Most advertising is.

When it’s not out-rightly racist, sexist, classist, ageist and/or homophobic it often implies it. The industry is based on making people feel bad about some normal human thing then selling them the solution to their imaginary problem.  On the occasions when it’s not doing that  it’s pretending that you’ll stand out from the crowd or become part of some fabled elite if you just buy this product that everyone else is now buying to do the same.  As if shoes were ever a substitute for a soul.

pic nicked from here

Most who point out the normality of this brand of nonsense seek to excuse Christian Dior.  I don’t.

Nor do I take any refuge in that tired old cliché about “fashion being fantasy not reality.”  Racism is also fantasy.  Something  being fantasy does not absolve it from criticism. (Am I going to be able to say to book critics: “You can’t say bad things abut my book because it’s fiction not reality?”)   A fantasy must be judged on its quality.

And this is not exactly Borges.

It relies on the grossest and most vulgar form of characterization, the racial stereotype, is dreary to look at and has no aim higher than selling you a jumper or whatever Dior makes anyway.    It’s fantasy of owning a product making you superior to the masses.  That’s reprehensible whether or not racism is invoked.  That people are accustomed to this crap is not a point in favour of Dior but a point against us all.  With fantasies like this, we can hardly expect much improvement in reality.

On the other hand, it did start a conversation about orientalism . . .

So humans can invent a fleet of  autonomous solar-powered, sea-swarm robots made “with ultra-light nanowire mesh that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil” and use these to clean up an oil spill in 30 days but we can’t figure out a way to actually use solar power to meet our energy needs, create any sort of alternate lubricant or fertilizer, nor can we stop spilling oil all over the ocean?

Okay.  Gotcha.  Makes perfect sense.

Haven’t heard anything this rational since geoengineering to solve global warming.

Built by the famous Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University, this robot is a cheaper version of previous fembots.  It costs $110,000 and, while it purports be an exact replica of this woman, it cannot walk. I, for one, wonder exactly how exact of a replica it is.  Does it have Barbie genitals or can someone actually penetrate the thing?  If so, I’d like to know how they go about replicating the anus and vagina.  My interest may seem prurient but I’m just curious.  Do they use a mold?  Is there a specialist?  Does the model have to sit on something?

The inventors hope to sell fifty of the machines to museums and hospitals where they will work as receptionists, patient attendants, or guides.  I generally prefer my guides to able to walk.  A chair-bound guide in a hospital will be a case of the immobile leading the immobile.  Having witnessed similar spectacles on a series of Friday nights, I can assure you that it does not end well; usually with one or both parties screaming and thrashing in a vomit filled gutter while someone else takes pictures for the facebook.

Geminoid F and the human model it was based on being asked to make out with each other by interested reporters.

The designers also made some interesting choices about the appearance of the robot.

“Geminoid F’s female appearance and more natural smile with lifelike teeth are designed to put people at ease. In a reflection of Kokoro’s plans to market the system overseas, the model on which Geminoid is based is one-quarter non-Japanese, ostensibly giving her a more universal look. The robot is also quite fashionable, sporting duds by designer Junko Koshino.”

This means that the creators think people who might otherwise be fine with a female robot would be put off by a female robot who looks too ethnic.  So, human shaped machine – fine.  Human shaped machine that looks Japanese – well that’s a bit too much.  What will the neighbors think?

Even in 2010, the assumption is that people are more prone to be racist than organicist.     I worry about any tech that caters to that sort of stupidity.  I can only lead to a world full of Brandys and Clints.   It’ll be the gentrification of the human body by people who can’t even choose decent shoes.

And we already have enough of that.  Even without robots.

Back in 2007, I sold a very short story to Space Squid.  They got my name wrong, calling me Ryan C. Thomas.  (A previous contributor.) I pointed out the error out and, by way of apology, they interviewed the pair of us in their next issue.  All that aside, I’ve always felt friendly to Space Squid.

Their zine is one of the only places I’ve published short fiction and it’s the only magazine I’ve ever put a concerted effort to get into. They struck me as an exciting bunch, twisted in the right way and doing the right sort of things – so much better than the boring behemoths of SF publishing.  They wanted sci-fi.     Not SF, not science fiction but good ole SCI-FI!!! I like sci-fi.  It’s got a bad rap from people who take shit a little too serious.  Space Squid was low brow by high quality.

And it’s amazing shit.

Now they’re up to something new – printing their zine not on paper but on clay tablets.   I could explain but I’m gonna let them do that via their press release.  Because it’s funny.

Press Release — Sci-Fi Mag Prints on Clay Tablets
Wed Aug 18, 2010 2:16 pm

For Public Release: 8/25/10

Contact: Matthew Bey, Publisher and Communications Director, Space Squid
email: squishy-at-spacesquid-dot-com

Literary Magazine to Print on Dead Media — Clay Tablets

As digital media threatens traditional print periodicals with economic and cultural obsolescence, some magazines are returning to their ancient roots. Austin-based science fiction and humor magazine Space Squid will print its ninth issue on clay tablets.

“Print is dead,” says Space Squid design editor Steve Wilson. “So there’s no reason not to print on the deadest media available. There isn’t much difference between dead media and really, really dead media.”

Faced with steep printing costs and the bulk of their readership downloading the online PDF of the magazine, the editors of Space Squid made the decision to return to clay tablets. Space Squid communications editor Matthew Bey says, “Given the choice between printing 2000 paper copies that won’t last ten years, or thirty copies that can last six thousand years, it’s an easy choice to make.”

