Thursday, August 8, 2013
On Geek Culture
Paul is a geek. A stereotypical (as defined by big media) geek. He lives with his mother, is a portly white man in his mid-30s, has no sexual relationships to speak of, and finds personal validation in his interactions with the subject of his fixation. The role works in no small part because Paul is played by Patton Oswalt, a comedian with impeccable geek culture credentials. The only difference between Paul and a stock geek culture character is what Paul geeks out about: sports. And sports, as we all know, are not geeky.
It was little remarked upon at the time, but the convergence of Oswalt’s casting, Paul’s obsessiveness over the Giants, and sports culture signified a new, more relevant understanding of the geek. In the world of Big Fan, the type of media Paul interacts with isn’t what designates him as a geek; it’s how he interacts with it.
We live in a world where comic book movies pull in record breaking box office numbers again and again, where Game of Thrones not only outsells mainstream fiction in book form but draws huge commercial and critical acclaim in television form, and where gatherings such as ComicCon — for years on the furthest periphery of mainstream consciousness — have become places for large scale entertainment news dumps. What was traditionally understood as geek culture is now the mainstream. Geeks are no longer marginalized outsiders; they’re the new normal.
This is hardly a new or novel observation, but it demands a fresh examination of what geekdom actually centers on. Just as Big Fan hints at, it’s instructive to examine interactions between consumers and media rather than the type of media being consumed, especially when it comes to corporate media.
Even by the narrow strictures of what’s traditionally accepted as geek culture, the whole thing isn’t remotely monolithic. The author, a proud participant in traditional geek pursuits, has a particular fondness for pen and paper roleplaying games — placing him below video gamers but on par with Star Trek fans — and enjoys Michael Moorcock, but can’t stand Star Wars, Doctor Who, or superhero comic books. This lack of uniform interests is more common than not; what is portrayed as geek media is diverse, as geeks have varying tastes. If we’ve already fractured geek culture into a thousand cliques and interests, the term “geek culture” loses all meaning beyond one of vague convenience.
If, instead, we begin to look at the geek as someone who allots space for media interest alongside or in place of class, race, or gender identity, then a more meaningful pattern emerges. The geek gives primacy to media consumption, using it as both identifier and lens with which to view the world; what that media happens to look like is irrelevant. The tie that binds geeks of a given strain together is what they choose to buy.
by Ian Williams, Jacobin | Read more:
Image: Denis Poroy/AP
The Sports Cable Bubble
Next to college sports
Which, of course, is exactly what makes it a bubble.
Add it all up, and big time sports are taking a minimum of $84.90 out of my pocket, year after year. Before I buy a jersey. Or a licensed video game. Or even a single game ticket. Just because I have pay television. Moreover, that amount doesn't include what I'm paying to conferences, leagues and teams not on the list. (Think the soon-to-be-rebranded Speed and Fuel channels, or regional sports networks like Comcast SportsNet Washington, which has local broadcast rights deals with the Washington Wizards and Capitals.) Nor is that 85 bucks even close to the total annual amount I'm forking over for sports programming, given that the same all-sports and sports-heavy networks paying for those megabuck league and conference rights are collecting hefty monthly fees from cable and satellite providers -- costs that are then passed on through monthly bills to customers like you and me. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson explains:
Here's how it works:
Let's try an exercise. Turn on your television. Grab a notepad. Make a list of every sports channel you receive. ESPN. NFL Network. Big Ten Network. MSG. All of 'em. If you get TNT and TBS, add them, too - both carry extensive, expensive sports programming.
All done? Good. Now go to the website What You Pay For Sports. (...)
All done? Good. Now go to the website What You Pay For Sports. (...)
