A graphic designer credited with creating a redesign of the Boston MBTA Transit Map is furious with Naughty Dog for using it in its recently released PlayStation 3 action game The Last of Us.

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Following the wee kerfuffle last summer, I’d no plans to play Tomb Raider; combine the producer’s statements with a vague memory of loathing the franchise ten years ago and a working knowledge of how gaming tends to treat female characters in general, and you understand why I might be reluctant.

Then the game came out. People whose opinions I respect began to say good things about it. I read an interview with Rhianna Pratchett, the lead writer. I found a reasonably-priced copy and said to myself, Well, maybe we should give it a shot.

[Read more.]

The last thing I expected, when I cracked the cover, was to look around sixteen hours later and discover I’d played through the night and most of the next morning, hooked on the narrative, determined to find out what happened next.*

*The last time I lost track of time that thoroughly for that long was with Dragon Age: Origins, the December of my final undergrad year. Mind you, DA:O is really more of a thirty-six-hour game than a sixteen-hour one. Or a sixty-hour one, if you’re a completist.

As narratives go, Tomb Raider’s is fairly straightforward. Survive. Escape. Rescue some mates. (Mostly survive.) Where it excels, though? Tone. Character. The deployment of emotional realism.**

**Not very realistic: the treatment of archaeology and archaeological projects. You need to know where you intend to survey and/or conduct excavation before you set out, because not only is it time- and labour-intensive, but you need paperwork, people. If you don’t have at least the landowner’s permission, and in most cases government permission, it’s not archaeology, it’s theft. Which happens a lot—the global trade in illicit antiquities is worth millions—but it’s not in the least respectable. See the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and for recent treatments of the field, Loot, legitimacy, and ownership: the ethical crisis in archaeology (Renfrew, 2000), and “Looting and the world’s archaeological heritage: the inadequate response,” Annual Review of Anthropology 34, 343—61 (Brodie and Renfrew, 2005). But we pass lightly over such avoidable failings, because—to be honest—real archaeological projects probably make more for sitcom or soap opera than for high drama.

The crew of the Endurance are searching for the lost (mythical, Japanese) kingdom of Yamatai. Part archaeological expedition, part reality TV show, most of the participants seem to be under the delusion that one can get rich through archaeology if you just find the right site. But a dramatic shipwreck intervenes! Cast ashore on a mysterious island, you finally regain consciousness tied up in a cave full of bones and dead people. Thus begins your adventure as Lara Croft. The tone of things for the first act is set by the words delivered by the voice-over actor: “This,” she says, “is going to hurt.”

(Other telling phrases delivered with conviction: “What is this place?” “You can do this, Lara,” and “Oh god, what am I doing?”)

Let’s be clear about one thing: Tomb Raider isn’t a fluffy adventure. It starts out with a survival-horror aesthetic, and ramps back to merely brutal and bloody.*** It isn’t, however (some elements of art design aside), gratuitously so. Naturally this is a judgment of taste, one based in part upon what I believe the game to be attempting as a piece of art: the material remains open to other interpretations.

*** The art design for some of the underground charnel houses leaves me wondering at the gory logistics. How much murderous killing can one population support?

So what is Tomb Raider doing, as art? It makes a damn solid attempt at charting the development of a character from a college kid with adrenaline sports skills into a badass survivor with a decent degree of emotional realism. Lara-you starts with nothing; stranded, wounded, alone, in pain. As you progress, Lara-you levels up in badassery without ever leaving the acknowledgement of this is going to hurt entirely behind. On an emotional level, this works, I feel, supremely well: it’s the first time that a “zero-to-hero” narrative has actually worked for me. And it’s the first time that I remember seeing a game address consequences for engaging in one’s first act of serious interpersonal violence, a visceral reaction of shock.

It’s also the first time I’ve seen female friendship drive the narrative arc of a videogame. Aside from surviving and regrouping with other survivors, Lara-you is driven to try to rescue her best friend Samantha Nishimura from the hands of the leader of the weird cultists who live on the island—cultists who seem to think Sam and a sacrifice are the key to controlling the storms that keep all the wreck survivors stranded in place. (I’m still gleeful with unholy delight that it centres female friendship! Not just features, but centres!)

There are several characters besides Lara, and they’re all well-drawn examples of human beings. Not to mention surprisingly diverse for a videogame! High drama, snark, and sacrifice dog everyone’s footsteps: you rapidly get a sense for them all as people, and care about what happens to them.

Some of the art is gorgeous. Gameplay, at least on the Xbox, is intuitive and tends not to get in its own way. I’ve played through twice now (on Easy: story interests me far more than testing my twitch-reflexes) and while death dogged my footsteps, the game’s autosave feature is damn handy: it saves everywhere. Puzzles tend to be fairly straightforward. It’s a game that comes together easily and really works.

And yes, I really bloody loved playing a game that owes much to FPS mechanics and has a female character in the central role; a game with an immensely compelling narrative approach and solid characterisation; a game that centres female friendship and doesn’t give us an obligatory male love interest.

I want more games like this. More like this, dammit. Bad archaeology (*cough*LOOTERS*cough*) and all: I felt so goddamn happy and welcome and at home playing Tomb Raider, it only reinforced how often before I’ve felt alienated by a game (or by a film, but that’s another story).

Is this how guys feel most of the time? Because the difference is shocking.

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Liz Bourke is a cranky youngish feminist. Find more crankiness at her blog and on twitter.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a classic cult show, taking B-movies, sci-fi clichés, and pop culture references and blending them all into a consistently hilarious masterpiece that also ended up providing a sort of stealth manual for life. In the not too distant past, it gave me a way to me a way to look at life and writing that made the whole growing-up-and-trying-to-be-a-real-writer-thing much less frightening.

[Put your helmets on, we'll be reaching speeds of 3!]

I had a joke I used to tell my friends, that I was basically a feral child, and that I was only civilized through my fortunate exposure to PBS. Sesame Street and LeVar Burton gave me just enough social skills to make it to high school. Then I discovered this man:

I tend to assume that everyone knows this show, but in reading the intriguing Onion AV Club discussion about the changes in MST3K’s structure, I saw that even some AV Club staffers were unfamiliar. So, a quick refresher: Joel (or Mike) and the companion robots Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo watch terrible movies while Mad Scientists monitor their minds, and Mike (or Joel) and the ’bots make fun of said movies in order to stay sane. This format allows Joike and the ’bots to run amok through 40 years of pop culture, time, space, and occasionally the American Midwest, making fun of everything. That’s really all you need to know, and leads us into lesson one:

 

1. Life is a choice between having control of when the movie begins and ends, and having robot friends.

Finding himself on the ship, Joel has to make the choice between controlling “when the movie begins and ends” and using those unnamed, but apparently “special,” parts to make his robot friends. Granted, this is one line in a song packed with information, but it tells us everything we need to know about Joel’s character. Trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation, Joel creates companionship for himself rather than trying to establish any dominance over his environment—which I think would be the most natural impulse. You’re stuck in space, and Mad Scientists are giggling at you through a viewscreen—of course you’d want to carve out any space you could to establish personal boundaries. But not Joel. He even gave his robots pals free will (which he notably regrets in Experiment 314: Mighty Jack.) That’s just cool.

 

2. Always do your research!

When I was in high school, and got my hands on a copy of the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, I read it repeatedly.

(Seriously - the black isn’t some border effect, it’s the guts of the book falling out.)

