culture: May 2006 Archives

How many geeky things can happen in a single day? Today is the third annual Towel Day, a day to honor the memory of Douglas Adams by carrying around a towel all day as if you were going to have to ward off the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal or something. Today’s installment of Savage Chickens -- always one of my first surfing stops of the day; it helps turn my Arthur Dent-esque early morning scream of horror into a chuckle -- reminded me that today is the 29th anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Wars in the United States, which is not only geeky in itself but was a major touchstone for Generation X’s twisted psychological development. An unrelated trip to the IMDB alerted me to the fact that today is Ian McKellen’s birthday, and he certainly has lots of geek interest, what with him being Gandalf, Magneto, and Frankenstein director James Whale all at the same time. (Also having birthdays today: Muppeteer extraordinaire Frank Oz and horror writer Poppy Z. Brite.) And on this day in 1961 is when JFK announced the Apollo program, without which we wouldn’t have Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 and a ton of other cool shit like technology that helps us make better pizza, and kidney dialysis machines.

So have a geeky day this May 25, and remember that geekiness is all around you, especially that guy in the next cubicle wearing a towel around his head.

(Technorati tags: Towel Day, Douglas Adams, Savage Chickens, Star Wars, Ian McKellen, Apollo program)

How many times can you quote Lily Tomlin’s brilliant philosophical quandary -- “No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up” -- before you want to break down and sob and never stop? I just about reached that point yesterday, when my favorite political bloggers Jon Aravosis and Duncan Black were all over an actually unbelievable story in the Washington Post about Senate majority leader and well-known nutjob Bill Frist. Honestly, it’s like an entry from the Bulwer-Lytton bad-writing contest, so horrendously awful that you can’t conceive of how anyone could have intended this to be taken seriously, never mind daring to attempt to convince someone else to actually publish it in one of the U.S. papers of record, much less actually achieving publication with it.

Oh, and it’s meant to be complimentary to Frist.

Yes, Chateau Picard will soon be on sale... or at least, some mocked-up bottles will be when auction house Christie’s hosts a sale of amazingly cool Star Trek crap in October. The two prop wine bottles are estimated to sell for between $500 and $700. Gosh, if I had money -- stupid dollars, as my geek pal Bonnie calls it, money to burn on cool crap the expense of which is hard to justify when you’re scraping the rent and the Con Ed together every month. But I don’t. Maybe I’ll buy a bottle or two of the vino from the actual Chateau Picard, which is fairly reasonably priced...

The real Chateau Picard has been around since long before the idea of Star Trek ever crossed Gene Roddenberry’s mind, but wine sellers are starting to try to cash in on the rise of the geek mindset. There was the hearty and delicious California cabernet called Cabzilla, the label of which featured the giant Japanese lizard monster with a tiny glass of wine in his hand. The wine, alas, is gone from shelves, the vintners having been caught up in a trademark battle in the courts with Toho, Godzillla’s home studio. I wish I’d taken a picture of a bottle while I could still find it, but I never imagined it’d disappear -- it was too tasty and pretty inexpensive, too. Even wine snobs liked it.

Wow:

More than one billion people in the world have access to the Internet, with a quarter of them with broadband, or high-speed connections, according to a survey.

The report by the firm eMarketer said the milestone of one billion was reached in late 2005, and that nearly 250 million households had broadband connections.

The firm estimates that of these people, 845 million use the Internet regularly.

I know this means that the vast majority of the people on the planet still do not have access to the Internet -- as well as other such coolnessess as clean drinking water and reliable birth control -- but still: a billion people. A billion people interconnected. It’s not like the moment, whenever it was, when a billion people first had access to a telephone. That represented potential connection: you could, theoretically, call anybody else who had a phone, but for the connection thing to work, in a culturally meaningful way as well as in a technical way, you needed to have a reason to call someone as much as you needed the number at which to reach him or her. You had to already know with whom you wanted to communicate and what good they might do you -- from the good of calling a distant loved one just to hear the sound of his or her voice to the good of, oh, calling a newspaper reporter to blow the whistle on some corporate or governmental malfeasance -- in order for the social exchange to be achieved. Calling a number at random and attempting to communicate with whomever answered was unlikely to do much for you, and would probably piss off the recipient of such a call if he or she were unwilling to speak with you, which would probably be the case.

