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Holden Caulfield › Likes
Digital TV is making it seem normal to see people's voices be slightly out of sync with their lip movements.
Holden Caulfield liked this
This is absolutely true. I've found that I don't even notice when video stutters for anything less than 1,000 milliseconds but those accustomed to broadcast television notice anything longer than 50 milliseconds yet they don't notice artifact white noise or static.
- Holden Caulfield
It will and is starting to seem odd when they do match perfectly. This will blur over into so-called 'real' experience too.
- Brian Staker
from email
Diet Coke with Bacon - http://naurunappula.com/z...
Holden Caulfield, Neya, Charlotte Mazeyrat and 2 other people liked this
must be bad *and yes, i do like bacon*
- Neya
mmmm bacon
- Rasmus Lauridsen
> @burningman responds to @eff's concerns about Burning Man's media policy & use of DMCA takedowns http://blog.burningman.com/...
Holden Caulfield liked this
Hey Labels, You Just Lost Your Biggest Cheerleader - http://techgeist.net/2009...
Holden Caulfield liked this
Soy and Pepper: Roast potatoes - http://www.soyandpepper.com/2009...
Derrick, Bluesun 2600, Holden Caulfield and 6 other people liked this
"These roast potatoes (or roasties) were made to accompany the roast beef last weekend. I tend to cook the healthier version normally, using much less oil, but sometimes you just want the traditional taste of good roast potatoes - crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside."
- Steven Perez
from Bookmarklet
Mmmm. My favourite food ever.
- Charley M
@duhism RT @feralsmile why eat? I thought Duhists absorb energy from sarcastic comments?--you've got the Breatharians beat
Holden Caulfield liked this
Fallout Themed LARP Event in Leningrad, Russia - http://lslinks.laughingsquid.com/fallout...
Holden Caulfield, Lars Clausen, Peter Renshaw and 3 other people liked this
very cool.
- Calvin Ayre
TED Talk Video: Clay Shirky on How Cellphones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History - http://laughingsquid.com/ted-tal...
Holden Caulfield, David J Lowe and Shannon Clark liked this
Retrofitting Blade runner: Retrofitting Blade runner: issues in Ridley Scott's Blade runner and Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? - http://books.google.com/books...
hex, Michael Fidler, Damiano and 14 other people liked this
"This book of essays looks at the multitude of texts and influences which converge in Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, especially the film’s relationship to its source novel, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Essays consider political, moral and technological issues raised by the film, as well as literary, filmic, technical and aesthetic questions. Contributors discuss the film’s psychological and mythic patterns, importance political issues and the roots of the film in Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, detective fiction, and previous science fiction cinema."
- zeroinfluencer
from Bookmarklet
an excellent book, I've read it on occasion and intend to purchase it one day in one of the Amazon binges
- Michael Bravo
The part about moral discourse where it compares Tyrell Corporation to Nazi scientists, (and by dint of that replicants to Jews which would make Bladerunners SS officers) is chilling stuff. PKD said that the inspiration for Bladerunner came from an entry in a concentration camp guard's diary where the guard complained that he was having to play classical music loudly at night in order...
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- Graham Sergeant
more people should understand that inspiration for the story. then there would be less stupid arguments about whether Deckard is (or isn't) a replicant. PKD understood that the concentration camp guards were not *behaving* as humans, despite being human, and having human parts.
- Karim
I thought the "Deckard is human" tribe was hunted to extinction in the late 90s
- Graham Sergeant
maybe they were, but i've always been in the IT DOESN'T MATTER tribe. :-D it's like arguing about whether it should be spelled "Baty" or "Batty." once you understand that human beings can act like robots, and robots can act like human beings (by using the Empathy Box, by saving Deckard's life, etc.) then it doesn't matter who is "artificial" and who isn't: what matters is who *acts* like a human being.
- Karim
the whole "is he or isn't he" argument is just so much tribalism, an attempt to reduce the story to us vs. them.
