LONDON—At Shoreditch Town Hall on Thursday, at an event hosted by Intelligence Squared and Vanity Fair, the longevous British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman of University Challenge fame asked the audience of few hundred: "Is the Internet a failed utopia?" He asked us to vote on the matter by raising our hands. About two-thirds of the audience disagreed with the statement, a fair few (including myself) were undecided, and only a smattering of people actually thought the Internet was a failed utopia.
It was then the turn of four panellists, in the style of an electoral hustings or stump speech, to change our minds. In the failed-utopia camp were Andrew Keen and Frank Pasquale; in the not-a-failed-utopia faction were Peter Barron and Beth Noveck. They took it in turns to deliver quite rousing speeches.
The naysayers obviously had the harder job from the outset—we were at an event that was specifically tailored for fans of the Internet, after all—but they did a good job of reminding us that the Internet, as it stands, is not the elysium that we were all promised at its inception. Keen warned us that, while we think the Internet is an idyllic plateau where everyone is on an even footing, where two guys in a garage can compete with the monolithic, infrastructure-owning giants, we're all deluding ourselves: just like the real world, the Internet is now ruled by big corporations.
The Civil Rights struggle was in full swing when the very first Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men comic was published in 1963. Featuring a community of persecuted mutants, Lee and Kirby had to have been aware of the way their comic would resonate with contemporary black protest. Subsequent readers certainly have been—as the X-Men have grown more popular over the years, the heroic Professor Xavier has often been compared to Martin Luther King. The supervillain Magneto, who advocates for mutant separatism and violence, has been compared to Malcolm X.
So if the X-Men have always been a Civil Rights metaphor, why not make that comparison explicit? That’s the argument of Eli Keel at Salon, anyway, who recently suggested that Marvel’s new Secret Wars series reboot should redesign Magneto as a black character. Magneto’s origin story is that he was a Jewish victim of the Holocaust, but that’s becoming less and less tenable for younger readers. The time is right for an update, Keel says: “The best fix for Magneto’s origin problem is to reboot him and Professor X into the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. Have them experience the heartbreak of the historic assassinations as young black men.”
There’s only one problem with that. The X-Men may be a metaphor for segregation. But it’s a really stupid metaphor.
To compare Magneto to Malcolm X is ultimately to say that Malcolm X was a supervillain intent on genocide—which is both insulting and a little racist. To compare Magneto to Malcolm X is ultimately to say that Malcolm X was a supervillain intent on genocide—which is both insulting and a little racist. Similarly, to say that Professor X is Martin Luther King is to suggest that pacifist resistance to injustice is equivalent to organizing a team of minority vigilantes to hunt down and police other minorities.
Xavier’s original plan in that first X-Men comic was to “build a haven…a school for X-Men! Here we stay, unsuspected by normal humans, as we learn to use our powers for the benefit of mankind to help those who would distrust us if they knew of our existence!” The whole purpose of the X-Men is to hide their difference while secretly helping mainstream society—and that help comes mostly in the form of kicking the tar out of other mutants. Martin Luther King was beaten by cops; he didn’t aspire to be one.
Keel recognizes that the Malcolm/Magneto, Martin/Xavier analogy doesn’t work very well and suggests a variety of fixes. But even if you made all the X-Men black, you’d have problems. The series’ main narrative convention still involves oppressed people forming a vigilante organization to beat up other oppressed people who threaten the status quo. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, for example, the main mission is to save Richard Nixon. There’s no real way to read that as a radical social program for racial change.
In a recent interview, artist and comics creator John Jennings told me, “honestly, I think it’s more important to have black creators working than it is to have black superheroes.” Rather than asking white guys to try to rewrite their characters to be more reflective of black and minority narratives, we should simply create better, original storylines. Imagine, for example, if the mainstream could stop churning out X-movies for half a minute, and instead decided to make a film version of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. Rather than asking white guys to try to rewrite their characters to be more reflective of black and minority narratives, we should simply create better, original storylines.
Wild Seed is about stigmatized mutants too, but none of the stigmatized mutants decide to form a paramilitary force. Instead, the story focuses on an African woman named Anyanwu, and her nemesis and sometimes friend, Doro. Rather than a confused metaphor about Civil Rights struggles, the novel is a painful exploration of slavery and sexual coercion, focused on a black woman’s power and her fear for her children. Certainly not a feel-good summer superhero bash—but then again, maybe that’s a sign that feel-good fun superhero bashes aren’t necessarily well-equipped to deal intelligently with issues of racial history.
Back in March, Michelle Rodriguez was asked if she wanted to play Green Lantern, and she responded, ” I think it’s so stupid… this whole minorities in Hollywood thing, it’s so stupid. It’s like, stop stealing all the white people’s superheroes. Make up your own.”
