Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

No Country for Old Men: a taste

On the web are five clips from the upcoming movie version of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, No Country for Old Men.  I'm cautious about films of books I like, but this looks good.  And not just because the Coen Brothers are in charge.

In the handful of minutes are many nice touches, like the underplayed coin reveal, Chigurh avoiding the pool of blood, our hero glimpsed only from the back on the phone, or stalking away from the dying man's truck.  The casting looks perfect for everyone, from the resentful girlfriend to the sheriff and the mad killer.  All tension is ratched up quietly, carefully.  Very McCarthy.

The novel is a fine crime work.  It turns on the device of an innocent person finding something criminal, triggering violence and chaos.   The prose is quiet, sparse, and forceful, compelling the reader to synchronically work out plot details and psychological depth.  The tone is also elegaic, weeping for the passing of time, embedded in two war veterans' reflections. 

The villain is perhaps my favorite touch, a someone deranged assassin.  He reminds me of The Judge from McCarthy's earlier (and still my favorite) novel, Blood Meridian (1985), one of the great characters in modern American fiction.

(thank you, Steven Kaye)

Gothic Second Life Flickr group

After much encouragement, I just started a Flickr group for Gothic Second Life images and discussion.  Have at it!

Previous posts on Gothic Second Life: a gazeteer, what is Gothic SL?

Human computing for text scanning and spam killing

This is brilliant: a human computing initiative which combines scam-killing with improving text scanning.  Luis von Ahn is behind it, of course (same chap who did Google's image labeling game).  You do a captcha, which clarifies a text scan.

More like this, please.

Flash versus Flash

This excellent short partakes of the old animation trope of an animated figure fighting with its artist.  Very clever use of the Flash interface.

(thanks, Howard Rheingold)

Defensive phone

One note from this excellent presentation at the New Yorker 2012 conference: mobile phones used to prevent harassment or attack.  Nokia's Younghee Jung describes women interacting with their phones - or just pretending to - in order to look less vulnerable to potential threats.

On the road to points near and far

Infocult may enter a light posting phase for the next week, since I'm traveling to Morocco for a conference.  Internet access and, more importantly, battery power might be uneven.  Will post here, and in Flickr, and Twitter, etc., as possibilities occur.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying Typepad's "post on" feature, which lets me enter a week of Draculablog now, each dollop scheduled to manifest automatically.

On passion

I really like this essay, which focuses on misusing the word "passion".

Passion is not enthusiasm. It is not love. It is not enjoyment, and it is not flow. Passion is an unstoppable overflowing of emotion that destroys in its satisfaction, that torpedoes lives and marriages and nations, that shoots husbands or coworkers or strangers in rage. It is the hot lava of the soul, and it burns what it pours over. It is not the positive team-building thing your sup­ervisor would have you believe.

(via Bruce Sterling)

Second Life revisits child porn/sex

Linden Labs has revisited its Second Life ageplay policy.  According to Clickable Culture SL's owners are cracking down on cases of child pornography, as well as simulated sex involving minors:

Linden Lab asserted yesterday that it has a "zero tolerance" policy for depictions of child pornography within its virtual world, stating that it is "exceedingly rare" to receive reports of such depictions, and that it has "immediately removed" such depictions when informed about them.

... Linden Lab stated "We simply will not tolerate the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors in Second Life."

Linden Lab promised yesterday to drop the hammer on those involved in "the depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving minors," promising to terminate accounts and "fully cooperate with all appropriate authorities." Furthermore, the company said that if real-world child porn is discovered in the possession of users, it would terminate the accounts and provide personal details to real-world authorities (a long-standing policy, according to Linden Lab).

We noted this issue more than a year ago.  Is there a shift at the Lindens, from tolerating multiple forms of expression and interaction to following more mainstream media policy?

Vampire hunters in the Balkans go for the King of the Vampires

Several people staked Slobodan Milosevic's corpse this week, according to Ananova.  The implement was three feet long, just in case anyone wanted to free Milosevic ("slobo Slobo").

In return,

Slobodan Milosevic's daughter-in-law Milica Gajic said she planned to sue the vampire hunters and accused the police of failing to protect the grave properly.

(via MetaFilter)

EDITED TO ADD: repeat of an earlier story.  Yikes.

To kick Helprin

I read Mark Helprin's awful, sad opinion piece in favor of eternal copyright this Sunday.  It gave me a pleasant dose of mocking-based laughter for the minute required to read the thing.  Some asides occurred to me along the way - is it funny that he steals from Mark Twain without mentioning him? and that he claims to have written the Great American Novel?  Ultimately it just wasn't that interesting.

Larry Lessig and others are wiki-fying a response.  But it does feel a bit like debating a creationist.  Perhaps Helprin's whine is simply better off forgotten, Stephen Downes notes.