Add it all up, and big time sports are taking a minimum of $84.90 out of my pocket, year after year. Before I buy a jersey. Or a licensed video game. Or even a single game ticket. Just because I have pay television. Moreover, that amount doesn't include what I'm paying to conferences, leagues and teams not on the list. (Think the soon-to-be-rebranded Speed and Fuel channels, or regional sports networks like Comcast SportsNet Washington, which has local broadcast rights deals with the Washington Wizards and Capitals.) Nor is that 85 bucks even close to the total annual amount I'm forking over for sports programming, given that the same all-sports and sports-heavy networks paying for those megabuck league and conference rights are collecting hefty monthly fees from cable and satellite providers -- costs that are then passed on through monthly bills to customers like you and me. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson explains:
… your cable bill -- $80 or $90, or whatever it is -- is best understood as two prices. The programming (i.e. the channels you watch) and the distribution (i.e. the infrastructure and profits for the cable companies). Every time you pay a cable bill, the channels collect a small fee. It's called an "affiliate fee." The most in-demand channels tend to negotiate the highest fees. And those tend to be sports channels …Take ESPN. How can the network afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on college and pro basketball rights, and more than a billion a year for "Monday Night Football?" Simple. ESPN is a cash cow, earning roughly $10 billion annually. And where does that money come from? According to an Atlantic article citing a report from Wunderlich Securities, the network brings in about $3.5 billion from television advertisements, and about $900 million from digital and magazine ads. No surprise there. The rest -- a staggering $6.5 billion, about two-thirds of the company's revenue -- comes from cable and satellite affiliate fees.
Here's how it works:
by Patrick Hruby, Sports on Earth | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Anti-Mosquito Force Field
The good news is that a sticker like this is not some far away concept dreamed up by scientists in a lab–it’s actually a real thing that you’ll likely be able to find on the shelves of your local Walgreens sometime in the not-so-distant future.
Essentially, the Kite Patch is a little square sticker that emits a cloak of chemical compounds that blocks a mosquito’s ability to sense humans. According to its developers, users simply have to place the patch onto their clothes, and they become invisible to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours. This is big news for developing countries like Uganda, where residents have little beyond mosquito nets and toxic sprays to combat the illness-spreading insects. (...)
Though the Kite seems a little fantastical, it’s backed by some legitimate technology. Back in 2011, Dr. Anandasankar Ray, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside (and founder of Olfactor Labs), found that certain chemical compounds can inhibit the carbon dioxide receptors in mosquitoes. These smelly compounds, which act like a anti-mosquito force field, are able to disorient the bugs, whose main method of tracking down humans is through our exhalation of CO2.
by Liz Stinson, Wired | Read more:
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Bar Fights, an Appreciation
The best bar fight I ever witnessed took place in a tiny shitkicky bar in Wyoming, somewhere along the road between Sheridan and Gillette. Outside there was a faint skein of April snow on the ground. Inside it was Hawaiian night.
The bar was festooned with tropical knickknackery and paper palm trees, grass skirts were free for the taking, and the owners – a salty-mouthed blonde and her mother – were forcing everyone to wear leis, including me. I was in the company of a Canadian poet and a Wyoming painter, fellow artists-in-residence at a foundation down the highway; we'd been snowbound for a few weeks, and, like loggers emerging from a long stint in a lumber camp, we were itchy for a bit of fun. Some hot whiskey, some social chainsmoking, a smile from a hard-faced girl, perhaps a clumsy two-step, and maybe – you never know – the spectacle of a good-natured late-night fistfight.
It was a perfect place for all that. A singer-guitarist with a drum machine mixed Merle Haggard and Joan Jett into his sets. An old Indian in new blue Wranglers and a belt buckle the size of a 45-rpm record tore up the dance floor with all seven of the women present, with the exception of the owner-mother, who chose to dance solo with an oversize chef's knife raised above her head, as if baiting criticism or suitors or both. Besides us, the only other nonlocals in the bar were three itinerant sheepshearers from New Zealand – two drunk louts and a girl.
I got the full story only later. Allegedly, one of the Kiwi sheepshearers – a short, stout, vinegary guy – took to throwing roasted peanuts at the head of a local boy, one peanut after the other. The local boy had some tragic name – I swear everyone pronounced it "Art Fart," though it must surely have been Art Vart. In any case, skinny Art Fart – clad in a grass skirt with an impromptu bikini top made from coconut shells and twine over his shirt – finally tired of being pelted with bar peanuts, said words to that effect to the Kiwi sheepshearer (who was also, I should note, wearing a grass skirt), and, like that, the fight was on.
Smart money was on the Kiwi. He'd started it, had some solid farm muscle on him, appeared to have piss for brains, and, unlike Art Fart, wasn't sporting coconut titties. But chalk one up for the US of A: After the typical cuss-and-shove windup, Art Fart threw a lanky-armed punch that sent the Kiwi buckling to the floor, hula skirt and all. There may have been some subsequent tussling – a crowd swiftly circled them, blocking my view – but the decisive blow had been struck. The fight officially ended, as I recall, when the salty blonde charged from behind the bar with a pistol, though I wouldn't swear to that in a court of law; maybe she just threatened gunplay.