Rodriguez took a lot of flak for her comments—which she later clarified—but looking at the X-Men, you have to wonder if she doesn’t have a point. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created an arguably thoughtless, clumsy, and in many ways ugly parable about stigmatized minorities in America. Yet 50 years later we’re still telling and retelling that same dumb story. Sure, if this was the only narrative available, it would be important to try to have better representation of minority characters and experiences. But couldn’t we, maybe, tell different stories? Because whether Magneto is white, black, or orange with purple stripes, the X-Men series is always going to present the Civil Rights struggle primarily in terms of stigmatized minorities blasting each other with power beams.
You can follow Noah on Twitter at @hoodedu. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
Jerry Weiers is doing just fine after volunteering his body to be shot with a Taser as part of a law enforcement fundraiser. Ultimately it was a win-win for everyone because money was raised and an angry Coyotes fan got to take out her rage on the mayor she believes isn't doing enough to help Arizona's NHL team.
A crowdfunding effort by Coyotes fans raised $10,000 to ensure they'd be the ones to pull the trigger and zap the mayor. Ronda Pearson was given the honor after she spoke her mind and yelled at the mayor during a council meeting.
Obviously she was happy with the result.
Here is a video of me tasing Mayor Weiers. I would like to thank EVERYONE who donated money to this great cause! https://t.co/Eeioa5sqY4
When you walk out of the Älmhult train station, there’s not much to see. To the west is a string of filthy box cars on the railroad, and to the east, a small park with no people. TripAdvisor will tell you that there is only one thing to do in the tiny Swedish village: Go to IKEA.
science journalists write weird shit when the summer's too hot
StartsWithABang writes: If you take all the kinetic motion out of a system, and have all the particles that make it up perfectly at rest, somehow even overcoming intrinsic quantum effects, you'd reach absolute zero, the theoretically lowest temperature of all. But what about the other direction? Is there a limit to how hot something can theoretically get? You might think not, that while things like molecules, atoms, protons and even matter will break down at high enough temperatures, you can always push your system hotter and hotter. But it turns out that the Universe limits what's actually possible, as any physical system will self-destruct beyond a certain point.
When the Chicago Blackhawks cleared the puck in the first period of Game 5, Tampa Bay Lightning goalie decided to come way out of his net to play the puck.
It was an awful decision.
Keep in mind that Bishop is 6'6 and the guy he ran into, Victor Hedman, is 6'6. That's like two freight trains colliding. Patrick Sharp has that crazy, thunderous blunder to thank for the easiest goal of his career.
'Here, it’s just $10 to enjoy working a train through the beautiful scenery of Gifu Prefecture, learning about the area and mastering the art of driving a passenger train and wow did I ever just talk myself into this game.'
Japanese Rail Sim 3D Journey in Suburbs #1 ⊟
That’s the name of a surprising 3DS eShop release this week, from Sonic Powered. With a name like that, you hardly need any description, or really even screenshots! You know what’s going on here.
In Japan, the Rail Sim series is on its fourth entry, all released as retail games! Here, it’s just $10 to enjoy working a train through the beautiful scenery of Gifu Prefecture, learning about the area and mastering the art of driving a passenger train and wow did I ever just talk myself into this game.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOHN ADAMS ONCE HAD TO SHARE A BED IN A CROWDED INN, AND SPENT A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF TIME ARGUING OVER WHETHER OR NOT THE WINDOW SHOULD REMAIN OPEN DURING THE NIGHT, AND WHETHER AN OPEN WINDOW WAS A HEALTHIER WAY TO SLEEP OR A SUREFIRE WAY TO GET SICK.
I wonder who was of which opinion
FRANKLIN WANTED THE WINDOW OPEN, ADAMS WANTED IT CLOSED.
I wonder who won.
FRANKLIN, BY TOTAL KNOCKOUT. HE KEPT EXPLAINING WHY FRESH AIR IS ACTUALLY GOOD FOR THE BODY UNTIL ADAMS GOT BORED AND FELL ASLEEP, ALLOWING FRANKLIN TO DO AS HE PLEASED RE: THE WINDOW.
Submission – Official Map: Bike Network Map of Houten, The Netherlands
Submitted by Bertram Bourdrez, who says:
I ran into this while reading about Houten (the Netherlands), a town celebrated for its high cycling rate (about 52% of all journeys):
Translation of the first paragraph:
“Houten is a true cycling town, but all of its red cycleways look alike. Not everyone knows how to find their way around the different neighbourhoods. To solve this problem, the town council and the local chapter of the Dutch Cyclists’ Union have created a wayfinding system, based on a transit map.”
I actually quite like the map, for the gimmick that it is. It has very few of the inexplicable inconsistencies that tend to plague transit maps made for non-transit uses. Apparently they’ve marked lampposts along each route with coloured and numbered indicators to show what “line” you’re on.
