Pseudoprosoponic Fiction
2011-05-18
Imagine a world – call it Mundavia – in which the dominant genre of literature is one in which plots, dialogue, and setting can be freely invented, but all the characters have to be real people.
Vote splitting
2011-05-03
Vote splitting crucial : NDP strength swung Liberal votes to Tories
The first returns suggest the rising support for the NDP has drawn enough votes to allow the Tories to capture 13 seats perviously [sic] held by Liberals and one held by the Bloc Québé cois [sic].
Although the Greens saw their popular vote again fall well below its 2008 level, returns suggest they were helping Tories win or lead in 14 seats where their plurality was smaller than the number of Green votes.
Let’s perform an experiment.
Let’s pretend that, instead of there being the Liberals and the New Democrats, we had one party representing the left wing in this country. Call them the Liberal Democrats. Now, granted, there will be some voters who might not want to vote for the Liberal Democrats. (Maybe they don’t like Jack Layton’s moustache.) So let’s assume that, oh, 5 per cent of the Liberal Democrat vote bleeds away to the Tories on the right. While we’re at it, let’s assume that 5 per cent also bleeds to the Greens on the left.
[…]
That’s 31 ridings. Under this scenario, the Tories win 135 seats and the Liberal Democrats 168.
“Huh. Well, you never know”
2011-03-04
For the studios, a good new idea has become just too scary a road to travel. Inception, they will tell you, is an exceptional movie. And movies that need to be exceptional to succeed are bad business. “The scab you’re picking at is called execution,” says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). “Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they’re right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint.”
With that in mind, let’s look ahead to what’s on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children’s book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.
And no Inception.
Puck teasing
2011-01-28
The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease
But there was to be no life-changing climactic scene at my hockey game, no angry announcements by Au Revoire, no black roses thrown out on the ice, no outbursts or outings or murders. What happened was, when we came out from the locker room to start the third period he was simply, poof, gone from the stands, my friends and my coaches and my parents all none the wiser. I guess it makes sense — what could he have said, really, what could he have done, that wouldn’t have made him look like the bad guy, the predator, the creep, when in fact the real villain was me?
[…]
Isn’t that the ultimate blessing of the Internet? Sure, it lets you lie and deceive. But it also lets you confess, and draw a small community to your confession, and find, eventually, a clean, well-lighted place for your real self.
“This cannot possibly be right”
2010-11-03
Did somebody just try to buy the British government?
I have come to the absolute conclusion that foundation X [sic] is completely genuine and sincere and that it directly wishes to make the United Kingdom one of the principal points that it will use to disseminate its extraordinarily great wealth into the world at this present moment, as part of an attempt to seek the recovery of the global economy.
and yet, the National Post is still worse
2010-09-30
Reinstate Rick Salutin << Murray Dobbin's Blog
That the Globe would fire him is indicative of the final stage of the Canadian political and economic elite’s betrayal of the country’s traditions and values. It’s all just business now and anything that isn’t business – certainly anything that questions it’s “natural” dominance – is simply dispensable. I can just imagine the suits at the Globe having a brief conversation about Rick’s column: “By the way, why are still publishing Rick Salutin?” Long silence. “Rick who?” I wonder if any of these guys ever even read him. It reminds me of a Star Trek episode where a representative of a race completely dedicated to trade and commerce, looks at Captain Picard who is trying to engage him in civilized conversation and says “Why are we speaking?”
Indeed, why are we speaking?
via rabble.ca
Derivatives
2010-07-09
Johann Hari – How Goldman Sachs gambled with the world’s poor – and won
There are some smaller explanations that account for some of the price rise, but not all. It’s true the growing demand for biofuels was gobbling up much-needed agricultural land – but that was a gradual process that wouldn’t explain a violent spike. It’s true that oil prices increased, driving up the cost of growing and distributing food – but the evidence increasingly shows that wasn’t the biggest factor.
[…]
Then, through the 1990s, Goldman Sachs and others lobbied hard and the regulations were abolished. Suddenly, these contracts were turned into ‘derivatives’ that could be bought and sold among traders who had nothing to do with agriculture. A market in “food speculation” was born.
Metafilter discussion
New horizons in bullshitting
2010-05-20
Ex-Harvard student accused of living a lie – The Boston Globe
“I was just knocked silly by this,’’ said one Harvard professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, who likened Wheeler’s fabrications to a scenario from the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley.’’ “There’s something that’s pathological there. And it’s something that seems to me that needs care and clinical treatment, rather than incarceration.’’
This lacks the ring of truth
2010-04-26
Patents are bogus: another reason
2010-04-20
What If The Very Theory That Underlies Why We Need Patents Is Wrong?
[The paper] looks at the putative theory that innovation comes from a direct profit motive of a single corporation looking to sell the good in market, and for that to work, the company needs to take the initial invention and get temporary monopoly protection to keep out competitors in order to recoup the cost of research and development.
The problem is that while this is certainly true sometimes, in many, many, many other cases — it’s not the way it works at all.