"We have to get out of here," said my poet companion. With a smile I refused, and there in that bar, as the Kiwis hustled their frothy countryman outside and into the giant RV that was their home during sheepshearing season, and as Art Fart ordered a victory round, I tried to explain to him, knuckleheadedly, what I'm about to attempt to explain, just as knuckleheadedly, to you: The spectacle of a good bar fight, properly executed and healthily ended, is not merely annoying boorishness. The best of them – an admittedly minor slice – are shaded with the elements of high art. Think ballet, with its orchestrated stepwork, and opera, with its epic, heart-on-the-sleeve passions, or any kind of gladiatorial drama. Naturally, these overlofty comparisons apply to boxing matches and run-of-the-mill fistfights, too, but the bar fight has a sublimity all its own. Because it's fueled by alcohol, it's usually a rank amateur's game, with all the unpredictability this implies, and unlike boxing and most angry fistfights, it's sometimes lacquered with a gloss of comedy. Flying peanuts, grass skirts – that sort of thing. For millennia saloons have served as comfortable petri dishes for sex and violence. I am either too honest or too unsophisticated to suggest that one can exist without the other. There is a mammalian side to all of us; on occasion it rears its head, snarls, makes a mess, acts the fool, howls at the moon, gives or gets a black eye.
Before we get rolling here, though, I feel it necessary to clarify my terms and to set a few ground rules. When I say bar fight, I mean this: one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat that occurs inside a saloon, or just outside its door. Except in those rare instances when a life is at stake, weapons have absolutely no place in a proper bar fight. In short: no knives, chairs, bottles, derringers, swords, or mounted billfish (a possible urban myth I once heard in Australia had a man attacking another with a marlin yanked off the wall), and absolutely no throwing opponents through plate-glass windows. (Let's call this last one the Charles Barkley rule, to dishonor Barkley's throwing of a man through the window of an Orlando bar in 1997 after the man had thrown a glass of ice at the NBA star. It's hard not to secretly admire Barkley, however, for his reply when asked if he had any regrets: "I regret," he said, "that we weren't on a higher floor.").
The bar was festooned with tropical knickknackery and paper palm trees, grass skirts were free for the taking, and the owners – a salty-mouthed blonde and her mother – were forcing everyone to wear leis, including me. I was in the company of a Canadian poet and a Wyoming painter, fellow artists-in-residence at a foundation down the highway; we'd been snowbound for a few weeks, and, like loggers emerging from a long stint in a lumber camp, we were itchy for a bit of fun. Some hot whiskey, some social chainsmoking, a smile from a hard-faced girl, perhaps a clumsy two-step, and maybe – you never know – the spectacle of a good-natured late-night fistfight.It was a perfect place for all that. A singer-guitarist with a drum machine mixed Merle Haggard and Joan Jett into his sets. An old Indian in new blue Wranglers and a belt buckle the size of a 45-rpm record tore up the dance floor with all seven of the women present, with the exception of the owner-mother, who chose to dance solo with an oversize chef's knife raised above her head, as if baiting criticism or suitors or both. Besides us, the only other nonlocals in the bar were three itinerant sheepshearers from New Zealand – two drunk louts and a girl.
I got the full story only later. Allegedly, one of the Kiwi sheepshearers – a short, stout, vinegary guy – took to throwing roasted peanuts at the head of a local boy, one peanut after the other. The local boy had some tragic name – I swear everyone pronounced it "Art Fart," though it must surely have been Art Vart. In any case, skinny Art Fart – clad in a grass skirt with an impromptu bikini top made from coconut shells and twine over his shirt – finally tired of being pelted with bar peanuts, said words to that effect to the Kiwi sheepshearer (who was also, I should note, wearing a grass skirt), and, like that, the fight was on.
Smart money was on the Kiwi. He'd started it, had some solid farm muscle on him, appeared to have piss for brains, and, unlike Art Fart, wasn't sporting coconut titties. But chalk one up for the US of A: After the typical cuss-and-shove windup, Art Fart threw a lanky-armed punch that sent the Kiwi buckling to the floor, hula skirt and all. There may have been some subsequent tussling – a crowd swiftly circled them, blocking my view – but the decisive blow had been struck. The fight officially ended, as I recall, when the salty blonde charged from behind the bar with a pistol, though I wouldn't swear to that in a court of law; maybe she just threatened gunplay.