On a transit-related note, the main destinations in a Dutch sleeper town like this would definitely be the train stations, which are at the core of the network and easily reached by routes 1, 4, 6 and 7. Both stations have extensive free and guarded bike parking for easy interchange.
Transit Maps says:
First off, Houten looks like an amazing place to get around by bike – cycle paths that are largely separated from roads, a very clear differentiation between arterial and local streets, low local speed limits, and curving streets to effectively deter speeding. It all adds up to that amazing 52% bicycle journey rate that Bertram quotes above. By comparison, my city of Portland, Oregon – often held up as a leader in cycling here in the US – has a bike commute rate of just 6%.
The map itself works well for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t overdo the “transit map” concept, remaining true to the actual layout of the city, albeit in a nicely simplified form. Secondly, the numbered routes actually seem to cross the city in a useful, logical manner, rather than just being created in an effort to push the transit map metaphor (something I’ve seen other bike and walking maps do, overcomplicating things to make the map look more impressive).
I also quite like the logo for the network, which has a stylised bike made out of “route lines”. Its rear wheel looks like an interchange symbol from the map, and sits at the intersection of a Blue Line and a Green Line. On the map, these lines (routes 1 and 4) intersect at the main train system: the heart of the city and the network.
Our rating: Simple is better sometimes! Three stars.
Old Geezer brings a tremendous value to this site. His odd cantankerous comments are at most a minor annoyance. Choosing to ban one of the original members of Gygax's group over the odd sex joke seems a bit rigid.
“How profoundly refreshing to leave behind rules of designation, imaginary cases, or the cat’s cradle of possible world semantics and to learn that the complexities are not in our language but in ourselves and in the world.” -Arthur C. Danto
Welcome back to Vi Hart Weekly! This week’s topics: new improv and webVR toys, gender video and comment curation, Rachel Dolezal and transrace, and this week’s book reviews.
Improv and webVR: pulling out bits and varying them
Open this in a new tab to accompany your news reading experience with this week’s piano improv, and maybe also get stuck staring at it for 10 minutes: vihart.github.io/spinny/daisy
I decided to throw together a bit of music pulled out of a longer improv, with a bit of webVR pulled out of a bigger project, with variations on both.
The webVR stuff started with this virtual version of our office we’ve been working on. I can’t say I recommend it at this point, but if you want you can see it here [arrow keys to move, or webVR with oculus and gamepad].
As it is, it might take 10 minutes to load and have broken textures, Which is why when I made this spinny thing I liked, I decided to pull it out and give it its own page where it can load and run quickly.
The spinny thing itself is based on this thing in our office made by Toby Schachman [above, left]. When I was looking for inspiration for what to put in our virtual office, I said to myself “why, that looks mighty for-loopable!” So I looped. And it was easy and effective enough that I couldn’t help isolating it and making some variations: 1, 2, 3
Cyclicy offset things are mesmerizing and easy to code, and I’ve made afewrelatedthings in webVR before [wasd to rotate view, and these have mouse interaction]. One of the brainfoods involved is Gary Foshee’s Harmonic Pendulum. Another is Jim Bumgardner’s Whitney Music Box, which might be what made me think music belonged involved somehow.
After my improv session that evening, I could remember that something in there was catchy and melodic, but not what it was at all. Usually it’d just be lost back into the aether of infinite potential pretty melodies, but I’d recorded this session and listened to it while I was messing with this code and making variations. Indeed, somewhere in the middle of an hour was this nice 5 minutes of melody, and I thought it went quite well with the webVR thing. So that’s how that happened.
But as we talked about last week, things get stuck in my head and vary and stuff. It happened to the webVR spinny thing, and it happened to this bit of music. It drove me nuts all through dinner, so then I went back for an improvisation just on that theme, to get it properly out of my head. I think I might like the original better, but here it is anyway:
And thus ends a story of simple musical and mathematical objects being taken out of their larger homes to be treated as their own special thing, one that gets stuck in your head and demands variations and repetition, an obsessive thought divorced from its context and focused on until it is finally destroyed.
YouTube’d a thing, and Comments
Enough people gave good responses to last week’s section on gender and Caitlyn Jenner, and seemed to consider it important [and it was the jumping off point for this ridiculous twitter exchange which gives me warm fuzzies], that I went ahead and edited the script and made it into a video:
On the topic of things I used to worry about or not understand when I was a horrible teenager:
I’ve heard some people say that the “PC police” have made it impossible to talk about gender and stuff, that they’re afraid to express their opinions because they’re afraid they’ll get backlash for what they perceive as no reason, drama, etc. My teenage self might have agreed, and would have never believed that if a bunch of people told me a thing I said was sexist/transphobic/etc, maybe that’s because it actually was sexist/transphobic/etc.
