Off By One

There’s a comic book called Transmetropolitan… a book for which the words “comic book” are insufficient to convey the quality of the story and writing that its author, Warren Ellis, has put into it. It’s one of those rare books that I can pick up and re-read any time, although it’s difficult to read only part of it. I want to sit down and absorb the whole story in one throw, every time.

The story is set hundreds of years down the road in The City, which is an unholy commercial amalgam of every urban excess imaginable. Everything is for sale, from nanoassembled Moravec life as a ‘foglet’ (a cloud of nanomachines imprinted with a human mind) to Long Pig, artificially vat grown human flesh. It’s amazing simply as a semi-dystopian view of human excess.

But… one issue, issue 8, “One Cold Morning”, is a bit of storytelling so painfully good that I have to force myself to re-read it each time I indulge in a re-read of Transmetropolitan. It’s the story of a “revival,” a 20th/21st century person who has been frozen in the expectation that science will advance enough to heal their ills and restore them to life, and it is tragic without pause. I can’t convey it here, because I’m not Warren Ellis, but in the man’s own words:

She was revived out of a sense of begrudging duty.
She’d been foisted on a future already busy enough with its own problems by a past that couldn’t have cared less.
She could have told the future what it’d been like to meet Che Guevara in that old Cuban schoolhouse.
She could’ve told them about the last Queen and Albert Einstein and a million other true stories besides.
But the future didn’t want to know.
…
Mary sticks to the alleyways, where the light and noise of the city is screened out a little.
And she talks to anyone who will listen. She tells of how she was Revived: tells it in cold, terrible detail. She has a photographer’s eye. She’s made a little documentary of her new life, up in her chilled head.
And she tells stories of the past. Great rich warm human stories of Stephen Hawking mapping the universe from a wheelchair, of dancing with children in Zimbabwe dust and walking through Moscow with Mikhail Gorbachev… John Kennedy playing grabass in the White House. Nelson Mandela laughing at dirty jokes on a Jo’Burg street, a kid walking in front of a Chinese tank… The stories that make us great.
Mary will live for maybe another century. But her story’s over. Because you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Two articles in the Wall Street Journal, one titled Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? and its sequel, Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators.

I’m just going to let these speak for themselves.

Found via MetaFilter.

Aaron mentioned TED to me some time ago as an interesting place to go for talks about the world; technology, science, economics, politics.

I finally got around to checking it out, and I have to admit, there’s a lot there.

It’s a time-consumer, no question, with the video talks running to 20 minutes each, so you might not get to see all of it at a shot, but I’m convinced it’s worthwhile. Right now I’m watching a talk on the application of economics to explaining AIDS in Africa, and there’s more like that.

Check it out.

I was going to resist…

I’ve got more consoles now than I’ve had in my life (Char with her PS2, PS1, and GC, me with my Xbox and Wii) but god damn it, this Bioshock demo is going to suck me in, I just know it.

Of course it’s coming out for the PC, where I have to reboot to play.

I think I might run Windows for a while. Just until the shakes end.

Or I’ll buy a goddamned 360, not because I believe in it as a platform, but because playing the sequel to System Shock 2 is, actually, worth $700 to me. Yes, it was that good.

You know, I feel sorry for the iconoclasts of the world; it’s not easy to convince people that their particular brand of fixed idealism is a bad approach, and the more religious the adherence the harder it is to combat.

This particular line of thought comes about while reading an essay by Freeman Dyson entitled Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society, wherein Mr. Dyson discusses some of his own personal heresies vis-a-vis global warming. Although he makes coherent arguments, he is doomed from the start not by flaws in his arguments, nor by the unimpeachable truth of the ideas he’s criticizing, but instead he’s doomed to forever tilt at windmills on this subject because — like religion and political orientation — belief in climate change, for or against, is based not on reason but on faith.

So, I feel sorry for Freeman Dyson. I feel sorry for Bjorn Lomborg. I feel sorry for Al Gore (although for different reasons — he’s part of the solution here, and part of the problem there) and for Richard Dawkins and James Randi.

Don’t mind the name; it’s kind of an inside joke.

So, being typically a couple of days behind the curve on the Daily Show viewing, I just got around to seeing the episode that aired on 28 Feb, and it had a “Back in Black” segment that dealt with — among other things — Daniel Radcliffe appearing in Equus, which includes a full-frontal nude scene, and is not a play for the kiddies.

So, some dumb bint on a news program referring to this event trotted out the same old crap I hear every time any connection — however tenuous — is made between the world of media for children and things that adults are ostensibly capable of understanding: “her young son saw these pictures televised, and he was really confused. Isn’t there a danger here?”

My response: Stop Breeding.

Seriously, just bloody stop, already. If the mechanics of reproduction are confusing and dangerous, stop using them. We don’t want more of that bloody attitude anyway, and really, you’re probably too insecure to be good in bed anyway. Here’s a tip, though: If the idea of an actor stepping outside of your comfort zone is dangerous, you need to grow the fuck up. I can’t emphasize this enough.

God damn, this angers me. Your confusion, you pathetic excuses for parents and human beings, should not be projected onto your children, whose only confusion comes from wondering why their parents are all flustered whenever they ask about any part of their bodies in between the tops of their thighs and their navels.

Grr.

Okay, I’m just being incoherent here. I’ll stop now.

I wish I had the memory required to make this a regular feature: I’ve been wanting to do periodic highlights of things I’ve seen in the newspaper that chafed me, or amused me, or really need to be seen. However, the facts that I a) do not have an electronic Journal subscription and b) forget to post them by the time I get to a computer, have prevented this.

Until now.

Seen in the news today:

UFOs hold key to climate: ex-minister

In short, Paul Hellyer, a former defense minister under Lester Pearson, has called for governments around the world to disclose all alien technology that they’ve accumulated over the years from crashed UFOs, in order to resolve climate change.

Yay, democracy.

Nothing on internet censorship (note: If you’re on a Canadian ISP and reading this, there are now sites blocked for all Canadians. Right now they’re kiddie porn only… but it’s a short step from that to deciding other sites are objectionable and blockable. Your ISP — the one you pay to provide you with internet access — is doing this. Respond as you will).

What I’m actually posting on is an excellent interview with Maynard James Keenan (of Tool) at the Onion AV Club.

The quote that really got me is this one:

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don’t know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how [I feel about it]. But I couldn’t responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I’m just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

He’s quite a guy, one with whom I’ve no doubt that I could argue for days.

Odds are, Beau should not be allowed to see this link: We Are Your Friends

It’s video, so don’t bother, on a slow connection.

Update:

The file at the original location was moved, so this Youtube link has it. If I find the better version again, I’ll upload it and host it here.

Justice vs. Simian: We Are Your Friends

Update again

The link is fixed, it’s a local file now. Will work ‘til doomsday.

As the strains of John Williams’ score waft from the speakers, and the 1977 edition of the opening text scrolls by…

This is a bit like coming home after a long voyage, or finding a friend long thought lost.

I’m an emotional geek, I know.