Ambrose & Elsewhere

I’m not a big Malcolm Gladwell fan, but maybe he was on to something.

You’ve probably seen something like this already…

I haven’t been a very reliable LiveJournalist lately: sorry about that. When I have words to deploy they have to go to Morlock and the werewolves. For an end of year summary, I’ll call on Ms. Quatro to rise and give us the gist, as it were.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it; happy Friday to all.

For some reason, the first song here (“Swinging London” by the Pretenders) represents the Saturnalia to me. I was at first dismayed that this was the only video of it on YouTube, then strangely pleased. Somehow, this reflects the true spirit of the Saturnalia in the Great Black Swamp. I especially liked the action shots where the guy holding the camera zooms in tight on the vinyl or swirls the lens around with the rotation of the EP (presumably so we can read the label, although I can’t). “Io, Saturnalia!” to those who celebrate, and “Io, Saturday!” to everyone.

Seen at rimrunner, a pretty good seasonal video: the Silent Monks sing Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus.

On the dubious premise that Everything is Better with Latin!™…

1. Nick is alive and well in Shanghai and my conniption-levels are dropping below the red line at last. Also, Skype is my new best friend.

2. “Everything is better with Latin!”™ Even the making of Iron Man as chronicled by the Dude himself.

3. Gnome Chomsky. It’s the visual that makes the joke.

1. On the Eve of St. Nick, my son Nick has set off for China where he’s going to present a paper at a professional conference. This freaks me out so much I’m not fully aware of how freaked out I am. But if I could put a number on it, the number would be very large.

2. I actually saw a copy of Blood of Ambrose on a shelf in a bookstore the other day. It would have totally freaked me out if I had not already been freaking out about Thing 1 (above).

3. Earlier this week, Nick and I attended a lecture by Larry Lessig, one of the founders of Creative Commons and of Change-Congress.org. It was less academic than I’d anticipated (in a good way) and much more entertaining. He made some great points about the way politics is done (and decent policy debate fails to get done) in this country, without falling into the left-vs-right culture-war stuff that stultifies our political discourse. Highly recommended, if the circus comes to a town near you. (Or to the interwebs: the talk was supposed to be released online under a CC license. But if it has been I haven’t been able to find it.)

I think what disappoints me about the Avatar aliens is that all this technology has been deployed to create an improved version of the same old man-in-a-rubber-suit effect. Why not make aliens which are impressive but distinctively nonhuman, like Anderson’s Ythrians? Or a beautiful environment which is nonetheless unsuitable for humans (e.g. Simak’s “Desertion” or Blish’s Seedling Stars). And those things were written generations ago. CGI is a pair of 7-league boots that filmmakers are using to take baby steps–even backward steps.

A happy Thanksgiving to my compatriots; a happy Thursday to all.