So I made a video about gender and stuff and I did not get any backlash from any of the groups that angry reddit/4chan trolls like to pretend jump on anyone who says anything about gender. Of course, that does not mean there was no backlash. I banned several hundred commenters for making transphobic, homophobic, and sexist comments. Some of these even were aimed specifically at me and on the topic of the video, though most were the same comments you’d see anywhere. Often these comments also contained complaints about the “PC police” who censor them, as if complaining about how some people don’t allow transphobic comments would keep me from banning them.
Years ago, I would have felt weird, guilty, or conflicted about this. While it’s considered justifiable to tell someone they’re not welcome to come into your house and insult you, it’s still considered rude to ask a guest to leave. Do they deserve a chance to learn? Etc.
But after gaining a better understanding of systems, and experience with the sheer numbers involved when dealing with internet social phenomena, I realize that there is no way but to moderate, aggressively, or else take responsibility for the inevitable consequence.
In a system where common stereotypes are treated as equal to minority opinions, it is inevitable that the stereotypes overwhelm any chance of discussion. And while I understand that many people have simply yet to learn, in a system where common ignorance is treated equally to expert knowledge, it is inevitable that common ignorance overwhelms. I know there’s plenty of other places on the internet that would welcome those ignorant comments; indeed, they seem word for word identical to the same troll comments that inevitably fill every space that does not actively curate them out. And there’s many places specifically set up for learning, and those need a lot of rules in order to function, specifically regarding the authority and greater knowledge of teachers over students.
When I post a video, I create a space. And I choose what to fill it with. I could pretend to myself that I’m just letting it fill itself, letting people decide and express their own thoughts that I am not responsible for, but I know too much to fool myself like that.
When you let a space fill itself, it fills itself with whatever’s the fastest material. Ignorance is fast. Hate is fast. It takes a lot of practice to be fast at love and tolerance, so while there are those who are fast at it, there’s not enough of them. It also takes time and practice to get fast at cultural norms, but everyone gets that practice and becomes an expert, whether they realize it or not. People can judge what’s outside those norms really really quickly.
I created that comment section, and I’m the only one who can curate it. There’s no such thing as impartiality, only avoidance of responsibility and capitulation to those who are quickest to judge and spend the most time judging. The internet is not a 1-person-1-vote democracy. The only responsible choice is to either mute selectively, or mute everyone. Given the time it takes to curate comments, removing comment sections altogether is often the only choice.
Sometime I’ll make a longer deeper post about the systems involved in this sort of stuff. But on the topic of being a responsible curator of the internet spaces we create, I’m going to say a bit more about one particular sort of comment that I’ve banned many people for: anything equivocating gender and race to justify intolerance. Which brings us to:
This Week’s Trending Media Topic: Rachel Dolezal and “Transracial”
A lot of people don’t know what to make of the concept that someone might identify as a different race, as you might have heard Rachel Dolezal claims (not that anyone has any official statements on the matter from Dolezal herself, as of writing this). I am not interested in speculating on her genuineness or in judging her actions, but for those who are in the position of having to curate comments/discussions, I hope some of my lines of thinking can at least point you in useful thought directions regarding the discourse surrounding this whole thing.
Many people are asking the question of whether one can be transracial or not. Whenever you find some “this or that?” question exploding in the media, the first question to ask yourself is not “this or that”, but:
1. Out of infinite possible questions, why this and why now?
2. In what context does the question make any sense?
There is much more information in the questions we choose to ask than in their answers. Questions don’t come out of nowhere, and treating the question itself as an independent purely-logical object misses the entire meaning of it. The reason for this question’s existence, the entire context on which it depends, is transgenderism. Without appropriating that context, the question would make very little sense as posed, and certainly “transracial” would not be trending social media. Maybe Dolezal herself would be trending, but the questions, the media story, would be a very different one.
Being both a semi-internet-famous person and a known feminist in the tech industry, I get people from every hateful corner of the internet forcing their way into my consciousness, so transrace is something I’ve heard many times before. People on the internet have been using the concept of transrace for years, not as an identity for themselves but as a hypothetical “argument” that they feel simultaneously justifies transphobia, mocks the “liberal agenda”, and allows them to throw in some racist stereotypes while they’re at it.
“Wow, a man can just decide he’s a woman? Next think you know liberals will decide a white person can just decide they’re black and [insert stereotypes here],” so their argument goes. I’ve deleted many comments of that form. I am much more aware than I’d like to be that some people understand race and gender so poorly that they find it reasonable to switch them up, context be damned.
I don’t know what’s up with Rachel Dolezal, but I do know that the hateful corners of the world are having an absolute field day. They invented this thing they thought was ridiculous purely as an excuse to mock others, and now they have one more excuse to pretend that they were justified.
