Fandom: The Golden Girls, The Lion King, Courage the Cowardly Dog
“”OHHHHHH! I am so excited to see Simba and Courage. I do hope that he and The Golden Girls are okay,” Muriel gushed in excitement. “Well, it is their stupid, stinking idea for them to be transformed into lions just so they could experience the movie for themselves,” Eustace griped in a tart, growly, exasperated tone.”
I can’t comment on the other golden girls but I know that upon the heat death of the universe, two things will remain.
One is a collection of masses of dead stars and cold, lifeless planets which will likely continue to expand farther and farther away from each other.
The other is Betty White.
Seriously now that chick’s like 280 years old now and she’s still not retired.
Anonymous asked:
Would you mind giving a quick run-through of the Ken Penders fallout, for those less educated on the subject (i.e. me and maybe others)?
Alright I’ll try to be concise about it as possible and not let my personal feelings on the man get in the way. Under the Read More for those interested.
I can sum it up for you in like 5 words: “Ken Penders Unlocked Bighead Mode”.
I Return with More Links
It has been a rather long time since I posted anything of any great import to this blog. Having finished up my vacationing (and before that, papers and assignments to be graded before the closing of the semester), I think it is high time to return to this as well.
First up, apparently there’s going to be a new site for games journalism out there. Here’s an argument by Whistling Fish about why this may not mean much change. The argument may seem familiar to some of you readers. I think it’s a very good one.
Secondly, if you’re not following Ta-Nehisi Coates, you should probably fix that immediately. His articles have been making the rounds a lot, and for good reason. He’s been making a few takedowns on the popularity of Ron Paul as a political candidate, but his somewhat older article on what he calls “muscular empathy” is a good read. Read it.
He’s also had a couple other articles that deal with the use of drones in our military engagements. See, for example, this article here. I suppose it almost goes without saying that I favor drones over ground troops for military intervention. The fact that they may create civilian casualties seems to miss a point to me — so too can (and do) actual people serving in our ground forces for a number of different reasons, such as poor decision making (shoot first, ask questions later, as a few other commenters say) and, yes, even blatant racism/ethnicism. Frankly, there is no way to avoid it in a war of any real scale.
So I think anyone who is particularly opposed to the targeting of civilians in these drone strikes ought then to be opposed to war in the general sense. (But even then, on a case-by-case basis I can see justification for war. Will more civilians die without intervention than with? It’s a sub-optimal solution for a world with too many problems.)
Still, I can certainly see why people would think that this sort of distance would make going to war seem less morally reprehensible — after all, we’re playing with these robots in someone else’s backyard. Why should we care what happens to theirs? We won’t have to clean it up. Even if we have lots of drones to send out, the production (and potential loss in combat) of these drones represents a large economic cost that could also be spent manufacturing more useful things for us here at home. As long as we’re going to war for the sake of our own self-interest (perhaps, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary when examined form larger scales, we might be able to turn a profit through this engagement!) we may as well use the manufacturing facilities to build stuff that more directly improves our quality of life.
The comments on the article are also worth reading in general, and also detail a few other points I haven’t made but are also important. You should probably read this. (Such as the fact that a drone strike is more likely to have more people serving as witnesses to it — although this has the potential for better error-checking, there’s definitely a good post waiting to be made about issues of collective responsibility. That, however, will be for another day!)
Everything I know about classical music I learned from Bugs Bunny.
Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, etc embedded within me the themes and motifs of some of the great classical works. It wasn’t until I started actually listening to classical music and opera that I realized how much of it I already knew — buried deep.
It gives me a much greater respect for both the music and the cartoons: the music’s ability to remain universal and the cartoons’ ability to fuse that music onto you at a young age. It is possible to feel nostalgia for a piece of music composed in the 19th century.
I made a playlist on Spotify of classical music that has been featured prominently in great cartoons.
If you don’t know much about classical music or opera, or enjoy it but never took the time to immerse yourself, I think this playlist is a great opportunity to begin. As you listen to it, I think you’ll find the music eerily familiar. And outside of the context of Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny, you’ll gain a new appreciation for this music. You’ll learn where this music comes from and who composed it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Here’s the track list for those of you without Spotify or if you live in some foreign land with strange musical restrictions:
- Il Barbiere di Siviglia: Overture by Rossini
- Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor by Tchaikovsky
- Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, und ein Abend in Wien: Overture by Suppé
- Die Fledermaus: Overture by Strauss
- Il Bargbiere di Siviglia: Largo al Factotum by Rossini
- Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor by Liszt
- Tales from the Vienna Woods by Strauss
- The Blue Danube by Strauss
- Carmen: Overture by Bizet
- Peer Gynt Suite No. 1: I. Morgenstemning by Grieg
- Die Walkure: Act III Scene 1: Walkurenritt by Wagner
- Guillaume Tell: Overture by Rossini
Very nice; I’m always in favor of getting people interested in the classics. Everyone ought to take a listen if they’re not familiar with these.
HOWEVER, you included the first part of the Peer Gynt Suite but didn’t also include In the Hall of the Mountain King? For shame!
They’ve really captured my sophisticated side in this image, created by Glen Brogan for the upcoming Sonic Generation art show.
The show, where you can see this image and others like opens on the 2nd of December at Brave New Worlds in Philadelphia, PA at 6PM; it’ll be showing for the rest of the month.
Insightful article; a strong reminder that any woman is far, far more than whatever red letter may be sewn onto her shirt.
My main criticism? The matter of defining a woman as “slut” or similar also hinges on taking a certain definition of “sex”. Even sex itself is a very murky subject and extremely difficult to objectively define — although the article mentions “broken hymen” specifically, there are obviously lots of other ways to have sex. And given that sexual climax doesn’t even require genital contact in all cases (to my understanding, at least), do we draw the line at some level of arousal irrespective of genital contact? Even beyond insults levied at sexually active women, the definition of “sexually active” strikes me as a sliding standard.
It does however echo much more nicely a point that I wasn’t as interested in discussing in my commentary of the Kotaku link; balance must be made in how we respond to the objectification of women through what the article calls “porn culture”. If our actions create an overall sex-negative atmosphere, then they are counterproductive.
This is one of a number of bloggers criticizing a recent article in the rather high-impact journal Nature. Not only is said article barely — if at all — connected to actual scientific research, it’s insanely demeaning to women under the guise of being “satirical”. This post is a good one as even more than just hanging onto a view like, “This really isn’t funny, I’m personally very offended,”* explains how and why many women (and men) in the field are distressed by this, and how it is an implicit lack of acceptance within the field rather than some baseline aptitude that drives women away from science. If the article in question is to be satire, it must satirize its own existence somehow; it does not.
This is not something a journal as high-impact as Nature should be publishing. So much for professionalism.
*Though a perfectly valid viewpoint, the response from those who aren’t offended is often of the form, “Well, it’s obviously false, just a dumb joke,” which seems to me a case of missing the point of the criticism entirely.
