closed to the open universe: from what are essentially solved problems to problems that are actually worth trying to find the answer to. The biggest area where this is showing up is of course research, but also in other classes; it's nice to get the occasional Transport problem where I'm allowed to remember that what I do just might be applicable to something. Take an optimization problem, for instance: the focus isn't so much on "getting the answer right," mostly because there isn't a right answer. There is, however, a right method, and that's what's being tested.
One class that I might have the opportunity to take next year is something about "undergrad thesis writing." Very much the "unsolved problem" approach--there's clearly a right and wrong way to write a thesis, at the same time as there's no right or wrong thesis. I looked at a sample syllabus online, and it included a revolutionary lesson plan: discussion. I didn't think you were actually allowed to do that at Tech, until I remembered I had something similar back in good old English II.
Maybe you're not allowed to have these "discussions" outside of LCC classes.
LCC, of course, is the school that offers mandatory English classes, the thesis writing class, and various artsy film classes that I'm not sure anyone actually has time to take. It stands for "Literature, Communication, and Culture," and hosts the much-maligned STAC ("Science, Technology, and Culture") degree. That said, an LCC class was one of only a few occasions in my educational history--until recent advanced engineering classes--where the "closed problem" approach was avoided entirely. There were no tests. There were quizzes, to make sure we were actually keeping up with our reading, that counted for relatively little of the final grade. Then there were papers, where we developed ideas and wrote about them, drawing off examples from the books.
In other words, I had learn-discuss-prove you understand.
Contract that to earlier English classes, which were more like learn-memorize-okay, did you memorize well enough? The best part of English, of literature, heck, of the entirety of liberal arts, is the ability to scrutinize a problem and discuss it both subjectively and objectively. This is the one field in all of academia where "what you think" is actually valid. (Try expressing a personal opinion in engineering, or economics, or law.) Too many English classes discard this concept entirely. It would be like treating fluid mechanics without calculus, or ethics without Aristotle.
Take high school lit staple The Odyssey. Fine book. Immense cultural and historical significance. Plenty of material for discussion, except that it's presented as a solved problem. "Children," a thousand high school teachers might be saying in unison, "this is hubris."
"Is that going to be on the test?"
A much better method would, of course, expect students to understand the role of hubris in the context of Ancient Greek society and religious beliefs, and write an essay on it with things like citations to the text. Is that too much to ask of students, particularly ones in high school?
And is thinking having "hubris" shoved down one's throat in itself hubris?
"Children, this is irony. Yes, it's going to be on the test."
Currently listening: Songs for Christmas, Sufjan Stevens
One class that I might have the opportunity to take next year is something about "undergrad thesis writing." Very much the "unsolved problem" approach--there's clearly a right and wrong way to write a thesis, at the same time as there's no right or wrong thesis. I looked at a sample syllabus online, and it included a revolutionary lesson plan: discussion. I didn't think you were actually allowed to do that at Tech, until I remembered I had something similar back in good old English II.
Maybe you're not allowed to have these "discussions" outside of LCC classes.
LCC, of course, is the school that offers mandatory English classes, the thesis writing class, and various artsy film classes that I'm not sure anyone actually has time to take. It stands for "Literature, Communication, and Culture," and hosts the much-maligned STAC ("Science, Technology, and Culture") degree. That said, an LCC class was one of only a few occasions in my educational history--until recent advanced engineering classes--where the "closed problem" approach was avoided entirely. There were no tests. There were quizzes, to make sure we were actually keeping up with our reading, that counted for relatively little of the final grade. Then there were papers, where we developed ideas and wrote about them, drawing off examples from the books.
In other words, I had learn-discuss-prove you understand.
Contract that to earlier English classes, which were more like learn-memorize-okay, did you memorize well enough? The best part of English, of literature, heck, of the entirety of liberal arts, is the ability to scrutinize a problem and discuss it both subjectively and objectively. This is the one field in all of academia where "what you think" is actually valid. (Try expressing a personal opinion in engineering, or economics, or law.) Too many English classes discard this concept entirely. It would be like treating fluid mechanics without calculus, or ethics without Aristotle.
Take high school lit staple The Odyssey. Fine book. Immense cultural and historical significance. Plenty of material for discussion, except that it's presented as a solved problem. "Children," a thousand high school teachers might be saying in unison, "this is hubris."
