Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

Some pretty pictures, brought to you by science; the ten best sex scandals of the decade; and something by some heathen who doesn't like TV series in box-set form.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

The demise of public spaces; top ten stories you might have missed this year; in horror, why are poltergeists the last thing we're scared of ?

Must-Read Article

Bryce Edwards has a fantastic long post up on the divide between political parties. He points out that the traditional Left-Right divide is not as important as it once was, due to there existing a rough consensus on the big questions of how the Government interacts with the economy.

Edwards then points to other, post-materialist, distinctions, and argues that these are now the lines on which ideological battles are fought.

It's a boundlessly fascinating blog post, and I intend to be writing quite a bit on it over the next week. In the meanwhile, go over there and read it. It really is mandatory reading to anyone who wants to get an idea of what makes political parties tick.

Thoughts On New Moon

I went to New Moon—the second installment of the Twilight series—at the Embassy Theatre on the night after opening night. I must confess to an early moment of anxiety: the theatre was very full with an audience consisting largely of teenage girls who were there, let's be honest, to surrender to their hormones; I was afraid that my period would synch up.

Once the movie started, I was able to put such misogynistic fears aside; here, then, are some thoughts on the movie, given in my characteristically unordered fashion. There are spoliers.

My main impression was of a movie that had to struggle for commercial reasons not to be itself. It begins with our vampire friend, Edward Cullen, meditating on Romeo and Juliet and suicide. This can be fantastically dark stuff, but I can see how it could ferment into box-office poison if left to develop on its own. So it isn't, and as a result, the major plot point—a "suicide by vampire magistrates" attempt—seemed weirdly unmotivated.

What we have is a vampire, Cullen, who cannot bear the thought of life without our heroine, Bella Swan, yet who refuses to grant her immortality by turning her into a vampire. Swan points this out, repeatedly (monotonously, even), but Cullen seems unable to grasp the fact that mortal people die.

Cullen's reluctance to grant immortality stems from his beliefs that (1), vampires are soulless, and (2), vampires are damned. How one squares this theological circle is left unstated. Twilight is many things, but a coherent meditation on issues left over from the zombie wars_PDF is not one of them.

Also included, mainly to cater to those sections of the audience wishing to perv at a non-pale—and non-moody, non-manipulative, non-creepy—boy, is Jacob and his friends, who just happen to be werewolves.

The werewolves have some uneasy peace going down with the vampires, and they serve the film by providing conflict and denim cut-offs. I disapprove of denim cut-offs as a general principle, and while New Moon puts the case for them about as strongly as I've seen, I remain unconvinced.

I was amused at the audience's reaction to the film's big cliffhanger ending: a proposal from Edward to Bella. There was a wave of incomprehension. Here, the culture disconnect between Twilight's Mormon author and kiwi teen audiences was at its most profound: rather a lot of people in the audience regarded this ending as unsatisfactory, whereas I'm sure that, as written, the proposal was meant to be culmination of the Cullen-Swan relationship.

I gather the impression that to a heathen audience, sex is the only acceptable culmination to a relationship, at least in fiction. (I'm reminded of a year-opening Man comic strip in Salient once, depicting all the regular protaganists in post-coital relaxion: one of them wonders what the strip will consist of now that relationship development can't be used to advance the plot.)

I'm not making any comment or judgement here: I'm just pointing out that even in fiction, cultural divides exist.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

How crosswords by different people can look alike; in praise of deviance; living with coal.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

Those crazy Aztecs; the wonderful adventures of Low Impact Man; the hype about interdisciplinary research.

This Is The Future Of The Labour Party

I wasn't going to blog this; I've already vented elsewhere. But I'm still irritated.

Charles Chauvel's post yesterday on Red Alert annoyed me a great deal.

Basically, he's just recycling a retarded beat-up from earlier in the year, when he castigated a National Party staffer for a perfectly sensible Facebook update, going so far as to fling out a press release. Apparently, Chauvel was so delighted at how clever that trick was, that he decided to repeat it. Yesterday, it was an ACT Party staffer in the firing line.

The staffer's grave offence? Making a topical joke:

"[] is booked for 8 nights in the Abel Tasman National Park...before Minister Brownlee rips it ip."

Taking offence on behalf of a bunch of trees, Chauvel decided to politicize a dude's Facebook page. Again.

When criticized, he offered the following defence, which has the impressive quality of being both lame and priggish:

I just got back to my office after working to repeal – successfully – the provocation defence. That matters a lot more to me than any of this, I have to say.

While I'm glad Chauvel fought the good fight on provocation—and I'm still under the impression that he's one of the good guys in Parliament—, this is just dumb. If he didn't think some dude's Facebook status update was important, why did he publicize it and try to score political points off of it?

Besides that, this is a terrible precedent to set. We now know Chauvel has "5 different facebook friends" spying on Parliamentary staffers, hoping to sniff out something—anything—to get offended by. This type of crap has two effects: first, it'll put good people off Parliament jobs, which are important; second, it gives the green light to all sorts of people with boundary issues to go trawling through people's internet trash.

Let's end this in a fun way, shall we?

From now on, Facebook-stalking for the purpose of digging for garbage from which to take umbrage shall be known as "pulling a Chauvel". This is more specific than its old name, "passive-aggressive bullshit".

Three sections of this Venn diagram don't have names yet: please suggest some.

UPDATE: Jake Quinn's take is here.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

Are simulations the new clinical trials?; where do movie-poster blurbs come from?; you, personally, are responsible for the collapse of society.

If Parliament Was Turned Into A Movie

...who would you cast?

The rules of the game:

• Assign an actor to an MP.

• Give at least two roles played by that actor that make you think he or she is suitable to portray that particular MP.

• Make some brief comments explaining your choices.

Here's a couple to get you started.

Tony Ryall

I nominate Hugo Weaving.

Similar roles: V (V for Vendetta); Smith (The Matrix); Megatron (Transformers).

Rationale: these are strongly goal-oriented characters who have a high tolerance for collateral damage; while they draw much ire from the opponents, under no circumstances is it a good idea to fuck with them.

Trevor Mallard

I nominate James Caan.

Similar roles: Sonny Corleone (The Godfather); Ed Deline (Las Vegas).

Rationale: these characters are totally loyal and somewhat prone to violent outbursts; they're not terribly big on the whole "remorse" thing, even if they're in the wrong; they are mighty useful attack dogs. I'd say don't fuck with them, but don't even look at them funny seems like better advice.

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Please nominate more in the comments.

9/10 In 29s

Disaster!

I pushed too hard on the speed thing, and as a result didn't stop to do a proper brainscan on question five.

The quiz is here.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

T-Rex perhaps wasn't so scary, after all; weird and wonderful lifeforms; the feeble critiques made by capitalism's petty detractors.

Assorted Links From My Internet Travels

Are you an adult?; pylons: saviours of wildlife; the population of Malthusians is getting out of control.

Many apologies for cribbing that last link from ALDaily; it was too good to pass up.