Category: Life

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A study recently determined that organically-grown food doesn’t contain more nutrients than conventional food. Um… okaaaay… I don’t think I’ve ever seen any advocates of organic farming making that claim. I’m sure there are a few, but the major themes generally seem to be:

  • More sustainable in the long term (less negative impact on the environment).
  • Less unhealthy residue from pesticides, fertilizers, etc.
  • Better taste.

And, of course, none of these points were addressed by the study.  In short, it’s a classic straw man fallacy.  Sure, I’ve got problems with the terminology used by the organic food sector (foremost: overloading the term “organic”), but this is just missing the point.

(Hat tip to Katie for pointing this one out.)

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The latest newsletter for the Center Theatre Group includes a mention of The Fly: The Opera.  Yes, The Fly, based on the sci-fi film about a scientist who gets combined with a housefly in a teleportation accident.  And its remake. As an opera. 😯

Plácido Domingo conducts the U.S. premiere of the LA Opera-commissioned opera written by Oscar®-winning composer Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings)based on the original 1957 George Langelaan short story as well as David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, with a libretto by the Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly).

I used to figure, if someone can turn The Phantom of the Opera, Little Shop of Horrors, and Jekyll and Hyde into a musical, nothing should surprise me.  But… seriously…  The Fly? And not just a musical, but an opera? And the creative team: Placido Domingo and David Henry Hwang working with David Cronenberg?

😕

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Possibly jumping the gun, but last night I reserved a backup hotel for next year’s Comic-Con. Although considering that most of the big-name hotels right by the convention center are already booked (though I’m sure they’ve set aside blocks for the convention already) or want incredible amounts of money per night, perhaps it’s not that crazy an idea.

The price and distance are just good enough that I’d be willing to skip the insane reservation crunch when the convention block goes on sale next year, though I’ll probably give it a shot to see if I can get something closer.

Meanwhile, we’re seriously considering hitting WonderCon again next year, which will also give us another excuse to visit people up in the Bay Area. (Not that we should need an excuse, but it seems like we do.)

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This morning I was surprised to hear that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had died. In part, it was because I hadn’t realized he was still alive. As the brief story went on, I remembered reading about his return to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of his work, I’ve only read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, back in high school.

Last week I was surprised to hear that the FBI was on the verge of indicting a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. I’d pretty much written it off as an unsolved case. Unfortunately, the fact that Ivins committed suicide means the case will never go to trial. Having the attorney general sign off on it doesn’t quite have the same sense of closure — or certainty — that a trial would. Unless the FBI releases seriously solid evidence (and I’m sure a lot of the evidence is probably classified, especially given the current administration’s affair with secrecy), there will always be a bit of doubt: did he kill himself because he’d been caught, or because he didn’t want to go through being scapegoated?

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Waaay back in the dark ages of the Web (somewhere between 1994 and 1997) I discovered a weekly email newsletter called “This Is True.” It collected strange-but-true news stories from around the world, summarizing each in a short paragraph with a witty one-liner at the end. I subscribed to the free edition, and later to the full version, which had about twice as many stories. I even picked up a few of the books collecting past stories (at a con, I think, but I can’t remember which con).

Eventually I got too busy to read them, and the back-issues piled up unread, and I decided to let my subscription lapse. But earlier this year, I decided to re-up with the shorter, free version, and it’s still as good as ever.

This week’s issue included a disappointing story: even though they practice — in fact, probably helped originate — responsible list management, Yahoo is blocking them as spammers. Why? Because people are signing up for the list, then deciding they don’t want it anymore, and instead of unsubscribing, hitting the “Report as Spam” button. Yahoo has apparently taken those spam reports at face value, and blocked everyone’s copy of the newsletter.

Clearly, some people are unclear on what “spam” means. It’s not just “mail I don’t want.” It’s “mass mail I don’t want and didn’t ask for.”

That, and I’m sure some people don’t realize that their reports are being used to train everyone’s filters. I remember a co-worker explaining a few years ago that he’d trained Gmail to send the SourceForge newsletters (or something similar) straight into his spam folder. I commented that they might be using that data to train their sitewide filters, and he said something like, “I hope not.”

Using user feedback to train sitewide or network-wide (such as Cloudmark, or Akismet) filters is a powerful technique. Some people will catch the leading edge of a spam attack, and that data can be used to protect others as the attack continues. Some will check their mail sooner, and that data can be used to re-filter messages that have been received, but not yet viewed.

