2007-04-15 at 4:53pm
This is precisely why we can’t let the Christian idiots win. Also check out Hector Rottweiller Jr’s response.
God, how dorky!
People falling out of bunkbeds - found via the excellent terpsichoros.
Collaborative learning
Proposal for a collaborative learning system by Stick (yes, “Now I Must Wank” Stick) at Kuro5hin.org. Very good, actually, has lots of really interesting responses. I was thinking along the same lines. We need a lot more public reference libraries that are of as good quality as university libraries (believe me: being able to get hold of all sorts of journal articles, interesting books and archive after archive of newspaper microfilm make a good learning environment!). I do like the idea of some centrally managed index of different online materials and articles.
Perhaps for techie things, some kind of meta tag system could be implemented to describe how articles lie on the Beginner to Master continuum, so that if such a thing was built we could say to a search engine: “Hey - I wonder if there are any good articles about C++ written for beginners or intermediates.” That would be really kind of cool. We need a way to distinguish the online equivalent of “The Dummies Guide” from really in-depth complicated stuff, and this is where meta tagging and such can help.
Dark Water
I went to the Phoenix Arts theatre Monday night and saw Dark Water, an amazing Japanese horror movie directed by Hideo Nakata. Thanks to a deal with the university I got in for £2 (including a drink), and although I haven’t seen Ring, this film scared the shitneys out of me.While the movie disappointed some, to this non-horror movie buff, it was pretty damn kickass. And yes, it was a perfect urban ghost story and miles better than any of the cheesy bloodfest movies I’ve seen. Anyway, we’ve got the Monty Python day coming up in November featuring clips, an analysis of the work, talks and, best of all, a showing of the genius 1979 film Life of Brian. And it’s only a tenner too. Genius, I say. Especially, considering, my local cineplex craphole charge about $6.50 to watch shite Disney crap. I never thought I’d live to see the day when arthouse would be cheaper than the local Hollywood dump.
If you get a chance to see Dark Water - preferably at the cinema, or when it gets it’s theatrical release - do. It’s pretty good movie, and - believe you me - it’s better than Hollywood can produce.
Age-rated books
Books are now a mass-market leisure activity, with millions of readers throughout Europe. In the last few years the age group of those reading has increased, and the average age of readers now exceeds 23 years. To cater for the older reader, publishers have responded by publishing books for this more mature market, many of whom are over 18 years old. The trend towards more mature books being available has not yet been identified by the average consumer who still believes that most books are made for young children, and may not be aware of the change when purchasing books for children. To that end, all books will now contain an age rating.
Thankfully the previous paragraph is complete and total bollocks. I know, if I was reading that I’d be in a cold sweat by the end. Why is it, then, that no fuss is made about the fact that there are video game age ratings? A new European body has been created that does video game ratings called PEGI - Pan European Game Information. Do people really need to have their hands held when deciding video games? It all strikes me as being rather like those twatty Plugged In Online nobs (interestingly, they did consult many religious groups, so the comparison may not be that far off). And, no doubt, the reasons are because of the nonsensical hypodermic needle model of media consumption (the “It’s been rejected by almost every key media academic, but the tabloids still find that one that disagrees” model).
Why are computer games and interactive media treated so differently from books? They can both be intricate texts with systematic taxonomies of genre, stylistic elements of film and other elements. But the interactive media text is still much maligned. We still have no significant organs of reviewing. Interactive media and computer games have elicited a few dank theorisers at ex-polytechnics, but we have yet to create an interactive media and computer game equivalent of the Times Literary Supplement or the London Review of Books. Newspapers that review computer games still consign them to the technical pages (the Guardian’s Online and the Telegraph’s Connected are two good examples) rather than highlight them alongside the books and movies. If you review Busted on the arts and music page, there is no reason not to review computer games - most of which are far, far, far better than Busted could ever hope for. Call me populist, if you like, but give me Final Fantasy over fat people singing in languages I don’t understand. I’d do Baldur’s Gate too, but I don’t really do the whole PC thing (although Boo the Hamster sounds like a good reason to splash out my life savings on one and I’d certainly get more from it than I’m currently getting from my tuition fees).
Game reviewing has fallen in to a terrible trap. Just like PEGI’s categorisation of games in to a ticklist of violence, drugs, fear, sex, discrimination and swearing, many reviewers use a similar ticklist framework - ‘graphics’, ‘sound’, ‘gameplay’, ‘story’. I’m sure anyone who has read any novel worth it’s salt would challenge the idea that you can rate a story out of ten. Computer game reviewing, along with much of music, film and other ‘entertainment’ reviews rely on stars, percentages, rankings (how many more “Top 100” lists can we, as a nation, bear?) and numerical scores. This implies some kind of objectivity, some kind of scientific method that can justify taking a creative work and putting a number on it.
