This Monday, July 7th, my fiance and I went to the airport and picked up this little guy:
His name is Beetle and he is adorable. Normally I think pugs are hideous (it was her idea), but Beetle is the sole exception. Obviously. Continue reading
Category Archives: Just for Fun
Webcomic Roundup
I’ve already been over some of my favorite bloggers in the past, but you may have noticed that bloggers aren’t the only thing in my sidebar. Although I enjoy all art forms, comics are a particular pleasure for me, and since webcomics are usually free I tend to read a lot of them. Here are my favorites:
- Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell might well be my favorite comic of all time, online or off. It hits all my weak points: alternatively funny, serious, and touching, with a story featuring both technology and magic, told through expressive and well-rounded characters. It’s smart, imaginative, and very well-written and drawn (though, like many of the comics on this list, its early pages are much rougher than its later ones). Tom plans each page meticulously and has probably had the entire story planned out start-to-finish since the beginning–relevant plot details will regularly be foreshadowed many months or even years in advance. In short, it’s excellent, and you should start reading it from the beginning right now.
- Dresden Codak is the kind of comic that could only have existed on the internet. Especially in his earlier stories, creator Aaron Diaz frequently makes various scientific references that will leave you feeling really stupid, then really smart after you’ve been to Wikipedia so you can get the joke. His art and writing are both brilliant, a little surreal, and frequently esoteric. The biggest downside of his comic is that it only updates about once every hundred years. You can start reading it from the beginning here.
- A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible–hm. Well, basically, imagine Dresden Codak turned up to eleven. Kind of. Very surreal, very highbrow, frequently makes literary and/or philosophical references that will leave you feeling stupid and/or smart, occasionally flirts with continuity but doesn’t really make a habit of it. Written by Dale Beran and drawn by David Hellman (who also did the art for Braid), it updates approximately once every thousand years. You can read it from what I suppose is technically the beginning here.
- El Goonish Shive by Dan Shive is something of a guilty pleasure of mine–it’s a fun, quirky story about a group of teenagers featuring magic, aliens, relationships, and frequent shapeshifting and gender-bending. It’s funny and cute and I like it, okay? Stop looking at me like that. The first comic is here (and yes, the art and writing do in fact get way better).
- Oglaf (EXTREMELY NSFW, by the way) is, well…I’m just gonna quote the ‘warning’ page directly: “This comic started out as an attempt to make pornography. It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately.” Yeah, that about sums the whole thing up. Written by Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne, it’s fantasy-themed, frequently inappropriate, and always funny. Make sure nobody’s watching over your shoulder, then start from the beginning here.
- Lackadaisy is the tale of a group of charismatic bootleggers in prohibition-era St. Louis, told by the master of brilliant and hilarious facial expressions, Tracy J. Butler. Oh, did I mention the bootleggers are anthropomorphic cats? In addition to the main storyline (which you can read from the beginning here), her website features a number of vignettes, side stories and sketches that are often even more hilarious than the main comics. This one about waffles is one of my particular favorites (don’t worry, it’s spoiler-free).
- Cerintha is a fantasy webcomic set in an alternate universe shortly before the fall of Rome. The art isn’t as impressive as many of the other comics on this list, but Cope (the author) keeps drawing me back with intricate plotlines and fun, interesting characters. Be warned: although the comic is frequently funny, the overall tone of Cope’s stories (including his previous comic, Atavism) tends to be pretty fatalistic. You can start reading Cerintha here.
- Speaking of dark and humorous, The Perry Bible Fellowship has some of the darkest and humor-iest on the ‘net. Nicholas Gurewitch masterfully juxtaposes cartoonish, childlike visuals with morbid, sexual, or just downright terrible stories. You will laugh, and you will feel like a horrible person, and then you will click the ‘next’ button. Go ahead, you monster.
- Continuing to speak of dark and humorous, never forget Garfield Minus Garfield, the greatest existentialist-humor webcomic ever accidentally written. I’ll let the comic’s description speak for itself: “Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.” I have honestly never laughed harder than I have reading this comic. Start here, then keep going until you can’t breathe. Trust me, it’ll happen sooner or later.
- Switching gears, Erstwhile is a comic that re-tells many of the lesser-known stories by the brothers Grimm. Each story is adapted and illustrated by a different author–Gina Biggs, Louisa Roy, and Elle Skinner. If you like fairy tales (especially the original versions), give them a look! Their first story is The Farmer’s Clever Daughter.
