I don't know what is going on at Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara, Canada--I've never been there. Based on these photos of horrified people, though, they have many satisfied customers. At least these Nightmares Fear Factory customers asked for it, unlike this creepy elevator scenario foisted on unsuspecting people by this Brazilian television show. You couldn't do this in America--the show would get sued after one of the victims had a heart attack.
My daughter recommended that I watch a season of the TV show 24 on Netflix. Over a period of a month, I did so. It was riveting, smartly written and incredibly well acted. But it left me uneasy for it's carefree stamp of approval on torture. And, no, the ends don't always justify the means. This article by James Parker in The Atlantic captures my own reaction. We all love the roller-coaster ride of a Hollywood thriller, but when it's over we don't always feel good about enjoying the "entertainment." Maybe it's because we know that entertainment harbors implicit lessons, including lesson on what is acceptable conduct. And in the case of 24, some of those lessons fit hand-in-glove with the American Neocon outlook on life.
"How do our computers see us?"
"Maybe if we could see what our computer sees, we would stare differently."
Here's a fascinating article by Kyle McDonald at Wired: "When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers.'" McDonald secretly loaded up his custom-made app onto numerous computers displayed at a Manhattan Apple store in order to create an art project. He was fascinated with the expressionless faces displayed while people use computers. McDonald is a programmer, and using his automated app, he gathered faces of Apple customers (check out the video he created based on people staring at their computers). Eventually, Apple figured out what McDonald had done. Next came the knock on McDonald's door by the U.S. Electronic Crimes Task Force, and a lot of inconvenience. What started out as an art project expanded to include a discussion of privacy and snooping, including corporate and government snooping. What did people think of his project? Here are a few of the hundreds of comments he received:Interesting how he as able to capture a truly expressionless face. It made me think about how too much computer time may make us retract from social interactions. Weird .
Facial expressions are partially reflexive but partially social. It’s not a surprise that expressions get bland when there is no one around to non-verbally communicate with.
We ARE social animals and we can only guess at the long term effect of computers on our species.
I like the idea of “how does a computer sees you” any Asimov reader would daydream after such sentence.
McDonald has written a long article, but it's extremely thoroughly engaging throughout. Also consider McDonald's work on Blind Self-Portraits. And here's a somewhat startling piece called "Face Substitution." Here is McDonald's website.Today is that time again when about 1.5% of the world will be watching a particular ball game in America, The Superbowl. Although Superbowl madness has been addressed on this forum, I'd like to put forward a couple of observations. The Superbowl is the culmination of the 20th century adaptation of sports to mass media. The packaging, production, and marketing of this one game is a major profit center based on what is essentially a sedentary activity. There are 22 players on the field, and 100,000,000 people watching, most in comfy chairs via television.The game play is nominally an hour long, but the coverage lasts many hours. This includes pre-game and post-game coverage, plus the three hours needed to watch the sixty-minute game. Worse than just sedentary, a predictable large fraction of the audience will be eating badly and drinking immoderately during the event. The advertising in all the media up to and during the event panders to and fosters this market segment. The message is clear: If you are not eating fried things and washing them down with booze, you are a weenie. If you are not buying these things for the family, you are not a good provider. So let's take a look at the activity itself. You have nearly two dozen buff young men in shiny tights periodically thrusting their bodies together to accomplish the explicit task of firmly holding a tapered cylinder with the goal of placing it repeatedly into the opponents end zone. The result of this "scoring" is brief solo dancing and many a manly fanny patted. What do I do on Superbowl Sunday evening? I go to a contradance. I spend the evening with a couple of dozen women in my arms, moving in rhythm and breathing hard. And the jocks in school called me gay.
This may not be the perfect forum for a review, but the film "3 Idiots" is about education versus training, science versus engineering, fear versus hubris (and the happy medium), life and death, love and despair, laughter and tears. And it has colorful Bollywood dance numbers, too!
I rented it on a whim, as it was billed as a movie about too-smart engineering students versus the educational system. I was puzzled when it began with English subtitles during the (Indian accented) English dialog. I remembered a 1990's PBS/BBC series on the English language, when some of the impenetrable-to-me accents of the U.K. had no subtitles, but the perfectly intelligible-to-me Cajun and Ebonic dialects did. But as the blend of Hindi and English became apparent, I saw the need.
I loved this movie. Once one gets into the esthetic swing of Bollywood productions, it makes perfect sense when serious issues become silly dance numbers, and all characters are played as borderline caricatures. One can observe the essential cultural differences between our familiar American dilute-Christian one-life-to-live and anyone-can-become-president attitude and the Indian institutionalized attitude that reincarnation is the only way to improve your lot except through extraordinary means.
Why I think this is appropriate to this forum is the take on education. The protagonist has a scientific mindset that is often at odds with engineering philosophy and even more with institutionalized education. The system of teaching to the test is questioned, as is the principle of square pegs hammered into round holes. Vocation versus avocation is central to this, and expounded toward the end.
The 3 Idiots - Official Trailer has embedding disabled, but preview is fun even without subtitles. You get the idea of how English and Hindi have merged in their culture.
I defy you to watch it and not have the songs "All izz well" and/or "Zoobi Doobi" stuck in your heads.