Posts Tagged ‘teleportation’
I May Have Committed A Little Light Treason Links
* thisisfine.jpg: An iceberg the size of Delaware has broken off Antarctica. My kids are three and five. Just 90. And you’re a little late.
* Blogger completely debunks claim Amelia Earhart was a Japanese prisoner.
* CFP: The George Slusser Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy, University of California, Irvine, on April 26–29, 2018. CFP: Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction. And our deadline was extended a month with the rest of the SUS: Suvin Today?, A Roundtable Discussion, The Society for Utopian Studies (November 9-12, 2017 in Memphis, TN).
* Nothing now would better serve the maturity and the invigoration of the Democrats than to give up any hope of sound advice or renewal from Bill or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They were pleasant to think about, but their politics have turned out wrong, and there’s nothing they can do for us now. The Age of Detesting Trump.
* Fredo, Fredo, Fredo. I tried to warn you: These revelations—and the possibility that more is yet to come—have made it increasingly untenable for Trump’s supporters to argue that there is nothing to the collusion story. And so, many have now begun to argue that even if there was collusion of the kind suggested by the Times, it wouldn’t be a crime—or even all that out of the ordinary. Some Trump loyalists are even making the case that it was smart and savvy for the campaign to pursue help from the Russians. Trump supporters know Trump lies. They just don’t care.
* I mean the wheels are really coming off.
TRUMP ODDS 7/2017
reelected 35%
defeated 35%
dies in office (natural causes) 15%
impeached 3%
resigns 0.5%
coup 5%
immortal god-emperor 6.5%— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 11, 2017
It’s sort of perfectly crafted, narratively, that the presidency of the worst father in the world now hinges on how much he loves his son.
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 12, 2017
* Trump still hasn’t resigned from his businesses like he promised, either.
* Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen: The Democrats! The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans.
* The attempt to stay faithful to the actual facts of the world that would make this impossible tanks the piece, but the overall message — that our political elites are soulless monsters without any hint of integrity or principle — is absolutely sound: What If Trump Had Won As a Democrat?
* Democrats should take the class warfare message to upscale suburbs.
* Science Fiction and Dystopia in the Age of Trump.
* What happens to America if Anthony Kennedy retires?
* Cancer researcher was held at Boston airport. Now he is being sent back to Iran.
* 23 emotions people feel, but can’t explain.
* Space colonization, faith, and Pascal’s Wager.
* In St. Louis, America’s nuclear history creeps into the present, leaching into streams and bodies.
* Between 2009 and 2011 more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. Rent Is Affordable to Low-Wage Workers in Exactly 12 U.S. Counties.
* Stage four credentialing. The Library of Heaven.
* The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) garnered more than 3,000 complaints regarding the uniforms. They conducted their own tests and found concerning evidence: a short-sleeved jacket had levels of cadmium, a highly toxic chemical, that were above the acceptable textile industry standard. The tests also found traces of formaldehyde, nickel, and tetrachlorophenol, all of which can cause major irritations. Formaldehyde, for instance, is even on the American Cancer Society’s list of known human carcinogens. What’s more, in 2011, Alaska Airlines experienced a very similar problem after issuing uniforms from Twin Hill. Around 10 percent of employees reported reactions and that airline issued a recall. Despite this damning evidence, American Airlines maintains that their uniforms are safe.
* Looking forward to this movie: Chicago Library Seeks Help Transcribing Magical Manuscripts.
* Gotta love a headline that has the courage of its convictions: CRISPR gene editing technique is probably safe, study confirms.
* We were driving away from Hedgesville when the third overdose call of the day came, for a twenty-nine-year-old male. America leads the world in drug overdose deaths — by a lot. Trump-Loving Sheriff Won’t Let Deputies Carry Overdose Antidote. A Small-Town Police Officer’s War on Drugs.
* The Klan comes (back) to Charlottesville.
* Drones keep dropping drugs and porn into prisons.
* Yes! Yes! Yes! And I’m especially all in for this: Quentin Tarantino’s Next Movie Will Be About the Manson Family.
* Remembering Milwaukee’s Own Cordwainer Smith.
* The mass defunding of higher education that’s yet to come.
* Jeff VanderMeer Amends the Apocalypse. Russia 1917: You Are There. Nor Secret Griefs Nor Grudges: Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances. Cottage Industry.
* The racial daring of Sundance’s Cleverman gives it an edge most superhero stories can’t match.
* The main reason for the contemporary evasion of Arendt’s critique of careerism, however, is that addressing it would force a confrontation with the dominant ethos of our time. In an era when capitalism is assumed to be not only efficient but also a source of freedom, the careerist seems like the agent of an easy-going tolerance and pluralism. Unlike the ideologue, whose great sin is to think too much and want too much from politics, the careerist is a genial caretaker of himself. He prefers the marketplace to the corridors of state power. He is realistic and pragmatic, not utopian or fanatic. That careerism may be as lethal as idealism, that ambition is an adjunct of barbarism, that some of the worst crimes are the result of ordinary vices rather than extraordinary ideas: these are the implications of Eichmann in Jerusalem that neo-cons and neoliberals alike find too troubling to acknowledge.
