APPROPRIATE USES IN NAZI ANALOGIES #1: IF YOU BURN BOOKS, YR A F***ING NAZI

Why yes, it is in fact Banned Book Week in the US again.

Here’s a map of book challenge cases in the last couple of years. The American Library Association figures it’s a very low estimate, as 70-80% of challenges aren’t reported to the ALA.

Meanwhile, if you missed it the first time, and wonder what the big deal is when there’s plenty of places besides public libraries to get these books, please read this.

PRODUCTION NOTE: Poster may be slightly out of date.

What makes a man start fires,

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NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

Good morning, Internet. It’s Monday and I am here to motivate you.

Remember: no matter how bad it gets, it could be worse.

Giant meat-eating bees, for example.



[Via Percy Trout]

FACT: Giant meat-eating bees and movie marketing executives have more in common that you might think.

Buzzing round yr house,

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RIDING THE ROBOT

I get press releases.

Sometimes they’re not what you think they are.

Like this one from Honda talking about their new “Personal Mobility Device”. I thought they meant a mobile phone or a netbook or something.

Turns out they meant a robotic unicycle based on its ASIMO robot technology.



Cute, but when it comes to robot tech and mobility, I’m more impressed by this “Miruko” wearable robot eyeball with face-recognition software that can be linked to an iPhone for potential “navigation, surveillance, and augmented reality entertainment applications”.

"Round Robin - I'm The Wolf Man" (Watch on YouTube)

Eyeball in my martini,

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ROBOTS GOT GAME

Speaking of robots, I’ve been to the movies again. And we actually have a theme this time: the near future!

Surrogates

In 2017, we will all stay at home and live our lives outside via lifelike robots controlled by virtual interfaces.

That’s the premise of this movie, where things start to go wrong after a surrogate is destroyed, killing the user by remote in the process. The film tries to make a commentary about people preferring artificial interaction to real people, but the premise itself is hard to get past – that realistic robots will somehow be so affordable within the next ten years that even low-income people will have them, and the 2% of people who don’t use them will secede from the US and live in sovereign machine-free zones.

Even if the movie was set in 2054 (as the original graphic novel is), there are plenty of inconsistencies and plot holes to derail the story. Either way, as imagined futures go, it’s not very convincing, even by Hollywood standards.

Gamer

In 2034, video games will feature live human avatars fitted with mind-control technology that allows gamers to control them.

That’s the premise of THIS movie from Neveldine/Taylor, the guys who brought you Crank. And it’s slightly more plausible in that the avatars are either volunteers (in the case of “Society”, which mimics Second Life via the cheesiest MTV videos you can think of) or death-row inmates (in the case of “Slayers”, a first-person shooter MMORPG). The actual technology to make this work is bonkers, but then Neveldine/Taylor have never really cared about technical accuracy about ... well, pretty much everything.

Anyway, the story is basically a mashup of The Running Man, Rollerball and Johnny Mnemonic with a video-game twist, with the hero of Slayers trying to fight his way to freedom from the game – which in turn threatens the IT CEO that invented the technology. Not that original, and the characters are pretty one-dimensional. And while I wouldn’t say replacing Gerard Butler with Jason Statham would have improved things, it wouldn’t have hurt.

On the bright side, the action is well done, and at least it’s a film with something to say, even if it isn’t always said that articulately. As B-level dystopian satires go, you could do worse (see above).

Games people play,

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