Tonight I was surfing around the internet trying to find something interesting to read (one of my favorite activities) while the pseudo-sweet sounds of Amunblane and the Electrocustics (Lucas & Nate playing everything under the sun on what has become a 6-guitar collection in my house) wafted through the hallways and into my office. Amazingly, something I saw made me think — a lot. I initially dismissed the title “Publisher Tests Selling by the Chapter” in my RSS feed from the Wall Street Journal. After some introspection on the idea, I came back to the article, and was disappointed by my inability to read the full article as, of course you know, WSJ requires a subscription. So I didn’t read it. Instead I’ll go on a major rant about this and many other things tie into a general theory of how we as a society consume content through technology, and offer a historical perspective on the subject. I may be very wrong about all these things, though I think it brings up a number of interesting issues that are worthy of consideration. (more…)
Its not often that I get a chance to flex my Religious Studies major but I thought it would be a good time for a bit of a rant and a bit of a book review. The book is about media manipulation, hype, and how they butt up against scholarly research. By way of opening remember the Da Vinci Code, the book by Dan Brown and movie. Remember all the hype and hoopla associated with it. The book and movie’s main character, a symbologist (although he is clearly a semiotitician but that is a much harder word isn’t it?), is drawn into a web of danger, intrigue, and crafty thousand year old puzzles surrounding the ultimate secret of Christianity… that Jesus had a wife! Now that has sunk in and you are back in your chair don’t worry. For advertising purposes you were probably made to think that this is new, unheard of previously, and a shocking idea. However, this particular “heresy” is almost as old as the canonical gospels themselves and has long been known to scholars of ancient Christianity and early Gnostic sects of Christianity. Not exactly ideas that will crumble modern Christianity. I thought the vdov readership might like a book that unmasks this kind of sensationalism for what it is. (more…)
It might be a bit of a lie to call this a comic review. Basically, I am just repeating to our readers something awesome that I found a while back. I know that couple of you at least will be interested. I have had (at the prodding of Mr. Meyers) a little experience with locksport, or rather the recreational art of lock picking. There are sites and groups dedicated to the activity but lock picking has long been a side part of “hacker” and general nerd culture. It is just something about defeating the hard (or not so hard in some cases) work of others. There are basic rules of conduct to it as well, so as to distinguish between the lock enthusiast and the thief. The main one being that one should never pick a lock that they do not own or have been given explicit instruction to do so by the owner. That is the general gist of it. I am still not very good and it specifically relates to my lack of tools. I know that I should have made my own set of picks but I opted for the easy way out and bought a small, basic set. Now you might be wondering where all of this is going? Well its going to the educational comic made by Locksport International! Basically they took Apple’s new Comic Life software for making homebrew comics and used it to teach the art of lock picking. No more will you be forced to learn from some IT Geek or dry MIT created text only walkthrough. Now you can get the basics in colorful comic form, which actually makes it all that much easier to follow. I think instructional comics are largely underrated and would love to see more of them. Anyway I think it is well worth a gander whether you are interested in picking locks or just want to see a good use of Comic Life.
Who knew when we would ever get around to a book review. Seeing as we are no longer socially current or interesting and forced to beg for milk at the great teat of Google marketing I thought “why not?” Seeing as I am the only contributing member that actually has time enough on his hands to read anything other than the dense, mathematically complex tomes of statistical thermodynamics, dynamic ion resonance modeling I thought it might be worth the effort to bring some easy reading to the vdov.net crowd.
Botany of Desire is a non-scientific scientific romp through the complex interplay between man and our domesticated crops. The whole work is couched in terms of plants fulfilling our desires and us in turn fulfilling the plants’ desires. Michael Pollan (hilarious last name for a gardener no?) guides us through the massive evolutionary interplay between man and plant in everything from cannabis to tulips. There is a utterly fascinating quality in delving into the genetics of apple trees and the socio-economic impact of European potato cultivation. The best part about Pollan’s prose is that it has the grip and fascination of fiction while being (almost) completely factual. He peppers the book with his own experience and perspective without coloring the facts too much. He is engaging and wonderfully entertaining. Who knew that Reagan’s massive crackdown on cannabis use lead to one of the most rapid genetic changes that a human crop has ever seen or that a debilitating tulip virus was responsible for some of the most treasured blossoms in all of human history? (more…)