"Is that going to be on the test?"
A much better method would, of course, expect students to understand the role of hubris in the context of Ancient Greek society and religious beliefs, and write an essay on it with things like citations to the text. Is that too much to ask of students, particularly ones in high school?
And is thinking having "hubris" shoved down one's throat in itself hubris?
"Children, this is irony. Yes, it's going to be on the test."
Currently listening: Songs for Christmas, Sufjan Stevens
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Webcomedy
I'm an xkcd man myself.
A couple wise friends--former residents, actually--once told me that there's a webcomic out there for anyone. Doesn't matter who you are, what you're into, what your style of humor is. If you're on the internet, there will be at least something that you can throw your support behind. Or fifteen somethings, if you're a few friends of mine.
My immediate reaction to most webcomics is that, while they're generally amusing in most cases, they're also not something that I'm going to expend effort to inspect every day in most cases. Several have distinguished themselves to my friends and colleagues as "awesome" and things that they think I'd "really enjoy if you gave it a chance." Probably true. The thing is, I don't necessarily want to have to give something that much of a chance. I want to be stricken, right away, with "wow, this is legitimately funny, I will make a concerted effort to keep reading this comic three/five/seven times a week from now on."
It's odd, too, because most of these webcomics deal with topics and inside humor that anyone who knows me halfway would think I'd be rolling in laughter over. RPG jokes? Video game jokes? I should be all about that sort of thing, right? In general. I think the main sticking points are these. First, I was never really into comics, as such, especially ones with recurring storylines. I much prefer my comics to be witty one-panelers, in the general style of Rhymes with Orange, or Non Sequitur at its funniest. (I don't care much for graphic novels at all. Nothing against them, really, just not my style. And I've yet to see a film adaptation of one that I've enjoyed in the least. Exempli gratia, 300.) I can take some week-spanning stories in my comics, but anything that requires me to follow something like a plot over many weeks has lost my attention. It's no longer comedic; it's become a chore.
And many of these webcomics touted as "hilarious" by my friends require that same sort of dedication. It's why I don't like WoW, except maybe on a much smaller scale: if you miss one day, you can't really enjoy the next without some make-up work. For example, I generally like the Order of the Stick that I've seen. It makes for an entertaining and generally amusing read. But it's often long, has a lot of words, and requires explicit knowledge of all the characters and past several comics to understand why it's funny. I actually really admire something that relies on contextual character interactions to drive humor. But that seems more like a novel than a comic.
Second thing I'm less than enthusiastic about is some manner of implied knowledge of all things esoteric that the webcomic author deems it necessary that I know about. Take this recent Penny Arcade. It relies on you knowing not only what Kane and Lynch is but also Jeff Gerstmann and his review. Perhaps I'm simply not the target audience for this comic, then, but I find it hard to believe that half the people exhorting me to read Penny Arcade got the joke either. (As for Mr. Gerstmann, the review isn't all that scathing, at least compared to half the user comments.)
I mentioned earlier that I like xkcd. There are a few things about it I do not like so much. It's "1337" week of comics was perhaps the least funny I've ever seen xkcd, because it combined both of my gripes over webcomics: a story that I'm supposed to follow, and supposition that I know who Richard Stallman is. Here's the thing: that strip was immensely successful to the xkcd hardcore. They know who Stallman is, and probably have lararia to him next to their computers. (I read the Wikipedia about him, and rolled my eyes more than anything.) Oddly, though I'd consider myself a fan of xkcd, I like it the least when it's truest to its most loyal audience.
Still plenty of science jokes to go around, though, like in the latest one. No knowledge of idealistic internet-rights movements implied here, just good old fashioned making fun of physics.
Currently listening: Messiah, Handel
A couple wise friends--former residents, actually--once told me that there's a webcomic out there for anyone. Doesn't matter who you are, what you're into, what your style of humor is. If you're on the internet, there will be at least something that you can throw your support behind. Or fifteen somethings, if you're a few friends of mine.