- Finally, there’s xkcd–a nerd classic. If you haven’t heard of Randall Munroe’s comic yet, you should get out from under that rock you’ve been living beneath and go check it out. Unlike most of the other comics on this list, there’s no real need to start from the beginning, since only a few of his storylines are continuous–it’s probably better to just hit the random button and go from there. Enjoy!
How about you? What are your favorite webcomics? Let me know which ones I’ve missed in the comments!
Filed under Art, Just for Fun
My Sordid Confession
It’s probably no secret that I’m a nerd. I like nerdy things, like dragons and comic books and Star Wars and mathematics. I have nerdy friends. I have pretty good nerd “cred” (go on, ask me to sing Still Alive. Or pretty much anything by Freezepop. Or The Protomen.) But as a nerd–and in particular a nerd who likes books–I have a secret, shameful confession to make. Continue reading
Filed under Art, Just for Fun
Today I Am Victorious, Final
This week, the final part of my flash fiction series is up. You can read it here, or you can start from the beginning here. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Next week, it’s back to nonfiction with an essay called “Sexism Is Over.” (Spoiler warning: it might actually be about how sexism is not over.)
Filed under Art, Just for Fun, Series
Today I Am Victorious, Again
This week, I present two more entries from my flash fiction series. You can read it from the beginning here.
The fifth and final part should be up either next week or the week after. If you have any thoughts or feedback, please leave a comment!
Filed under Art, Just for Fun, Series
Today I Am Victorious
This week, a little something different: the first two entries in a series of flash fiction vignettes. You can find parts one and two on my deviantART account, with more parts to follow in the coming weeks. Hope you like them!
Filed under Art, Just for Fun, Series
Blogger Roundup
It seems I don’t have anything interesting to say this week. So here’s a list of writers who do!
- Mattie Brice writes about videogames a lot. Unlike most videogame journalists, however, her writing style is neither obsessively technical nor academically detached–she approaches all her writing with a fierce individualism and a strong commitment to broader perspective that is sorely lacking in videogames. You won’t find stat breakdowns or frame rate counts in her reviews, and you won’t find excessive academic jargon in her critiques; instead, you’ll find thoughtful and articulate musings, analyses, and manifestos on how games relate to our wider culture, and how we can relate back.
- Chris Bateman writes about videogames a lot too, but he also maintains an interest in a broad range of topics, especially the intersection between science and philosophy. Though his tone is much more academic than Brice’s, he writes with a clarity and open-mindedness that is refreshing in academic works and in philosophical writing particularly. I have yet to read a piece of his writing without at some point going “huh, that’s an interesting thought”–and unlike most philosophers, those thoughts frequently have actual applications!
- Finally, Paul Graham is one of the most intelligent, readable, and influential people writing about computers today. Though the subject matter of most of his essays focuses on his interests (computer programming and technology startups, mainly) nearly all of them can be read with no prior knowledge of the subject, and in every case he tries to tie the topic in to some broader theme of interest (e.g. effective communication, or the nature of beauty). Though I don’t agree with everything he says (and since some of his older essays were written years ago, he probably doesn’t either), and he occasionally suffers from the naive short-sightedness endemic to all people of privilege, he invariably has something interesting to say and he almost always says it well. If Brice is the heart and Bateman is the eyes, then Paul Graham is the head.
How about you? Who are your favorite internet writers?
Filed under Just for Fun
My New Year’s Resolution: Being, not Doing
It’s no secret that most new year’s resolutions fail. The reason is less well-known: most people resolve to do something differently in the coming year (e.g. lose weight, improve their relationships, get a raise), but make no concrete or detailed plans for how to do it. The most effective new year’s resolutions are not vague aspirations, but commitments to specific habits. The reason this works is threefold: first, specific goals are better than vague ones because they let you measure your progress. If you resolve merely to “eat better”, it can be difficult to tell if you’ve succeeded. (Better than what? What does “better” mean?) If you resolve, on the other hand, to lose 10 pounds (and keep them off–another common pitfall of new year’s resolutions), you have a specific measure of success.