While everyone else is confused and unsure what is going on with this person, the people who have been mocking this situation for years have their responses ready to go. The quickest easiest comments necessarily dominate all uncurated conversation. The tiny judgmental minority gets the most votes.
Dolezal is an interesting case and there’s a ton of complexities in there, but we can’t see what’s going on if we’re looking at race through the lens of gender. Another great way to destroy any chance of understanding this in context would be to focus intently on Dolezal herself. I’m sure there are people who see it all much more clearly than I, whose voices are hard to find because their answer to this question does not fit the “identity politics” “liberals pushing their ridiculous liberal agenda” storyline that provoked the asking of it.
Reason alone can’t untangle cultural problems; for that we need truth and history, two things we are very bad at facing.
This Week’s Book Reviews: On Color and Philosophy
Continuing my research on color and philosophy, this week I read “Form and Content” and “Color for Philosophers”. And this time I mean color as in Roy G. Biv, not color as in Dolezal, though as we’ve just seen, racial color vision is also rife with philosophical quandaries and examples of form without content.
Form and Content, by Bernard Harrison
An interesting book of the kind where the first sentence is “It is often held that language can express only the form but not the content of experience.”
Harrison’s way of getting at content of experience, as with many previous philosophers, is with color experience as a shining example. Color seems irrefutably to exist outside the human mind; seeing is believing I suppose. This book was published in 1973, at a time when a lot of good science on color vision was known to scientists but still ignored by philosophers. As an argument about color specifically, it’s out of date, but as an argument about the expressibility of content, It’s interesting to see the third way out of arguments that seemed, without the benefit of science, to be either-or propositions.
Harrison has this concept of “color presentation,” the theoretical actual color presented, which may or may not reflect the color as we see it. Without science, it seemed only a question of how skeptical one was of experience: are the colors we experience the correct real ones, or might we be seeing the wrong ones, and how would we know? But now we know there is no such thing as the “true real actual color of a thing” in the first place, that color experience can come from many different physical and psychological properties, and that in fact not everyone interprets the same wavelengths in the same way. It’s a warning against taking skepticism in the wrong direction: the real questions are in a different direction than all the cases that had been considered.
Another concept: “natural nameables.” Things in the world that are things, basically. Is “Yellow” a natural nameable? Would all cultures name yellow “yellow”, or is which wavelength corresponds to which words an arbitrary choice, and yellow is only a particular thing by convention?
The concept of “natural nameables” is interesting, though the question is wrongly put. Turns out yellow is neither a cultural convention nor a real existing special wavelength; it’s in the physiology of our eyes, the tiny receptors and cells that compute the signals before they even reach the brain. But Harrison’s account of what makes these colors consistently nameable is interesting and may yet have some truth in it: he takes Wilhelm Runge’s double-cone color space (color cubes are more popular these days, I think), and then starts adding points that he thinks allow the greatest amount of color discrimination (most roundy and evenly-sized voronoi cells).
Berlin and Kay’s “Basic Colour Terms”, which found that different languages have different numbers of words for colors but that they start with the same ones (first black/white, then red, etc) did make a big splash on the philosophy of color when it came out. So Harrison comes up with a scheme where perhaps adding these colors one by one to the geometric color space, in a way that gives the most even color sectors as you go, is what arises to the apparently strange fact that all languages with at least three colors will place the third one in about the same space as our “red”.
It’s good mathy thinking and I like it. Though language is not what makes red and green highly visible and pure colors to our eyes, it is also not fair to say “it’s how eyes work” and leave it at that. Eyes could (and do) work differently, with small variations across humans as to which blue is “true blue”, and large variations across species. It would be better to ask why our eyes evolved this set of capabilities, and an efficient splitting-up of a color space makes more sense here.
He also tackles the infamous “could we invert red and green?” question. If I learned red is actually green, could we, by talking, ever discover that I’m seeing it “wrong”? Would it be “wrong”? If there’s no way to tell by talking about it, then a red/green switch would be “discourse neutral”, which is a useful concept. Perhaps many things where we see them very differently but think we’re talking about the same thing are in fact “discourse-neutral” differences between us.
Harrison argues the red/green spectrum switch would not be discourse neutral, because while the spectrum of possible colors is symmetric, the naturally nameable ones aren’t; we’ve got subtleties on the reddish side, like orange and pink and brown, that create an asymmetry in the linguistic form of our color names. He calls this the “semantic topology”.
It’s a great idea, that language must necessarily have asymmetric semantic topologies so that we don’t accidentally invert our discourse. Whether this linguistic idea has much to do with color, or with anything at all, is another matter.