In the entry on Experiment 202: The Sidehackers, Mike Nelson talks about how, up to that point, the writers would watch portions of movies they thought might work for the show, schedule writing sessions, and then sit down as a group to go through an initial riff. This tactic worked until this movie, when they discovered that a brutal rape and murder scene happens toward the end, and is actually a catalyst for the ending. They had to cut a pivotal scene, and try to write jokes around the gap this created in an already thin plot. Plus, obviously, the idea of writing jokes about a film that ended so tragically wasn’t a pleasant experience. They changed their policy based on this movie, and screened complete movies from then on before choosing.

 

3. Specificity = universality.

The more local the riffs got, the better they were. Circle Pines, Minnesota accents, casserole recipes, Garrison Keillor digs, the Wisconsin Dells, Packers, Prince…for a girl trapped in flat, dull, sub-tropical, tourist-trap Florida, these tiny glimpses of life in the Northern Midwest were like windows opening into a wider, less-humid world. It also gave me personal investment in the world of the show that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, which leads to the idea that despite the silliness of the show, and the advice not to take it too seriously, these characters had more depth than many of the cardboard sitcom characters that were on television at the time. Plus, the show was movie-length, and allowed for a level of investment that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise—which actually leads into:

 

4. Art can be ritual.

The ritualistic aspect of the show has been commented on many times already. Most MSTies can tell you about the first time they saw the show, and many have made it a ritualistic event—getting up to watch it on Sunday mornings, watching it in dorm rooms, and a surprising number of people use it as a nightly sleep aid. But I think the biggest aspect of the show-as-ritual is the cult-like way that people would slowly learn what the show was, and then begin trading tapes and watching communally. The first episode I ever saw was Experiment 508: Operation Double 007, at a slumber party, after all the other kids had passed out. So my first experience of it was sitting eyelash-length from the TV, with the sound as low as possible, laughing into a pillow so I wouldn’t wake anyone else up and get us in trouble. I think the illicit nature of this first viewing that added to my love of the show—it was my thing for a while, because most of my friends didn’t seem to like it the way I did. But, since my family didn’t have Comedy Central, it quickly became a very intense relationship of finding people who had tapes and gathering for weekends (or occasionally skipping school) with people who became my closest friends, who all shared a love of this weird show. This cemented my thoughts about the role art could play in people’s lives, and the sort of bonding that can come only come from suffering through Manos, the Hands of Fate.

 

5. Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.

The people who get you will find you, or will be willing to do the work to figure it out. The references in the show are actually important, because they speak to this trust in the audience. Because of their large writing staff, who had a variety of interests, MST3K was written by people who were all reacting to each other as well as the film, and building those interactions into the show. You can go from the name of the Satellite of Love itself, through invention exchanges like Dr. Sax, Tragic Moments, the William Conrad Alert Fridge, and Daktari Stools, to the highly-detailed parodies of Star Trek: Voyager, Planet of the Apes, and 2001, and around to impressions of Tug McGraw and Rollie Fingers, and before you’ve even hit the actual riffs you’ve got a dizzying display of culture, both “high” and “low.” If you get the joke then you get a thrill of knowing that someone else noticed something about culture that you thought was interesting, but if you don’t get the joke, it’s on you to go look it up.

 

6. American Culture (1950—1990 Edition) was Inexhaustibly Interesting.

My teachers tried their best, but really, if it wasn’t for MST I’d have a pretty bare, bullet-point idea of the 2^nd half of the 20^th century. Luckily MST3K was there to fill in the gaps. ‘50s sitcoms, Quinn-Martin productions, C-list Japanese monster movies, Zappa lyrics, Aztec theology—I don’t know where I would have been without them. And obviously, when I did get a reference, I got to experience the burst of synaptic joy of being in on the joke.

 

7. How to Critique American Culture (1950-1990) 101.

Coming to a national network at the very beginning of the ’90s, MST3K stared into the void of our culture, and when that void stared back…Crow said “Bite me.” The writers of the show managed to balance a genuine love of the B-movies they watched with a quick, pointed attack on the movies’ celebration of mediocrity and conformity. Faced with two hours of blonde dullards, they unleashed their full AV geek arsenal, pointing out shallow values systems, kneejerk racism, misogyny, and classism—and also just the basic fact that many of the movies pushed boredom and blind acceptance of the status quo as the solution for all social ills.

 

8. “It’s just fiction. You don’t have to accept the ending they hand you.”

(Go ahead and skip to 1:27:00, unless you want to watch an unhealthy amount of Jack Elam.)

Probably the most important thing I ever learned. Probably the most important thing anyone can ever learn. As far as I’m concerned, this is the essential lesson of postmodernism, the rise of “geek” culture, fanfiction, Sweded videos, and hell, the whole last half of the 20^th century. We are not passive consumers, we don’t have to receive top-down wisdom, we don’t have to roll over and let culture wash over us. You’re pissed off that Sansa Stark is a simpering kid? Re-write her so she’s stronger. You love a movie so much you wish you’d made it? Make your own version with cardboard and duct tape. Maybe it won’t all be good—the Bots' re-write of Girl in Lover’s Lane is ridiculous—but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. And if you keep going, you might make something as timeless as Experiment 910: The Final Sacrifice.

 

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Leah Schnelbach should probably repeat to herself it's just a show...but the part in Laserblast when Mike and the ’bots all become Pure Love and Pure Energy and stuff makes her tear up a little. You can find her not-Tweeting here.  

Filed under: Art, Culture

You love charts. You love superheroes. But you don't know of any media that combines the two, like so much peanut butter and jelly. Your suffering has come to an end. Or at least it will August 3, when former ComicsAlliance contributor, Comic ... Read more

 

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some sketches I did on illustration boards! The board is rather awesome to work on with markers, plus they’re thick and less prone to accidental folding (which I tend to do when I erase a tad too vigorously!)

Rapunzel and Harley Quinn are currently for sale in my Etsy store (http://etsy.me/17AtmeV).

 

Obama delivered a real stemwinder on the moral urgency of cutting carbon pollution (video, transcript below). So of course Politico reports, “Cable news skips Obama’s climate speech.”

The President surprised everyone by bringing up the Keystone XL pipeline, even though aides had said he wouldn’t. Obama left his Administration very little room for approving it. Heck, he even called them “tar sands”–a phrase that “oil sands” advocates never use.

And Obama gave Climate Hawks a new slogan: “Invest, divest.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted:

"Invest, divest" is the most crypto-radical line the President has ever uttered.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 25, 2013

Climatologist Michael Mann said of the speech, “It is the most aggressive and promising climate plan to come out of the executive branch in years and President Obama should be applauded for the bold leadership he has shown in confronting the climate change threat head on.”

Since this is such an impressive and well-crafted speech, with many lines you will want to quote again and again, I’ll post the entire transcript below. It’s hard to say what the best part was, but we knew yesterday that he was going to put on the table a plan to meet his Copenhagen target of a 17% reduction in carbon pollution by 2020, including regulations for existing power plants.

He also offered a terrific push back against the pessimists who don’t believe Americans and American businesses are up to the challenge of solving this problem:

The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it’s a — (inaudible) — a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity. (Applause.)

You know, these critics seem to think that when we ask our businesses to innovate and reduce pollution and lead, they can’t or they won’t do it. They’ll just kind of give up and quit. But in America, we know that’s not true. Look at our history.

And just yesterday, CP argued, “Obama Should Tell Ex-Im Bank To Move Beyond Coal” and Obama responded, “Today, I’m calling for an end of public financing for new coal plants overseas — unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies, or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity.”