The second reason specific habits are better is the habit part: changes are more effective if they’re consistent. In addition to specific measures of success, goals that can be broken down into smaller pieces and made into a routine are more effective, because once they’re routine you no longer have to spend conscious effort on them. Defaults have incredible power for this very reason, and making a commitment into a routine takes advantage of that power. A new behavior done once is an exception–a new habit becomes part of who you are.
This leads me to the last, and possibly most important reason why commitments to specific habits work better than vague promises of improvement: they act to alter not just your behavior, but your self-image. This is the same thing that makes hypnosis (and, to a lesser extent, self-affirmations) effective: it changes not just your behavior, but your fundamental conception of who you are. This is deep magic: a behavior or commitment affected for someone else’s sake will never be as strong as a change in belief. The most effective way to make a change in your life is to start thinking of yourself as the kind of person who makes that change. In that sense, then, the most effective resolution is not to ask yourself what you want to do differently, but who you want to be differently. To that end, here’s my new year’s resolution for 2014:
I resolve that I am an
- Attentive
- Hardworking
- Ambitious
- Creator[1]
I chose to be Attentive because I’ve noticed recently that I tend to operate on autopilot a lot, not paying full attention to whatever I’m working on. Sometimes that’s okay, if I’m paying attention to something else (presumably something more important) instead. But more often these days, I find myself running on autopilot just because I can, and that’s simply lazy. So, I am resolving to be someone who gives my full attention to whatever it is I’m working on at that moment.
I chose to be Hardworking for similar reasons. In college, one of the biggest lessons I learned was how to procrastinate on a deadline–to my misfortune, I discovered that I could often get away with simply not doing a lot of the work, as long as I did well enough on tests and other assignments to keep my grade up. Unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works: if I miss a deadline at work, the project doesn’t just go away at the end of the semester. So, I’m resolving to be someone who works hard to accomplish whatever I commit to, and to do my best to get it done on time.
I chose to be Ambitious because I want to make an impact on the world someday, and because I look up to and admire people with similar ambitions. It may be idealistic to want to singlehandedly change the world for the better…but then, only idealists ever have. So, I’m resolving to be a person who has high expectations for myself, and who’s never satisfied by the status quo.
Finally, I chose to be a Creator because I wanted to re-affirm my commitment to art and invention. When I was a small child I wanted to be an inventor–someone who brought their imaginings into the world of reality. As I got older I realized that literally being an inventor was not the only way to do that: it was possible with art and science as well. What’s important to me is not necessarily the method by which I influence the world around me, what’s important is merely that I do. So, I am resolving to be a person who uses their mind and hands to make their thoughts visible to the rest of the world, to actively change it for the better. In other words…to be an artist.
What are your new year’s resolutions?
Notes:
[1] Yes, I’m aware that this makes me “A HAC[K]”
Digging through some old emails I found an article I’d read years ago that said basically this same thing, only better.
Filed under Diary, Just for Fun, Philosophy
Why Do Mirrors Reverse Left and Right?
When you see your reflection in a mirror, why does your right become its left, but top and bottom stay the same? I’ve seen this question answered a number of different ways, but the explanation that makes the most sense to me is also, I think, the simplest: mirrors don’t reverse left and right. They reverse front and back.
Since “left” and “right” are subjective,[1] let’s simplify the discussion a little: imagine that you’re facing due north and there’s a mirror in front of you. If you jump up, your reflection will also jump up–no reversal. If you step one foot sideways, to the east, your reflection will also step one foot to the east: not reversed. But if you step south, away from the mirror, your reflection will move north–the opposite direction.
The reason mirrors seem to reverse left and right, but not up and down, is because when looking at our reflection we automatically imagine ourselves in their position–that is, turned around both left-right and front-back. This habit comes from a lifetime of interacting with other people and having to interpret their “right”, “left”, “front” and “back” in terms of our own. When we see our reflection, we reflexively identify it as another person, identical to us in every respect, except with all their features on the “other side”–e.g., a mole on the left side of your face is on the right side from your reflection’s “point of view”. But it is not the mirror that makes this transformation–it’s us, when we mentally turn ourselves around and put ourselves in our reflection’s shoes! We are mentally reversing our front-back and left-right, but the mirror reverses only the first.
