I was reading it as a kind of counter blast to the surprisingly pervasive and seductive idea that a civilisational collapse could be a good thing or, you know, liberating in some way. Logical argument is all fine and good but it doesn’t change minds very easily. Not as well as you can with 200 pages of fiction.

Right, now for some Left 4 Dead 2. Fun Apocalypse!

In discussing global freedom, Bono waxes about “the trouble an aroused citizenry can give to tyrants” and how the power provided to citizens “via cellphones, the Web and the civil society and democracy these technologies can promote, is being felt by those who have traditionally held power.” Surely Bono realizes that those technologies can only promote freedom when they are built so that the citizens using them cannot be tracked, censored and spied upon (and ultimately punished for expressing their views).

Indeed, when accused of violations of basic human rights, China and other authoritarian regimes are happy to equate the development of their apparatus of online repression with other countries’ censorship and surveillance systems.

And by far the best weapon they have in this global battle to erode the neutral role of service providers is the entertainment industry, which so regularly calls upon ISPs to actively police and censor the world’s networks. Perhaps Iranians, Chinese and North Koreans will find in the next decade, as he predicts, “their Gandhi, their King, their Aung San Suu Kyi.” But if all communications are built with the surveillance infrastructure and censorship policies he wants to force on ISPs, how will these emerging leaders protect their ability to motivate and inspire the world’s people?

As one of the world’s foremost champions in fighting global poverty, Bono has testified to Congress about the impact of excessive pharmaceutical patent enforcement on the availability of life-saving drugs. Given his understanding of the benefits of flexible IP reform, Bono’s new call to seize control of the Internet by embedding content tracking in the name of ensuring full payment for the movies, music, and media that are overwhelmingly produced by rich countries sounds especially off key. After all, the net transfer of wealth due to an excessive emphasis on copyright enforcement is overwhelmingly from the world’s poorest countries to the world’s richest. The flourishing of local art and the fair trade of native culture from developing countries needs the flexibility of the global copyright regime, not a war on piracy.

The whole short piece can be read here

close up.

Above is the first page of Acme Novelty Library #18. Our heroine (on the far right of the spread) is experiencing insomnia. If anyone ever asks me what comics can do that novels and films can’t (no one ever does) then I show them (or rather would show them if they’d ever asked) this. It’s at the precise intersection of art, typography and literature and perfectly captures the feeling of spiralling worry that often accompanies bouts of 3AM sleeplessness. Because you can start reading it at any point you’re plunged straight into the circular logic of this kind of worry, it’s not about cause and effect, worry begets further worry and the layout of interlinking circles recapitulates this fucked up state of affairs.

Below is the last page of Acme Novelty Library #18. Whilst it’s layout is more traditional than the audacious opening spread it’s no less formally specific, relying for it’s power on a close reading of the preceding 56 pages and encouraging the viewer to flick back and revisit certain incidents from the main story. Whilst it looks at first glance like a simple chronologically ordered layout each frame or set of frames is from a totally different time period in the heroines life and is decoded by the reader noticing/ referring back to various background cues scattered through the rest of the ‘text’ (most obviously the presence of her lover but also the position of the lamp, clothes she’s wearing, the cat, the view out the window etc.). It’s a typically bleak Ware ending “I am entirely, 100%, horrifyingly alone”, the character gets some sleep but it’s fitful, the similarities with the books beginning are unavoidable and you get the feeling that the dreadful suicidal insomnia of the opening scene is always close. Cheery stuff!

close up.

PS my favourite textual description of insomnia is in Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (thanks Dan)

• 8 to 12 onions, peeled and chopped in big chunks
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1 cup ketchup
• Worcestershire sauce to taste
• 1 cup water
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 can (each 28-ounce/796mL) Heinz spaghetti (can re replaced with leftover pasta in tomato sauce-any shape will do)
• 1/2 to 1 pound Cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a large, enameled, cast-iron Dutch oven, sauté onion in oil until translucent but not brown. Add ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and water. Simmer until onions are mushy and mixture is soupy. This is your first layer. While the onions are bubbling away, brown the meat in a frying pan with garlic and seasonings. Drain fat and layer meat on top of onions to make second layer. Cover meat with spaghetti. Cover spaghetti with cheese. Bake for 1 hour. Serve with garlic bread and a crisp green salad. Serves a crowd.

from here

Just read a big long PDF article on Watchmen by Andrew Rilstone that Alex F sent around. I didn’t think there was anything really new in there with regard to Watchmen but it’s a really great synthesis of ideas that have been floating around for a while and has some brilliant insight filled asides, about amongst other things, “silver age” Superman comics.

Supergirl’s blunder is in fact a blunder against the rules of the comic book: ‘Supergirl’s existence is a secret’ is a rule, in the same way that ‘Kryptonite robs Superman of his powers’ or ‘Lois Lane can never discover that Superman is Clark Kent’ are rules. On page 1, we were asked the question: ‘We know that the rules of the comic say that Supergirl must return to the future – but what will cause her to do so?’ The final page replies ‘She returns to the future because she realises that the rules of the comic says she must.’ It’s is a closed system, derived entirely from its own premises.

Anyway, it’s made me do a lot of thinking. As someone who never really read superhero comics as a child (some JLA and some books of the superman film and the Batman TV series but otherwise I went Beano -> Archie -> Oink! -> 2000AD -> ) I kind of get what he’s saying, there are certain levels on which the comic presumably operates which I just totally miss but then I don’t think that’s an issue particularly (though people might disagree).