Color for Philosophers, by C. L. Hardin
Finally, in 1986, a philosopher/scientist got frustrated enough with unscientific philosophy to write this book on the science of color vision, targeted towards philosophers. I almost didn’t read it because I figure I know quite a bit about how color vision works, but I decided to because:
1. It’s helpful to see it all written out at once like that, with good explanations and diagrams and connections to philosophy, and with all these other recently-read books in mind.
2. Apparently it was successful in its mission, and raised the level of discourse in the philosophy of color. I wanted to know what kind of book does that, as well as understand the context more recent philosophers are writing in.
The forward by Arthur C. Danto (quoted in this post’s epigraph) sums up much of the motivation and frustration. “The disease so much of philosophy consists of is the belief that it is philosophy when in fact it is something else,” in the case of color, “just bad science”.
The truth of the world actually has some bearing on theoretical discourse, and one must be suspect of any argument outside of mathematics that claims to get by on reason alone.
My fascination with the philosophy of color began with just how much science can actually bring to it. It’s a great example of where questions of philosophy actually got answered, or at least complexified. When it comes to real tough things like qualia, to have a standard example actually get revolutionized and make progress is pretty cool.
Why is there no reddish green? Not any linguistic form, just the opposition color theory that makes it so that the cells in our eyes actually cannot send a red and green signal at the same time! Why are brown and pink standard color words, but not dark and light greenish-yellow? Because our receptors physically treat yellow as having more achromatic content (so it seems brighter) and less saturation (so it does not have the range of perceptibly different saturation that an equivalent to brown and pink require).
Why would our eyes do that? Probably not for the benefit of an asymmetric semantic topology, and more likely because seeing subtleties in browns and pinks is a useful adaptation. Evolution is not covered or speculated upon, though.
Color for Philosophers also hammers home just how much context matters even in things that seem basic. Wittgenstein wondered why there’s no such thing as a brown light, and how black and white translucent screens or filters should behave differently from colored ones. Well, because brown and black and white actually do not exist in isolation and cannot be seen without context. A single brown pixel, alone in a dark room, is orange. A single pink pixel is red.
It’s not some deep psychology perception process; it’s in the very simple computations that the cells of the eye do before sending out the signals. And it’s less a quirk of physiology and more that in a world full of light and shadows, accounting for context is the only way anything can ever have enduring properties (or else the white thing actually turns black when in shadow).
Hardin also tackles the inverted spectrum question, and makes note of “phenomenal asymmetries”. Someone who sees red as yellow might be able to pass through life without noticing, just as it’s common for colorblind people to go a long time without noticing. But if we get them in a lab, it’s easy to tell with some simple tests. And someone who sees red as yellow would not have the chromatic range to differentiate pinks from reds from browns, Hardin argues.
This makes some amount of sense, though I’m not convinced that it would be impossible for someone to percieve reds as a more chromatically depthful version of yellows that do include an easily-differentiable supersaturated yellow, along with easily differentiable yellowish-greens as a side benefit.
His argument against a red/green switch seems to rest upon that reds are obviously warm and greens are cool, so we could break discourse-neutrality by asking someone whether they think red looks warm or cool. I find this pretty weak. If fire looked green and water looked reddish-purple and everyone called green warm and red cool, I’m pretty sure I’d think green was plenty warm, but Hardin seems to think a warm green is an obvious contradiction. Either he’s wrong, or I am, in fact, a red/green invert and Hardin has just found me out.
Anyway, that’s all I have time for in this week’s brain thoughts news. Maybe see you next time!
Fact: In the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatally shot more people than police did in England and Wales, combined, over the past 24 years.
Behind the numbers: According to The Counted, the Guardian’s special project to track every police killing this year, there were 59 fatal police shootings in the US for the days between 1 January and 24 January.
According to data collected by the UK advocacy group Inquest, there have been 55 fatal police shootings – total – in England and Wales from 1990 to 2014.
The US population is roughly six times that of England and Wales. According to the World Bank, the United States has a per capita intentional homicide rate five times that of the United Kingdom.
This is a picture of Ada Colau, the new mayor of Barcelona, being carried away by riot police officers in July of 2013. At the time a leader of the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, Colau was arrested while “occupying” a Barcelona bank during an anti-eviction protest:
Colau in July 2013.(AP/Emilio Morenatti)
And here’s Colau on June 13, right after being sworn in as the next mayor of Barcelona:
Ada Colau just after being sworn in as mayor.(AP/Emilio Morenatti)
Colau, a well-known housing and anti-eviction activist, is the leader of the leftist coalition Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona Together). During Spanish regional elections in May, Colau’s party edged out the coalition lead by former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias. Colau was helped by endorsements and support from new anti-austerity party Podemos, as well as the left-wing Catalan Green Party.
Meanwhile in Madrid, 72-year-old judge and leader of a similar leftist alliance Manuela Carmena was sworn in as mayor thanks to support from the Socialist party. Carmena’s victory signals the end of 24 years of conservative leadership in the Spanish capital.
