The Informavore

No matter what you think about casting choices, there is a certain amount of thought that goes into why an actor is chosen to play a particular hero, villain, or supporting character.  Sometimes, that choice is based purely on the star power attached to the lead.  There’s one case where this has really gotten the in way.

Ah…the untamed wild of our neighbors to the north. When our Canadian brethren aren’t busy dousing french fries with gravy, savoring ham-like bacon or enjoying universal health care, they sometimes engage in a leisurely game of hand-to-jaw combat with wildlife that preys on the family pet. While taking her puppy out, Marie Simon noticed the pup kept trying to run back into the house. She turns to see a coyote lunging for the dog. She grabs the coyote, tosses the puppy out of danger and PUNCHES THE COYOTE IN THE JAW. It runs away. The puppy is safe. The woman gets treated for minor scratches and a rabies vaccine.

Marie Simon, you are woman and I hear you roar.

I too, am the owner of a small dog that probably looks like a T.G.I.Friday’s Puppetizer to most large predators. Usually when I come home I’m greeted with bounding energy and a wellspring of affection. But not yesterday.

When I returned home to a lethargic dog that preferred to lay on the frozen ground than run around outside, I grew concerned. I called the vet’s office. Nothing says good times like, “Wait around for vomit or diarrhea, then call us.” Still, she’s lumbering around looking pathetic. Corey pointed out that perhaps the giant Busy Bone I gave her for her birthday the day before was a bad idea. I waited her out. We sat on the couch, mostly motionless until Corey returned from class at 9 p.m.

Naturally, the little monster ran like a toddler on a 5-hour energy drink binge to the door when Corey returned home, catapulting off the side of the couch and acting like nothing had been wrong. I gave her the side eye for making me sound crazy. She’s been all over Corey over the past few months. Go figure. I’d still punch a coyote for her. But when it comes to the rabbits that taunt her during the summer? She’s on her own.

In other canine related news, I ran across this poem by Jack McCarthy the other day and it made me melt. Read through to the end…and try not to drip on your computer. He’s wonderful. If you agree…go buy his stuff. Support the arts!

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I was out of town on Wednesday during Steve Jobs’ big announcement of the iPad. Walking through the halls of the Capitol building in Frankfort–iPhone firmly planted in pocket with the sound off–I could only imagine how the world was changing around me. Surely the much-heralded Apple Tablet would affect all aspects of our lives from that day forward.

Not so much. At least not yet.

Upon returning to the office on Friday, the question everyone wanted to ask me was “Are you buying an iPad?” I’ve been an early adopter of the iPhone–twice sneaking away from camp to procure the new device. Despite the hype and the potential the iPad presents, I will not be giving Steve Jobs $500+ this Spring. Keep reading to find out why.

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I love alternate history stories.

Take Superman: Red Son for example. Instead of becoming a hero for truth, justice, and the American Way, the Man of Steel represents the ideals of Stalin and the Soviet Empire.

Sliders, The Twilight Zone, and a host of other TV shows and movies have documented novel “what if?” scenarios in which changes both grand and small affect the world we know today. Heck, even J. J. Abrahm’s 2009 Star Trek reboot was an elaborate exercise in alternative history. What was particularly interesting about the film, and so many of these stories, is that while it breaks away to create something new, there are numerous instances where authors go out of their way to mirror the actual timeline.

Newsweek and Facebook, as part of their Decade in Rewind series, has a interesting look at what the last several years might have looked like if Al Gore had been elected President in 2000. The oral history touches on the people, places, and events that were immutable in the last decade, though often spins said events in a new direction. After a bitterly divisive election and a few missteps, Gore uses the bulk of his political clout and budget surplus to move forward with his environmental efforts.

May 2003: In excess of 670 miles of wetland are restored along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast. To announce the successful completion of the initiative, the president holds a ceremony on the deck of a solar-powered casino boat in the Biloxi harbor, standing before a banner that reads “Mission Accomplished.” It is roundly ridiculed.

“He plants some grass in the mud and prances around in front of a banner? Gimme a break. This isn’t leadership it’s toilet training.”