I don’t want Geek Philosophy to turn into yet another political blog -- there are enough people, and better informed ones than me, already doing that -- but it’s hard to cut myself off from political topics when it seems like every day there’s another news story that sounds like a dispatch from a dystopian science fiction novel. It was only a few days ago that I thought I had seen the ultimate warning sign of the coming of the Republic of Gilead, but a horrifying article in today’s Washington Post smacked me in the face and invited me to think -- and scream -- again:

Forever Pregnant
Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant
By January W. Payne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 16, 2006; Page HE01

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

Assuming you can believe anything a government report tells you, the Brits have just punctured the balloons of alien lovers everywhere:

None of the numerous UFOs reported over Britain in the last 30 years was a flying saucer, the government said as it released previously secret defence files probing mysterious aerial sightings.

The declassified study -- "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region" -- concluded that such UAP do exist and are "usually described as coloured lights and sometimes as shapes"....

The study, which aimed to assess whether Britain was threatened by UAPs and "should the opportunity arise, to identify any potential military technologies of interest", concluded there was "nothing of defence intelligence value".

[from AFP via Breitbart.com]

As Paul at WizBang points out, in response to this breaking news:

Who are the most favoritest geeks of geeks themselves? The geek dating site Geek 2 Geek took a survey, and the winners are:

1. Bill Gates
2. Stephen Hawking
3. Steve Jobs
4. Albert Einstein
5. Linus Torvalds
6. Kevin Mitnick
7. Kevin Smith
8. Kevin Rose
9. Leo Laporte
10. Joss Whedon

Not a girl among them.

Perhaps, as Deanna Zandt commented recently on the Guardian blog Comment Is Free, “digital culture is still biased against women.” Perhaps, as Annalee Newitz noted recently on AlterNet, it’s the result of “dickish biology or dickish culture that creates a problem like Slashdot,” where a link to an article of hers prompted not “a lively debate about technology and social justice, [but] a popular thread in the ‘comments’ area about whether [she] was too fat to be considered attractive.” Perhaps, as alicetiara at the “feminism and technology” blog Tiara.org suggests, we all need to:

speak out against sexist or homophobic comments whenever we see them on any tech-related site. They may get modded down (unlikely, if they’re half-way articulate or include a particularly hilarious anti-Micro$oft/pro-Linux joke), they may get ignored, but if the diversity of the readership becomes reflected in the diversity of the participants, eventually sexism will be considered unacceptable on the site. Even if it’s just for being tacky or off-topic.

And perhaps the fact that Deanna and Annalee and alicetiara are already making some noise means we’re on our way to making some future most-favorite-geeks list.

Is Keith Olbermann reading Geek Philosophy? Oh man, wouldn’t I love to think so? Last night on Countdown he said flat out that George Orwell’s 1984 was not meant to be an instruction manual, which is exactly what I said recently. But of course that was hardly an original thought, or at least, hardly the kind of thought that you wouldn’t expect any thinking geek to have had recently. But it does prove that Keith and I are birds of a feather and hence destined to be married, right?

*sigh* Love in the time of rising fascism. It’s so romantic.

Anyway, there’s another dystopian novel that I keep being reminded of more and more of these days, like when I read about the Religious Right’s war on contraception in The New York Times Magazine that pretty much proves that these nutjobs are totally anti-sex, or at least anti-sexual pleasure as a divine right of womanhood:

Once in a while I pop into Deconsumption, a peak-oil, coming-crisis blog, and how cool is this: yesterday Steven Lagavulin, the blogger there, got into a big thing about Generation X and how our particular attitudes have been shaped by the world we grew up in, and how those attitudes will shape the next great form that American society will take:

