Review of “Let England Shake”
PJ Harvey's "Let England Shake," is both a love letter to her home and an intervention. War is the theme here, violence and death predominate in the lyrics and the music veers between glittering menace and hypnotic dirges. What else is new?
"Let England Shake" is probably a better introduction to the artist than nearly anything released in 10 years. While very different in tone and sound from her early period, these songs nevertheless return to some of Polly's favorite motifs: catchy, circular guitar work, theatrical vocals and multi-layered instrumentation. 'All & Everything' shines in particular, surging and sagging like the tides of Gallipoli, bearing the shattered bodies of England's patriotic dead.
“Future Imperfect” at the Boston Underground Film Festival
My brother's movie 'Robotic Panic' was accepted into the "Future Imperfect" short film collection showing today and tomorrow at the Kendall Theater as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival. That was reason enough for me to go see the collection but I also wanted to see what the future looks like in 2011.
In short: grainy, grimy and grim.
DIY Drones
From thermal imaging to prosthetic arms, from computers to Hum-Vees, military technology has regularly been adapted for civilian uses. This process has been going on since Roman times so it should be little surprise that the current crop of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have bequeathed their own technological advances. One could argue that drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are the signature weapon of the past decade. Now these automated spying and weapon platforms have been adopted by a growing community of hobbyists and there are indications that this technology could soon find commercial application.
PAX East Day 3
I was feeling pretty on top of things Sunday. The alarm went off and I staggered over, hammered the button and slept until 7:45. Woke up, got everything ready to leave, glanced at the clock, saw that it said 8:27. Feeling really good at this point. I'm trying to decide in my head if I want to sit down on the hard concrete of the queue line again or pretend to be waiting on carpet for the opening of the Wyvern Theater for some presentation I don't know if I really want to see. I pull into a nice parking spot about a block from the BCEC and realize two things.
I forgot about Day Light's savings and I'm a complete idiot.
PAX East Day 2
So I had to wait until Saturday to go to PAX, which sucked but I did get there early and left late so I feel like I got at least a taste of the convention's awesomeness.
The opening of the PAX East, standing in enormous roped off lines is how I imagine a colony world being evacuated in the far far future. When the word was given, in a gentle, loving stampede, the nerd herd advanced into the convention area. There was a great rumbling cheer that spread through out the crowd. There were far fewer steampunks here than Arisia; the dominant visual meme appeared to be these orange traffic cones from plants vs zombies.
I walked through the table top area first before taking a dip into the expo area. This was my first gaming industry con so I just did the whole gap mouth tourist thing blundering from one epic line to the next looking at the enormous pretty screens. There is just a stupid number of upcoming games, and eventually I realized I had entered the shell-shocked state of a walking coma and decided to find something else to do.
From Fear and Wonder to Wall-E:
The feature picture is a snippet of Ward Shelley's Timeline painting, "History of Science Fiction." I stumbled onto the picture from Cory Doctorow's blog Boing Boing, but it's popping up in Reddit as well. I'll pause while you find the original picture and stare at it and all of its awesomeness.Original
What is biopunk?
In 1997, a very bizarre picture, appearing to show a human ear growing out of the back of a mouse, became an odd Internet sensation. While what was actually being depicted in the picture is somewhat different from what it appears (the ear is actually made out of cow cartilage), it nevertheless became a rallying point for all sorts of fears about the direction technology, biotechnology in particular was taking us. That image, to me, also helps me understand the term biopunk.
Review of “Windup Girl”
The winner of the 2009 Nebula and 2010 Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy novels, Paulo Bacigalupi’s Windup Girl, represents a quandary. It well-deserves recognition and acclaim but is it science fiction or fantasy? Most of the reviews I’ve read place the work in the former genre and compare it to William Gibson or Bruce Sterling. Others fudge the issue by labeling the novel ‘dystopian’ or ‘bio-punk.’ All of these are clever dodges of the central issue of the novel: while impressively grim, compelling, and lyrical it is certainly hard to believe from the perspective of a Newtonian universe.
More on this in a moment.
Retro-futurism
In the 40's and 50's people imagined a future filled with elevated motorways, flying cars, robots and rocket ships. Obviously, that future didn’t quite come to pass. Instead we have the chaotic and post-modern world of the Internet, wild disparities in economic opportunity, ubiquitous corporations and the steady accelerating pace of technological development. On the surface the shiny silver rocket ship future has been supplanted and replaced by the future described by Gibson, Sterling and Cameron.
Tagging Your iTunes Songs
By adding a list of tags to the songs in your music library, you can easily create playlists for every desired theme, mood or purpose. I use this technique, Comments Smart Playlists, when I set up background playlists for my RPG games. Tagging each song's comment field can also be used for a wide variety of uses such as presentations, movie soundtracks or simple amusement.