—Bill O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor, May 27, 2003.

“Dear Mr. President, we elected a nerd. Please stop being a dork.”

—MoveOn.Org billboard, San Francisco.

The story plays out in a very interesting way. At what point does it deviate from expectations? What points are completely implausible? What would you have liked to see? Would Al Gore have been the ultimate Nerd President? Was the author borrowing heavily from a series of West Wing scripts?

We’d like your thoughts on David Rakoff’s piece of speculative fiction.

Update: Newsweek continues the fiction today with a less sunny recap of the Gore years.

President Obama is a alien lizard from outer space.

It’s not the claim of opponents of the President’s healthcare reform efforts. Instead, it seems to be the allegorical underpinning of ABC’s reimagining of the early 1980s television miniseries V.

Anyone who has sat through an honors high school English class where they read George Orwell’s Animal Farm can attest to the power of achieving political commentary through the use of allegory. As it turns out, a pig is not always just a pig nor is a horse always just a horse. In the case of V, a story about an alien invasion is not just a sci-fi yarn about visitors from another planet.

An article from Slate this week poses the question “Is V a political allegory?”:

More than a few journalists and bloggers have remarked that it’s possible to read V as an allegory hostile to President Obama and sympathetic with the birthers and other nutcases who believe him to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The charismatic Visitors load up their “bandwagon” by “spreading hope.” In using their sophisticated iguana technology to provide free medical services, they promise “universal health care.” Indeed, if the show is to have the symbolic import that we expect from a science-fiction story, this is the only possible way to read V as a coherent text.

The original miniseries, which aired in 1983-84, did not seem to hide its message. The Visitors from the series were painted as Nazis, building upon a generation still very familiar with the ramifications of WWII and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Still entrenched in the Cold War, it had a resonate message for American audiences.

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BoingBoing posted a link to the online game Pick the Perp. You’re posed a question, such as “Who was charged with Robbery?” then you pick from a series of 5 photographs who you think the perp is.

According to the site:

Booking mug shots and related information is gathered from arrest records from open sheriff’s web sites in the United States of America. Those appearing here have not been convicted of the arrest charge and are presumed innocent. Do not rely on this site to determine any person’s actual criminal record.

What’s interesting (that BoingBoing and Pick the Perp don’t point out) is how quickly this game goes from amusing to slightly stomach turning. Whenever you find yourself staring at five complete strangers and wondering, “Who looks like a heroin user? Which one of you look like you’d be involved in a domestic dispute?” only to guess wrong (or sadly, right) you can’t help but wonder if it’s an educated guess or a profile in socio-economic/racial/gender profiling. I secretly started to wonder if this was an elaborate ruse being conducted by psychology or communication scholars to test how people associated crimes with certain demographic factors in photographs…that would prove very interesting when discussing profiling and jury bias, perhaps?

In defense of educated guesses though, look for orange jumpsuits on serious offenses and wonky eyes for those who were charged with being under the influences.

Been a while since you’ve cleaned out your refrigerator? Not quite sure if that tangy zip is what your Miracle Whip should smell like? How long can you keep ketchup before it goes bad? The Table of Condiments via Neatorama is a handy and well designed guide to the shelf life of most condiments.

If you’re a big ole’ comic book geek or a raving Obamaniac – then there’s a good chance that you went freaking ape-shit crazy today over the Spiderman Obama variant cover that hit stores today. If you’re neither of the two – allow me to fill you in:

You know how sometimes TV Guide will put out a week’s issue with a series of 4 different covers with different cast-mates of [Current T.V. show]. On the inside – it’s the same T.V. Guide. Same times. Same shows. It’s just the cover that’s different. With a comic book variant – there will be something sparkly and super duper special about a cover that is different from the one that’s in mass production. So say – out of 10 issues of T.V. Guide – 9 of them have Hurley on them, and only one has Sawyer. Sawyer is the variant. Got it? Easy peasy. Comic book with an insert about Spiderman saving Obama at the inauguration. Easy. Right?