- Karim
which, the story of gutted original script aside, is more or less the gist of the latest Terminator, eh?
- Michael Bravo
Michael, yes, and similar ground was also covered in the remake of "Battlestar Galactica," as well as ages ago in the various "Ghost in the Shell" franchises. in the latter there are characters who are completely artificial except for their brains, and one of them has a lot of angst about whether she's still really human...
- Karim
I'm an avid GITS fan, so... :) also liking BSG quite a lot, but I don't have a TV series habit, so I'm stuck somewhere halfway through the first season, fully intending to continue though.
- Michael Bravo
It's an important distinction in that the "hero", who we have been following for the entire story, even glimpsing into his interior life at the mythical reverie implant, an emotional high point of the film, is the same as those he is hunting, and we are taught, by dint of Deckard's replicant status, that replicants have as rich an interior life as we do, yet are an enemy to be disposed...
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- Graham Sergeant
one man's "destabilization of built-in moral assumptions" is another man's cheesy plot twist. "And the guy persecuting the X's was an X himself!" distracts from the real point of the story, in my opinion.
- Karim
PKD was happy to put the question in the novel as a kind of *doubt* -- something the protagonist questioned, something intended to cause cognitive dissonance in the reader. by resolving the doubt (and the cognitive dissonance), the story loses the ability to make the reader question his OWN humanity.
- Karim
The revelation that we have been empathising with a replicant (in the sense that we empathise with the protagonist in classical storytelling) is precisely what brings the audience's humanity into focus and the apparatus the story uses to do this is that which makes Deckard most human to us; his emotional reverie inside his most private moment which is actually an implant externalised as...
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- Graham Sergeant
Also, I'm not sure I would call it a twist, it is more of a dramatic reversal in a sequence of reversals that starts with the revelation that Rachel is a replicant unknowingly, Baty killing his "father" and saving his persecutor, to reciting poetry and revealing more emotional richness than any other character in the film. A twist comes out of nowhere but a dramatic reversal is part of the build up to a story climax
- Graham Sergeant
Bladerunner raises the distinction between human and replicant so that it can then erase that distinction.
- Graham Sergeant
i choose to believe the same -- that the story of 'blade runner' is a story that gives us the opportunity to think about what truly makes us human, and i think any story that does that in an effective way is a good one. when i was in college, albeit a long time ago, thinking about that same question, i was thrilled at the idea that humans were so similar to our non-human primate relatives.
- docrivs
if we examine critically the science fictions and current scientific and technological realities that make up our world we can now be thrilled at the idea that we can continue to alter our attitudes about what it means to be human.
- docrivs
Docrivs, I'm sure Ray agrees with you."Ray Kurzweil's wildest dream is to be turned into a cyborg—a flesh-and-blood human enhanced with tiny embedded computers, a man-machine hybrid with billions of microscopic nanobots coursing through his bloodstream." http://www.newsweek.com/id...
- Tom Himpe
@tom there was a speech William Gibson gave at some scifi writers' gathering (or some such, I can dig it out if you are interested), in which he said that we are all actually cyborgs for a long time now, we just don't realize it yet, meaning. for example, this - you are now digesting information that goes into your optic nerve via pixels on your screen and before that has traveled...
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- Michael Bravo
#cyborganthropology that's pretty damn cool, tom. thanks. the creator of some of the most widely-used electronic musical instruments in the world seems to me to be an appropriate visionary for that dream. i think he'd probably agree that it is fascinating to see a future ahead of us in which the lines between humanity and machine-ity (is there a word for that?) will be blurred even further.
- docrivs
#cyborganthropology mike, that's exactly the kind of thinking that has fascinated me for a very long time -- probably when i first learned about computers and electronics, as a child. what is the difference between people and robots, was a question i asked a lot at school. the answers i received were never satisfactory -- all that talk about 'spirit' and 'soul' and 'humanity' and 'consciousness'... it never did it for me. i'm also fascinated with networks -- bits travelling through the air or wiring...
