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The above-ground segment of the Bathurst TTC station is pleasantly bright, a large construction of glass and metal that, while modernistic, at least could help sufferers of SAD. This openness also means that pigeons can easily fly in, and out, of the station. (I've seen a couple at track level.) How can you keep them from roosting? Spiked signs help.
Jul. 2nd, 2009
A while ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mindstalk made a post about the cliché of the inevitability of Empires in Space.
I remember an essay jointly authored by Niven and Pournelle, part of their explanation of the back story of their 1974 novel The Mote in God's Eye, in which they had an Empire of Man to play the role of an ecumenical state.
Another Niven story, like the previous novel set in Pournelle's CoDominium story-telling universe, reminded me of another cliché. This story features a pilot who was born on a world populated by Inuit, a glaciated world settled by Inuit coming from across Earth's Arctic regions, there to maintain their traditional lifestyles ...
Pardon?
When I take a look around my study, looking at novels and RPG supplements and the Internet, I find that white people--frequently Asians as well--inhabit all kinds of worlds, from glacier worlds doomed to forever present only half of their surface to a dim red dwarf star to Earth-like garden worlds orbiting beautiful bright stars just like the Sun to stranger asteroid warrens or habitats in close orbit of degenerate white dwarf stars, all worlds which contain at least a certain number of perils and drawbacks not found on Earth. Are we to believe that colonists drawn from the stocks of what we in Canada call the First Nations are going to insist on colonizing worlds exactly like that of their ancestral Earth homeland? Maybe Inuit colonists might love a pleasantly warm world to live on, one with warm winter breeze and fertile land and--if you really insist--plenty of marine pseudo-mammals to hunt.
This all fits into a larger pattern of seeing First Nations people are archetypes, as being incapable of being really modern or post-modern or whatever. The best-known example of this I can think of is Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager, a character in touch with his native roots a spiritual man from a peaceful world prone to using dream quests to find solutions to problems. Really.
Why can't there be other First Nations stereotypes in science fiction? Imagine cut-throat Yupik capitalists, or Quechua-speaking technologists, or Haida bioengineers, or Aborigine literary critics, or the Mapuche Star Empire. But no, the First Nations are defined substantially by the knowledge that they and their peoples can't truly be modern, are incapable of developing societies characterized by cities and Weberian bureaucratic structures and research-and-development facilities and mass media. They should be happy, some writers seem to presume, being the spiritual foils to the oh-so-tired civilization built on their homelands.
mindstalk made a post about the cliché of the inevitability of Empires in Space.The usual line is that with poor communications, a feudal structure is good for long-range government. This never felt right, but I was thinking about it in the past day. Really... what? Europe's feudal realms were in rather smaller areas than the Roman Republic at its pre-Imperial height. Roman used pro-consuls and pro-praetors, so there was local autocracy, but appointed by the Senate, not hereditary. And why couldn't a democratic/republican federation handle the needed decentralization?
I remember an essay jointly authored by Niven and Pournelle, part of their explanation of the back story of their 1974 novel The Mote in God's Eye, in which they had an Empire of Man to play the role of an ecumenical state.
Another Niven story, like the previous novel set in Pournelle's CoDominium story-telling universe, reminded me of another cliché. This story features a pilot who was born on a world populated by Inuit, a glaciated world settled by Inuit coming from across Earth's Arctic regions, there to maintain their traditional lifestyles ...
Pardon?
When I take a look around my study, looking at novels and RPG supplements and the Internet, I find that white people--frequently Asians as well--inhabit all kinds of worlds, from glacier worlds doomed to forever present only half of their surface to a dim red dwarf star to Earth-like garden worlds orbiting beautiful bright stars just like the Sun to stranger asteroid warrens or habitats in close orbit of degenerate white dwarf stars, all worlds which contain at least a certain number of perils and drawbacks not found on Earth. Are we to believe that colonists drawn from the stocks of what we in Canada call the First Nations are going to insist on colonizing worlds exactly like that of their ancestral Earth homeland? Maybe Inuit colonists might love a pleasantly warm world to live on, one with warm winter breeze and fertile land and--if you really insist--plenty of marine pseudo-mammals to hunt.
This all fits into a larger pattern of seeing First Nations people are archetypes, as being incapable of being really modern or post-modern or whatever. The best-known example of this I can think of is Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager, a character in touch with his native roots a spiritual man from a peaceful world prone to using dream quests to find solutions to problems. Really.
