John Rodgers posted about his experience of trying to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy for the cinema:

[Because the themes of science fiction tend to be about the present day...] it's almost impossible to write about the future in any effective/meaningful way.

I faced that challenge, and had it beat me like a red-headed step-child, when I took a swing at adapting Foundation a few years ago.

(You hear those two sounds? The first was about half the science fiction fans on the planet fainting at the prospect of one of the writers of Transformers adapting Isaac Asimovs' Holy Trilogy. The other was the sound of the remaining science fiction fans lighting torches.)

I was partnered with Shekhar Kapur — who has a blog now, of all things. Huh. This seemed like a pretty spiffy idea. He was just off Elizabeth, and the canny executive's thinking was that the future, to a great degree, is a costume drama in the opposite direction. That is, there'd be lots of things that need explaining, totally different political and social situations the audience must understand instantly, and quite a lot different wardrobes and thingamabobs the audience should find fascinating rather than ridiculous.

The line between Blackadder II and Elizabeth is finer than you think. [...]

I wish they'd got to make this film: just as long as Will Smith didn't end up playing The Mule.

[Via The Sideshow]

It's true: The Onion truly is America's Finest News Source:

BATON ROUGE, LA—In a breakthrough study that contradicts decades of understanding about the nature of alligator–drunkard relations, Louisiana State University researchers have concluded that people's drunkenness does not impair the ancient reptiles' ability to inflict enormous physical harm. [...]

Good to know…

[Via Shakesville, via Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal]

Ursula K. Le Guin, inspired by Ruth Franklin on Micheal Chabon:

Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs — somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly… but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There, again, the heavy, soggy sound. But it hadn't rained for weeks, it was only sultry, the air close, with a cloying hint of mildew or rot, sweet rot, like very old finiocchiona, or perhaps liverwurst gone green. There, again — the slow, squelching, sucking steps, and the foul smell was stronger. Something was climbing her stairs, coming closer to her door. As she heard the click of heel bones that had broken through rotting flesh, she knew what it was. But it was dead, dead! God damn that Chabon, dragging it out of the grave where she and the other serious writers had buried it to save serious literature from its polluting touch, the horror of its blank, pustular face, the lifeless, meaningless glare of its decaying eyes! What did the fool think he was doing? [...]

[Via jwgh, in a comment at James Nicoll's LiveJournal]

Courtesy of Five Acres with a View:

A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire engine with lights flashing and a wailing siren at full blast zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat next to the driver of the fire engine was a Dalmatian. The children, never having seen a dog in a fire engine before, started to discuss what the dog might be for.

"They use him to keep crowds back," said one youngster.

"No," said another, "he's just for good luck."

Several more ideas were put forward and an animated discussion soon ensued when a little girl who had sat quietly throughout the discussion and deep in thought finally brought the argument to a close…

"They use the dog," she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrant."

Best. Willow Spider. Sculpture. Ever!

I'll grant you there's a certain attraction to the notion of having an email client that shows you sharks eating your spam, but I really don't think 3D Mailbox is for me.

Think of 3D Mailbox as email meets videogame. Or as an email metaverse. Do you love videogames? Are you passionate about email? Then 3D Mailbox is for you. It's e-mail for the visual generation.

Yes, I'm passionate about email. That is, I care enough to use an email program that shows me my email without wasting screen real estate and CPU cycles rendering each email as an avatar.

3D Mailbox turns your emails into people: In the first level, Miami Beach, beautiful models represent good email, and goofy Sumo guys represent spam. Chill with your email poolside and in private cabanas, and feed your spam to the sharks! The beautiful locales and Brazilian background music make you feel like you're on vacation any time of the day.

Two points:

1. I could see some point to the idea of assigning each email an avatar if it was possible to map the sender's features and body type onto the email's avatar, rather than simply showing a generic bikini babe/sumo wrestler for each email. I'm not saying I'd use the program, but it would at least be a potentially helpful enhancement.
2. The least they could to is assign different avatars according to the type of spam: a man burning piles of banknotes for 419 Scammers, a nasty-looking germ for emails with a virus attached, or a generic avatar wearing a mask for spam with faked sender information. (Let's not get into how you'd represent spam advertising porn or certain types of … ah … chemical enhancement.)

