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May 15th, 2012
10:37 am - Wherein I wonder about alternate histories.
This Cracked.com article, "6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America," could be one of the most interesting I've read -- from an educational perspective -- in recent memory. (I can ignore overlooking St. Augustine as this continent's oldest European settlement because the article told me that Monk's Mound is a thing.)
I was taught none of the stuff therein, of course, when I was in school. Mostly it deals with how thoroughly the native inhabitants were screwed.
I even learned something new from it. I knew that plague destroyed most of the natives, but the article put numbers and colorful descriptions to the devastation. Sobering, both.
It all goes to explain why U.S. culture is apocalyptic at times. I've noticed we always seem to look forward to the end of the world -- Y2K, 2012, Apophis, Israeli domestic policy -- but never quite put my finger on why that was. Now I have a better idea: we've seen an apocalypse already. The one which allowed this very culture to exist.
And we wonder in the back of our national skull how many days we must wait until it's our turn.
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May 13th, 2012
May 12th, 2012
11:45 pm - Well they're no friends of mine
It's interesting to see what has become of anime music videos.
The AMV embedded above is "PencilHead," a project by the guy who turned Noir into a beautiful James Bond intro. Both AMVs are of the "Death By After-Effects" variety, but PencilHead is the new crown jewel of the genre.
You will see why.
Fortunately, that type does not rule all AMVs. New classic-form ones, which involve one show set to one song with excellent timing, still exist.
Not that I have anything against skillful editing, of course. Here's another newish one which uses video-splicing skills to great effect -- by presenting something fun, not making the editing the star of the show.
It's all making me excited for Otakon, months away. AMV Hell 6 will be there. The crowd will go wild, I'm sure.
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May 11th, 2012
04:07 pm - Japan: making a smaller and more efficient population.
The population of Japan increasingly becoming elderly, and of impressive health into its extended longevity, is not a surprise.
The statistically concerning lack of babies to replace them, however, is.
Their demographic situation is such that:
Japanese researchers have now warned of a doomsday scenario if it carries on this way with the last child to be born there in 3011 and the Japanese people potentially disappearing a few generations later.
I suppose that is the price of extreme homogeneity. Luckily, they have about a thousand years to solve it with a lot of sex, even if they must eventually do it with foreigners.
The article suggests some possible reasons for the lack of human mating over there. It does not mention the robotic butt, yet it ought to, since "some suggest many young Japanese people prefer "virtual" friends with a robot or on the internet."
Which makes me wonder: Wait, they already have robot friends over there? Not just "robot friends" wink-wink, but automaton companions?
Get with the program, United States!
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May 8th, 2012
07:36 pm - Grey Havens Nursing Home
So my grandma did something dumb recently. Possibly dimentia-related. I've now found out what that is.
First let me back up a bit. She, essentially blind and Parkinson's-riddled yet a naturally social person, has been cooped up at home with her nigh-immobile husband for a frustratingly long time. She evidently tried packing her things to get up and leave a few times in the past, but couldn't muster the energy or will to ditch the place.
Well, last week she decided she finally had enough of sitting around watching news and movies all day and wanted to leave.
She took the keys to their giant truck and tried to drive it away. Imagine it. An age-shriveled Bilboesque woman fumbling for the keys and likely dropping them repeatedly, planning to go... where, exactly? None know.
Her truck plans failed, thankfully. Undaunted, she tottered out into the neighborhood, luckily staying out of the street. She got five houses down before a neighbor noticed her and asked what was up. The neighbor took her inside, and a couple concerned phone calls later she was in a psychiatric hospital with her doctor. There she rests as I type this, waiting to move to an assisted living facility.
So this weekend we're going to stop by and say hello, while wondering what precisely will become of her house and the things in it.
At least she'll be around more people now.
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May 4th, 2012
08:06 am - "You're gonna put me in a home!" "You're already in a home." "Oh how could you?"
So my grandmother had another dimentia episode. It caused her to re-evaluate her living arrangements. This time next week she'll be in an assisted living place.
Everyone concerned is saying "It's about damn time," so I will too.
Imagine if you will, a blind old woman tottering about her house. She can stand and move without inordinate effort and pain, which is more than can be said of her husband of about a decade, so the bulk of manual labor about the house -- fetching the mail, answering the door -- is done by her. She, who is so short of sight that she would fumble for nearly a full minute with locating and using the key to her front door when visitors such as Meals On Wheels or her relatives would arrive. She, a very social woman whose main daily activities have gradually shrunk to migrating from bedroom to sitting room for hours of television and movies with said nigh-immobile husband.
That is the sort of situation for which assisted living exists.
She's finally taking advantage of it, which is good, since her son and daughter have been on her to seek it for years now.
When my mom told me all this over the phone, she promised with a laugh that she wouldn't put my sister or I through that sort of reluctance when she "gets of an age" to need help living.
Hopefully by then we'll have some of Japan's elderly-assistance robots.
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May 2nd, 2012
05:11 pm - Asari Patriarchs
I've had some interesting random squadmates in ME3 Multiplayer.
My previous favorite was a talkative Russian guy who I couldn't understand at all, except for a word that sounded like "koorlrlrlrlrlrl" (rolling Rs) -- which, given the context, must be Russian for "Bullshit!"