Why can't there be other First Nations stereotypes in science fiction? Imagine cut-throat Yupik capitalists, or Quechua-speaking technologists, or Haida bioengineers, or Aborigine literary critics, or the Mapuche Star Empire. But no, the First Nations are defined substantially by the knowledge that they and their peoples can't truly be modern, are incapable of developing societies characterized by cities and Weberian bureaucratic structures and research-and-development facilities and mass media. They should be happy, some writers seem to presume, being the spiritual foils to the oh-so-tired civilization built on their homelands.
[LINK] Two Michael Jackson links
Jul. 2nd, 2009 02:38 pmTwo people on my Livejournal friends list have made Jackson-related posts which deserve further propagation.
- brunorepublic covers the exciting news that Michael's abusive svengali father, Joe, has launched a new record label that's bound to be successful. "In essence, he motivates the artist with pain until they achieve the desired results. It's not easy to reach the top. Many people simply lack motivation; they aren't able to push themselves there. So, Papa Joe does the pushing for them, and he pushes hard! After just a few years of physical and emotional torment, it's amazing what people will do for a moment of relief. Their desire for success is genuine. When they perform, you can really see it in their eyes."
- Elsewhere, lord_whimy examines the extent to which Jackson's transgressiveness related to his talent. "I think transgression has become a cheap artistic tactic, a short cut: it's all impact, no resonance. It's too obvious. It starts out novel, but then quickly becomes tiresome. There's a law of diminishing returns that sets in with transgression: once it gave us Bowie, but now it gives us Insane Clown Posse. Jackson's transgressions did nothing to serve his art; he was great in spite of them, not because of them."
[MUSIC] Lenny Kravitz, "Black Velveteen"
Jul. 2nd, 2009 03:16 pm"Black Velveteen," the final single released from Lenny Kravitz's successful 1998/99 album 5, is the only Kravitz song that I can bother to care about. I tend to agree with the general consensus that 5 is an indifferent and disappointing album, but the sample-heavy electro-rock of "Black Velveteen" gets me.
After I take in the music I next go to the song's lyrics, which turn out to be more disturbing than I'd have thought on a first casual listen. Sexbots, it seems, are in. Really.
This sexbot has a "[n]ice piece of kit/Electronic clit/Just sit down for a fit, doesn't mind doing dishes and recommends nightspots and will dance and have sex any time, will be better than any anything living. Misogyny, anyone? I was all but certain that this was a critical commentary on the future of gender relations, and indeed, this 2000 interview with Kravitz confirms that he intended this song as a critical commentary on the future of intimacy in a high-tech and amoral world.
Even so, "Black Velveteen" still leaves me feeling a bit awkward, by the detail in the song but mostly because of the knowledge that, yes, we're getting close to this goal. I wonder if the way I feel re: "Black Velveteen" is the way that Swift's contemporaries felt about "A Modest Proposal".
After I take in the music I next go to the song's lyrics, which turn out to be more disturbing than I'd have thought on a first casual listen. Sexbots, it seems, are in. Really.
Black velveteen
Simple and clean
Oh what a bad machine
Black velveteen
Supple and lean
The 21st century dream
Ready to please
Free from disease
She's waiting on her knees
This sexbot has a "[n]ice piece of kit/Electronic clit/Just sit down for a fit, doesn't mind doing dishes and recommends nightspots and will dance and have sex any time, will be better than any anything living. Misogyny, anyone? I was all but certain that this was a critical commentary on the future of gender relations, and indeed, this 2000 interview with Kravitz confirms that he intended this song as a critical commentary on the future of intimacy in a high-tech and amoral world.
"Black Velveteen" is about technology and we're getting so pulled in by computers and technology and our kids have their face in the computers all day. We have our face in computers all day and the human relationship is being diminished by this so I figured, well ok, we're so into computers, and we're so into technology and now we're also beginning to play God and get into cloning and all kinds of things. So we don't like to have relationships we like to have them but we don't like to keep them and we don't know how to keep them. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? And synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, you turn it off and put it in the closet, you know, like the vacuum cleaner. (laughs) You pull it out when you want it. Oh you don't want this one, and then you want, you start, it's probably going to happen one day. We're going to get to a really sick point of designing fake people.
Even so, "Black Velveteen" still leaves me feeling a bit awkward, by the detail in the song but mostly because of the knowledge that, yes, we're getting close to this goal. I wonder if the way I feel re: "Black Velveteen" is the way that Swift's contemporaries felt about "A Modest Proposal".