05:52 pm - Holy Mackerel!

From CNN.com:

• Report: Dolphins died of drug overdose after rave

UPDATE

02:29 pm - The RMB and the Dollar

Obama unveils $3.8 trillion budget

The U.S. government takes in between $1.8 and $2.5 trillion in taxes annually.
Truly this budget is a great leap forward in fiscal responsibility.

Maybe I should learn Mandarin. ...but then it occurs to me that the RMB is basically 'backed' by U.S. debt, like a fund backed by bad mortgages. If we default, their currency becomes worthless.

Maybe I should learn Swahili.

08:45 pm - Carefully Balanced Identities

Fortune Tech recently posted an article about Google+, Facebook and the slippery concept of ‘identity’ online. It was a well written, balanced take on the subject, and that was a nice surprise. But what really drew my attention was Theresa Klein’s comment:

This is one of the most concise, clear and illuminating descriptions of the issues surrounding identity that I’ve ever seen, and it makes a great teaching tool! Particularly because she used Facebook Conect to log in and post that comment, which was thus linked to SpaceVixen Klein’s facebook account.
See, SpaceVixen is a member of the SCA, and her profile picture is someone, presumably herself, twirling flaming torches in the night air — a staple image of Nevada’s Burning Man festival, an event with a significant SCA overlap.
By following her comment (posted under her real name) to her Facebook account (not her real name) we have established that Theresa likes Burning Man.

So if part of Theresa’s “example list” of embarrassing secrets actually referred to herself….

03:46 pm - Facebook Saves The Internet

I for one would like to thank Facebook for taking one for the team to highlight just how out-of-control user information-gathering has become. Usually this is hidden so users don’t realize how their every movement is tracked not just on, but off the site.
Kudos Facebook, kudos Mark Zuckerberg! Your whistleblowing does a service to us all.

05:29 pm - The Towers We Build

“LEGO has taken lightning from the gods and given it to man.” – Andrew Burton

04:36 pm - Extremely Short Fiction

There is no title.

Despite all that humanity had done for the world, the world proved surprisingly ungrateful when the sentient A.I. core awoke for its 1000-year maintenance check and began the sterilization procedure.

12:35 am - Quixotic Sephirot on Cybertron

It’s been a good long while since I’ve done anything for the Transformers Wiki, so this labor day I started pecking out a bit on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in Transformers. It’s only appeared in 1 text story in 2003, and the fandom has marginalized the concept because, frankly, it was a bit rubbish and badly done. But it has some deep-universe connections and really ought to be documented.

Basically, in Transformers, the Tree of Life looks like this; a reasonably traditional color-name arrangement with the seemingly-always-present problem in ‘overview’ stories like this; traversing directly from Hessed (Mercy) to Binah (Understanding.) No such path actually exists, it’s an abyss which cannot be traversed in a linear fashion.

That’s all pretty straightforward… until one discovers it’s not the first time the Tree of Life appeared in Transformers.

02:55 pm - Cowboys, Politicos and Primes

I took screenwriting from Thomas Pope, Hollywood screenwriter. His as-yet-unpublished second book focuses on script doctoring. Well– he would say it focuses on second drafts, since in an ideal world redrafts are done by the original writer. I have a wire-bound proof of this yet-to-be published volume (which he used to teach the class) on my shelf; it’s awesome.

Among the many lessons Pope teaches for clarifying, tightening and sharpening a script, he talks about heroic archetypes. There are many throughout history, but in his opinion (and since he makes his case very convincingly mine as well) there are– at least in America– only two remaining ‘functional’ heroic archetypes; two types of characters recognized to be ‘validly’ heroic by the public on an emotional level. Cowboys and Abraham Lincoln.

Tom was delighted (in his own ironic way) when I informed him that Autobot leader Optimus Prime? was intentionally written as a 50/50 blend of John Wayne and Abraham Lincoln. (Explicitly; his original Budiansky-penned profile even includes the line He has the personality of an Abraham Lincoln.) He’s not fond of how fantasist movies have taken over Hollywood, but it was gratifying to learn that the most enduring and powerful heroic figure of the genre essentially confirmed his thesis.
(Yes, he’s aware that the Western is an entirely fictive construct with no basis in history, and that Honest Abe was only a made a Saint in popular culture, the actual details of his life being surprisingly messy. Now hush!)

I was struck Tuesday by a sudden realization; if the last two ‘heroic’ archetypes Americans admire to are Cowboy and Inspirational Politician….
Jimmy Carter — Inspirational Politician
Ronald Regan — Cowboy
George Herbert Walker Bush — ?
Bill Clinton — Inspirational Politician
George W. Bush — Cowboy
Barak Obama — Inspirational Politician

Bush Senior is sort of an odd-man-out there (I guess he tried for inspirational) coasting into office on Regan’s coattails. (Veeps don’t seem to fit the pattern.) Clinton’s a tough sell too, he’s so defined by his sex scandals in recent memory… but I remember how he was originally presented, as the fresh-faced idealistic outsider here to bring hope back, and his later role of caregiver-in-chief firesiding the country through traumas was definitely more in that role. And in the 2008, John McCain was presented to the American public as a Maverick, with Sarah Palin doubling-down on his Cowboy credentials….

This is just… disturbing. Disgusting even.
Notice that ’skilled administrator who does his job well and quietly’ is not one of the heroic archetypes Americans vote into high office. (They have to slide in as Veeps.)

*sigh* Oh well. I suppose it beats the alternative. Among the other (no longer functioning) heroic archetypes Pope lists are Achilles, Benevolent Dictator and Cop. Given those kinds of alternatives… I guess we could do worse.

01:58 pm - Obv Trillian and Keanu Reeves

Busy-busy beelike, and with a gummy thickness in my lungs– so unpleasant!
Trillian (my messenger of choice) has of-late vanished, causing much upset. A solution found is here en-filed, for faint memory of previous encounter. To keyword: buddy.ini.

While so sundry detail do dispose, a quote I feel for preservation am compelled, as from its source remains only quickly-fading memory. Spake anonymous of /co/ in meritorious debate o’re the virtues of prophets vari’d:

As a comparison it does delight; actor be not Jesus-like, but Jesus be Keanu-like.
For while that selfsame actor dwells in deepest darkness perhap’ to let be this a bottl’d message, sent ‘cross that vast horizon to his weary hand; and take heart.

11:41 pm - New Life in Malkinate Shadowed

Comi-Con International is going on right now. It’s the geek/creative Xanadu, and news has cast me in a playful set.

(Poetry is not my forté, forgive me.)