Generation X is fundamentally unable to accept the self-centeredness and self-serving-ness mentality that signifies this era, the love for black-or-white ideological causes, and the blanket judgmentalism that Boomer leaders so comfortably buy into. Not to mention that they largely hate corporatism and authoritarian control in any form.... in their hearts Gen-X'ers have always hated the status quo they've grown-up within. They will hold little sentimentality for it when it collapses, and many in fact long for a chance to burn the whole system down and try to remake it in more equitable terms. Not because they're smarter, or right-er, or even capable of doing that well...but simply because they've never really felt they were at home in any of it. And that's also largely their problem--having never felt at home in it, they've also never felt they had a foothold from which to oppose it. So they tend to drag their feet a bit on the road to cultural maturity, or drop out altogether. In fact, many corporations are starting to quietly lament the management vacuum they're coming up against in recent years as the best and brightest of the new generation seem to be largely turning their backs on the corporate ladder.... Still, Time marches relentlessly on, and this generation is going to be stepping up to the plate whether they like the game that's being played or not. So regardless of whether Strauss & Howe are right in their theory of generational cycles, it's not hard to sense that a cultural revolution is coming, and it's going to be dramatic--and probably not altogether peaceful--as the next generation begins to inherit an America they never made.

But he also makes the point that generational pigeonholing is not meant to imply that these generalizations apply to everyone:

[P.S. -- I should acknowledge that Strauss & Howe's study by no means implies that the Boomers are blameworthy or that Gen-X is the only voice of authority for informing the new culture. Simply that as a general rule these two generations embody the "forces in conflict" during the years of crisis. Obviously the seminal movement toward a potential "culture of responsibility" was actually forged by Boomer Hippies who persisted in staying the course that most of their peers so wantonly abondoned....and certainly many Gen-X'ers will only let loose the keys to their Escalades when they get torn from their broken fingers....]

Amen to that.

The winners of the tenth annual Webby Awards have been announced, and, rather depressingly, many of the nominees and winners across the wide range of categories are corporate sites. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t very many worthy sites in the bunch -- I’m pretty much madly in love with everything the BBC does online, for one -- but I would really like to see more recognition by the Webbys of the fact that what really drives the Web is individual effort -- the sites with multimillion-dollar backing may be the ones with the loudest voices, but it’s the collective effort of a million little voices that really makes the Net unique, and a powerful force in today’s global culture. I’m not sure, for instance, whether there isn’t a more important site in the world at this very moment than Riverbend’s blog Baghdad Burning, not merely for its insider look at the American invasion of Iraq but for the fact that it exists at all -- her work is truly revolutionary in every sense of the word.

And I say this as a Webby judge and member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the group that awards the Webbys. What, you thought I was just some dork with a Web site? No, this is what IADAS membership means:

One of these headlines is honest-to-God real (culled from the E! Online, actually), and the other is honest-to-God fake (culled from The Onion). Can you guess which is which?

Phish Collapses Onstage

Onion or AP?

Keith Richards' Brain Just Fine

Onion or AP?

“It’s only rock ‘n’ roll but I like it, like it, yes I do.” --The Rolling Stones

It might seem kinda contradictory, but one of the things that being a devout reader of all kinds of science fiction has given me is a sense of history. Or perhaps I should say, Of a sense of history as a process, as a process that isn’t over yet. When you read SF set in the future, SF that has a sense of history itself (like, say Lois McMaster Bujold’s brilliant space opera series centered around Miles Vorkosigan), you start to develop the appreciation that we’re living in the middle of history, too. Will bored 14-year-old students who’d rather be outside playing low-gee tennis on the Martian surface 1000 years from now roll their eyes when their teacher introduces the topic “The Information Revolution: From Gutenberg to the Singularity, 1450-2250”? Will all the great and glorious mess that is the world around us right now at this very moment be reduced to a single line in a textbook: “The early 21st century (Old Calendar) on Earth was characterized by mass upheaval, mostly over the scarcity of natural resources”?

It makes you feel really small and insignificant.

What does it mean when music and movies and books are pirated online, or via bootleg DVDs or CDs? It means there’s an avenue of demand that is not being met by the legitimate producers of the material and not, most likely, that ordinary consumers are looking to get away with getting something for nothing. iTunes has proven that people will pay for what they want -- in this case, downloadable singles -- when they are offered the opportunity to do so.