Andrew Rilstone’s analysis is very definitely from the point of view of someone who has studied English lit. read an awful lot of comics and can put all this into a well written well structured 60 page essay. My reading of Watchmen is from the point of view of someone who’s studied Comp Sci, has read a few comics – more interested in the visual side of things than the stories – and who frankly couldn’t structure 60 pages of critical thought if his life depended on it.

Alan Moore is a writer of comics so why should someone like me who’s basically in it mostly for the pictures be up for buying everything he produces?

For me Watchmen’s strength is in it formal characteristics, the rigid layout and controlled use of variation in the layouts to create pacing is absolutely masterly and the way the story is pieced together as a whole is similarly controlled and meticulous Moore is famously didactic about this aspect of his comic writing, Rilstone gets this but it seems peripheral for him, for me it’s absolutely central to why Watchmen is great, the superhero stuff is a vehicle for Moore’s formal mastery. The keystone in my reading is the Fearful Symmetry chapter in which each page reflects in layout and theme it’s counterpart i.e. first page reflects the last on so on into the middle.

OK, this is getting long now but I may as well carry on seeing as I’ve started: So for me what I love about comics, more than the individual bits of the artwork (Dave Gibbons is a good comic artist and perfect for Watchmen for the following reasons, he’s a typical of the vernacular mid/ late 80’s style, works well with the reproduction technology of the day, superb attention to detail, consistency and just the right level of complexity. A winning combination) … what I love about comics, more than the individual bits of the artwork is the way the whole works are structured, at their best comics are like beautiful architecture (Dan Clowes’ Ice Haven, almost anything by Chris Ware) the details are important but the visual structure and it’s utility are what’s *really* important and it’s and effect that just can’t be achieved in novels (though Alan Moore tried with Voice in the Fire) or in films. This is the property for me which separates enjoyable pulp like Joss Wheddon’s Buffy Season 8 comics from brilliant transcendent pulp like Alan Moore’s Tom Strong stories. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself particularly clearly here will add more to this later …

I often find when I finish a book that there’s half a dozen or so pages with the corners turned over for future reference, half of these I can’t figure out what it was precicely that struck me and the others I store away to think about or discuss or mention to someone and then promptly forget about. Instead I’ve decided to note them down here and then forget.

On oppression

Writing as Tiptree, she wrote,

Incredible how top dog always announces with such an air of discovery that the undedog is childish, stupid, emotional, irresponsible, uninterested in serious matters, incapable of learning – but for god’s sake don’t teach him anything! – and both cowardly and ferocious, [...] The oppressed is also treacherous, incapable of fighting fair, full of dark magics, prone to do nasty things like fighting back when attacked, and contented with his place in life unless stirred up by outside agitators. [...] Once I learned the tune I stopped believning the words- about anybody

On the joy of science

At last Alli had clear, conclusive results, [...]. She was overjoyed. [...] She felt she had stood “bare-faced in front of Nature” and asked a it question. And Nature had grumble, stalled, made her rephrase the question , then finally answered yes. It was, she recalled, “the most thrilling moment I have ever had in my whole life.”

On sexism in science / science fiction etc.

Arthur C Clarke, for example, had recently sent a letter to the editor of Time magazine agreeing with astronaut Mike Collins. Collins had told Time that women could never be in the space program, subce in zero G a woman’s breasts would bounce and keep the men from concentrating. Clarke proudly claimed he had already predicted this “problem”. In his novel Rendezvous with Rama he had written “Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship: weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting.” When Joanna Russ tried privately to explain why this was insulting, Clarke, responding publicly in the SWFA newsletter, asked why Commander Norton shouldn’t be attracted to women – didn’t Russ want him to be? He added that though some of his best friends were women, the level of discourse of the “women’s libbers” clearly wasn’t helping their cause.

Amazingly and unfortunately this kind of sexism is still alive and well in the IT world the geek feminism wiki has the details: “But some of my best friends are women!!!!“

Normal service will be resumed as soon as our bodies figure out how to work normally under the new sleep patterns.

Sometimes in the middle of developing one thing you stumble on other things.

2009 New Scientist no 2697

1. Why would New Scientist use Mercator projection? The map clearly calls for an equal area projection to illustrate that that green bit at the top of the map is a tiny proportion of the planets land area. Bizzare.
2. The great African dustbowl in Dredd’s world is surprisingly modest compared to the predictions of New Scientist
3. In fact if it weren’t for all the radiation and hordes of ravening mutants Dredd’s world might be preferable
4. Love the title of the Dredd map “World Population and Anti-Population”. What’s an anti population? I don’t know but it sounds pretty cool.

Leroi highlights the problems with Darwin’s theory at the time he proposed it (no mechanism for inheritance, gaps in fossil record etc) and shows how these were gradually overcome, leading us through the developments and refinements that have produced the modern synthesis and showing how recent DNA evidence continues to reinforce the theory, confirming many of Darwin’s hunches, deepening our understanding and throwing up some surprises (I never knew that eyes only evolved once, pre ‘95 it was always assumed that they had developed separately in different species). Not only is the documentary a good introduction to the genuine controversies in evolutionary theory but it’s a good story and a great illustration of the scientific method in action. Also, being mercifully free from the dogma that characterises a lot of the popular discussion of Darwin at the moment it isn’t afraid to acknowledge that there remain gaps in our knowledge and limits to the theory, both facts which I find tremendously exciting.