Both Colau and Carmena have promised to cut their salaries and stop evictions. If Colau’s past record is any indication, she just might give banks a run for their money.
Mistakes happen, we're all human -- but one graphics producer at ESPN in Brazil either hit the wrong button haphazardly, or legitimately thinks the nation of Georgia located in the Caucasus shares the same letter "G" flag that the Bulldogs do.
Let's test something out, shall we?
No matter what country we're from, some words stay the same.
'Sounds like a dramatic reading of the Shit Portland Mamas Say Tumblr.'
On paper, Hungry Hearts scratches out as an intriguing domestic-horror situation: New mom Mina (Alba Rohrwacher), freaked out about the medical establishment, goes overboard trying to keep her baby "pure." Pretty soon she's banning cellphones and refusing to feed him food she hasn't grown herself. Daddy Jude (Adam Driver) is torn between respecting his wife and protecting his kid. Sure. Sounds like a dramatic reading of the Shit Portland Mamas Say Tumblr.
So I’ve been reading various posts pop up on tumblr how cartoons of today as “so much better” than the 90s toons, and how in the 90’s, cartoons “lacked variety, intelligence, talked down to kids, and one that many felt most important, the lack of POC as the cast in which they play a major role, without being stereotyped”.
Let me bring you back to a little time in 1994 when the Disney Afternoon was the highlight of kids days. Amongst cartoons like Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Ducktales, Tale Spin and other Disney classics, allow me to introduce (or remind) you of one of the most “adult yet for kids” cartoon series that Disney EVER put out.
Running for 78 episodes over 3 seasons, this series took the kid friendly Disney Afternoon, and gave it a very serious action drama that didn’t treat children as children, but as adults. With a gripping storyline soaked in mythos, history and Shakespeare, this series did more than entertain, in many instances, it educated. I could ramble for pages about this series, but let’s just cover some of the big things.
“Pay a man enough, and he’ll walk barefoot into hell.” ~Xanatos
1. Treating kids like adults. No other Disney cartoon ever had the balls to start with the main villain saying something like the above. No kids cartoon has (I’m talking kids shows, not the likes of Simpsons and South Park). But it wasn’t to be edgy. The writers has reasons and lessons to be told. And tell them, they did. Life, death, revenge, loss, love, hatred, forgiveness and acceptance were all themes of this series, and many more.
So, how did this series treat kids like adults? The storytelling. Yes there were the occasional gags, the jokes, the puns, but they were woven into the show and never overused. The story was written to appeal to all watchers. Action, adventure, romance, drama, sci-fi, history, mythos, everything was here. The stories never talked down to you, but at you. They were never written for giggles, but for reasons. Really, the only thing that makes this a “kids” show, is that it’s animated.
2. The Storylines The story arcs in this series were incredible. From short few episodes, to entire sagas, to the one large series spanned arc, this series didn’t skimp out. It bounced from the past to the present on many occasions, allowing the stories of the past, to influence the future. Things you would see for fleeting moments in one episode, would come back for large parts further down the line.
(Don’t trust these kids.)
Gargoyles was huge into Shakespeare. it wonderfully incorporated Shakespearean tales and mythos into it’s world (with it’s own spin of course), and told it well. It was gripping and made kids want to read his works. It had excellent writers that wrote a very coherent, very expansive story.
3. Lessons to be learned Beyond the themes, were the lessons it told. Family, trust, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, all major focal points of the series. Character growth is the biggest storyline of all. All characters grow and change, all of them learn and keep learning. They were never written in a way to talk down to anyone, never belittling in their lessons.
I can’t talk about Gargoyles without talking about the episode Deadly Force. Cartoons in the 90s has PSAs. a lot of them. It was just common. Gargoyles was no exception, but when they did it, it wasn’t just to kids, it was to adults as well. Up to this point, our main character Detective Elisa Maza, has always carried, and used her firearm. Nothing much was ever said about it. She was a police officer, this is what she does. A very simple thing in a cartoon for a police officer to use a gun, something they could have really gone without much attention. Except, they didn’t. In this episode, Broadway is fascinated with a cowboy movie, and after watching it, he visits Elisa in her apartment. He finds Elisa’s gun, sitting in her holster. Wrapped up in the excitement over the movie while Elisa is tending to dinner in the kitchen, Broadway takes the gun, and starts to play pretend cowboy. Bouncing around the room having fun, he accidentally shoots her.
This is now a situation that is very real, because children DO this. They see things, they emulate them, and they play, not understanding what the consequences might be. So when Gargoyles decided to go through route, they didn’t take it lightly. They don’t hide it and treat it like a boo boo. Not only do they show blood repeatedly (almost unheard of for a child’s cartoon), Elisa nearly dies from her injuries, twice.