But for me the best part was perhaps the least expected, where he calls on young people, indeed on all Americans, to become climate hawks and create a nationwide climate movement:

I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society. (Cheers, applause.)

Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm. And ultimately, we will be judged as a people and as a society and as a country on where we go from here.

Our founders believed that those of us in positions of power are elected not just to serve as custodians of the present, but as caretakers of the future. And they charged us to make decisions with an eye on a longer horizon than the arc of our own political careers. That’s what the American people expect. That’s what they deserve. And someday our children and our children’s children will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could, when we had the chance, to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world? And I want to be able to say, yes, we did. Don’t you want that? (Cheers, applause.)

Americans are not a people who look backwards. We’re a people who look forward. We’re not a people who fear what the future holds; we shape it.

What we need in this fight are citizens who will stand up and speak up and compel us to do what this moment demands. Understand, this is not just a job for politicians. So I’m going to need all of you, to educate your classmates, your colleagues, your parents, your friends.

Tell them what’s at stake. Speak up at town halls, church groups, PTA meetings. Push back on misinformation. Speak up for the facts. Broaden the circle of those who are willing to stand up for our future. (Applause.)

Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. (Applause.) Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. (Applause.) Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.

And remind everyone who represents you at every level of government that sheltering future generations against the ravages of climate change is a prerequisite for your vote! Make yourself heard on this issue. (Cheers, applause.)

In short, become climate hawks, become single issue voters on the issue. Invest in clean energy, divest from dirty energy.

Here is the video:

Yes, there are legitimate questions about why someone who understands the science and the morality of the issue so well didn’t give this speech four years ago. And Obama himself hasn’t fully divested from fossil fuels — he still praises domestic oil and gas production. But these are matters for a later post.

Right now, Obama deserves kudos for delivering a inspiring and substantive speech. If he truly follows through on it, if he keeps speaking out, if he puts in place EPA regulations that would enable the 17% cut, and if his Secretary of State negotiates a global climate deal, then this speech will certainly be remembered as a turning point for the climate issue.

Here’s the entire transcript:

(For ease of reading, I am not indenting this.)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. (Cheers, applause.) Thank you, Georgetown! (Cheers, applause.) Thanks. Thank you so much. Now — thank you, Georgetown. Everybody please be seated.

And my first announcement today is that you should all take off your jackets. (Laughter.) I’m going to do the same. We got — (cheers) — it’s not that sexy, now. (Laughter.)

(Chuckles.) (Laughter.)

It is good to be back on campus, and it is a great privilege to speak from the steps of this historic hall that welcomed presidents going back to George Washington. I want to thank your president, President DeGioia, who’s here today. (Cheers, applause.) I want to thank him for hosting us. I want to thank the many members of my Cabinet and my administration. I want to thank Leader Pelosi and member of — members of Congress who are here. We are very grateful for their support. And I want to say thank you to the Hoyas in the house for having me back. (Cheers, applause.)

You know, it — it was important for me to speak directly to your generation because the decisions that we make now and in the years ahead will have a profound impact on the world that all of you inherit. You know, on Christmas Eve 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 did a live broadcast from lunar orbit, so Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders. The first humans to orbit the moon described what they saw, and they read Scripture from the book of Genesis to the rest of us back here.

And later that night, they took a photo that would change the way we see and think about our world. It was an image of Earth: beautiful, breathtaking, a glowing marble of blue oceans and green forests and brown mountains, brushed with white clouds, rising over the surface of the moon.

And while the sight of our planet from space might seem routine today, imagine what it looked like to those of us seeing our home, our planet for the first time. Imagine what it looked like to children like me. Even the astronauts were amazed. It makes you realize, Lovell would say, just what you have back there on Earth.

And around the same time we began exploring space, scientists were studying changes taking place in the Earth’s atmosphere. Now, scientists had known since the 1800s that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap heat, and that burning fossil fuels released those gases into the air. That wasn’t news. But in late 1950s, the National Weather Service began measuring the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, with the worry that rising levels might someday disrupt the fragile balance that makes our planet so hospitable.

And what they found, year after year, is that the levels of carbon pollution in our atmosphere have increased dramatically; that science, accumulated and reviewed over decades, tells us that our planet is changing in ways that will have profound impacts on all of humankind.

The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years. Last year, temperatures in some areas of the ocean reached record highs and ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record, faster than most models had predicted it would. These are facts.

Now, we know that no single weather event is caused solely by climate change. Droughts and fires and floods, they go back to ancient times. But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet.

The fact that sea level in New York — in New York Harbor are now a foot higher than a century ago, that didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it certainly contributed to the destruction that left large parts of our mightiest city dark and underwater.

The potential impacts go beyond rising sea levels. Here at home, 2012 was the warmest year in our history. Midwest farms were parched by the worst drought since the Dust Bowl and then drenched by the wettest spring on record. Western wildfires scorched an area larger than the state of Maryland. Just last week, a heat wave in Alaska shot temperatures into the ’90s.

And we know that the costs of these events can be measured in lost lives and lost livelihoods, lost homes, lost businesses, hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency services and disaster relief.

In fact those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it. They’re busy dealing with it. Firefighters are braving longer wildfire seasons, and states and federal governments have to figure out to budget for that. I had to sit in on a meeting with the Department of Interior and Agriculture and some of the rest of my team just to figure how we’re going to pay for more and more expensive fire seasons.

Farmers see crops wilted one year, washed away the next, and higher food prices get passed on to you, the American consumer.

Mountain communities worry about what smaller snow packs will mean for tourism, and then families at the bottom of the mountains wonder what it’ll mean for their drinking water.

Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction — in insurance premiums, state and local taxes, and the costs of rebuilding and disaster relief.

So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements, has put all that to rest. Ninety-seven percent of scientists — including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data — have now put that to rest. They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it.

So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late.

And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you but to your children and to your grandchildren.

As a president, as a father and as an American, I am here to say we need to act. (Cheers, applause.) I — I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing. And that’s why today I’m announcing a new national climate action plan, and I’m here to enlist your generation’s help in keeping the United States of America a leader, a global leader in the fight against climate change.

Now, this plan builds on progress that we’ve already made. You know, last year I took office — or — or the year that I took office, my administration pledged to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from their 2005 levels by the end of this decade. And we rolled up our sleeves, and we got to work. We doubled the electricity we generate from wind and the sun. We doubled the mileage our cars will get on a gallon of gas by the middle of the next decade. (Cheers, applause.)

Here at Georgetown I unveiled my strategy for a secure energy energy future. And thanks to the ingenuity of our businesses, we’re starting to produce much more of our own energy. We’re building the first nuclear power plants in more than three decades, in Georgia and South Carolina. For the first time in 18 years, America’s poised to produce more of our own oil than we buy from other nations. And today we produce more natural gas than anybody else.

So we’re producing energy. And these advances have grown our economy, have created new jobs that can’t be shipped overseas, and by the way, they’ve also helped drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly 20 years. Since 2006, no country on Earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America. (Applause.) So it’s a good start.

But the reason we’re all here in the heat today is because we know we’ve got more to do. In my State of the Union address, I urged Congress to come up with a bipartisan market-based solution to climate change, like the one that Republican and Democratic senators worked on together a few years ago. And I still want to see that happen. I’m willing to work with anyone to make that happen.