* As you can probably tell by looking around, every employee at our startup is 23 years old. On the morning of your 24th birthday, the barcode on your employee ID stops working and you can no longer enter our building. We do this to ensure our company has a ceaseless, youthful energy. We believe old people are displeasing to look at and also, bad at ideas.
* Nightmare jobs I’d never even though about: Rape Choreography Makes Films Safer, But Still Takes a Toll on Cast and Crew.
* First object teleported to Earth’s orbit.
* Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again! Junot Diaz and Margaret Atwood in conversation.
* Wakanda and Zamuda: A Comparative Analysis.
* And sure, I can pick up tacos on the way home.
Using salt circle runes to trap an A.I. car is possibly the most cyberpunk thing ever. pic.twitter.com/4ckbQlMyBS
— Kasper Hawser (@Gossenphilosoph) July 11, 2017
Written by gerrycanavan
July 12, 2017 at 6:43 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, academia, air travel, Amelia Earhart, America, American Airlines, Antarctica, Anthony Kennedy, apocalypse, Arendt, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Black Panther, Bojack Horseman, books, Borges, Borne, bureaucracy, capitalism, careerism, CFPs, Charles Manson, Charlottesville, Chicago, childhood, China, China Miéville, class struggle, Cleverman, climate change, Colorado, Coming to America, communism, Cordwainer Smith, CRISPR, Curb Your Enthusiasm, cyberpunk, Darko Suvin, Democrats, deportation, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., drones, drug addiction, drugs, dystopia, ecology, Eichmann in Jerusalem, emotion, espionage, eviction, fathers, fathers and sons, film, Flat Earth, flat Earthers, Fredo Corleone, Game of Thrones, general election 2016, geoengineering, HBO, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, ice sheet collapse, immigration, Iran, Islamophobia, Japan, Jared Kushner, Jeff Vandermeer, Junot Díaz, kakistocracy, KKK, kleptocracy, magic, Margaret Atwood, memory, Milwaukee, Mizzou, moral panic, never tell me the odds, Nnedi Okorafor, nuclearity, Obi-Wan, opioids, origin stories, outer space, over-educated literary theory PhDs, parenting, Pascal's Wager, politics, prequels, prison, public universities, race, racism, rape, rape culture, Republicans, Ridley Scott, robots, Russia, Russian Revolution, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, Soviet Union, St. Louis, Star Wars, startup, stock photography, student debt, superheroes, Supreme Court, Tarantino, taxes, teleportation, The Apprentice, The Godfather, the Internet, the rent is too damn high, the suburbs, Title IX, treason, Utopia, UVA, Wakanda, white supremacy, Who Fears Death, Wisconsin, World War II, Zamuda
Post *All* the Links
A big post, catching up from most of last week:
* Science fiction on the BBC: A brief history of all-women societies.
* Top Five Most Destroyed Canadian Cities in the Marvel Universe.
* News from MLA! Dissing the Dissertation. Anguish Trumps Activism at the MLA.
* News from my childhood: Another new version of Dungeons & Dragons is on the way. MetaFilter agonizes.
* News from the Montana Supreme Court: “Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people — human beings — to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creatures of government…”
* News from the future right now: Record Heat Floods America With Temperatures 40 Degrees Above Normal.
* How College Football Bowls Earn Millions In Profits But Pay Almost Nothing In Taxes.
And what ends up happening there is that the candidate with the big stack of donor money always somehow manages to survive the inevitable scandals and tawdry revelations, while the one who’s depending on checks from grandma and $25 internet donations from college students always winds up mysteriously wiped out.
* Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda.
* How The Cave of Time taught us to love interactive entertainment.
* Inside the Shel Silverstein archive.
* While genomic research on the super-old is in its very early stages, what’s fascinating is what the researchers are not finding. These people’s genomes are fundamentally the same as other people’s. They are clearly very special, but not in ways that are obvious.
* What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2012? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1955.
* The headline reads, “Quadriplegic Undocumented Immigrant Dies In Mexico After Being Deported From His Hospital Bed.”
* Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported.
* A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Arkham Asylum.
* Pepsi Says Mountain Dew Can Dissolve Mouse Carcasses. Keep in mind: that’s their defense.
* Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term.
* Romney: Elected office is for the rich.
* How banks and debt collectors are bringing dead debt back to life.
People who stop paying bills earn lousy credit ratings but eventually are freed of old debt under statutes of limitations that vary by state and range from three years to 10 years from the last loan payment.
But if a debtor agrees to make even a single payment on an expired debt, the clock starts anew on some part of the old obligation, a process called “re-aging.”
So if borrowers again fall behind on their payments, debt collectors can turn to their usual tools: letters, phone calls and lawsuits. By restarting a debt’s statute of limitations, the collectors have years to retrieve payments.
* Wells Tower: In Gold We Trust.
