| New Disney princess movie sounds pretty good |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|10:04 pm] |
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/t3cONCyIjM8/new-disney-princess.html I wasn't going to both going to see the new Disney cartoon, "The Princess on the Frog," first because Disney's campaign to turn princesses into pure little-girl-crack is tiresome-verging-on-offensive, and second because it looked like a trite and opportunistic way to bring in African-American viewers.
But Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has me convinced. This sounds like a damned good movie. Maybe I'll take the kid to see it.
Tiana takes the princess role a step further -- she's not just Disney's first African-American to wear the crown, she's the first one with a regular job. (Unless you count Mulan's gig as a warrior.) She also, like "Ratatouille's" Remy, makes the case for great food as a social leveler and the cornerstone of a good life. Tiana knows that food "brings people together" with more reliable results than even voodoo.
But the strides here aren't just for princesses. Those Charming Guys of bygone days have traditionally been even less interesting than the ladies they rescue. Campos makes his Naveen such a cocky player that he doesn't stop seducing even when he's turned green and asks for just one kiss ... "unless you beg for more." He's a spoiled rich guy who needs to grow up, and the movie is just as much about his journey as it is about Tiana's.
And what a felicitous spot to take that journey. The Crescent City, in all her late 19th-century glory, shines like a jewel here: an enchanted, lively, multicultural town full of bright blossoms and infectious songs. As they say in the movie, "Dreams come true in New Orleans." Randy Newman [ed: ugh], who wrote the score, does a bang-up job of paying tribute to the city's rich musical heritage in a series of colorful, trippy numbers. There's a jazzy Armstrong-like song (featuring a crocodile named Louis), a gospel-tinged showstopper, a zydeco throwdown, and a boogie-woogie paean to the town sung by Dr. John [ed: that's more like it].
[ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<br [...] </blockquote>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/t3cONCyIjM8/new-disney-princess.html">http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/t3cONCyIjM8/new-disney-princess.html</a></p>I wasn't going to both going to see the new Disney cartoon, "The Princess on the Frog," first because Disney's campaign to turn princesses into pure little-girl-crack is tiresome-verging-on-offensive, and second because it looked like a trite and opportunistic way to bring in African-American viewers.
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But Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has me convinced. This sounds like a damned good movie. Maybe I'll take the kid to see it.
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<img src="http://craphound.com/images/trailer-princess-and-the-frog.jpg" align="left">
Tiana takes the princess role a step further -- she's not just Disney's first African-American to wear the crown, she's the first one with a regular job. (Unless you count Mulan's gig as a warrior.) She also, like "Ratatouille's" Remy, makes the case for great food as a social leveler and the cornerstone of a good life. Tiana knows that food "brings people together" with more reliable results than even voodoo.
<p>
But the strides here aren't just for princesses. Those Charming Guys of bygone days have traditionally been even less interesting than the ladies they rescue. Campos makes his Naveen such a cocky player that he doesn't stop seducing even when he's turned green and asks for just one kiss ... "unless you beg for more." He's a spoiled rich guy who needs to grow up, and the movie is just as much about his journey as it is about Tiana's.
<p>
And what a felicitous spot to take that journey. The Crescent City, in all her late 19th-century glory, shines like a jewel here: an enchanted, lively, multicultural town full of bright blossoms and infectious songs. As they say in the movie, "Dreams come true in New Orleans." Randy Newman [ed: ugh], who wrote the score, does a bang-up job of paying tribute to the city's rich musical heritage in a series of colorful, trippy numbers. There's a jazzy Armstrong-like song (featuring a crocodile named Louis), a gospel-tinged showstopper, a zydeco throwdown, and a boogie-woogie paean to the town sung by Dr. John [ed: that's more like it].
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<a href="http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2009/11/24/princess_and_the_frog/index.html?source=rss&aim=/ent/movies/review">"The Princess and the Frog" is Disney royalty</a>
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<em>Previously:</em><ul><li><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/28/disney-princess-wedd.html#previouspost">Disney Princess wedding dresses - Boing Boing</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2004/03/31/disney-asks-gizmodo-.html#previouspost">Disney asks Gizmodo to clarify that jewel box is not intended for ...</a></li>
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<a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f37f972d1eb42b67e0802ddbc8283522&p=1"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f37f972d1eb42b67e0802ddbc8283522&p=1"/></a>
<img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2226"/><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/t3cONCyIjM8" height="1" width="1"/> |
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| EFF sets sights on abusive EULAs |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|09:53 pm] |
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Nn6GV9oDPdA/eff-sets-sights-on-a.html The Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Terms Of (Ab)Use project tracks news, litigation and fights related to abusive terms of service, EULAs and other electronic flimflam. Now's a good time to mention once again my own EULA, which I put at the bottom of my emails:
"READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer."
Using a TOS, online service providers can dictate their legal relationship with users through private contracts, rather than rely on the law as written. In the unregulated and unpredictable world of the Internet, such arrangements often provide the necessary ground rules for how various online services should be used.