But this is a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock. It demands our attention now. And this is my plan to meet it, a plan to cut carbon pollution, a plan to protect our country from the impacts of climate change, and a plan to lead the world in a coordinated assault on a changing climate. (Applause.)

This plan begins with cutting carbon pollution by changing the way we use energy, using less dirty energy, using more clean energy, wasting less energy throughout our economy.

And 43 years ago, Congress passed the law called the Clean Air Act of 1970.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah! (Applause.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That was a good law. The reasoning behind it was simple. New technology can protect our health by protecting the air we breathe from harmful pollution. And that law passed the Senate unanimously. Think about that. It passed the Senate unanimously. It passed the House of Representative 375 to 1. I don’t know who the one guy was. I haven’t looked that up. (Laughter.) I mean, you can barely get that many votes to name a post office, these days. (Laughter.) It was signed into law by a Republican president. It was later strengthened by another Republican president. This used to be a bipartisan issue.

Six years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by that same Clean Air Act, and they required the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, to determine whether they’re a threat to our health and welfare. In 2009, the EPA determined that they are a threat to both our health and our welfare in many different ways, from dirtier air to more common heat waves, and therefore, subject to regulation.

Now, today, about 40 percent of America’s carbon pollution comes from our power plants.

But here’s the thing, right now, there are no federal limits to the amount of carbon pollution that those plants can pump into our air, none, zero. We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury and sulfur and arsenic in our air or our water, but power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free. That’s not right, that’s not safe and it needs to stop. (Cheers, applause.)

So today for the sake of our children and the health and safety of all Americans, I’m directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. (Cheers, applause.)

I’m also directing the EPA to develop these standards in an open and transparent way, to provide flexibility to different states with different needs and build on the leadership that many states and cities and companies have already shown. In fact, many power companies have already begin modernizing their plants and creating new jobs in the process. Others have shifted to burning cleaner natural gas instead of dirtier fuel sources. Nearly a dozen states have already implemented or are implementing their own market-based programs to reduce carbon pollution.

More than 25 have set energy efficiency targets. More than 35 have set renewable energy targets. Over 1,000 mayors have signed agreements to cut carbon pollution. So the idea of setting higher pollution standards for our power plants is not new. It’s just time for Washington to catch up with the rest of the country. And that’s what we intend to do. (Applause.)

Now, what you will hear from the special interests and their allies in Congress is that this will kill jobs and crush the economy and basically end free enterprise as we know it. And the reason I know you’ll hear those things is because that’s what they’ve said every time America sets clear rules and better standards for our air and our water and our children’s health. And every time, they’ve been wrong.

For example, in 1970, when we decided, through the Clean Air Act, to do something about the smog that was choking our cities — and by the way, most young people here aren’t old enough to remember what it was like, but you know, when I was going to school in 1979, 1980 in Los Angeles, there were days where folks couldn’t go outside. And the sunsets were spectacular — (laughter) — because — because of all the pollution in the air. But at the time when we passed the Clean Air Act to try to get rid of some of this smog, some of the same doomsayers were saying, new pollution standards will decimate the auto industry. Guess what? Didn’t happen. Our air got cleaner.

In 1990, when we decided to do something about acid rain, they said our electricity bills would go up; the lights would go off; businesses around the country would suffer, I quote, “a quiet death.”

None of it happened, except we cut acid rain dramatically. The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it’s a — (inaudible) — a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity. (Applause.)

You know, these critics seem to think that when we ask our businesses to innovate and reduce pollution and lead, they can’t or they won’t do it. They’ll just kind of give up and quit. But in America, we know that’s not true. Look at our history. When we restricted cancer-causing chemicals in plastics and leaded fuel in our cars, it didn’t end the plastics industry or the oil industry. American chemists came up with better substitutes. When we phased out CFCs, the gases that were depleting the ozone layer, it didn’t kill off refrigerators or air conditioners or deodorant. (Laughter.)

American workers and businesses figured out how to do it better without harming the environment as much. The fuel standards that we put in place just a few years ago didn’t cripple automakers. The American auto industry retooled, and today, our automakers are selling the best cars in the world at a faster rate than they have in five years with more hybrid, more plug-in, more fuel-efficient cars for everybody to choose from. (Applause.)

So the point is, if you look at our history, don’t bet against American industry. Don’t bet against American workers, don’t tell folks that we have to choose between the health of our children or the health of our economy.

(Applause.) The old rules — the old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technologies, we’ve used science, we’ve used research and development and discovery to make the old rules obsolete.

Today we use more clean energy, more renewables and natural gas, which is supporting hundreds of thousands of good jobs. We waste less energy, which saves you money at the pump and in your pocketbooks. And guess what. Our economy is 60 percent bigger than it was 20 years ago, while our carbon emissions are roughly back to where they were 20 years ago.

So obviously we can figure this out. It’s not an either/or; it’s a both/and. We’ve got to look after our children, we have to look after our future, and we have to grow the economy and create jobs. We can do all of that as long as we don’t fear the future; instead, we seize it. (Cheers, applause.)

And by the way, don’t take my word for it. You know, recently more than 500 businesses, including giants like GM and Nike, issued a climate declaration, calling action on climate change one of the greatest opportunities of the 21st century. Wal-Mart is working to cut its carbon pollution by 20 percent and transition completely to renewable energy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Hear, hear ?). (Applause.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (Chuckles) Yeah, but Wal-Mart deserves a cheer for that. (Applause.) But think about it. Would the biggest company, the biggest retailer in America — would they really do that if it weren’t good for business, if it weren’t good for their shareholders?

A low-carbon clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine. I want America to build that future right here in the United States of America. That’s our task. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, one thing I want to make sure everybody understands. This does not mean that we’re going to suddenly stop producing fossil fuels. Our economy wouldn’t run very well if it did. And transitioning to a clean energy economy takes time. But when the doomsayers trot out the old warnings that these ambitions will somehow hurt our energy supply, just remind them that America produced more oil than we have in 15 years.

What is true is that we can’t just drill our way out of the energy and climate challenge that we face. (Cheers, applause.) That’s not possible. I’ve put forward in the past an all-of-the-above energy strategy, but our energy strategy must be about more than just producing more oil.

And by the way, it’s certainly got to be about more than just building one pipeline. Now — (applause) — I know there’s been, for example, a lot of controversy surrounding the proposal to build the pipeline, the Keystone pipeline that would carry oil from Canadian tar sands down to refineries in the Gulf. And the State Department is going through the final stages of evaluating the proposal. That’s how it’s always been done.

But I do want to be clear. Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interests.

And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact — (applause) — the net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward. It’s relevant.

Now, even as we’re producing more domestic oil, we’re also producing more cleaner-burning natural gas than any other country on Earth. And again, sometimes there are disputes about natural gas, but let me say this: We should strengthen our position as the top natural gas producer because in the medium term, at least, it not only can provide safe, cheap power, but it can also help reduce our carbon emissions.

Federally supported technology has helped our businesses grow more effectively and extract more gas. And now we’ll keep working with the industry to make drilling safer and cleaner, to make sure that we’re not seeing methane emissions, and to put people to work modernizing our natural gas infrastructure so that we can power more homes and businesses with cleaner energy.

The bottom line is, natural gas is creating jobs. It’s lowering many families’ heat and power bills. And it’s the transition fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution even as our businesses work to develop and then deploy more of the technology required for the even cleaner energy economy of the future.

And that brings me to the second way that we’re going to reduce carbon pollution, by using more clean energy.