But that is patently absurd. We have no way to objectively categorise computer games. If it were only a small coterie of AOLers (the same “ppl” who frequently use the interrogative “sup?”) who were doing this it would be acceptable. But this is precisely the technique used by a wide range of magazines - both console and computer. They use this method only masking it with some style. If well done criticism could be performed on computer games, not only would it raise the art of the video game makers in the eyes of the public, it would also provide a feedback loop. Which, in short, means: NO MORE SIMS GAMES!!! Currently game makers get it pretty sweet from video game reviewers. They aren’t asked much - graphics are the main priority, ‘gameplay’ (an ever flexible definition) second and storyline is a bonus. And unless they’ve used the greatest hits of Jason Donovan as the soundtrack, not a great deal of criticism takes place of that. If game makers had to please pickier people, although I can’t promise less Sims games (although it’s a nice fantasy), giving makers at the top-end of the bell curve a feedback loop would possibly encourage more intelligent RPG’s and other story-telling games. Which would certainly make a change from the never-ending cycle of “We’ve slightly changed the player names and the sponsors, gimme yer money” sports games.
The weapons of mass destwuction awe hewe somewhewe.
Why didn’t I see this story when it first happened? Bush rather making light of the whole WMD issue. Bush’s hunt for WMD is now as comical as Elmer Fudd’s constant search for Daffy Duck. Although, Daffy Duck’s Washington equivalent is significantly easier to find than Iraq’s WMD stash: John Ashcroft’s about as daffy as they come. Elmer Fudd seems to have a problem with W’s. Just like the American population then. Still, it explains Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia’s new found love for duck hunting. It also adds another tool to our linguistic arsenal in understanding George W. Bush. (Thanks to bignosedugly for the link!)
Seems me(ish) is gone. Shame. It’s one of those weblogs which I liked but didn’t read a great amount of, but now that it’s off air I feel bad that I didn’t read as much as I would have liked to. I briefly met Meg at the get-together in London, and she seemed like a nice person. Why somebody would want to troll me(ish) is beyond me. Well, I’m hoping Meg will be posting again soon. (Thanks Hanni)
If anyone says to you that theocracies can be tolerant, here’s more proof that they can’t: Muslim Zanzibar are banning homosexuality, threatening an extended prison sentence for convicted gays and lesbians.
Stupid Evil Bastard points to a bizarre religious miracle story: Boy sees image of J-C in lava lamp.
Thoughts about ZeroConf
ZeroConf seems great, and I’m excited by the work of Porchdog Software. I think we need to have a single place that lists cool ZeroConf applications (SubEthaEdit, Spike, iStorm etc.).
The Supreme Court Debaclé
Mad props to Lord Lamont for this little gem:
My Lords, may I thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for that Answer? Is he aware that I was just trying to save him from having two monuments to his folly? But he prefers to have two follies as a monument… Given the Government’s record on the Scottish Parliament building and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor’s own involvement in the Millennium Dome, how can anyone have any confidence in the costs that he has put forward as estimates for the building of the new Supreme Court? Given that he said that the costs of the building will be defrayed by charges to the users of justice, can the noble and learned Lord explain why it should be right for the users of the court to carry the risk that the costs of the court will, judging by past experience, most likely be exceeded twice, five times or even 10 times?
Now, £6 million (the most conservative figure I found) or £2 million (the hugest figure I found) times by five? By ten? That’s a lorra, lorra hospitals. Not to mention the £10m that the new court will need to operate each year. The Judicial Committee as we have it now only costs £623,000. Why can we not simply reform that which we already have? Get rid of the horrible business of having the Lord Chancellor straddling the three branches and create an independent judicial appointments committee (and all the other juice) without the expense of moving?
This is yet another example of the government’s “packaging” strategy, a triumph of skin-deep, barrel scraping politics. Instead of taking each problem and finding a solution, we are being fobbed off with a package. We can’t pick and choose, we can only take the reform or leave it. It’s Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” all over again. We need reform of the House of Lords, but not in this way. We need one based on a rational and sensible approach to constitutional reform, the sort that Lord Falconer isn’t giving the country.
Jesus is Everybody. And fundamentalists criticise secular humanists for a lack of an objective and overriding metanarrative? Jesus is simply an empty shell for everyone’s own prejudices. How about we use our own voices, rather than always using the voice of someone who can’t refute it either way?
XSLT hacking
Abbey Workshop has a great tutorial on how to split a list of values in to elements in XSLT 1.0. It’s easy to adapt, and can be used quite easily with other types of separators (commas etc.). With xsl:normalize-space, you can use this for simpler string handling. XSLT 2.0 offers you the ability to use regular expressions.
I’m using this as part of an API interface to del.icio.us for an soon-to-be-announced personal RDF database project.
Next Monday is London’s first PowerPoint karaoke night. Ian told me about this the other night and it sounds highly lol-inducing.
