Please, please, somebody in the ML community, PLEASE attend the auditions and report back to us. This seems too awesome to be missed.
John @60: Most of the deaths reported in Mexico are adults aged 20 to 50.
Rikibeth@59: It isn't yet clear how quickly death occurs, though. We do have a few advances on 1918 that might help at least a bit; various immune-suppressant medications and intubation spring to mind. The reports out of Mexico don't quite sound like that 1918 degree of "couldn't get to the hospital on time," to me.
Anyone else have better data?
I asked the same question on my blog about a year ago. ^_^
My theory is that the horror trope du jour is the a function of the zeitgeist for what unknown society collectively fears most at the time. When we were venturing into space exploration, it was aliens. When we were entering into a highly-technological age, it was robots.
Now that we're confronting biotech and its implications, it's zombies, with a side order of not-very-suppressed apocalyptic anxiety.
Oh, my mistake, I'm conflating two separate things, here -- Nader on the ballot with the Independent party, and the Greens only running one candidate here. But that one candidate is McKinney for president. Sorry!
Chad @5: I love those machines, too. I'm going to be very sad the day I show up to vote and find they've been swapped out.
Out here in Nassau County, we didn't even have to wait in a line; in and out in about five minutes, including time for the sweet old lady to find my name to sign in the register. I'm assuming the lines will kick in when all of the Manhattan commuters get home tonight.
I was surprised and pleased to see that the Right to Life party has dropped off the ballot here, and surprised and disappointed to see that the Working Families party, Conservative party, and Republican party fielded most of the same candidates (except, of course, for Obama.) And a little blue to see that the Green party's only candidate up was Nader. Sigh.
Today, to channel all of the nervous fidgeting, I'm going to: work on my NaNo novel; go grocery shopping, bake pumpkin cookies, set up a weather station with my first grader, shred office papers, and fold a bunch of laundry. It's too bad this is probably going to leave me with hours and hours of time to refresh 538.
Thank you, Patrick, for finally explaining to me what the heck was up with all of those small parties that seemed to run identical candidates to the big parties. It seemed to me like an exercise in futility. I've been wondering for years (but obviously not enough to go and find out for myself!)
Amusingly enough, ARGfest, the annual get-together for the alternate reality gaming community, was held in Boston this summer. We'd hoped to get a representative from the Boston PD to speak to us and open a channel of communication about pervasive gaming and/or viral marketing, but alas, it fell through. I'd really have loved to hear what advice they in particular would have offered us.
So sorry you're all going through this. May Teresa's recovery but swift and uneventful, and may she live to tell this story with a laugh many dozens of years from now.
Thanks for posting this, Jim. It's an excellent metaphor for the creative life, and I can already tell it's going to stick with me for a long, long time.
Wakboth @26: Hmm, that's an excellent point. Thank you for making it!
Separately, on MeFi: I find it a very useful community. It helps me to work out how people can arrive at very different, reasoned points of view on many, many subjects. It's worth the price of admission for that alone. The signal to noise is fairly high (though not as high as here) and even the noise is educational in its own way.
It might not be right for you, but that doesn't make it (or its participants) a festering barnacle on the face of the internet.
The interesting phenomenon here, to me, is how not how quickly people are willing to jump to conclusions with little to no information, but instead how passionately they will defend those conclusions.
I guess if I were running BoingBoing I'd be pleased that I'd succeeded in creating such intense emotional engagement. People don't get this worked up over stuff they don't care much about.
"Well, yeah - the fact that water is *far* more abundant on this planet than any sort of burnable fuel."
Yes, this is most certainly true; but water is also very poorly distributed, and there are places in the world where water scarcity is a meaningful problem even today... and they're not all in the deserts of Africa, either. (I'm thinking of all the construction in Las Vegas with certifications of 20-year water supply. And what happens after THAT, one might ask?)
That said, I'm with you that it's probably a non-issue due to those important missing details. Though it remains an interesting mental exercise either way!
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, right? My first thought was along the lines of "Well, since corn ethanol makes people starve, let's do them quicker and dry them out instead." I'm having trouble working out the life cycle here, though, and trying to see if the end game here is massive drought or if I'm just missing smething.
So yeah, I'm suspicious but I yearn for it to be the good thing it looks like: Cheap, abundant energy. Yum.
I really hope this gets widespread press notice; that more coverage out there, the more pieces to try to put together how it works and what the catches or nasty side effects might be.
The part about this that really resonated for me was at the end,
that little morsel about grasping every opportunity to transform a
passive experience into an active one. I'm surprised at how much this
discussion has focused on television as it used to be, and not
television as it's becoming.
I could just be obsessed, but forgive me, this is what I do. The
future of entertainment is a profoundly exciting thing, and yes, it
does include consuming, creating, and sharing, just like the esteemed
Mr. Shirky says. It's alternate reality games and cross-media narrative
and pervasive gaming. We're taking the passive experiences of
traditional entertainment and encouraging you to kick the tires of the
story world and watch the whole thing shake a little.
The thing he doesn't talk about, that I think is a related
phenomenon, is one of convergence. Like Leah @ #66, for a lot of
viewers, that old-fashioned passive viewing experience, just sitting on
your couch by yourself being fed the show, is no longer sufficient. You
want a website to visit; you want the blogs of the lead characters, you
want their email addresses, you want to know what happened between
characters offscreen. You don't want to just hear about the secret,
pivotal government documents, you want to read them. It's happening in
television and film, and it's seeping into novels, too.
When I think about it too much, I *still* get a little light-headed
and a lot overexcited. Searching for the net-native literature is a
heady business.
Jim @ #10: Here's a link to the SFWA telling you what it does to help its members: http://sfwa.org/org/services.htm
It's not so much different, really, than the work of other unions.
I'm just loving the commentary here about the media flattening
complex problems into binary choices, and the URL: 010101.html. :)
OK, how's this one?
Misunderstood teen teams up with her genius little brother to save their father and the universe from an evil disembodied brain.
Oooh, oooh:
Girl saved from oppressive family by befriending an intelligent and telepathic horse. Her special gift of empathy gives her high status, and she eventually finds true love and saves the kingdom. Also schoolyard bullying.
I really loved those books when I was in high school. They haven't held up for me, though.
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