For the past four years, we’ve doubled the electricity that we generate from zero-carbon wind and solar power. (Cheers, applause.) And that means jobs, jobs manufacturing the wind turbines that now generate enough electricity to power nearly 15 million homes, jobs installing the solar panels that now generate more than four times the power at less cost than just a few years ago.

I know some Republicans in Washington dismiss these jobs, but those who do, need to call home, because 75 percent of all wind energy in this country is generated in Republican districts. (Cheers.) And that may explain why last year, Republican governors in Kansas and Oklahoma and Iowa — Iowa, by the way, a state that harnessed — harnesses almost 25 percent of its electricity from the wind — helped us in the fight to extend tax credits for wind energy manufacturers and producers. (Applause.)

Tens of thousands of good jobs were on the line, and those jobs were worth the fight. And countries like China and Germany are going all in in the race for clean — (audio break) — I believe Americans build things better than everybody else. I want America to win that race, but we can’t win it if we’re not in it. (Applause.)

So — so the — the plan I’m announcing today will help us double again our energy from wind and sun. Today, I’m directing the Interior Department to green-light enough private renewable energy capacity on public plans to power more than 6 million homes by 2020. (Cheers, applause.)

The Department of Defense, the biggest energy consumer in America, will install three gigawatts of renewable power on its bases, generating about the same amount of electricity each year as you’d get from burning 3 million tons of coal.

(Applause.)

And because billions of your tax dollars continue to still subsidize some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world, my budget once again calls for Congress to end the tax breaks for big oil companies and invest in the clean energy companies that will fuel our future. (Cheers, applause.)

Now, the third way to reduce carbon pollution is to waste less energy in our cars, our homes, our businesses. The fuel standards we’ve set over the past few years — years mean that by the middle of the next decade, the cars and trucks we buy will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. That means you’ll have to fill up half as often. We’ll all reduce carbon pollution. And we’ve built on that success by setting the first-ever standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses and vans. And in the coming months we’ll partner with truck makers to do it again for the next generation of vehicles.

And meanwhile, the energy we use in our homes and our businesses and our factories, our schools, our hospitals — that’s responsible for about one-third of our greenhouse gases. The good news is simple upgrades don’t just cut that pollution; they put people to work, manufacturing and installing smarter lights and windows and sensors and appliances. And the savings show up in our electricity bills every month, forever. And that’s why we’ve set new energy standards for appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers.

And today our businesses are building better ones that will also cut carbon pollution and cut consumers’ electricity bills by hundreds of billions of dollars.

That means, by the way, that our federal government also has to lead by example. I’m proud that federal agencies have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by more than 15 percent since I took office. But we can do even better than that. (Applause.) So today I’m setting a new goal. Your federal government will consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within the next seven years. (Cheers, applause.) We are going to set that goal. We’ll also encourage private capital to get off the sidelines and get into these energy-saving investments. And by the end of the next decade, these combined efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings will reduce carbon pollution by at least 3 billion tons. That’s an amount equal to what our entire energy sector emits in nearly half a year.

So I know these standards don’t sound all that sexy. But think of it this way. That’s the equivalent of planting 7.6 billion trees and letting them grow for 10 years, all while doing the dishes. It is a great deal, and we need to be doing it. (Applause.)

So using less dirty energy, transitioning to cleaner sources of energy, wasting less energy through our economy is where we need to go. And this plan will get us there faster. But I want to be honest. This will not get us there overnight. The hard truth is carbon pollution has built up in our atmosphere for decades now. And even if we Americans do our part, the planet will slowly keep warming for some time to come.

The seas will slowly keep rising and storms will get more severe, based on the science. It’s like tapping the brakes of a car before you come to a complete stop and then can shift into reverse; it’s going to take time for carbon emissions to stabilize. So in the meantime, we’re going to need to get prepared. And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid.

States and cities across the country are already taking it upon themselves to get ready. Miami Beach is hardening its water supply against seeping salt water. We’re partnering with the state of Florida to restore Florida’s natural clean water delivery system, the Everglades. The overwhelmingly Republican legislature in Texas voted to spend money on a new water development bank as long — as a long- running drought cost jobs and forced a town to truck in water from the outside.

New York City is fortifying its 520 miles of coastline as an insurance policy against more frequent and costly storms. And what we’ve learned from Hurricane Sandy and other disasters is that we’ve got to build smarter, more resilient infrastructure that can protect our homes and businesses and withstand more powerful storms. That means stronger seawalls, natural barriers, hardened power grids, hardened water systems, hardened fuel supplies.

So the budget I sent Congress includes funding to support communities that build these projects, and this plan directs federal agencies to make sure that any new project funded with taxpayer dollars is built to withstand increased flood risk. And we’ll partner with communities seeking to help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double-duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.

And we’ll also open our climate data and NASA climate imagery to the public to make sure that cities and states assess risk under different climate scenarios, so that we don’t waste money building structures that don’t withstand the next storm.

So that’s what my administration will do to support the work already underway across America, not only to cut carbon pollution, but also to protect ourselves from climate change. But as I think everybody here understands, no nation can solve this challenge alone, not even one as powerful as ours. And that’s why the final part of our plan calls on America to lead, lead international efforts to combat a changing climate. (Applause.)

And make no mistake, the — the world still looks to America, believe me. You know, when I spoke to young people in Turkey a few years ago, the first question I got wasn’t about the challenges that part of the world faces, it was about the climate challenge that we all face and America’s role in addressing it.

And it was a fair question, because as the world’s largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter, as a country with unsurpassed ability to drive innovation and scientific breakthroughs, as a country that people around the world continue to look to in times of crisis, we’ve got a vital role to play. We can’t stand on the sidelines. We’ve got a unique responsibility and the steps that I’ve outlined today prove that we’re willing to meet that responsibility.

While all America’s carbon pollution fell last year, global carbon pollution rose to a record high.

That’s a problem. Developing countries are using more and more energy, and tens of millions of people entering a global middle class naturally want to buy cars and air conditioners of their own, just like us. You can’t blame them for that.

And when you have conversations with poor countries, they’ll say, well, you went through these stages of development. Why can’t we?

But what we also have to recognize is, these same countries are also more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than we are. They don’t just have as much to lose. They probably have more to lose. Developing nations with some of the fastest rising levels of carbon pollution are going to have to take action to meet this challenge alongside us. They’re watching what we do, but we’ve got to make sure that they’re stepping up to the plate as well. We’ll — we compete for business with them, but we also share a planet. And we have to all shoulder the responsibility for keeping the planet habitable, or we’re going to suffer the consequences together.

So to help more countries transitioning to cleaner sources of energy, and to help them do it faster, we’re going to partner with our private sector to apply private sector technological know-how in countries that transition to natural gas. We’ve mobilized billions of dollars in private capital for clean energy projects around the world.

Today I’m calling for an end of public financing for new coal plants overseas, unless they deploy carbon capture technologies, or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity. (Applause.) And I urge other countries to join this effort. And I’m directing my administration to launch negotiations toward global free trade in environmental goods and services, including clean energy technology, to help more countries skip past the dirty phase of development and join a global, low-carbon economy.

They don’t have to repeat all the same mistakes that we’ve made. (Applause.)

We’ve also intensified our climate cooperation with major emerging economies like India and Brazil and China, the world’s largest emitter. So for example, earlier this month, President Xi of China and I reached an important agreement to jointly phase down our production and consumption of dangerous hydrofluorocarbons, and we intend to take more steps together in the months to come. It will make a difference; it’s a significant step in the reduction of carbon emissions. (Applause.)