- docrivs
Graham, i'm still not buying the idea that saying Deckard is a replicant "brings the audience's humanity into focus." if anything, it serves to turn Deckard into The Other. you can call it a "dramatic plot reversal" instead of a twist, but it amounts to the same thing -- a tired science fiction trope in which it is revealed that the man is really a machine. (e.g. the ending to Star Trek's "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and The Outer Limit's "Demon with a Glass Hand")
- Karim
i agree that the story intends to blur the relationship between human and replicant, but PKD never really explains in the book that Deckard is a replicant. to the extent it doesn't matter, PKD ends the book by having Deckard find a real toad, thought to have been long extinct. Deckard really cares for the toad. but at the very end, his wife Iran finds out the toad isn't real. which *doesn't matter*, because she ends up ordering some artificial flies for it to eat.
- Karim
karim: that's pretty cool about the toad. i haven't had read any of pkd's books yet, i don't think. he didn't write 'a scanner darkly' did he? i read that. it was strange, but had some cool ideas. you make me want to watch 'blade runner' again to see if i see what you see. i like stories when the android/cyborg/robot/replicant doesn't know that it is part-machine (or a human-simulated machine). i just saw that alien movie with winona ryder, and this conversation reminds me of her character similarities
- docrivs
yikes, docrivs, i hope i didn't totally spoil the book for you? i figured everyone here would have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. :-) yeah, i think PKD did write "A Scanner Darkly" -- the film being fairly faithful to the novel. a case could be made for Deckard not being a replicant in the movie: he feels bad about "shooting a woman in the back," and feels bad about telling...
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- Karim
i haven't seen the film yet, but i did look it up to see if pkd wrote it. i like books that blur the edges of reality/dream/hallucination. i need to read electric sheep. that's been one i've been hearing about all of my life. i was more into fantasy sci-fi, as a kid, and didn't get into the future stuff for awhile. no, you didn't give it away -- the book. i'm sure that my having seen the movie first will spoil it more than anything else.
- docrivs
Blade Runner riddle solved http://news.bbc.co.uk/2... "the Director's Cut edition - although deliberately ambiguous - convinced many that the hero was indeed a replicant and in a Channel 4 documentary Scott at last reveals they are correct."
- John Hardy
Karim, Bladerunner isn't cheesy... ok, the voice over was cheesy but that's gone now. There's no way any of those plot turns from science fiction shows come close to the subtletly of the now iconic origami unicorn. All plot devices and premises are old as the hills, it's how they're treated that matters. and the emotive richness of Bladerunner is unmatched in the science fiction genre....
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- Graham Sergeant
Graham, i *partially* agree with your last comment. :-D i don't think the movie is cheesy. i think "revealing" that Deckard was really a replicant is a cheesy reveal :-D it's the ending to an M. Night Shyamalan film, not a Ridley Scott film. Mr. Scott obviously would disagree with me :-D as would you, but that's just the way i feel about it. the "Deckard = replicant" reveal answers a question that i think PKD deliberately *meant* to be ambiguous and unanswered.
- Karim
J.J. Abrams gave a TED talk on the importance of mystery (http://www.ted.com/talks...) and it's something i agree with wholeheartedly: that it's important for some questions to remain unanswered, that the important thing is that the question *makes us think*, makes us wonder, *adds* to the story because it forces us to consider things instead of having all the answers handed to us on a platter.
- Karim
first time I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" i puzzled about whether Deckard was an andy -- which led me to wonder what one was, exactly: how many artificial parts could someone have before they were a machine. which reminded me of the love letter from Hamlet to Ophelia, where he pledges his love to her, for as long as "this machine is to him." (i.e. as long as Hamlet lives...
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- Karim
have you all seen the trailer and website for the surrogates? it looks frickn awesome!!!
- docrivs
trailer for 'the surrogates' -- http://news.septagonstudios.com/...