My immediate reaction to most webcomics is that, while they're generally amusing in most cases, they're also not something that I'm going to expend effort to inspect every day in most cases. Several have distinguished themselves to my friends and colleagues as "awesome" and things that they think I'd "really enjoy if you gave it a chance." Probably true. The thing is, I don't necessarily want to have to give something that much of a chance. I want to be stricken, right away, with "wow, this is legitimately funny, I will make a concerted effort to keep reading this comic three/five/seven times a week from now on."
It's odd, too, because most of these webcomics deal with topics and inside humor that anyone who knows me halfway would think I'd be rolling in laughter over. RPG jokes? Video game jokes? I should be all about that sort of thing, right? In general. I think the main sticking points are these. First, I was never really into comics, as such, especially ones with recurring storylines. I much prefer my comics to be witty one-panelers, in the general style of Rhymes with Orange, or Non Sequitur at its funniest. (I don't care much for graphic novels at all. Nothing against them, really, just not my style. And I've yet to see a film adaptation of one that I've enjoyed in the least. Exempli gratia, 300.) I can take some week-spanning stories in my comics, but anything that requires me to follow something like a plot over many weeks has lost my attention. It's no longer comedic; it's become a chore.
And many of these webcomics touted as "hilarious" by my friends require that same sort of dedication. It's why I don't like WoW, except maybe on a much smaller scale: if you miss one day, you can't really enjoy the next without some make-up work. For example, I generally like the Order of the Stick that I've seen. It makes for an entertaining and generally amusing read. But it's often long, has a lot of words, and requires explicit knowledge of all the characters and past several comics to understand why it's funny. I actually really admire something that relies on contextual character interactions to drive humor. But that seems more like a novel than a comic.
Second thing I'm less than enthusiastic about is some manner of implied knowledge of all things esoteric that the webcomic author deems it necessary that I know about. Take this recent Penny Arcade. It relies on you knowing not only what Kane and Lynch is but also Jeff Gerstmann and his review. Perhaps I'm simply not the target audience for this comic, then, but I find it hard to believe that half the people exhorting me to read Penny Arcade got the joke either. (As for Mr. Gerstmann, the review isn't all that scathing, at least compared to half the user comments.)
I mentioned earlier that I like xkcd. There are a few things about it I do not like so much. It's "1337" week of comics was perhaps the least funny I've ever seen xkcd, because it combined both of my gripes over webcomics: a story that I'm supposed to follow, and supposition that I know who Richard Stallman is. Here's the thing: that strip was immensely successful to the xkcd hardcore. They know who Stallman is, and probably have lararia to him next to their computers. (I read the Wikipedia about him, and rolled my eyes more than anything.) Oddly, though I'd consider myself a fan of xkcd, I like it the least when it's truest to its most loyal audience.
Still plenty of science jokes to go around, though, like in the latest one. No knowledge of idealistic internet-rights movements implied here, just good old fashioned making fun of physics.
Currently listening: Messiah, Handel
Monday, December 03, 2007
Oh, ES&T Elevator, Why Do You Confuse Up With Down?
In the category of "Things Georgia Tech really ought to be good at, seeing as how it's an engineering school..."
Generally, when one pushes the "up" button on an elevator, one expects the elevator to in fact go up. Not so in the ES&T (aka Ford, or Environmental Science, or CHBE building). For the ES&T elevators lack the usual discrimination that most elevator-users have come to expect from their machines. I swear, that thing is programmed somehow to sweep all the floors that I'm not standing on, pick up passengers, drop them off if convenient, and finally show up to my floor. But wait! That's only to find that the elevator is headed to L2, and not 2 or anywhere else that might be construed as "up" like I asked.
I've mentioned this one before, but it continually perplexes me how poor Tech's water situation is. This has nothing to do with the drought that's plaguing northern Georgia at the moments. In fact, by all considerations, you wouldn't even know that drought existed while you were sitting on Tech campus. After all, what's a faucet that leaks, a shower that won't turn off, and another shower that takes about three minutes to heat up?
Oh, only thousands of gallons of water. I don't know why a shower can go from working one day, and having the handle spin impotently on its stem the next day, with no discernible way to shut off the stream of water that it's wasting. Not to mention the heat. I have never heard of this happening before, but I've had the pleasure of having Glenn's hot water line break over the past couple of weeks. Literally. I didn't know pipes did this. Maybe only in eighty year old dormitories.