And finally, my administration will redouble our efforts to engage our international partners in reaching a new global agreement to reduce carbon pollution through concrete action. (Applause.)

You know, four years ago, in Copenhagen, every major country agreed, for the first time, to limit carbon pollution by 2020. Two years ago, we decided to forge a new agreement beyond 2020 that would apply to all countries, not just developed countries. What we need is an agreement that’s ambitious, because that’s what the scale of the challenge demands. We need an inclusive agreement, because every country has to play its part. And we need an agreement that’s flexibile, because different nations have different needs. And if we can come together and get this right, we can define a sustainable future for your generation. So that’s my plan. (Applause.)

The actions I’ve announced today — the actions I’ve announced today should send a strong signal to the world that America intends to take bold action to reduce carbon pollution.

We will continue to lead by the power of our example, because that’s what the United States of America has always done.

I am convinced this is the fight America can and will lead in the 21st century, and I’m convinced this is a fight that America must lead. But it will require all of us to do our part. We’ll need scientists to design new fuels. And we’ll need farmers to grow new fuels. We’ll need engineers to devise new technologies. And we’ll need businesses to make and sell those technologies. We’ll need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech zero-carbon components, but we’ll also need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a — a new clean-energy era.

We’re going to need to give special care to people and communities that are unsettled by this transition, not just here in the United States but around the world. And those of us in positions of responsibility will need to be less concerned with the judgment of special interests and well-connected donors and more concerned with the judgment of posterity — (applause) — because you and your children and your children’s children will have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

As I said before, climate change has become a partisan issue, but it hasn’t always been. It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans led the way on new and innovative policies to tackle these issues. Richard Nixon opened the EPA. George H.W. Bush declared — first U.S. president to declare human activities are changing the atmosphere in unexpected and unprecedented ways. Someone who never shies away from a challenge, John McCain, introduced a market-based cap-and-trade bill to slow carbon pollution.

The woman that I’ve chosen to head up the EPA, Gina McCarthy, she’s worked — (cheers, applause) — she’s terrific. Gina’s worked for the EPA in my administration, but she’s also worked for five Republican governors. She’s got a long track record of working with industry and business leaders to forge common-sense solutions.

Unfortunately, she’s being held up in the Senate. She’s been held up for months, forced to jump through hoops no Cabinet nominee should ever have to, not because she lacks qualifications, because there are too many in the Republican Party right now who think that the Environmental Protecting Agency has no business protecting our environment from carbon pollution. The Senate should confirm her without any further obstruction or delay. (Cheers, applause.)

But more broadly, we’ve got to move beyond partisan politics on this issue.

I want to be clear. I am willing to work with anybody — Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, greens, anybody — to combat this threat on behalf of our kids. I am open to all sorts of new ideas — maybe better ideas — to make sure that we deal with climate change in a way that promotes jobs and growth. Nobody has a monopoly on what is a very hard problem.

But I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society. (Cheers, applause.) Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm. And ultimately, we will be judged as a people and as a society and as a country on where we go from here.

Our founders believed that those of us in positions of power are elected not just to serve as custodians of the present, but as caretakers of the future. And they charged us to make decisions with an eye on a longer horizon than the arc of our own political careers. That’s what the American people expect. That’s what they deserve. And someday our children and our children’s children will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could, when we had the chance, to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world? And I want to be able to say, yes, we did. Don’t you want that? (Cheers, applause.)

Americans are not a people who look backwards. We’re a people who look forward. We’re not a people who fear what the future holds; we shape it.

What we need in this fight are citizens who will stand up and speak up and compel us to do what this moment demands. Understand, this is not just a job for politicians. So I’m going to need all of you, to educate your classmates, your colleagues, your parents, your friends.

Tell them what’s at stake. Speak up at town halls, church groups, PTA meetings. Push back on misinformation. Speak up for the facts. Broaden the circle of those who are willing to stand up for our future. (Applause.)

Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. (Applause.) Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. (Applause.) Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.

And remind everyone who represents you at every level of government that sheltering future generations against the ravages of climate change is a prerequisite for your vote! Make yourself heard on this issue. (Cheers, applause.)

I understand the politics will be tough. The challenge we must accept will not reward us with a clear moment of victory. There’s no gathering army to defeat. There’s no peace treaty to sign. When President Kennedy said we’d go to the moon within the decade, we knew that we’d build a space ship and we’d meet the goal.

Our progress here will be measured differently, in crises averted, in a planet preserved. But can we imagine a more worthy goal? For while we may not live to sea the full realization of our ambition, we will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be — be better off for what we did.

It makes you realize, that astronaut said all those years ago, just what you have back there on Earth.

And that image in the photograph, that bright blue ball rising over the moon’s surface containing everything we hold dear, the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity, that’s what’s at stake. That’s what we’re fighting for. And if we remember that, I’m absolutely sure we’ll succeed.

But thank you, and God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Cheers, applause.)

Thanks to efforts from hundreds of protesters and state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-TX), an omnibus abortion bill did not win legislative approval from Texas lawmakers early on Wednesday morning. Republicans conceded that their vote to end Davis’ 13-hour filibuster on the legislation didn’t make the midnight deadline, when Texas’ special session officially concluded.

The proposed legislation, SB 5, would have criminalized abortion after 20 weeks and forced all but five of the state’s abortion clinics to close their doors. Because of Texas’ size and population, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards warned that SB 5 would amount to a “virtual ban” on abortion services in the state.

In order to block SB 5 from passing the Senate and heading to Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) desk before midnight on Tuesday, Davis filibustered the legislation for more than 12 hours. Under Texas’ Senate rules, Davis was not allowed to sit, lean against a desk, eat, drink, go to the restroom, or talk about anything unrelated to SB 5 during this time. At several times on Tuesday night, Republican legislators contended that she was breaking the rules of the filibuster. Once, they complained that another lawmaker helped Davis put on a back brace. Later, they claimed that discussions of Planned Parenthood and ultrasound procedures were off-topic.

Shortly before 11 pm, after Davis’ fellow lawmakers believed she had violated the terms of the filibuster three times, they attempted to end it. The crowd erupted in protest, shouting “Let her speak!” and chanting Davis’ name:

As a group of male officials discussed the parliamentary procedure that would decide the fate of Davis’ filibuster, her colleague Sen. Leticia Van Putte (D) wondered, “At one point does a female lawmaker raise her hand to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?”

The Senate eventually voted to put an end to Davis’ filibuster. There was dispute over whether that vote began before the midnight deadline. Democrats claimed it began at 12:02 or 12:03 am on Wednesday, and Republicans disagreed. Despite the disagreement, the Senate held a full vote in the early hours of the morning and approved SB 5 by 19 to 10.

But around 3:00 am, Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst (R) — who already amended some of the rules for the special session to allow lawmakers to more easily push through SB 5 — declared that the bill would not be able to be signed in the presence of the Senate. Thanks to “all the ruckus and noise going on” in the capitol building, Dewhurst said it wasn’t quiet enough to sign the bill, and blamed “an unruly mob using Occupy Wall Street tactics” for disrupting the Senate’s work. The New York Times notes that although the legislature’s official website first declared the Senate’s vote on the filibuster took place on Wednesday, that date was later changed to Tuesday.