Unfortunately, it also can give a lot of power to people who are either unclear on the criteria being used or have an axe to grind, unless you include measures to (a) contain the impact or (b) keep track of each reporter’s reliability. I know Cloudmark factors in the reporter’s reputation, for instance. And I suspect that AOL does, at least in some cases, limit measures such as blocking to specific recipients, but I can’t be certain.

Anyway, to summarize:

  • Use the Report Spam button responsibly.  If you actually subscribed to it, it isn’t spam unless they refuse to remove you from the list.
  • Check out This is True.  You may laugh, you may groan, you may think, or you may get pissed off at the world — or all of the above.  It’s certainly worth a look.

(I really should have finished writing this yesterday, before someone submitted the original story to Slashdot. Posting about it to get the word out seems kind of redundant now. Heck, now that I think about it, I should have submitted the original to Slashdot. Oh, well.

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A couple of things I’d like to do for next year’s Comic-Con International, assuming vacation time and financial situation are compatible:

1. Take the following Monday off. Comic-Con is not relaxing. Even if you don’t go out to parties every night, it’s still exhausting. It wasn’t so bad when we left early on Sunday, but the last two years we’ve stayed all the way to the end of the show. Two-plus hours of driving, plus a stop for dinner, meant we weren’t home until Sunday evening. You’re supposed to be a zombie at the con, not after you get home. It would be much better to take a day to sleep in and recover a bit. (Plus it would allow extra time to do things like sort through photos and post them quickly.)

2. Take the whole week off and make it a vacation. We missed maybe a grand total of 4 hours of daytime programming this year, and still didn’t catch everything we wanted to. (Admittedly, a lot of that involved choosing between simultaneous events.) That doesn’t leave much time to just be in San Diego, except for nighttime. It would be nice to head down the previous weekend and spend a few days as tourists. Maybe hit the Wild Animal Park or something. Then switch hotels on Wednesday and do the con. Certainly our trip to WonderCon earlier this year benefited from taking extra time to do other things.

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As Comic-Con International strains at the boundaries of the San Diego Convention Center, it’s begun spilling over into the city. Go back 4-5 years, and the most you would see would be the occasional street light banner or bus stop advertisement. Now, there are people handing out flyers as far out as the trolley stops, and walking around the Gaslamp in ridiculous mascot costumes (the sandwiches a few years ago, the donuts this year). There are displays near the trolley stops. There are buses wrapped with full advertisements for movies and TV shows, shuttle vans labeled U.S.S. Enterprise — there was even an ice cream truck parked for several days on 5th street with a Eureka ad on the side (and probably something inside it, but I was always on the other side of the street when I saw it).

It’s mainly the TV and film studios (except for the flyers), and it ties into something that author Robert J. Sawyer mentioned at his spotlight panel: Convention-goers are nexuses (well, nexi). We’re the people who are so into movies, TV, games, comics, etc. that we’ll put in the effort, time and expense to go to this kind of event, and we’re likely to talk about it. They’re counting on us going back to our offices or dorm rooms, hanging out with friends, blogging, posting on Twitter, or otherwise telling everyone we know about how cool this and that new movie is going to be.

In short: It’s an advertising blitz designed to kick off word-of-mouth hype, aimed at the crowd that’s both most primed to receive it and most likely to spread it.

With the massive convention floor and unbelievable crowds, they’re doing everything they can to stand out. So we get the viral marketing, like the ads for TruBlood, the Humans-Only Restrooms signs, the army of people in Quarantine outfits, the Neighborhood Watch–style sign for The Spirit. We get the swag. We get the celebrity appearances. We get displays of terra-cotta warriors to advertise The Mummy and replicas of the Owlship from Watchmen.

All that brings in more people, which of course makes the event more attractive to the studios, so they put in more effort, which brings in more people, and they start promoting movies that have nothing to do with comics, sci-fi, fantasy or horror, the genres that used to be the main focus for the con. (I remember thinking that Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was an odd choice to promote at Comic-Con. This year, the sequel blended right in.)

The con seems to have reached an upper limit in terms of the number of people it can handle at the current venue, which is contracted through 2012. I wonder whether Hollywood will demand bigger crowds — which would probably be best handled by spilling into neighboring hotels — or be satisfied with the numbers it’s got.

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