- docrivs
docrivs, that does look all kinds of awesome. mashup of The Matrix with Ghost in the Shell :-D
- Karim
yup, that's what i was thinking... and 'true lies' (is that the one where arnold's dreaming the whole time?) and 'strange days'... i love this kinda stuff
- docrivs
Bladerunner show us 3 characters (Deck, Rach, Baty) who it says are definitely replicant but all display empathy amongst other rich emotions, the one trait we are told, that should differentiate them by it's absence. Each one of these characters also commit murder as well. This is as much a hall of mirrors as the book as we still can't tell them apart even though the film gives us the...
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- Graham Sergeant
The deepest mystery that we'll never penetrate is what it means to be human. Both film and book complicate our thoughts on this. Compared to this, withholding Deckard's status is a bit flimsy.
- Graham Sergeant
Thanks for the pointer to the TED talk, I'll watch it. Meanwhile, on the subject of mystery, let me list a quote from one of my favourite books, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin (in a separate comment due to the lack of formatting in friendfeed comments)
- Michael Bravo
"The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me,...
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- Michael Bravo
Good quote from a great writer.
- Graham Sergeant
It's time!! The Farmers Market opens this Saturday at Pioneer Park -- Come and join us!! http://www.downtownslc.org/events... (via @downtownslc)
Holden Caulfield liked this
I'm so excited for the Farmers Market to finally open!
- Holden Caulfield
ParisLemon » On Trolls - http://parislemon.com/2009...
Holden Caulfield liked this
Everything changes, it always does. This is why I've never believed in such a thing as 'social media', because it's not tech or services, it's people. Anonymous or not.
- Eric Rice
from Bookmarklet
Also, when it comes to real people/known people as trolls, there has to be consensus and you don't always see that. Many people call Prokofy a troll (or Vaspers), but I'm not so quick to judge. I'm just smart enough to figure out where the message is through the wall of rhetoric and vitirol. But it's not *my* problem others don't want to deal with the process. Wisdom requires some pain, and not something we much of in a 140-character, headline-driven soundbyte world.
- Eric Rice
Horizontal v. Vertical Farming - http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/2009...
Holden Caulfield, Claus Metzner, Brian Daniel Eisenberg and Anika liked this
Who Should Make The Buffy Movie? [Rant, Part 2] - http://io9.com/5271668...
Holden Caulfield liked this
Holden Caulfield liked this
the picture with the lolipops is awesome
- Holden Caulfield
Holden Caulfield liked this
Sometimes I feel like I am driven, but I'm not sure who's in the driver's seat.
Holden Caulfield liked this
Solar panels that float in the ocean - http://dvice.com/archive...
Scoble, Alex Scoble and Holden Caulfield liked this
The PETA Files: NBC's Sexually-Explicit Super Bowl Ad Rejection Makes Us Blush - http://blog.peta.org/archive...
Holden Caulfield liked this
# licking pumpkin/#pumpkin from behind between legs/# rubbing pelvic region with pumpkin I PUT ON MY ROBE AND WIZARD HAT
- Eric Rice
from Bookmarklet
BloodNinja : IRC (long before PETA) - http://www.bloodninja.org/
Holden Caulfield liked this
"I touch you on your lettuce, you massage my spinach... Sexily.... My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love. My insides turn to celery as I unleash my warm and sticky cauliflower of love. <MommyMelissa> What the fuck is this madlibs? I'm outta here.
- Eric Rice
from Bookmarklet
Nobody would hurt a sea kitten - http://www.peta.org/sea_kit...
Holden Caulfield liked this
Yeah but I'd certainly slap the ever loving shit out of the person who invented the phrase, and I'd do so with my big sea kitten named TROUT.
- Eric Rice
from Bookmarklet
Ah, delicious sea kittens, let me snuggle you... in my belly.
- Daniel Andrlik
NOM NOM
- Eric Rice
In an unexpected reversal of events, people are now eating 'land kittens' because of PETA's successful campaign to call fish 'sea kittens'
- Holden Caulfield
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