In the second level, set at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), every email is a Boeing 747! [...]

I dread to think what the equivalent of the spam-eating shark is in this level. Surface-to-Air missiles?

[Via Bifurcated Rivets]

The trailer for the film adaptation of the first instalment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy looks promising: a cast to die for, all sorts of natty special effects, what looks to be an epic adventure story.

I haven't read the novels, so I have no idea what the trailer might suggest about the film's fidelity to the source material,¹ but the trailer has piqued my interest to the point where I might just be tempted to venture into a cinema this December.

¹ Not that a faithful adaptation is always the best approach, but on general principles I think that if a producer has bought the rights to a novel they ought to try to make the film a decent reflection of the source material. Otherwise, the end result is in the lap of the gods: sometimes you get Blade Runner, sometimes you get Starship Troopers², and sometimes you get I, Robot.

² Which I thought owed a lot more to Verhoeven than it did to Heinlein. (That was probably a good thing.)

I thought I'd posted about this article on the US approach to naming military campaigns before, but I can't find the post so perhaps I just remember reading it a while ago:

Shortly after word spread among key military leaders that President Bush had ordered the invasion of Panama, Lieutenant General Thomas Kelly, Operations Officer on the Joint Staff, received a call from General James Lindsay, Commander-in-Chief (CINC), Special Operations Command. His call did not concern some last-minute change in the invasion plan; rather, it concerned a seemingly insignificant detail of the operation: its name. "Do you want your grandchildren to say you were in Blue Spoon?" he asked. Lieutenant General Kelly agreed that the name should be changed. After hanging up the phone, General Kelly discussed alternatives with his deputy for current operations, Brigadier General Joe Lopez.

"How about Just Action?" Kelly offered.

"How about Just Cause?" Lopez shot back.

So was born the recent trend in nicknaming operations. Since 1989, major US military operations have been nicknamed with an eye toward shaping domestic and international perceptions about the activities they describe. [...]

[Via Qwghlm]

The Hide-a-Pod:

You love your iPod. It’s a great product. You take it everywhere and you use it every day. But owning a device so desirable and fashionable as an iPod comes with one major drawback … the iPod has become a target for theft. So how can you take your iPod out of your home without fear?

Welcome to the Anti-Social [...]

Cheeky.

[Via atypicalreview]

From Overheard in New York:

Yuppie customer: Can we have the tasting menu?
Waitress: You eat everything?
Yuppie customer: Yeah, sure.
Waitress: Gizzard?
Yuppie customer: I'll eat the asshole if you put a tasty sauce on it.
Waitress: We don't serve assholes here.
Yuppie customer: This is New York. How do you stay in business?

–Japanese restaurant

One of Neil Gaiman's readers spotted a neat coincidence:

I just realized this morning that the weekend Stardust opens is also the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, one of the most active times for "shooting stars" of the year; so it wouldn't be unheard of at all for people to see the movie, walk out of the theater, and actually see a shooting star themselves.

Was the opening planned that way (if it was, this is an incredibly cool bit of marketing that I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned yet), or was this just an amazing coincidence?

It's an amazing coincidence. But now I've told people, maybe it'll be a key wossname in the marketing strategy, in those parts of America where you can still see the stars.

Handsoap:

This is actual soap.
Shaped like little hands!
Each 'hand' is hand made.
Wash your hands with hands.

You need to visit the site and see the photo of the product to fully appreciate how bizarre it is.

[Via Geekologie]

I haven't done one of these posts in a while.

• Three from Kathleen Connally: Intercloud Lightning, Pig Wallow, and Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) Drying Its Wings.
• Andy Bell's Red Light.
• Two from Trey Ratcliff: Heart of Satan – What it looks like when fireworks explode inside of a storm cloud over a river (answer: spectacular!) and Twisted inside the Fiber.
• Sam Javanrouh's Red Pencil.
• A delicious kitten from Cute Overload.
• Ugly Overload brings us a fish who knows his place and Equinophilia.
• Sri Lanke, Pollonaruwa by Luisa Puccini.
• Vikram Singh's shadow. (NB: possibly NSFW.)
• Silence by Monika Brand.
• Passing Phad.
• A Snowy Paddock in Craftsbury, Vermont.

