Books, Movies, Music

[Update: Keith pointed out that my small disclaimer at the end isn’t clear enough. This post is copied, stolen, cut and pasted in its entirety from Keith’s blog, ISTP Dad. I was glad to learn of the story, and this was meant to be ironic and funny.]

An editorial in the Washington Post is explicit about a topic close to my heart: students think plagiarism is fine, and teachers (high school? college?) realize that there’s not much point in assigning papers if they expect 100% original work.

…the educational system needs to acknowledge what the paper is today: more of a work product that tests very particular skills — the ability to synthesize and properly cite the work of others — and not students’ knowledge, originality and overall ability.

The comments on this editorial are worth a read as well. Not everybody agrees with the sentiment.

(Cut and pasted verbatim from ISTP Dad.)

Bill Gurstelle thought the exploding balloons were as funny as I did, and now I understand why: the contributing editor of Make magazine knows his way around improvised munitions.

He also knows YouTube videos of oppressed geeks getting back at The Man with potato guns is a good marketing ploy for his audience. Whoosh Boom Splat appears to be his latest book. Amazon doesn’t let me look inside, but how can you go wrong with projects like these?

• The Jam Jar Jet — the simple pulse jet engine that roars
• The Elastic Zip Cannon — a membrane-powered shooter that packs a wallop
• The Mechanical Toe — a bungee-powered kicking machine
• The Vortex Launcher — a projectile shooter that uses air bullets for ammunition
• The Clothespin Snap Shooter — the PG-17 version of a clothespin gun that fires fiery projectiles
• The Architronito — the steam-powered cannon conceived by Leonardo da Vinci

So, is 300 really the “torrent of blood and awesomeness” that Matt says it is (and the preview supports), or does it run out of steam as NPR’s film critic, Kenneth Turan, suggests?

Unless you love violence as much as a spartan, Quentin Tarantino, or a video game playing teenage boy, you will not be endlessly fascinated. The problem is that the visual panache that made Snyder an acclaimed director of commercials works better for 30 second spots than two hour features.

Snyder explained his work to Wired Magazine a few weeks ago.

For now I’m stuck reading up on the Battle of Thermopylae and generally being amused at all the derivative layers in this story: Snyder’s movie, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, based on a 1962 movie, based on Herodutus’ telling of a 2500 year old event.

No sooner do I lay down a rant about how bad Sprint WiFi is than do they run an ad telling us how great their service is. Well, not only that, but they promise to save us from “Connectile Dysfunction.”

Angela Natividad described it best:

It’s hard to position broadband ads. You can be like Earthlink, which kind of laughs at the whole idea of marketing in general, and you can be like Comcast, which takes the easy way out with off-colour humour. Or you can make up a disease, kind of like Microsoft, and propose that your product will in fact cure it.

There’s a fine art to this tactic. A good rule of thumb: the closer you can get your made-up disease to sound like a sexual disorder, the better. Maybe people will get confused and mistakenly believe you could solve both problems, not just (the invented) one. Cute, Sprint. Cute.

It would all be chuckle-worthy enough if — as Zach and Matt pointed out when the shared the ad with me — if I hadn’t just complained about how lousy their Wifi service is.

The above circulated a while ago, but I post it today to recognize this special ALA Midwinter edition of Casual Fridays. And while I’m not suggesting libraries will or should become 21st century dance halls, Lichen’s title, “1.0 -> 2.0, the video” has some resonance here.

And on the theme of music videos that tell stories comes Miranda’s Yo Te Dire, which I like both because it’s funny and because I’m instantly attracted to foreign pop culture.

Harry Shearer and Judith Owen are performing their holiday sing-a-long at the concert hall at the Society for Ethical Culture in NYC with guests TMBG and others. It’s a go on Friday, but why can’t these things happen closer to me? Actually, maybe they should all come to Warren afterwards.

Props to Tim for offering linking me to a remix of Feist’s Mushaboom. I like the original better, but, well, I’m also a fan of remixes.

While looking up Bonobo — who is soon to have a new album out — I discovered not only some videos of his tunes, but also a path leading to videos from other Nijna Tune artists, including this goodie from Kid Koala.

Hop to it, dogs. Peer an eye at thar video and argue not w’the cap’n:

Tuesday September 19th 2006 is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Talk Like a Pirate Day only comes once a year (on September 19th), this year it falls on a Tuesday. If you’re not ready yet, you can learn more about this international holiday on the About TLAPD page or practice some phrases from the PiratePhrases page. After all, you don’t want to be handed the BlackSpot when the holiday is over!

Geography Made Easy : Being An Abridgement Of The American Universal Geography, Containing Astronomical Geography, Discovery And General Description Of America, General View Of The United States, Particular Accounts Of The United States Of America, And Of All The Kingdoms, States And Republics In The Known World, In Regard To Their Boundaries, Extent, Rivers, Lakes, Mountains, Productions, Population, Character, Government, Trade, Manufactures, Curiosities, History, &c. : To Which Is Added, An Improved Chronological Table Of Remarkable Events, From The Creation To The Present Time, Illustrated With Maps Of The Countries Described : Calculated Particularly For The Use And Improvement Of Schools And Academies In The United States Of America

is it really the longest book title ever? i don’t know.

I’m a sap. I can’t help but get choked up when I read or hear Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry The V.

eHow tells me that “Saint Crispin’s Day is a good day to honor lives well lived, beliefs held dear and shoes well made.” But Steve Denning calls the speech a “magical, linguistic sleight of hand,” and warns us:

…it may work for a battle, or even several battles. But the danger in real life is =that it may not be sustainable. It unravels when people begin to question: what’s the point?

Perhaps even more so today, when the justification of war is a often a matter of serious debate and question, the US Army finds that the soldier’s will to fight and kill stems mainly from the soldiers’ interest in surviving and having their buddies survive, rather than in any belief in the purpose of the war. The story of who we are as a fighting unit is more powerful than: what on earth are we doing here, shooting and killing people?

Will pressed Joe, asking him to name his top ten favorite books. Joe pressed back, saying such lists were ridiculous, but still, sometime later he emailed with the following:

Okay, here are the books that got to me at certain points in my life. Not sure I would view them all the same now, but this is a list of sorts.

I found this an interesting challenge, and of course impossible…I have more lists but I stuck to novels…

Top ten novels by female authors

• The Golden Notebook
• Cross Creek
• We Took to the Woods
• Pride and Prejudice
• Member of the Wedding
• Secret History
• Middlemarch
• Song of the Lark
• The Fountainhead
• The Good Earth

Top ten novels by male authors

• War and Peace
• A River Runs Through It
• Crime and Punishment
• As I Lay Dying
• Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest
• The Magus
• The Deptford Triology
• Lonesome Dove
• A Fan’s Notes
• Light Years