- ttttttttttttttttttttt
- UuVvWwZ
Big Brother is watching you and smelling good.
- Melissa Bateson, "Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting"
- Katie Liljenquist, "The Smell of Virtue"
All that remains is to overload our sense of taste, touch, and hearing with good vibes.
Dynamic Open-Participation Divisions
- ZeFrank's Color War
- Tumblr's Sharks vs Cats
Dynamic Closed-Participation Divisions
- Hogwarts Sorting Hat
Fictional prejudices, stereotypes, and slang which produce derogatory terms that reveal our own tendencies towards prejudices, stereotypes, and slang have been on my mind.
Mutants in the Marvel Universe are decried as muties. The alien race in District 9 is crudely referred to as prawns. Robots get toaster, tin can, and bucket of bolts which relate them to inanimate metallic objects of lesser value.
Then there is the seemingly rare viewpoint of the human being as a lesser being. Possibly only available to aliens, artificial intelligences, and ascended beings. The slurs that stand out tend to refer to our evolutionary tree (hairless ape) or our biological traits (meatbag or fleshling). Aaron Stack (the Machine Man) and Bender are perhaps the most noteworthy for their proficiency at demeaning humans.
As with all things that dwell on my mind, this has already been covered at tvtropes.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticSlurs
At the start of this latest episode of Fringe a police officer receives a phone call that instructs him to carry out an enigmatic task. The immediate thing that came to mind was that some writers had finally got wind of Alternate Reality Games and worked them into a story.
What a sinister thing that would be - a game that would drive participants to commit crimes.
Or at least unknowingly serve as accomplices as the case of Anthony Curcio and his Craigslist decoys.
"So you guys really embedded a top secret problem in a game hoping that someone like me would solve it?" - Eli Wallace, Stargate Universe
This trope of gamer-turned-hero is never going to die is it?
- The Last Starfighter
- Captain N: The Game Master
- http://www.eegra.com/show/sub/do/browse/cat/comics/id/77
Now that the customer is getting a voice there seems to be no shortage of stories of PR departments bending over backwards to appease them.
I wonder when the point will come where a company forgets what it's supposed to be selling and instead spends all of its time attempting to put out the multitude of fires.
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
I am a nerd and by all accounts should enjoy Doctor Who.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Doctor as a character. I love how these last seasons have reached back into the mythos and stirred up things that were touched upon in the past.
I just can't seem to turn my brain off while I'm watching it. I can't tell if it's the pacing, the effects, or the way it's shot. Watching it can be almost frustrating and exhausting which causes me to not enjoy it thoroughly.
I can only imagine that this is the sort of thing that a significant other feels when they're dragged to Comicon or having to adjust their schedule around a MMORPG raid time.
Which means true Doctor Who appreciation is probably some Ur-Geekdom tier ability.
Part I: An app to resolve those moments where everyone is indecisive about an activity.
- Simplest solution: take a manually entered zip code and returns a random location from a database
- Advanced solution: automatically determine the GPS location...
- Creative solution: ...emulate a Magic 8-Ball in appearance and behavior (shake)...
- Advanced creative solution: ...emulate Spin the Bottle in appearance and behavior (point)...
Part II: A web service to resolve who is riding with who.
Part II-A: A web service where people text calling "Shotgun!" to determine who initially called it.
Part III: A generic app that calculates splitting a bill and determining tip.
Ultimate solution:
- All users must create profiles listing allergies, dietary preferences, relationships, automobile, and budgets. Everyone is stuffed into a weighted calculation that returns an optimal suggestion for the destination and travel arrangement.