When I see people selling bootleg DVDs of new theatrical releases on the subway in New York (early this week, copies of An American Haunting were already being hawked, even though the film didn’t open till today), I don’t see people looking to undercut the efforts of the creative artists whose work they clearly enjoy -- I’m not even sure that most people appreciate that piracy means you’re taking money out of the pocket of actors and directors and musicians and writers. What I do see are people for whom the multiplex experience is not a vital component of enjoying a film, or people for whom extras-packed DVDs are not a vital component of enjoying a film at home. What I do see are people saying, “This is how I want to see a new movie,” and what I do see is that they are indeed paying for this... but instead of paying the legitimate producers of the material, they’re paying the well-oiled criminal organizations that produce the bootleg DVDs. It’s a revenue stream that the movie studios are ignoring, to their own detriment, for no reason that makes any sense. These people who want to watch movies like this are not going to go away, and if the studios were smart, they would figure out a way to get these people to pay them.

The TV networks are finally catching on to the concept that if so many people are willing to download episodes of TV shows from illegal sources, they may well be willing to download episodes of TV shows from legitimate sources. But maybe they don’t realize how huge the demand is. ABC got a shock early this week:

ABC Site Buckles as Network Streams First Ad-Supported Shows

ABC's Web site crashed twice [on Tuesday] as Internet users flocked to watch streaming versions of its most popular shows, including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives."

It was the first time the shows were available online directly from the network, and the first time the advertising community had gotten a look at what ad products would be offered. It was also the first opportunity for the industry to gauge how popular such an ad-supported offering might be with consumers.

[from ClickZ News]

What floors me is that ABC obviously dramatically underestimated how popular these offerings would be -- that’s the only explanation for the fact that its servers were overwhelmed. How execs there could not have had an inkling of the demand is a mystery... but perhaps if they see that there is money to made by giving viewers what they want, they’ll, you know, give it to us.

Is there anything geekier than a spelling bee? I think not, and yet -- in this strange new geekified world we’re suddenly living in -- this has not stopped the Scripps National Spelling Bee from, for the first time ever, airing on primetime network television. From the AP:

WASHINGTON - For the first time in its 79-year history, the National Spelling Bee — the original "reality TV" — will go prime time for next month's drama-filled finals. Thanks to recent movies, books and even a Broadway musical, young spellers are suddenly hot. After 12 years of showings by the sports cable network ESPN, the final rounds of the two-day Scripps National Spelling Bee will be shown live Thursday evening, June 1, on the ABC network.

"I think we're ready for prime time and I think America is ready for spelling bees in prime time, too," Paige Kimble, the bee's director and its 1981 national champion, said in an interview Tuesday.

Part of the reason is how surprisingly popular films about spelling bees have been over the last couple of years -- the latest, Akeelah and the Bee (read my review at FlickFilosopher.com) is even about a girl geek, which alone is worth celebrating.

And now comes the moment in which many things that have been derided about Generation X -- our snarkiness, our reflective irony, our inability to take anything except as a joke -- matures into a brand of discourse that may, quite literally, save the world.

Unless you watch CSPAN or read political bloggers, you’d barely know that Stephen Colbert, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday night, stood up a few feet from the president of the United States and announced that the emperor has no clothes. And you wouldn’t know this because the mainstream press is ignoring Colbert’s devastating blow, is pretending that the highlight of the evening was Bush’s good-natured ribbing of himself instead of Colbert’s “truthiness to power” performance that left the president scowling like a spoiled child who’s had his toys taken away from him.

Daily Kos points out that George Orwell’s worst nightmare -- a work previously considered to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual for government -- continues to come to pass.

By declaration of the president of the United States, today, May 1, is Law Day:

Law Day, U.S.A., 2006
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

America's legal system is central to protecting the constitutional principles on which our Nation was founded. As we observe Law Day, we celebrate our heritage of freedom, justice, and equality under the law.

This year's Law Day theme, "Liberty Under Law: Separate Branches, Balanced Powers," honors the wisdom of the separation of powers that the Framers of our Constitution established for the Federal Government. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention recognized the risks that accompany the concentration of power and devised a system in which the Federal Government's authorities are divided among three independent branches. James Madison highlighted the importance of our Constitution's separation of powers when he wrote, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Throughout our Nation's history, we have been reminded repeatedly of the wisdom of the Framers' design....

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty eighth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirtieth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Reminder of the wisdom of the Framers: