Savage Popcorn

Coffee Shorts have just added the first animation to their network, and it’s a good one. The Janitor is a dark and surreal slice of science fiction from Wolfram Gruss and Michael Noll.

Something that often irritates me is the way in which people use cuddly phrases to talk about activities which are a long, long way from being cuddly, nice or even human.

There is nothing “honourable” about murdering your daughter and there is nothing “pro-life” about trying to control who can and cannot have access to fertility treatment.

It has often been pointed out that the human memory is a very unreliable beast. This animation from Chris Ware (via David Thompson) really brings home just how unreliable our memories can be.

Towel Day happens every year on May 25th to celebrate the humour and insight that Douglas Adams brought to all our lives.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

It’s a tough universe out there. Make sure you know where your towel is.

I really wish I was in Bologna right now

Slow Food on Film is an international festival of Cinema and Food promoted by the Slow Food movement and Cineteca di Bologna.

Slow Food on Film aims at promoting a new critical awareness of food culture through the screening of films, short films, documentaries and TV series that focus on food-related issues (drives, perversions, identity and emotional implications) in an original way, as well as on the agricultural and food industry’s repercussion on society and the environment, and on gastronomic memory as a common heritage to be safeguarded.

It appears that Nine Inch Nails were satisfied enough with the response to their free download of Ghosts to repeat the experiment for tgeir next album, The Slip.

the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

The physical CD will be along later but for now, sign up and chek it out.

Orson Scott Card has published a blistering article in the Rhino Times (via) which takes apart JK Rowling’s legal claims against Steven Vander Ark and the Harry Potter Lexicon.

Card points out that authors use each others ideas all the time and, while the Lexicon may not be scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment. He also hits the nail on the head in pointing out that Rowling has let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation and now.

Her case will probably fail – it certainly deserves to – and once the dust has settled Rowling is likely to discover that she has irretrievably damaged both her reputation and her career. And all for the sake of some small book that wouldn’t have had even the most minor impact on her income.

Update

JK Rowling could learn something about artistic professionalism from Sylvester Stallone who said (via) of Son of Rambow: “The fact that it was so heartwarming is the result of brilliant filmmaking by its creators.”

In 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the TED Prize, an annual award granted at the TED Conference. She was granted $100,000, and more important, a wish to change the world. Her wish was to create a day in which the world came together through film. The result is Pangea Day.

Starting at 18:00 GMT on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.

The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person’s eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here.

The program will also include a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.

Films can’t change the world, but images can be powerful. And the people who see these images can be moved to make a difference. Check out the videos, bookmark the site and mark the date in your diary.

My current issue of New Scientist hasn’t turned up yet but Slashdot has linked to an interesting article about the science behind the upcoming Iron Man film. They note that the technology in the film is a lot more firmly rooted in reality than you might realised – and much more realistic than the usual pretend science that infests so many of these types of film.

It’s worth reading and, I have to admit, makes the film seem a lot more appealing than it has done up to now.