* Epic Doctor Who Timeline. More here.
* Battlestar Galactica: Totally planned. See also.
* The cast of Community plays pop culture trivia.
* “White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars.”
* Classified docs reveal why Tolkien failed to win ’61 Nobel Prize!
* Solve the Fermi Paradox the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal way.
* And you probably already saw Paypal’s latest outrage, but man, it’s a doozy.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 9, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, adjuncts, Africa, aliens, all-women societies, America, Apple, banking, Barack Obama, Batman, Battlestar Galactica, BBC, Canada, cave of time, childhood, Choose Your Own Adventure, CIA, climate change, Colbert, college football, comics, community, copyright, corporate personhood, debt, delicious Coca-Cola, democracy, deportation, dissertations, District 9, Doctor Who, Dr. Seuss, Dungeons & Dragons, ecology, Fermi paradox, film, games, genetics, genomics, gold, Herland, How the University Works, immigration, Iowa, iPads, Kant, literature, longevity, Louis C.K., Mars, Marvel, Matt Taibbi, Mitt Romney, MLA, money in politics, Montana, morally odious monsters, Nobel Prize, nostalgia, nuclear proliferation, nuclear war, nuclearity, only the super-rich can save us now, Paypal, Pepsi, poetry, politics, Portlandia, priceless violins, public domain, science fiction, Shel Silverstein, Steve Jobs, taxes, teleportation, the courts, The Joker, the law, the rich are different from you and me, the truth is out there, Tolkien, trivia, Zelda, zombies
Tuesday Miscellany
* Howard Dean: Kill the Senate bill. Markos Moulitsas: Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate. It falls to poor Matt Yglesias to declare victory. As I suggested earlier, my pragmatist streak will probably push me to support reform no matter how much Lieberman extracts, and Ezra Klein (still under fire for his rude reminder that policy has consequences) and Steve Benen make that pragmatist case here and here. Still, this rankles. I wouldn’t want anyone who matters (quiet, Ezra) to commit the unpardonable sin of being honest, but I’ll personally send Harry Reid a hundred dollars for his reelection if he turns around and uses reconciliation to pass the public option anyway just as soon as the current insurance reforms are passed.
* Much-needed good news: The DC City Council has endorsed marriage equality.
* Bad Astronomer tackles transporter metaphysics.
* More than 65 million years ago, a cataclysmic event drove a majority of the Earth’s species into extinction, and tragically, wiped out the last of the dinosaurs long before bazookas could be invented and used on them. (Thanks Russ!)
* io9 has the series bible for Batman: The Animated Series.
* And dueling reviews of Avatar insist it does and does not suck. (Thanks to Dan for the “suck” version. “Avatar is the corniest movie ever made about the white man’s need to lose his identity and assuage racial, political, sexual and historical guilt.” This I have to see.)
Written by gerrycanavan
December 15, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Avatar, Batman, bazookas, dinosaurs, film, Harry Reid, health care, Howard Dean, James Cameron, Joe Lieberman, marriage equality, metaphysics, nerd physics, nerds, politics, public option, reconciliation, science fiction, teleportation, television, The Onion, the Senate, Washington D.C.
What Philosophers Believe
The PhilPapers Survey was a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views, carried out in November 2009. The Survey was taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students. This has both a survey and a metasurvey that asked a smaller group to predict the results of the original survey. Shockingly, a full 69% percent of philosophers get the teleporter problem wrong:
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?
Accept or lean toward: survival 337 / 931 (36.1%)
Other 304 / 931 (32.6%)
Accept or lean toward: death 290 / 931 (31.1%)
The consequentialist approach to the trolley problem turns out to have become hegemonic.
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don’t switch?
Accept or lean toward: switch 635 / 931 (68.2%)
Other 225 / 931 (24.1%)
Accept or lean toward: don’t switch 71 / 931 (7.6%)
Also interesting: pluralities believe philosophical zombies are conceivable but not metaphysically possible (I concur) and rejects the terms of Newcomb’s Paradox (not sure what this can mean in practice). 73% are atheists.
All this and more via MeFi.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 9, 2009 at 9:45 am
Lucky for Me I Minored in Transporter Metaphysics
Speaking of Star Trek, the Poli-Sci-Fi Radio podcast got deep into the weeds this week on Dollhouse, The Prestige, clone “immortality,” and how the transporter on Star Trek is a fax machine that shreds its input when it’s done with it. (Bill has more on his home blog.)
Having spent a good portion of my childhood working out the metaphysical implications of such technology, I myself was moved to comment. As someone with a well-documented and simply unhealthy fear of death, I must admit that the consciousness-as-Ship-of-Theseus direction these discussions invariably take is both the only possible solution to the problem as well as a clear ontological horror in its own right.
Written by gerrycanavan
May 1, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged with clones, consciousness, Dollhouse, immortal robot bodies, immortality, nerd physics, Poli-Sci-Fi Radio, science fiction, Ship of Theseus, Star Trek, teleportation, thanatophobia, you don't exist