Beware: once you start reading the stories of bizarre behaviour collected at My Crazy Roommate you may find yourself losing large chunks of time as you trawl the archives.

See, for example, From Dr. Bhatia:

When I was in third year of medicine, I saw my roommate (let's call him MD) lying on his cot with his back towards me and having spasms. Concerned that he was having a seizure, I called his name out.

Me: MD, you okay, man?

MD: Uhhhn

(Repeat the above 2-3 times)

Then MD shouted: AM SHAGGING MAN. JUST SHUT THE F*** UP.

I went quiet.

Then MD produced his masterpiece. It was a foot long yellow colored stick-like shabby thing that he held when he turned.

Me: What's that?

D: My shagger

Me: What's a SHAGGER !!!!!

MD: It's the yellow shoe-shine cloth I daily shag into.

Me: But why is it so stiff, standing on its own?

MD: I've been doing in it for 3 years Now. Maybe now I should wash it.

P.S. He had not washed it when I was in 5th year also.

[Via Nerve Scanner Blog]

Matt Gardner has posted another of his X-Men parodies, X-Men: Phoenix Season. Very good indeed.

See previous comments on Gardner's work here, here, here and here.

[Via Ice_Cold_Emma_Frost, posting at Comic Book Resources Forums]

"How hard could it be to administer a handful of internal users writing a handful of blogs?" If only he knew:

It was about frickin’ time — Rob had finally landed himself a promotion. Technically, it was more an "absorption of responsibilities" than anything else, but the important thing was that his new role as "Global Editor" offered an excellent ROR (Return On Résumé). Really, how hard could it be to administer a handful of internal users writing a handful of blogs?

The previous Global Editor had left abruptly, and no one was really sure why. Some say he was fired, others say he just stopped coming in, and still others say he was committed. Fortunately for Rob, the previous editor left behind some extensive process documentation…

Anyone who has ever complained about the vagaries of WordPress/Movable Type/Drupal/Blogger again will suddenly feel much better after reading about the hoops Rob had to jump through. Rob would have been better off using carrier pigeons or semaphore to distribute his users' content…

The Sphinx observatory enjoys a heck of a view:

At an amazing 3,571 metres, the Sphinx observatory at Swiss Alps is the highest-altitude construction in Europe. The Sphinx building and observation terrace stand 117 metres above the Jungfraujoch-Top of Europe.

The observatory looks so tiny, so fragile; clinging onto the edge of an alpine peak, waiting for a strong gust to send it plunging back to ground level.

In 1994 DEC made this video to tell their customers about the potential of this new-fangled World Wide Web.

I'd almost forgotten just how basic sites looked in the early years of the web; it's no wonder that I used to think back then that there was still a chance that gopher might be a viable alternative to the web.

I wonder if someone will be looking back in 2020 at one of today's promotional videos – say, for the iPhone or Leopard – and thinking about how primitive they looked. I certainly hope so.

[Via Fimoculous.com]

John Henley writes in the Guardian's diary column:

Bless the Mail on Sunday, which we've only just got around to reading, but hey. The first two missives on its effortlessly readable letters page seem, if we're not mistaken, to be calling for the return of capital punishment as a suitable deterrent to suicide bombers. Are we alone in spotting what some might conceivably call a fatal flaw in this particular proposition?

[Via Roy Greenslade]

33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names:

1. AGLET – The plain or ornamental covering on the end of a shoelace.
2. ARMSAYE – The armhole in clothing.
3. CHANKING – Spat-out food, such as rinds or pits.
4. COLUMELLA NASI – The bottom part of the nose between the nostrils.
5. DRAGÉES – Small beadlike pieces of candy, usually silver-coloured, used for decorating cookies, cakes and sundaes.

Good to know…

[Via LinkMachineGo]