lightcastle

Since the anarchist Tintin and the gender-swapped Asterix came up at work this morning, does anyone know if there is any gender-swapped Tintin anywhere? It strikes me as one that would be interesting to see.

(I'd also love to see a good gender-swapped Corto Maltese picture, because I think it would be an awesome look.)

Sadly, the amount of legal complexity to ship a piece of bone across the border is a bit much, and so I will not be able to send s00j something to paint on during Burning Man. At this point, it's over triple digits, and that's if I don't get fined for breaking the law.

This makes me sad, as I did spend a couple of days finding a butcher who could provide, and since I was able to actually have it be something personal.

She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton--the big fat blade-bone--and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the First Singing Magic in the world.

-- The Cat That Walked By Himself

Two interesting articles on National Personifications.

The first mostly just discusses those that exist as well as showing some of the interesting artwork involved. The second gets a bit more into the way different elements of society often contest over differing personifications.

The gender issues involved in the country as an idea being almost universally an Athena variant in the west, while the symbol of the common people is almost always a man, are notable.

I also note that the USA seems to be one of the only that has an Uncle Sam figure to represent the government rather than the people. I suspect this has much to do with the idea of the government of the US as being "of the people" in the national myth.

Meanwhile, leaving the realm of the idealized, the Teen and Transgender Comparative Study looks like a really interesting piece.

In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. As observers, however, we have been taught to view the subjects in much the same way: with sheer terror.

Shame it's not where I can see it.

And kinda sorta related if I squint, why Ginny Weasley is awesome. Having never read the books, I can't say much on that, but I can see why the author likes her so much.

Forgive the Princess Bride paraphrase.

As some of you know, my mom is an artist. One of her media is book binding. One day, she took a workshop on re-purposed art, right around the time some old computers at her lab were being discarded.

The result has been a recurring theme of circuit board books, each hand bound with some piece of circuitry.

(And wow is photographing art hard.)





The first two are both Japanese bound watercolour paper, with a motherboard as the front cover.



The one on the right is Japanese binding again, and I don't know the name of the other style. (It may just be "Western".) The Western has a single small circuit as a decoration, while the Japanese binding again has a large circuit board almost as the entire cover. I do believe that circuit is hand stitched, if that's an appropriate turn of phrase.





This last one is bound in a texture that almost looks like bark, decorated with buttons, and tucked into its own case which I believe is a re-purposed disk mount.

November begins, which it means it is time to start worrying about the $WINTERHOLIDAY

Bureaucracy
I need to get a new Canadian Passport and deal with the IRS. I also need to get a mattress.

Technology
I am hoping to get all the info off my backup external before it grinds to a halt. (It got kicked over and has started making terrible grinding noises.)

Arts
Week two of Hope in Chaos at Mainline. Come on out and see it! After that, no plays lined up, although I want to get back to storytelling and some stand up. I am also hoping to find time to put up actual websites.

From elsewhere, lovely underwater photos.

News
From the New York Times, Europe's Plagues Came From China. The great waves of plague that twice devastated Europe and changed the course of history had their origins in China, a team of medical geneticists reported Sunday, as did a third plague outbreak that struck less harmfully in the 19th century. The three outbreaks are The Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, and the Plague of 1900.

I think I might want to pick up this book, Proofiness, about the dark art of mathematical deception. The book reminds me of this classic about how gender studies are reported.

Sady Doyle on the Hate Snowball on Stephen Fry, with followup, and the simple eloquence of Stephen Fry's Twitter response to this all.

Random
From Information is Beautiful - Every Doctor Who trip through time

A really interesting idea from Johnathan at A Tiny Revolution, Five Dollar Fridays

Starting today, every Friday I'm going to give five dollars to someone who's produced something funny/interesting/worthwhile and is giving it away on the internet(s).
Obviously the internet is the greatest distribution technology ever created for music and writing and video and journalism. But it's also obvious it generally makes it more difficult for people producing such things to earn a living.

So I have three goals with this:

1. Finally start paying some of the people who've created wonderful things I've enjoyed.

2. If possible, get lots of other people online to start doing this as well. It would be a beautiful thing if it grew and grew, and three years from now 10,000 people were giving away $50,000 to artists every week. To help get things rolling, I've created the twitter hashtag #5DF. Every week I'll link to the recipient of my five dollars on twitter with that tag, and if you start doing it I encourage you to do the same. (I'll also archive all my recipients here.)

3. In my most grandiose dreams, this idea would—in the process of becoming popular—make people realize that we need a new way to fund all kinds of art. In theory the internet should be a dream come true for artists and people generally, but it will never fulfill its potential if everyone is trying to eke out a living from advertising or just what other people are willing to cough up on the spur of the moment.

There's more at the post, including a mention of Dean Baker's old Artistic Freedom Voucher idea.

The idea appeals, although obviously I am not up for it until I have an income. (i.e. - likely never again)

Of course, in some ways this represents a private, non-centralized Kickstarter project.

I know some people have discussed the idea of a subscription model to pay artists, but I don't know of any sites coordinating that.