On the topic of making things hot and cold, Facilities assures us that we "have the power to control energy costs." A charming little magnet that each resident has the chance to swipe annually during Opening (what a non-housing person would call moving in) tells us that we need to keep the temperature around 68 during the winter.
Truly, that's a wonderful idea. If only our HVAC units didn't insist on radiating heat when it was 60 degrees outside, maybe we would in fact have the power to control energy costs.
Currently listening: "Sonne," Rammstein
Generally, when one pushes the "up" button on an elevator, one expects the elevator to in fact go up. Not so in the ES&T (aka Ford, or Environmental Science, or CHBE building). For the ES&T elevators lack the usual discrimination that most elevator-users have come to expect from their machines. I swear, that thing is programmed somehow to sweep all the floors that I'm not standing on, pick up passengers, drop them off if convenient, and finally show up to my floor. But wait! That's only to find that the elevator is headed to L2, and not 2 or anywhere else that might be construed as "up" like I asked.
I've mentioned this one before, but it continually perplexes me how poor Tech's water situation is. This has nothing to do with the drought that's plaguing northern Georgia at the moments. In fact, by all considerations, you wouldn't even know that drought existed while you were sitting on Tech campus. After all, what's a faucet that leaks, a shower that won't turn off, and another shower that takes about three minutes to heat up?
Oh, only thousands of gallons of water. I don't know why a shower can go from working one day, and having the handle spin impotently on its stem the next day, with no discernible way to shut off the stream of water that it's wasting. Not to mention the heat. I have never heard of this happening before, but I've had the pleasure of having Glenn's hot water line break over the past couple of weeks. Literally. I didn't know pipes did this. Maybe only in eighty year old dormitories.
On the topic of making things hot and cold, Facilities assures us that we "have the power to control energy costs." A charming little magnet that each resident has the chance to swipe annually during Opening (what a non-housing person would call moving in) tells us that we need to keep the temperature around 68 during the winter.
Truly, that's a wonderful idea. If only our HVAC units didn't insist on radiating heat when it was 60 degrees outside, maybe we would in fact have the power to control energy costs.
Currently listening: "Sonne," Rammstein
Monday, November 12, 2007
Holiday Spirit, part I: Preconsumerism
For a few years, I've sworn, mostly by myself, that the "holiday" season was encroaching on my autumn. This was not a popular opinion. "No," some might say, "stores have always put Christmas stuff in stores this early." Or "What's wrong with it? It's getting chilly out, might as well celebrate." Finally, though, the Fish Wrapper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution for those of you keeping score at home and unfamiliar with my uncle Jim's pejorative) has sided with me. See the cover story from last Wednesday. Rather, have seen the article, as using Douglas Adams' time-travel vernacular seems appropriate here.
Is it really a bad thing? Mostly, yes. The only reason that we care about a special occasion is that it's special in the first place. Artificially extending that sort of dilutes the "speciality" of it. People don't celebrate birth months, or birth weeks, it's birthdays. Retailers are interested in expanding on their most lucrative month of the year, by stretching it into two months. Problem is, that doesn't actually work. People are going to buy at three times: 1) when the season starts, out of a burst of enthusiasm, 2) Black Friday, if only out of tradition, and 3) right before whatever holiday you're interested in buying for, out of last-minute desperation.
At the same time, I don't necessarily want to start hearing Jingle Bells on November 3, when it's still like 60 something degrees outside. I'm not exactly sure why I have this admittedly traditionalist view of the holiday, but the point is, I'd like my Christmas confined to after Thanksgiving. That said... Starbucks holiday drinks are out, which mandates an immediate trip to the local coffee house.
Brief Commentary: Macbeth
DramaTech's production of "the Scottish play" (as it's known in paranoid, superstitious theater circles) was truly excellent. A few missed deliveries and muffled lines against imaginatively choreographed swordfights, an impeccable Lady Macbeth, and an awesome guy with no hair and a footlong beard providing percussive accompaniment throughout? Well done, DramaTech. You've won my ticket purchase for all the rest of the shows you do, from now on.
Oh, and as Zach correctly pointed out, that one Wyrd Sister was totally hot.