Yet TOS agreements also raise a number of concerns for the consumer, as they can be a vehicle for abuse by online service providers. For starters, TOS provisions are usually written by the service providers themselves. As a result, they tend to end up being one-sided in the service provider's favor, and are often designed to be beyond any judicial scrutiny. Even more importantly, most users never even bother to read, let alone understand, these agreements, filled as they are with confusing legalese.
The time has come to shed light on what these Terms of Service agreements actually say, and what it means to users. In conjunction with our TOSBack project, EFF is working to make the contents of these TOS more transparent for the average user.
Terms Of (Ab)Use
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| thanks |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|08:38 pm] |
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http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanks.html Thanks for all the suggestions about how to embed sound in a picture. I'll try a couple of them tomorrow. About half of you suggested Flash. I'm not sure how that helps. I don't want to make an animatic and then have to upload that to youtube or something and then link back to my blog. Too many steps for me and for the reader.I just want separate pictures that scroll exactly like they do now, |
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| 1970s Marvel Team-Up megapost |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|05:35 am] |
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http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1246194.html ![[info - personal]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) skalja requested some old-school Marvel Team-Up. For your sampling pleasure today I've selected four issues from 1977, #s 59, 60, 61 and 62, by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Dave Hunt.
I loved the old MTU series for its meticulous attention to continuity; it wove the team-ups around the characters' own series, yet still flowed smoothly from one story to another itself; and, as you'll see here, it was a great place to pick up and expand upon dropped plot threads and start new ones. The tricky bit here is that the individual stories are only 17 pages long, which my trusty calculator tells me makes for 5 and a half postable pages. And the plots are kind of all over the place, so this may be a bit tricky to follow, but I shall try to fill in the gaps.
We start with #59, guest starring Yellowjacket and the Wasp, titled "Some Say Spidey Will Die By Fire...Some Say By Ice!" BTW, this issue is "dedicated - with respect and admiration - to Roy Thomas." I know not why.
( Seventies Spidey could not catch an even break. Ever. )
So. What'd you guys think of the trip down memory lane? |
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| Hacked Email Archive Fuels Climate Skeptics' Conspiracy Theories [Weather] |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|12:00 am] |
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http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ZXZad6M_8-c/hacked-email-archive-fuels-climate-skeptics-conspiracy-theories  The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia keeps some of the most accurate climate records which are key to many climate change debates. Its email archives were hacked, and now it's the center of another conspiracy claim.
As soon as the email archives' contents were made publicly available, arguments broke out. Was there proof of data manipulation that could flip the entire climate debate topsy-turvy? Were scientists at the university working to keep works by climate skeptics out of journals? Answers to either question are unclear. According to New Scientist, there was no evidence of actual data manipulation, but some of the email exchanges could be construed as attempts to suppress some research. No matter how those questions wind up being resolved, in the end the trouble doesn't seem to be in the contents of the emails or in the data, but in the fact that the Climate Research Unit restricted access to the climate data to those it deemed "bona fide researchers." Maybe some of the accusations the unit faced could've been avoided had the data been more freely shared in the first place. [New Scientist] Photo by coda
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| This is How a Pissed Off Designer Quits His Job [Image Cache] |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|11:20 pm] |
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http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/cmgLK-G6USY/this-is-how-a-pissed-off-designer-quits-his-job  It might not be the smartest way of giving a zero-weeks notice at work, but you've gotta give this guy some credit for doing extra work and making a custom Mac OS X app just for the purpose of quitting.
Supposedly the pop up prompt (which apparently doesn't do anything) was seen by the fellow's coworker who explained the situation: He believed he was in a temp-to-hire position, and after three months of extra hours and butt-kissing, turns out it's just a temp position. He was a good worker too. I'd have recommended him. Too bad he burned his bridges... Obviously he had contemplated quitting long enough to make this thing, but still refused to speak to anyone about his feelings. Ironically, he complained about the 'divas' at his last job. Well, who'd want to keep him if he makes an app with prompts that don't even have functional buttons? If nothing, one of the buttons should've opened an email app with a pre-written apology note. [Method Shop via Cult of Mac]
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| Stonehenge: virtual 3D animation |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|08:51 pm] |
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/SjRjmcM9xbU/stonehenge-virtual-3.html
The non-profit Wessex Archaeology organization created a virtual fly-over of Stonehenge and vicinity based on LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data collected from the air. From the project page:
During production of the animation, we turned the LIDAR data into a solid 3D model of whole landscape surrounding Stonehenge. Aerial tours of the most famous sites and monument groups were animated in HD (720i) resolution. What is exciting is that much of the upstanding archaeology, from well-preserved barrows to the subtle earthworks of prehistoric field systems, are clearly visible.
To do this, we had to work out how to use the data at 1:1 for our animations (for this kind of task it is often necessary to reduce the complexity of the data by half or quarter (1:2 or 1:4) due to enormous memory and processing requirements). This we achieved, and using lighting techniques we have been able to show the archaeology of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site as it has never been seen before.
The Stonehenge Landscape in 3D (via Daily Grail)
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Erin sez, "This past weekend in the Mojave desert Mad Max fans got together for a 3-day, one time only 'Road Warrior Weekend' campout and built replicas of the Gyrocopter and Interceptors."