"We have to get out of here," said my poet companion. With a smile I refused, and there in that bar, as the Kiwis hustled their frothy countryman outside and into the giant RV that was their home during sheepshearing season, and as Art Fart ordered a victory round, I tried to explain to him, knuckleheadedly, what I'm about to attempt to explain, just as knuckleheadedly, to you: The spectacle of a good bar fight, properly executed and healthily ended, is not merely annoying boorishness. The best of them – an admittedly minor slice – are shaded with the elements of high art. Think ballet, with its orchestrated stepwork, and opera, with its epic, heart-on-the-sleeve passions, or any kind of gladiatorial drama. Naturally, these overlofty comparisons apply to boxing matches and run-of-the-mill fistfights, too, but the bar fight has a sublimity all its own. Because it's fueled by alcohol, it's usually a rank amateur's game, with all the unpredictability this implies, and unlike boxing and most angry fistfights, it's sometimes lacquered with a gloss of comedy. Flying peanuts, grass skirts – that sort of thing. For millennia saloons have served as comfortable petri dishes for sex and violence. I am either too honest or too unsophisticated to suggest that one can exist without the other. There is a mammalian side to all of us; on occasion it rears its head, snarls, makes a mess, acts the fool, howls at the moon, gives or gets a black eye.
Before we get rolling here, though, I feel it necessary to clarify my terms and to set a few ground rules. When I say bar fight, I mean this: one-on-one, hand-to-hand combat that occurs inside a saloon, or just outside its door. Except in those rare instances when a life is at stake, weapons have absolutely no place in a proper bar fight. In short: no knives, chairs, bottles, derringers, swords, or mounted billfish (a possible urban myth I once heard in Australia had a man attacking another with a marlin yanked off the wall), and absolutely no throwing opponents through plate-glass windows. (Let's call this last one the Charles Barkley rule, to dishonor Barkley's throwing of a man through the window of an Orlando bar in 1997 after the man had thrown a glass of ice at the NBA star. It's hard not to secretly admire Barkley, however, for his reply when asked if he had any regrets: "I regret," he said, "that we weren't on a higher floor.").
by Jonathan Miles, Men's Journal | Read more:
Image: Yuri Arcurs / Alamy
Google Introduces New Feature to Help People Find In-Depth Stories
[ed. Or you could just come to Duck Soup every day.]
Google introduced a new feature this afternoon that makes it easier for people to find relevant, in-depth articles about broad topics.
Jake Hubert, product manager, said Google research shows that about 10 percent of Google searches are for broad topics such as happiness, love and stem-cell research.
“We’re trying to find the best in-depth content,” Hubert said by phone. “A lot of it will be from well-known publications, but sometimes the best answer is from someone’s blog or a local paper.”
Here’s how it works: When you search for a broad topic in Google and scroll down the list of results, you’ll see an “in-depth articles” header toward the bottom of the page. Under that header, you’ll see links to long-form stories about that particular topic.
“We’re going to be experimenting with different ranking algorithms,” Hubert said, but for now, “it’s on the lower part of the page.”
“We’re trying to find the best in-depth content,” Hubert said by phone. “A lot of it will be from well-known publications, but sometimes the best answer is from someone’s blog or a local paper.”
Here’s how it works: When you search for a broad topic in Google and scroll down the list of results, you’ll see an “in-depth articles” header toward the bottom of the page. Under that header, you’ll see links to long-form stories about that particular topic.
“We’re going to be experimenting with different ranking algorithms,” Hubert said, but for now, “it’s on the lower part of the page.”
The new feature is aimed at people who aren’t just looking for news stories, but want to find stories they can “kick back and read on a Saturday afternoon and spend 15 or 20 minutes on,” Hubert said.
by Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter | Read more:
Image via:
How a Gang of Harmonica Geeks Saved the Soul of the Blues Harp
Of course, it doesn’t help if your harmonica is so poorly designed that you couldn’t play it well even if you were a pro, which describes the state of the instrument from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, when Hohner, the largest harmonica manufacturer in the world, made a single, seemingly small change to its ubiquitous Marine Band harmonica. Hohner’s bottom-line gambit was to slightly enlarge the slots through which a harmonica’s reeds vibrate. It made the instrument’s pair of reed plates cheaper to assemble but the instrument itself virtually impossible to control, thanks to all the extra air that was now being blown into and drawn out of it. Hohner eventually corrected its error, but it took a ragtag group of harmonica customizers and music geeks from around the world to force the 150-year-old German firm to face the music.