Think about looking at yourself with a video camera. Here, left-right and front-back are both reversed (if you’re facing your recording, that is–if you’re looking at yourself from the back then nothing will be reversed). If you move towards the screen (e.g. north), your recording moves in the opposite direction (e.g. south); if you move to your right (e.g. east), your recording still moves in the opposite direction (e.g. west). The same goes for text printed on a shirt: in a recording, front-back and left-right are both switched, just like they would be on another person, so the text is legible; but in a reflection, only front and back are switched, so–just like a transparency sheet viewed from the wrong direction–the text appears “backwards”.[2] To prove that the text on your shirt is not reversed left-to-right in a mirror, you could remove the shirt and point it at a bright light so that you can read it from the inside (in other words, the back–but with the right sleeve still on your right and the left sleeve still on your left). The text will look just like it does in the mirror: front and back reversed, but left and right the same.
Feeling enlightened? Confused? Got a better explanation? Let me hear it in the comments!
Notes:
[1] As a child, I once asked my parents how people knew what side of the road to drive on, to keep from crashing. When they told me “you drive on the right”, I was still confused–“whose right?” I thought. It took me a while to realize that it didn’t matter–if you’re traveling in the other direction, “right” is on the other side. This is not an intuitive idea.
[2] If the image I linked is confusing you, think about it this way: the text on the transparency is viewed from the front, so it is perfectly readable. The mirror “sees” the transparency from the back, so from its perspective the text is reversed front-to-back (just as it would be if you were looking at the other side of the transparency). But the mirror itself reverses front and back when it reflects the text back to you, so the reflection still appears legible because front and back have been reversed twice.
Filed under Just for Fun, Science
BREAKING NEWS: Obama Actually Muslim, Osama Actually Jew
In our top story today, CIA officials earlier revealed that an extensive, top-secret investigation has concluded that Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th president of the United States of America, not only was not born in the U.S., but is in fact a Muslim extremist who hates America and everything it stands for.
“This was shocking for all of us,” says Zeke Retagent, the CIA operative in charge of the investigation. “But the deeper we dug, the harder it was to deny. There’s no doubt about it–Barack Obama is a terrorist bent on destroying everything this nation holds dear.”
In what some may consider even more shocking news, investigation into what is now being called the “Obama Conspiracy” revealed that Osama bin Laden, long reviled as the founder of al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is in fact a devout orthodox Jew who had nothing to do with the attacks.
“He was really just a scapegoat,” says Retagent, whose investigation uncovered irrefutable evidence that Osama was forced at gunpoint to take responsibility for the attacks. “Obama was the real mastermind, he orchestrated the whole thing. 9/11, the recession, school shootings, the budget crisis, YouTube comments–all Obama’s ideas, brought to fruition through careful planning and a diabolical, systematic undermining of the U.S. government from the inside out.”
When faced with these charges, Obama gave an inspirational and eloquent public denial that was nevertheless soon drowned out by the hisses and boos of the furious crowd. His call for an “appeal to reason, prudence, and common Human sense and decency” came shortly before the crowd broke through the protective police barrier and secret service agents, trampling the man to death. Reports from the scene indicate that in his last moments Obama showed his true colors, shouting “La ilaha illAllah!” (“there is no God but Allah”) and “Damn you infidels to Hell!” When asked why he had ignored Obama’s moving denial and attacked, one man on the scene replied, “Yeah, Obama was pretty good at giving speeches. So was Hitler. You think that’s just a coincidence?”
Soon after Obama’s address it was revealed that Osama bin Laden, long believed to have been killed in a covert U.S. operation (one that dramatically boosted the president’s approval rating), was actually being held in a secret detention facility as leverage to ensure the continued cooperation of al-Qaeda. Osama delivered an official address apologizing for falsely taking responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Center, claiming a “shameful weakness in the face of death”. He also indicated he harbored no ill will towards the American government, and advocated for a peaceful reconciliation. The alleged terrorist organization al-Qaeda, which was non-violent until Obama militarized it, will return to its former operations of charity work, education advocacy, and weekly Torah readings at their local community center.
The charges against Obama have naturally engendered suspicion against his staff, particularly the now-acting president Joe Biden, who was sworn in soon after Obama’s disastrous statement. According to Mr. Retagent, however, “none of the evidence so far points to Biden. As far as we can tell, Obama was acting alone.” Retagent stressed that the investigation was ongoing, although he went on to say “We don’t really expect to find anything. I mean, come on–his name is ‘Joe Biden.’ That’s about as un-Muslim as it gets.”
Filed under Just for Fun
In Search of Secrets 