“Sometimes archaic media just works better,” says Space Squid art editor David Chang. “In some respects, clay is a superior recording medium. It has more warmth and depth of tone than paper.”

The clay tablets are unfired as was common practice in Sumeria. Like their historical antecedents they are dried in the sun, giving them a startling durability. “Practically speaking, these tablets could last until the end of the world itself,” says Chang. “Unless someone drops them.”

The Space Squid clay tablet is the first major cultural application of clay tablets since the collapse of Egyptian colonialism in the first century A.D. The tablets are printed using a unique technology that allows multiple impressions of the same text, despite recording on a medium that pre-dates Gutenberg by thousands of years.

Says Bey, “If the Sumerians had been as clever as Space Squid and developed a similar clay-printing technology, they would have sparked the enlightenment era a thousand years before the birth of Christ.”

The clay tablet issue contains most of the content familiar to readers of the paper version of Space Squid. Side one has a seal-imprint with the image of a squid and the name “Space Squid” in phonetic cuneiform. The rest of the front-face features a short story by Kevin Brown titled “Hunting Bigfoot,” hand-lettered in the English alphabet using a wedged stylus in the same manner as the Sumerian scribes. The back side contains an off-color joke and advertisements for the Drabblecast podcast, the movie Bikini Bloodbath, illustrator David Johnston, Krakatoa Shirts, and a live performance of the graphic novel Intergalactic Nemesis.

Space Squid will print less than 15 clay tablets. Only five tablets will go up for auction at the Armadillocon art show, open to members of the Armadillocon science fiction convention. One tablet will go up for sale on eBay. The remaining tablets are reserved for private collections.

Space Squid, which is known for printing edgy and often humorous fiction, has a history of pushing boundaries. In 2009 Space Squid staff experimented with zombie-killing techniques, using actual weapons and actual heads, posting their scientific results on Youtube.

A digital PDF of Space Squid issue 9, with far more content, will be available at spacesquid.com.

For more information:
Space Squid:
http://www.spacesquid.com/

Video of clay tablet printing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gg6oNMB6Fg

Photos of clay tablet printing:
http://www.revolutionsf.com/bb/weblog_entry.php?e=2539

Armadillocon:
http://www.armadillocon.org/

Zombie head bashing experiment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSd7SbO9I8U

Just found my baby book while cleaning.  Here’s some of Mother’s notes:

“Ryan was an extremely good-natured little fellow – crying only when he was hungry.  He enjoyed travel; new places and faces and lots of attention.  Ryan had a winning smile for everyone and was a true little “charmer.” By six weeks, he was sleeping soundly thru’ the night and often he would awake with a smile to wish me good morning! Ryan was a BIG baby and at the age of 3 months was wearing some of his new outfits sized to fit 12-18 month old babies!!”

I have no idea what happened either.

“The D.R. is baseball’s puppy mill. The buscones develop and sometimes feed and house these teenage players, with the intent of selling them to the highest bidder, a major league team willing to fork over thousands, if not millions, of dollars to secure a prospect. As a reward for their work, buscones typically pocket 25% to 50% of the prospect’s signing bonus. Many folks in the Dominican Republic resent being labeled a buscón because of the term’s other connotation: swindler.”

pic nicked from here

“Baseball, which has been played in the D.R. since the late 19th century, glorifies the rags-to-riches tales of so many Dominicans who make it to the majors. But buried beneath these charming yarns are the often cruel, sometimes criminal, ways in which all that Dominican talent gets curated. The absence of a school-based sports system forces teams to lean on buscones like Papiro. These trainees find prospects, sometimes as young as 11 or 12 years old, and tutor them in baseball so they can be signed once they turn 16. Buscones often pull kids out of school — Papiro’s players, for example, attend class once a week — to focus them on baseball. They have huge economic incentives to cheat. Age fraud and performance-enhancing drugs, which in the Dominican Republic can be bought like candy, are rampant. The families of these players see the sport as the only way out of abject poverty.”

“Over the past decade, just 2% of Dominican players who signed with a team have made it to the majors. The country’s roadsides are lined with the failures — those who gave up school to chase a baseball career only never to see a single offer from a big-league club. Baseball has provided many real economic benefits to the Dominican Republic, plus immeasurable psychic delights to its citizens. But with these benefits comes a great social cost. “It borders on child exploitation when you’re a dream merchant,” says Charles Farrell, an American based in the D.R. who is trying to start a baseball-centric high school there, “and not delivering the dream.”

–Baseball Dreams: Striking Out in the Dominican Republic – Time Magazine

Welcome to The Jetsons, bitches.

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

While this is still “conceptual” (meaning it’s not for you and me) both Philips and Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are working on making it into a product.

I’m looking forward to a few things here, not the least of which is printable food.

1. Various copyright fights from cookbook manufacturers.  How will the Julia Child estate feel about her recipes being copied and used?  Will Apple produce its own digital fabricator and then charge people for recipes at their iFood store?  If they do, I bet the Macheads still worship Jobs and figure he’s doing them a favor.

2.  Clever people figuring out how to use this device to manufacture explosives and drugs then sharing those recipes and modifications online.  The anarchist cookbook might have a much more literal meaning.

3. Computer viruses that infect your fabricator and creates food that will get you high or poison you.  This might be that hippie dream of spiking the water supply come true.

4.  Massive government bailouts to help suddenly unemployed farm animals.

5. Foursquare of Food — “I just cooked bacon and eggs.”  ”I am now the mayor of chocolate.” — and the amazing obesity that such competition will engender.

The future looks bright, friends.

pic nicked from here