Critique: "Orange Juice: With Additional Fiber and Vitamins"
The few motivated friends who are bored enough to read about me for ten minutes and still find themselves wanting can now experience the joys of "Orange Juice: With Additional Fiber and Vitamins."
Cinematic genius, by the way. The suspense at 1:15! Who could the mysterious figure be, who creeps in the foreground by the fridge, with accompanying icy overtones? What is this mysteriously skeleton-shirted girl's motive? Perhaps we shall never know. A superficial critique of the situation after watching the ending says that it involves hand-drawing, but the more observant viewer will notice the nuanced change in mood, pace, and movement that she exhibits in her latter appearance, suggesting something far more mysterious--sinister? or merely secretive?
The contented sigh at 3:09--does it foreshadow a startling turn of events, in which our hero shall never enjoy his juice this deeply again? Or it is it more of an existentialist nod, wherein the protagonist experiences a sort of Zen of citrus that is in itself nutritious and enlightening? A bitingly oblique social commentary from a repressed capitalist, who knows that the most satisfying outcome can only come from his own mixing efforts? Of course, the postmodernist's trademark at the end, allowing the tightly wound sequence of events simply to unlace and free itself from artificial constraints of "plot" that plague other forms of storytelling.
Says my roommate Hershel, "I'm intrigued. Captivated really. Yearning for more. There must be more!" Hopefully, hopefully.
Currently listening: "Mohammed," the Dandy Warhols
Is it really a bad thing? Mostly, yes. The only reason that we care about a special occasion is that it's special in the first place. Artificially extending that sort of dilutes the "speciality" of it. People don't celebrate birth months, or birth weeks, it's birthdays. Retailers are interested in expanding on their most lucrative month of the year, by stretching it into two months. Problem is, that doesn't actually work. People are going to buy at three times: 1) when the season starts, out of a burst of enthusiasm, 2) Black Friday, if only out of tradition, and 3) right before whatever holiday you're interested in buying for, out of last-minute desperation.
At the same time, I don't necessarily want to start hearing Jingle Bells on November 3, when it's still like 60 something degrees outside. I'm not exactly sure why I have this admittedly traditionalist view of the holiday, but the point is, I'd like my Christmas confined to after Thanksgiving. That said... Starbucks holiday drinks are out, which mandates an immediate trip to the local coffee house.
Brief Commentary: Macbeth
DramaTech's production of "the Scottish play" (as it's known in paranoid, superstitious theater circles) was truly excellent. A few missed deliveries and muffled lines against imaginatively choreographed swordfights, an impeccable Lady Macbeth, and an awesome guy with no hair and a footlong beard providing percussive accompaniment throughout? Well done, DramaTech. You've won my ticket purchase for all the rest of the shows you do, from now on.
Oh, and as Zach correctly pointed out, that one Wyrd Sister was totally hot.
Critique: "Orange Juice: With Additional Fiber and Vitamins"
The few motivated friends who are bored enough to read about me for ten minutes and still find themselves wanting can now experience the joys of "Orange Juice: With Additional Fiber and Vitamins."
Cinematic genius, by the way. The suspense at 1:15! Who could the mysterious figure be, who creeps in the foreground by the fridge, with accompanying icy overtones? What is this mysteriously skeleton-shirted girl's motive? Perhaps we shall never know. A superficial critique of the situation after watching the ending says that it involves hand-drawing, but the more observant viewer will notice the nuanced change in mood, pace, and movement that she exhibits in her latter appearance, suggesting something far more mysterious--sinister? or merely secretive?
The contented sigh at 3:09--does it foreshadow a startling turn of events, in which our hero shall never enjoy his juice this deeply again? Or it is it more of an existentialist nod, wherein the protagonist experiences a sort of Zen of citrus that is in itself nutritious and enlightening? A bitingly oblique social commentary from a repressed capitalist, who knows that the most satisfying outcome can only come from his own mixing efforts? Of course, the postmodernist's trademark at the end, allowing the tightly wound sequence of events simply to unlace and free itself from artificial constraints of "plot" that plague other forms of storytelling.
Says my roommate Hershel, "I'm intrigued. Captivated really. Yearning for more. There must be more!" Hopefully, hopefully.
Currently listening: "Mohammed," the Dandy Warhols
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