It’s often not a pretty sight, and you don’t even want to know about the tonguing techniques employed to block certain holes while blowing out or drawing in, let alone a prolonged period of bloody lips. “That was kind of a rite of passage,” laughs harmonica maker and technician Kinya Pollard. “If your lips weren’t bleeding after a gig, you were considered a weenie.”
Not surprisingly, kids everywhere aren’t exactly clamoring to learn how to play the harmonica, nor are the airwaves crowded with the instrument’s sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, sound. Yet despite their low profile in the culture at large, following those decades of poor quality by Hohner, harmonicas are enjoying a full-blown renaissance right now, as major manufacturers and boutique customizers alike battle to perfect the beloved instrument. In a weird way, harmonicas are cool again precisely because they aren’t hogging the limelight, giving them an underground, back-to-the-roots cachet.
by Ben Marks, CW | Read more:
Images: uncredited
Samurai Armor
The strangest and most convoluted part of the armor, the kabuto helmet, also served its purpose. Its bowl was made of riveted metal plates, while the face and brow were protected by a piece of armor that tied around behind the head and under the helmet. The most famous feature of the helmet was its Darth Vader–like neck guard (Darth Vader’s design was actually influenced by samurai helmets). It defended the wearer from arrows and swords coming from all angles. Many helmets also featured ornaments and attachable pieces, including a mustachioed, demonic mengu mask that both protected the face and frightened the enemy. A leather cap worn underneath the helmet provided much-needed padding.
Although the samurai armor went through significant changes over time, its overall look always remained fairly consistent to the untrained eye. It was so well-made and effective that the US Army actually based the first modern flak jackets on samurai armor.
by Pauli Poisuo, Listverse: 10 Fascinating Facts About the Samurai | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Groundwork Laid, Growers Turn to Hemp in Colorado
[ed. See also: this previous post -- Holding Our Breath.]
Along the plains of eastern Colorado, on a patch of soil where his father once raised alfalfa, Ryan Loflin is growing a leafy green challenge to the nation’s drug laws.His fields are sown with hemp, a tame cousin of marijuana that was once grown openly in the United States but is now outlawed as a controlled substance. Last year, as Colorado voters legalized marijuana for recreational use, they also approved a measure laying a path for farmers like Mr. Loflin, 40, to once again grow and harvest hemp, a potentially lucrative crop that can be processed into goods as diverse as cooking oil, clothing and building material. This spring, he became the first farmer in Colorado to publicly sow his fields with hemp seed.
“I’m not going to hide anymore,” he said one recent morning after striding through a sea of hip-high plants growing fast under the sun.
Mr. Loflin’s 60-acre experiment is one of an estimated two dozen small hemp plantings sprouting in Colorado. Hemp cultivation presents a vexing problem for the federal government, which draws no distinction between hemp and marijuana, as it decides how to respond to a new era of legalized marijuana in Colorado and Washington State. (...)
Opponents say that hemp and marijuana are essentially the same plant and that both contain the same psychoactive substance. But supporters say that comparing hemp with potent strains of marijuana is like comparing a nonalcoholic beer with a bottle of vodka. (...)
Lately, hemp has been tiptoeing toward the agricultural mainstream, gaining support from farmers’ trade groups and a wide array of politicians in statehouses and in Washington. In the Republican-controlled House, a provision tucked into the farm bill would let universities in hemp-friendly states grow small plots for research. (...)
Beyond the risk of federal raids and seizures, Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, said the market for hemp goods is still vanishingly small and questioned whether it could really be a panacea for farmers.
“Hemp is the redheaded stepchild of marijuana policy, and probably for good reason,” said Mr. Sabet, who is now the director of the Drug Policy Institute. “In a world with finite capacity to handle drug problems, my advice would be for people to think less about an insignificant issue like hemp and more about the very real issues of drug addiction, marijuana commercialization and glamorization, and how to make our policies work better.”
by Jack Healy, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Matthew Staver for The New York Times
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