Yes, she survives of course, but the description of her injuries was very real, and the consequences of the injuries lingered in future episodes. But what makes this episode beyond a simple PSA, is how adult they handle it. Do they turn it into the normal “GUNS BAD” type PSA with no lessons other than fear tactics? No. Instead, at the end of the episode, Elisa accepts responsibility for the accident, saying “I should have been more careful where I kept it. We both made mistakes”.
They don’t turn the episode into one of fear, but one of education. Was the child (Broadway) wrong for playing with the gun? Yes, absolutely. But the adult (Elisa) was equally wrong for leaving the gun loaded and in it’s holster, and she acknowledges that. When Broadway replies with “Yeah, but you nearly paid for this mistake with your life.”, she answers with, “Then let’s not repeat them”. The lessons learned isn’t about gun violence or guns are scary, it’s about gun responsibility. How is this showcased in a later episode? Elisa then keeps her gun in a lock box. So not only is there a lesson for kids not to play with guns, there is a lesson for adults on how to safely store firearms. Talk about good writing! Taking a very real situation, and handling it not with kid gloves, but with respect.
Lessons were a huge part of Gargoyles, and while woven into every episode, they were never slapped in your face, but part of the story. Lessons like home is where your family is, not where you live, that hate only furthers hate, so it is better to forgive to end the cycle, to accept those that are different from you, and to lessons of loving and learning about your own heritage. Speaking of…
4. You want POC? Let me introduce you to the Maza family. Peter, Diane, Derek, Beth, and of course our star, Elisa, a half African American, half Native American family.
All characters get their own chance to shine, with character history and development (with of course, a fair chunk of the series being Elisa episodes). While in the 90s many cartoons were whitewashed, this series showed people of all colors, and having one of the main cast not be white was a big step for Disney. This show took great steps not to stereotype, and was about the fight for equality, peace, and acceptance for all.
5. The characters and voice actors
They loved their characters in this show. Practically everyone got a back story. Some small, some massive. Explanations, personalities, histories, it was all there. They explained why characters did what they did, what made them how they were. Xanatos was the shows villain, but was he truly evil? No. He was human, he had flaws. He had a heart under that evil exterior, and as a character, he grew. Everyone did. No one was a “typical ___ type”. Everyone changed. Some got better, some got worse, but everyone grew. They had reasons to grow.
As for voice actors? Do you like Star Trek? The production team sure did, because there were a LOT of Star Trek actors on this series, from Jonathan Frakes (Riker from TNG) as Xanatos, Marina Sirtis (Troi from TNG) as Demona, Nichelle Nicholes (Uhura from TOS) as Diane Maza, Kate Mulgrew (Janeway from Voyager) as Titania, to many more. There were a LOT of Trekkies in the cast, all doing wonderful VAs.
But it wasn’t just the Trek connection, other voice actors such as Ed Asner as Hudson, Jim Cumming as Dingo, Tim Curry as Sevarius, and Keith David as Goliath (that man has such a sexy voice LOL) to name a few. The voice acting in this series was some of the strongest in any cartoon, which actors giving very powerful and emotional performances throughout.
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Like I said, I could chatter for pages and pages about why this series is worth checking out, but I think this has gotten long enough. The series is available on DVD to buy off Amazon, or you can find it on YouTube if you search (but seriously, buy it, support it!). As for why I wrote all of this? Because I wanted to show that while some cartoons of today are very well done, they’re not as ground breaking as some people may think. Hidden gems like Gargoyles did it before, and did it well, and I just wanted to showcase a wonderful Disney cartoon that didn’t get the recognition it deserved back in the day.
Also, Gargoyles is just such a damned fantastic series that deserves a watch!
“Peter” and “Diane”. There was never such a series for acknowledging one’s friends, and we were privileged to be associated with it.
If you’ve thought to yourself, “Hmm, I need more massacres and more humor in my life,” you should probably speak to a doctor. Or maybe give Ryan North’s Hamlet-based choose-your-own-adventure game, To Be or Not to Be a spin. Either way. Talk to someone about that.
Jokes aside, the game looks like a hilarious take on the Shakespearean tragedy. You play as one of three characters: the eponymous Hamlet, his ghostly father Hamlet Sr., or Hamlet’s potential wife, Lady Ophelia. You make choices like you would in any other choose-your-own-adventure book. The story changes based on the choices you make, and it can play out canonically, or you can choose from a ton of different Ryan North-y lines.
This game started as a real, honest-to-god choose-your-own-adventure book, and this is its digital incarnation. It features fantastic art from Kate Beaton, Randall Munroe, Anthony Clark, Zach Weiner, and Matthew Inman. Plus if the trailer promises the Hamlet crew hanging out on party boats, you can’t really go wrong.
Super Opinionated.
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