Davis also conducted a successful filibuster in 2011 in an attempt to prevent Texas from cutting public education. Early on Wednesday morning, she called SB 5′s defeat “an incredible victory for Texas women and those who love them.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

The three minute “Dumb Ways To Die” Australian ad for Metro Trains cleaned up at the Cannes awards this past weekend, winning everything in sight.

Which gives us a good excuse to run a bunch of parodies ncreated since the first video went viral.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dumb Ways To Die Cleans Up At Cannes – And In Parodies

by Alison H. Mayer

We've seen some pretty crazy LEGO art, but this dress really takes the (wedding) cake!

Artist Rie Hosokai created this stunning dress as a contribution to Tokyo's "Piece of Peace" charity exhibit at the Parco Museum. In a statement accompanying the piece, Hosokai argued that

"In the modern trend...all things whole get broken down, [and] for that reason, people now seek to reconstruct their consciousness by extending it onto others. Through this process of extension, we have learned to unravel things down to their basic elements. We construct things from the most basic building blocks."

More simply put, in order to find truth (or in Hosokai's words, "the answer"), we must construct our world piece-by-piece through our connections to those around us. Pretty nifty, no? Although it certainly seems as though it would be difficult to construct much of anything while wearing that dress.

For more awesome fashion made out of crazy materials, you can check out Rie Hosokai's website here!

Related Video:

Watch: Star Wars Toys

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Of late, David Hasselhoff has been spied sporting a comic book style T-Shirt with The Hoff emblazoned across his what-used-to-be-a-historical-rippling-chest-and-six-pack.

Turns out it’s not just a T-Shirt. It’s a strip from Retro Comics, launching this weekend (though copies wont actially be available yet) and then spinning into an official The Hoff comic book. Here’s the puff…

The Hoff character, co-created by the Hoff and Simon will appear as a time-travelling agent of H.O.F.F. (Heroes Of Fearless Freedom), and will team-up with the Funk Commandos in a history-making special team-up issue… co-written by Simon Williams and David Hasselhoff. Simon is looking forward to meeting the Hoff at the London Film and Comic Con in July: “I literally can’t believe it… I’m a long-time fan of Davids. It’s going to be amazing… I genuinely can’t wait!”

It will be launching at the London Film And Comic Con on the first weekend in July, where The Hoff will rub shoulders with the likes of Milo Manara and Dave McKean.

So… Who wants to party with The Hoff and his comic book?

David Hasselhoff Gets His Own Comic, Launches It In London This Weekend

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Opinion

When the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe animated series found its way to Netflix Instant not too long ago, I thought it would make perfect background noise for my work day; some nostalgic entertainment to help pass the time while ... Read more

 

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gierlichmypussy:

Howl’s moving castle: Howl Demon 2by ~KeHey

I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. I’m in love. WOW.

Wow, great cosplay *_*

Don’t mess with Sally.

Prepare to feel old, beatniks. While scrolling through my Facebook feed I stumbled upon Alan Light’s Flickr gallery.  Light gave me permission to share his pictures from the 13th annual San Diego Comic-Con in 1982.

I wasn’t alive when these were taken but I really appreciate the window into history. My first San Diego experience was in 2008 and I could never image the vibe this show had at the time. SDCC 2013 is less then a month away, and I can’t wait to shoot photos like these for someone like me 30 years from now to look back and try to imagine it was like to be at comic-con.

See all the photos here.

Henry Barajas is the co-creator, writer and letterer for El Loco and Captain Unikorn. He has also written and lettered short stories for two successful Kickstarter SpazDog Press projects: Unite and Take Over: Stories inspired by The Smiths and Break The Walls: Comic Stories inspired by The Pixies.  He is the Newsroom Research Assistant for The Arizona Daily Star and was nominated for the Shel Dorf Blogger of the Year award for his work at The Beat.  You can follow him on Twitter @HenryBarajas.

It looks like the animated series Devil Survivor 2 may now coming to a close so I am sure that MegaHouse is rushing to ride the hype wave in releasing their painted figures of Banri and Nitta-san from Devil Survivor 2.

In my opinion Banri is coming along okay and her unique character design is lending herself well to figurine form. However she and Nitta are both looking far too robotic. It's hard to put words on it but I would like to see these two girls look more like girls and less like robots. A little bit more fluidity to the pose would go a long way to help sell these two ladies. 

[via 2chan]

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Pac-Man: Bruce Waka is a mask I wear, that I’ve been wearing since I was a child… but it’s become a liability, so it’s over. Bruce Waka and his troubles aren’t my concern anymore. The only thing that matters now is my mission. Nothing will stand in the way anymore.

Dear Abby, 22 June 2013:

DEAR ABBY: When did men decide it was “stylish” to wear a two-day growth of beard? I can understand men not shaving on their day off, but to go unshaven and wearing a tux just looks wrong. It is twice as wrong if they have gray in their beard. Please tell the men of America to shave! — STYLE POLICEWOMAN IN OHIO

Dear Style Policewoman:

I’ll tell you exactly when men decided it was “stylish” to wear a two-day growth of beard: in BULLSHIT A.D., the year of our Lord 19Literally Everything Is About You, Madam.

Men of America, but particularly the men of Ohio who are forcing this poor, helpless woman who cannot control her ocular functions and thus must stare at untold swaths of disgusting grey-spotted beards: shave!

I don’t know where men get off not expressly making an effort to live up to your aesthetic standards, but this shit has got to stop. Before you know it, the men of America will have decided not to spend their every waking moment wondering what some totally reasonable Midwestern lady with the world’s most understandable priorities will think about their facial hair.

Filed under: Opinion, Ask Chris

Over a lifetime of reading comics, Senior Writer Chris Sims has developed an inexhaustible arsenal of facts and opinions. That's why, each and every week, we turn to you to put his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader ... Read more

 

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Two New York men were indicted this week in an alleged plot to build a portable X-ray weapon to destroy enemies of Israel that scientists say is “the stuff of comic books.” Indeed, while death rays may have been the preferred weapon of Golden Age supervillains and B-movie mad scientists, their real-world application is dubious in [...]

Filed under: DC, Fashion

The golden age of the costume hoodie seems to be drawing toward its inevitable decline as one manufacturer embraces what may very well be the future of more-casual-than-but-also-maybe-more-intense-than-cosplay superhero fashion: Costume backpacks. ... Read more

 

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Slate offers the kind of simpleton article that makes me crazy:

Why Do Animated Movies Cost So Much?

A good animation movie can take $50 million or more to produce. Animation is a highly labor-centric work. During my undergrad, some of our classmates worked on a three minute animation film for a college event. That took about two months for a team of eight people. Multiply the quality by 1000X and the size by 100X and you get a Pixar movie. ...

1) The story, direction, and sound: An animation movie might have no human actors, but it does have human story creators, screenplay writers, art directors, and sound effect people. It takes a lot of effort (and wages) to create the smooth story that will capture the audience. In a regular movie, an experienced actor might carry the show even with a bad story line and could do a lot of spontaneous things. There is no saving in an animated movie.

2) Art work creation: A single frame of an animation film can have millions of moving parts. For the Sully character in Monsters, Inc., there were 2,320,413 individually named hairs on his body. When he moves, the animators have to animate each hair in the body to create a highly realistic effect. ...

3) Studio costs: Studios such as Pixar have 600 or more creative people working on a movie for three to four years. They need to be housed and provided a creative environment and tools ...

4.Server costs: Animation is a highly computing-intensive task. Each individual frame has to be rendered to integrate all the moving parts. ...

