Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Sci-Fi Is a Splash at Sundance. Science-fiction films make a big impression at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Computer-generated imagery and grad students' physics projects help express the dark side of science. Jason Silverman reports from Park City, Utah. [Wired News] 9:26:35 PM    comment [] Jesus, I hope his wife knows what she's got here...not a God so much as a visionary, innovative genius who gets it. Fundamentally gets it. Linus as Antidote. Linus just has a way with words, don't you think? BusinessWeek did an interview with him, and he said some useful and some memorably funny things about SCO. My favorite first: "Nothing to lose is a bad situation to be in. They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies to boot. I'd rather not get too close to them." He was asked what he thinks is motivating SCO: "I think there was a fair amount of bad feeling when IBM dropped out of the Monterey project [a joint-development project with SCO]. That was a big deal for SCO, and they had a hard time with that. Never mind the fact that it had long since become clear that the project wasn't going anywhere, and IBM would have been crazy to continue with it. "So you have some pent-up anger at IBM, a failing business that was losing its market, and put it together with a greedy new CEO who has fought legal battles before, and what do you get?" Linus totally gets it that the Novell-SCO copyright dispute has no significance in the greater IBM context, because their claims, in his view, are shaky anyway, even if the copyrights were theirs, because they can't seem to come up with any copied code: "The validity of their claims has always been very shaky, even regardless of the fact that Novell claims SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights in the first place. "The SCO claims have been shaky from the start because they haven't actually been able to show any particular copied code. It's like me claiming copyright on some article you wrote for BusinessWeek [without being] able to specify which article and which part of it I would have written. The fact that Novell now contests the SCO copyright ownership just makes them even more shaky." There is lots more in the interview, so hop on over and have a nice visit with Linus. Passing time with Linus is a good antidote to thinking about and writing about Dark Darl. [GrokLaw] 9:20:31 PM    comment [] Sorting the Wheat From the Chaff. As we often point out, most of the high profile billion dollar "anti-aging" industry is based on exaggeration, bad extrapolation and outright lies. It causes great harm to legitimate science, but how do we, the consumers, learn to separate out the wheat from the chaff? What is legitimate, and what is not? This article from the Edmonton Journal gives an overview of that issue, although the author does make the classic Tithonus error in assuming that a longer life is a more unhealthy life. The points to take away are, we thing, to be skeptical, and to read the Longevity Meme. [Longevity Meme News and Commentary] 8:44:25 PM    comment [] If you have not read this remarkable man's book "Ghost Rider", do so immediately. I mailed this book to a close friend who had lost his wife after a long illness, and he kept it for his library, and sent me a fresh copy. It was that resonant. Neil Peart speaks about lyrics. "Writing lyrics is a tremendously demanding form of discipline; it requires precision. ... I'm not happy with spontaneity musically either." [Blogcritics] 8:26:52 PM    comment [] New distribution method. Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno have announced a new way to let artists sell their music online rather than only... [Blogcritics] 8:20:21 PM    comment [] Madness In Gotham. Since their earliest years, the stories of the Batman comics have been intensely psychological. Over the years plotlines have explored the motivations, drives and significant experiences of Batman, as well as the major criminal characters who variously populate the halls of Arkham Asylum and the streets of Gotham City. Batman is one of the most successful and enduring of modern myths, read and watched by millions. As a genre with the concept of mental illness at its core, it is perhaps one of our most popular and enduring representations of madness. [kuro5hin.org] 8:17:51 PM    comment [] This is your brain in love. In a fascinating new book, evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher examines the chemistry responsible for the giddiness, fixations and overarching lunacy associated with romantic love. [Salon.com] 8:17:21 PM    comment []

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