My new favorite is a pair of chatty older gentlemen.
I only entered their game for a few moments before the host quit. Neither of them could have been a day under fifty. One sounded exactly like an 80+ co-worker I once had. The other had a slight Southern drawl. Both complained loudly about whether another player's gun could have fired three shots per reload -- presumably a Widow v. Black Widow confusion. They assumed the phantom player was cheating.
They were both playing as asari.
Video game fans are a diverse bunch.
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April 11th, 2012
06:31 pm - "Behold, the ravages of age!"
So hey, my maternal grandmother might have dementia.
She's had Parkinson's for quite a while now. Evidently it can cause issues in parts of the brain besides motor control, and it seems it has, with her.
I'm told that she hallucinated my sister standing next to her, once, when said sister was at home here, some two hours away.
She hallucinated me, too, recently. She became fraught with worry that I might hurt myself, because I was way up in a tree in her yard, pruning a branch. I was neither in her tree nor in her city at the time.
I have three remaining blood-relation grandparents, and the Suspected Order of Death (which we keep behind their backs) involves her checking out first. Maybe this is the beginning of it.
So it goes.
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April 4th, 2012
04:54 pm - On Golden Poo
So.
Much could be said about a story with a headline which could be rendered as "Consumerist Readers Vote EA Worst Company in America," especially when that vote is Internet-based, and especially when the announcement came with this stinger:
"Traditionally, the Poo has been delivered on its little red pillow. But this year, we'll give EA three different color options for its pillow, though in the end it's still the same old Poo."
Yes, Mass Effect 3 had something to do with EA beating out companies like Bank of America for "worst," but the terrible ending of a major game trilogy is not enough to bring out over 160,000 voters.
Even if I'm wrong and it is, EA's practices of maintaining high prices and slicing out portions of completed games to be sold as DLC speak to what the article says in the beginning:
"... Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank."
Do not forget that this is a poll in which all participants were 1). online 2). Consumerist readers 3). who wanted to answer a poll. It is not a highly representative group.
The most important take-away from the poll, for me, is what Consumerist readers prioritize -- and that is not a bad thing. It is not indicative of immaturity, or entitlement, or whatever else. It's a matter of opinion on a very, very basic subject.
Let me try to explain...
The best book I ever read, Terry Pratchett's Nation, takes place mostly on a South Pacific island inhabited by indigenous peoples. The men and women have their own parts of the island, where they live and work and farm. Pratchett described their respective agricultural practices like this:
The Nation grew the big crops in the large field. That was where you found aharo, sugarcane, tabor, boomerang peas, and black corn. There men grew the things that made you live.
In the Place, the gardens of the women grew the things that made the living enjoyable, possible, and longer: spices and fruits and chewing roots. They had ways of making crops grow bigger or more tasty. They dug up or traded plants and brought them here, and knew the secrets of seeds and pods and things. They raised pink bananas here and rare plantains and yams, including the jumping yam. They also grew medicines here, and babies.
Now:
Imagine that one day both the men and the women, as sole stewards of their respective crops, demanded high prices for poor quality goods by unfair and aggravating practices. You buy something from both the men and the women. If both groups were equally greedy and slipshod, which one would sting you the most when you made your purchase? Toward whom would you feel the most resentment?
It is my hypothesis, perhaps unprovable, that the majority of the people who would resent the women would vote EA as "America's worst company" over Bank of America.
EA's services as a video game purveyor are not strictly necessary. They do not "make you live" in the same way as Bank of America's money-keeping, money-lending and mortgage-holding. For a very large number of people, however, video games make life "enjoyable, possible, and longer," and so EA's corporate squeeze is felt more tenderly.
Bank of America makes buying and owning a house a pricey, unfair, annoying process. EA makes enjoying a leading form of life-toleratingly good entertainment anywhere a pricey, unfair, annoying process. The result of the Consumerist poll is nothing but the space between what its online readers believe is more dastardly: greed in a major bank, or greed in a major entertainment company.
Do I agree with the result? Hell no, because EA never tricked people into homelessness, and because plenty of non-EA video games exist. But that doesn't mean I don't understand and sympathize with the winning voters.
Life is much lesser without the things which make it fun. The poll result is nothing but a statement to that effect.
Hopefully EA will take that as a reminder that they are stewards of something important for so many people.
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March 24th, 2012
09:37 am - And so begins the great shipping-storm of our time.
I have an odd relationship with most movies, cartoons, comics, and video games. Here it is:
Very rarely is the lead protagonist my favorite character. There's always some fatal disconnect or supporting-character overshadowing. To the best of my recollection, I can count all of them on one hand and have a thumb left over.
Two episodes in, Korra now occupies that thumb.
Yes, the first two episodes of The Legend of Korra are now online, and they aren't illegal leaks this time.
It is worth seeing.
Does it explain everything that happened in the seventy years since The Last Airbender? No, and it doesn't need to. Enough is said and shown for satisfaction. If they never say another word about the previous cast, I'll be fine.
The show officially starts in three weeks, on April 14th, 10:00 AM Central (but who's counting).
I will be watching it.
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