Here's a news flash: It ain't the CG, Virginia. Animation has always been pricy, relative to lower budget live-action films. But at the same time, animation costs have always varied radically, even as they were lower than many A-list movies. A few scattered examples:

Pinocchio was the most expensive movie of its time, if you base it on running length. Gone With the Wind (released at the same time as Pinoke) cost $4.25 million (three hours and forty minutes) to Pinocchio's $2.35 million (86 minutes). Do the math.

But animation could also be cheaper than its live-action competition. Twenty months after the debut of the little wooden boy, Disney produced Dumbo for under a million bucks, way less than Technicolor live-action extravaganzas of the period (Adventures of Robin Hood, Wizard of Oz, Northwest Mounted Police) many of which cost more than $2 million.

In our time, animation costs still run neck-and-neck with live-action pictures but still vary widely in cost. Of current top-drawer animated features, the high-priced specimen would be Tangled, weighing in at $250 million. (When a picture is in production for ten or twelve years, costs explode.) And the low-cost candidate is Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me, down in the $75 million range. (Chris Mededandri runs a lean ship.)

And what would be the "median cost?" for the modern animated feature? Probably something in the $100 million to $170 million range, which is right on track with budgets of modern live-action flicks. (You don't believe it, go look at Box Office Mojo and compare various budgets. Super-hero tent poles cost as much or more than the product coming out of Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, and Blue Sky Studios. And way more than movies produced by Illumination Entertainment.)

So to the question, "Why do animated movies cost so much?" the only sane response would be:

"Compared to what?"

Animated features have always had similar levels of costs relative to A-list live-action, no matter what era you care to do budget analyses. As it was in 1940, so is it now. CG has nothing to do with it, it's the medium.

The most epic Super Smash Bros. match EVER proves the game isn’t just for button-mashers

While there’s sadly no sign of a Blu-ray release, Warner Bros. are at least going to issue DVD season sets for the tremendous Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

TV Shows On DVD scored this look at the cover art, but sadly haven’t any word on whether or not there’s any supplements. I’m guessing not for now, but still.

For my appraisal of the series, check out a previous instalment of the Bleeding Cool podcast. Short version: it’s Scooby Doo for a post-Buffy world.

Hopefully season two will follow, and maybe great sales of season one could encourage supplements for that release.

And, yes, I know these episodes are on Netflix in HD. Trust me, I know. Do like boxes, though. Discs. Things I can touch.

Finally! Full Season Sets For Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated Begin

A friend who used to read a lot of SF but who hasn’t read any for a while asked me for recommendations for recent science fiction books that I was excited about. These aren’t meant as anybody’s “best,” least of all mine, they’re just science fiction books written in the last ten years that have made me excited about the possibilities of SF all over again. The “sense of wonder” is easy to get when you’re twelve, because everything is new, but books that can give it to me now are valuable.

I thought I’d share my thoughts.

[Ten books, no spoilers]

The first thing to come to mind was Karl Schroeder’s Lady of Mazes (2005). It’s post-everything science fiction, it deals with virtuality, loss of privacy, identity issues, and what it means to be human when it’s possible to edit that. It’s a book that raises huge philosophical issues, and it’s also a cracking good story with great characters. I like all of Schroeder, but this is my favourite book of his so far, and definitely one of the things I want to point to when I say that this is what the genre is capable of.

Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin (2006) takes an original science fiction idea and uses it to tell a double-braided human story. Aliens, or something—they call them the Hypotheticals—have put Earth in a protective cocoon that means that while time passes normally for us, outside the universe is flashing by and the sun is getting dangerously hot. Nobody knows why this has happened, and people respond in all the ways people do—with science, religion, panic and hope. Wilson carries everything through and makes it all work—with great characters and a terrific voice.

Susan Palwick’s Shelter (2007) is a thoroughly imagined near future US where everything has changed but grown out of where we are. It’s about artificial intelligence and the medicalization of character flaws—and even things that might not be flaws. One of the main characters is under intervention for altruism for most of the book. It takes visible trends and extrapolates them out in the way only science fiction can, and it’s doing that with the trends of today—well, 2007. Again, it’s also wonderfully written. Maybe when I was twelve I could get excited by a badly written book with shiny ideas, but not any more.

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (2008) is a big novel about the history of philosophy and science—set in an alternate world where that history has been different but parallel—and yet Stephenson manages to make it a ton of fun. There are things wrong with it, and I’ve been reliably informed that the physics makes no sense, but that doesn’t matter because what Stephenson’s doing is writing something new about the way people think and the way the scientific worldview affects everything. It also has geeky scientific monasteries that feel real and are fascinating.

Geoff Ryman’s Air (2005) is one of those books that draws you in immediately. It’s about a future mind-internet coming to a little third world village that has been on the edges of technological civilization for a long time, and how it affects the people, especially the women. Karzistan is an imaginary country somewhere on the Silk Road. It has always been marginal, been a margin, and it still is. Gibson said the future was unevenly distributed, and this is a brilliant book about the unequal edge of distribution. This is the kind of book that wouldn’t have been written in previous decades because it took a lot of work and ground clearing to get to a place where it was possible to make these characters visible. Which is part of what it’s about.

Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark (2003) is about an autistic man in the near future. Again it has a very clear distinct voice—and this is indeed something I like in a book, but it’s not something new in the last decade! Speed of Dark is a character portrait of a very unusual character, seen from inside. The way Lou thinks is different and fascinating, and Moon shows us that close up and almost makes us feel what it would be like. This is a book that does rely on a lot of past SF—in particular “Flowers for Algernon”—but which is going on and doing something really interesting with it.

Kasuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) is a science fiction novel written by a mainstream writer—and the trend for this last decade has been the tendency for these not to suck. (In addition to Ishiguro, Michael Chabon has pulled it off brilliantly.) Never Let Me Go is a dystopia that uses the mode usually used for writing about privilege and nostalgia to talk about appalling things. It’s shocking and powerful and wonderful and original.

M.J. Locke’s Up Against It (2012) is book I’ve only read once, and which I’m planning to read again and write about really soon. It’s set in a near future solar system, and it’s full of engineering and problems with water and technology and people. It’s a whole lot like the kind of traditional science fiction I love, but it has real rounded characters and the modern solar system—the one science has recently revealed to us, not the one SF has taken as a default setting for so long. Up Against It is exciting to me because it’s doing what old SF did, taking current science and engineering and writing fun stories with it, only with current science and engineering. And current practice of characterisation and plot. It’s a terrific read.

I’m well aware that I haven’t read everything from the last decade. Emmet suggested that Peter Watts Blindsight absolutely belongs on this list, and so does China Mieville’s The City and the City. But I haven’t got to them yet, and so they’re not on my list. I’m sure there are lots of things I’ve missed, and probably lots of things I’ll think of myself as soon as I hit send. (That always happens.) I’d be very interested to have people add to this list in comments, with recent science fiction novels that have made them excited about what science fiction can do. Please don’t list fantasy. I may do a companion post about fantasy later.

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Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two poetry collections and nine novels, most recently the Hugo and Nebula winning Among Others. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.

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Turn any text into the logo style of the popular series

Nothing to do late at night? Try this just for fun! An Attack On Titan Logo Generator that decorates any text into a logo that looks like the series logo. Samples and link after the jump!

The newly designed Kinect for Xbox One may run afoul of a bill called the "We Are Watching You Act," if it becomes law. The law sponsored by

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