Wrong. SO wrong. Because the one variant is invariably worth more than the regular issues.

But the thing about this variant: it was an [Edit: Super special screwy] incentive plan for Marvel. Marvel tells the comic book shop, “Say you ordered x-number of Spiderman issues last time. For every, say, 20 extra issues you order, we’ll give you a variant.” Not a big deal for your gigantic comic book stores, they can easily order more, somewhat difficult for your lower sized chains. There’s the first print ultra-limited edition with a blue background, that’s the one that came out today. So folks were lining up all over the place today to get their hands on the Obama variant of Spiderman.  Here’s how I spent the most terrifying morning of 2009.

So – my resident comic book geek hubs – has been feverishly asking me to go pick up a copy of the variant for like, the past week. There’s only one comic book store in town and it opens at 10 a.m.

Hubs: “You have to get there early. Get there before 10.”

Moi: “Yeahyeahyeahwhatever.”

Hubs: “No. I’m being serious. You really need to get there early.”

Moi: “Mmmkay.”

So I get there at 9:55 and there are three middle aged men, god bless ‘em, standing in line outside the door. Part of me wanted to say, “If there are only three of you – you probably don’t need to be in a line.” But this was the Whopper Virgin in me coming out because, as I learned, fewer people does not mean less insanity.

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Burger King thinks so.

Adweek:

“The fast-food chain has released the Whopper Sacrifice application on Facebook. The app rewards people with a coupon for BK’s signature burger when they cull 10 friends. Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook’s news feed explaining that the user’s love for the unlucky soul is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper.

The effort crafted by Crispin Porter + Bogusky came about after agency creative staffers confronted the too-many-friends scenario themselves on Facebook.

“We thought there could be some fun there, removing some of these people who are friends [but] not necessarily] best friends,” said Jeff Benjamin, executive interactive creative director at Crispin, and friend to 736 on Facebook. “It’s asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the Whopper,” he said.

The app also adds a box to user profile pages charting their progress toward the free burger with the line, “Who will be the next to go?”

Really, Burger King? REALLY?

Now – I can buy the sacrificing part. In a way – it’s kind of clever. But sending a message to the sacrificee about their “less-than-Whopper-like” status among the sacrificer? REALLY? Most folk I know take that shit PERSONALLY.

On the bright side, when you’re laid up in the hospital from your coronary from consuming too many Whoppers – that’s ten less people crowding up the place during visiting hours.

Then again – this is all the King really wants. Free advertising and publicity. (Shakes fist in air) I’ll get you next time – marketers!

I figure that the universe must be nudging me toward this nugget if I found the article on the New Scientist while hearing about it on G4′s coverage of the CES. Apparently – not only was Tetris useful in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – but has also been shown to help treat head injuries. So – let this be a lesson to you – keep a Tetris app on your iPhone in the event you find yourself in a bar fight, spontaneous street hockey game or nasty Vespa accident.

Emily Holmes and colleagues at the University of Oxford theorised that Tetris would work like a “cognitive vaccine,” and immunise patients from future haunting memories of wars, crimes or accidents.

This isn’t the first time video games have been used to treat PTSD. Psychologists and computer scientists have successfully deployed virtual reality scenes to treat Iraq war veterans, months or years after their tours ended.

What’s different about Holmes’ approach is that patients play the game within minutes of a traumatic experience. Tetris is so engrossing and mentally taxing that geometric shapes replace images of exploding grenades, car crashes and human carnage, her team hypothesises.

This seemed to work, according to a preliminary study published today in the journal PLoS ONE. Forty volunteers, aged 18 to 47, watched graphic 12-minute clips of a surgery, fatal car crashes, and a drowning. A half-hour later, twenty of the participants played Tetris for just 10 minutes. The other half sat quietly for the same time period.

Volunteers kept a diary of their thoughts for a week and returned to the lab for a follow-up visit. Overall, the Tetris players experienced fewer traumatic flashbacks than the control group — three versus seven, on average.

It’s too bad ‘Bejeweled’ doesn’t have the same effect.