I’ve got lab reports to grade, and I’m giving an exam this afternoon, so more things to grade. But tonight…tonight I shall watch Jessica Jones, and tomorrow I will deal with the deluge.
That is my plan, and I’m sticking to it.
Here are two photos of the Minneapolis cityscape, one from the 21st century and one from 1970. Can you guess which is which?
Some things do get better. Although I’m now disturbed by the realization that Mary Tyler Moore was throwing her hat up into such filthy air.
There’s this new movie coming out, Gods of Egypt, which looks like a horrendous fecal splatter of CGI with Egyptians played by Canadians and Scotsmen. I’m serious. I expect poutine and bagpipes, with pyramids in the background, and testimonials from Ben Carson on the historical accuracy of the movie.
KILL ALL GODS. ALL GODS MUST DIE.
The infamous Chuck Tingle has released a new book for the season: Oppressed In The Butt By My Inclusive Holiday Coffee Cups
A synopsis:
Yes, that’s how I’m feeling right now. Festive like this little guy.
He missed at least one: the telephone! People had mixed feelings about this strangely intrusive object in their homes.
“… Most people saw telephoning as accelerating social life, which is another way of saying that telephoning broke isolation and augmented social contacts. A minority felt that telephones served this function too well. These people complained about too much gossip, about unwanted calls, or, as did some family patriarchs, about wives and children chatting too much. Most probably sensed that the telephone bell, besides disrupting their activities, could also bring bad news or bothersome requests. Yet only a few seemed to live in a heightened state of alertness, ears cocked for the telephone’s ring – no more, perhaps, than sat anxiously alert for a knock on the door. Some Americans not only disliked talking on the telephone but also found having it around disturbing, but they were apparently a small minority. Perhaps a few of the oldest felt anxious around the telephone, but most people … seemed to feel comfortable or even joyful around it. … Sociologist Sidney Aronson may have captured the feelings of most Americans when he suggested that having the telephone led, in net, to a ‘reduction of loneliness and anxiety, and increased feeling of psychological and even physical security’.” (Fischer, 1992, p. 247)
My own kids were coming of age as the cell phone was becoming popular, and we had reservations, too: “what do you even need a cell phone for?” and “watch out, bad people will get your phone number and say terrible things”. Nothing bad happened after all.
So I’ve learned my lesson. When the direct brain implants become available, and my grandkids (if I have any) start whining for the gadgets, I’m not going to lecture them on the dangers of imbedding electrodes in your skull. No, sir, I’ll just whisper “Don’t tell your mom” and whisk them off to the local clinic for the top-of-the-line Apple NeuroMesh with the MicroRetinal Interface.
Rogan Brown was commissioned to create paper sculptures of bacteria. They are beautiful.
It took 4 months to cut all the fiddly little bits. Worth every minute, though.
It’s a sequel, God’s Not Dead 2 (but Professor Jeffery Radisson is).
Like the first one, the heart of this already terribad movie is a ginned-up controversy. Philosophy professors do not force students to sign pledges of belief, and there is no prohibition against citing the Bible as a literary and sociologically-relevant text. Even us noisy militant atheists don’t argue that you have no right to believe as you want.
The movie is going to be more invented oppression to fit the persecution complex of Christians. It’ll probably make a bucket of money, while getting abysmal reviews and making the rational, honest part of society puke into buckets.
Luxander, one of our awesome bloggers at FtB, is trying to raise a few dollars to start a video gaming channel (in case you don’t recall where Lux is blogging, they are a co-blogger with Zinnia Jones.) They’re requesting a pittance for what should be a unique startup.
I chipped in a bit, although to be honest, I’m just hoping Lux will remember me when they’re rolling in all that PewDiePie money.
All day long, my social media have been pinging with jubilant people repeating the message that a new Star Trek series is coming out in 2017. Now don’t get me wrong — I was once a 9 year old boy who begged his parents to let him stay up late to watch Star Trek — but I felt a despairing groan deep inside me.
Let it die.
The series came out 51 years ago. We don’t need another rehash, reboot, repeat, whatever of the same stories. It’s not as if this is the only science fiction future we can imagine, it’s not even as if this was the best framework for telling stories ever. Inspire me with something new. Do something brash and wild and surprising.
I know, this is commercial television, which lives for the predictable and bland, the lowest common denominator that will draw in the largest audience. I will point out two things: 1) in its time, Star Trek was that weird wild card that network executives didn’t understand, and 2) now its virtue to television producers is that it is an entirely known quantity with a built in audience, and is therefore the precise opposite of what good science fiction ought to be.
