Are We Not Men? : Election Quiz Show

Today, CNN has a sidebar quiz where you can test your knowledge of the political candidates against the average viewer of late night comedy programs (Daily Show, Leno and Letterman). Since it's one of these wacky javascript things, I'll put the quiz questions here. Play along and then click the Full Post link for answers and comments. Trust me... this is good stuff.

(Answer Bush or Kerry unless otherwise noted)

1.) Who favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market?

2.) Who urged Congress to extend the federal law banning assault weapons?

3.) John Kerry says that he would eliminate the Bush tax cuts on those making how much money?
A. 50,000+ B. 100,000+ C. 200,000+ D. 500,000+

4.) Who is a former prosecutor?

5.) Who favors making the recent tax cuts permanent?

6.) Who wants to make it easier for labor unions to organize?


Answers:
1 - Bush
2 - Kerry
3 - C (200,000+)
4 - Kerry
5 - Bush
6 - Kerry

Average Scores:
Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart - 3.59 correct
Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno - 2.95 correct
Late Show w/ David Letterman - 2.91 correct
No Late Night Viewing - 2.62 correct

Monkeys forced to push a button for each question would have an average score of: 2.75
Humans who were certain of just one answer out of the six and guessed (or outsourced to Baboon Island) for the rest of the questions would have an average score of: 3.25
That average jumps up to 3.75 if you know two answers.

The implications of these numbers is [insert seeming hyperbole here]. For instance, the average person polled did WORSE THAN ABSOLUTE RANDOM. This suggests that people are actually confused on some of the most rudimentary dividing points between the political parties.

There are three questions in there I feel like everyone must know... Permanent Tax Cuts (HELL, THE ANSWER IS IN THE QUIZ JUST 2 QUESTIONS PRIOR!), Labor Unions and Social Security (Assault Weapon thing probably everyone should get right, but I suppose I can forgive it being wrong since Bush has in the past said he is pro-Assault Weapon Ban). And, okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and knock one of those off... But even then, statistically, 3 out of 4 people should be scoring a 4.

What may be more disturbing is that those three topics - at least - are subjects to jokes on late night comedy shows... which means the average person laughing at those jokes doesn't get them.

All I can think is that CNN must have screwed up. That's supposed to be a 4.59, and 3's for the rest. Please, God, let Big Media fail us...

Crazy Things

I am working to reconcile some issues with my ISP that have left me a raging psychopath... I have no internet and am told every day that it will be on the next day. It seems they think this is acceptable customer service.

Hopefully, I'll be able to post at length soon. In the meantime, I will try to use this venue to do some work.

Mud, Art, Underpants

I hate to steal news from Pitchfork, but take a look this. Protest? Punk rock? Annoyance theater? Self destruction? Spa treatment? You be the judge.

ahhhhhhh....

I know everyone pretended to be tired of this the second that it became news, but...

...this cracked me up.

World of NudeCraft

In the final 15 minutes of Blizzard's server stress test for its upcoming World of Warcraft, a group of about two dozen doomed-to-erasure player characters gathered in the crossroads of Goldshire, a suburb of imperial capital Stormwind.

A friend and I stripped to our shorts and had a nude duel, my rock solid dwarven fists eventually falling to his aerobic rogueishness. The fight ellicited some laughter and soon other stripped lingerers were bearing arms and helping the effort to declothe the mob. Pacifist Nudists and Naked Brawlers quickly joined together for a drunken dance party (seen, in one of its less homoerotic sections, above). Naturally, suggestions of streaking to Stormwind began to circulate in the exhibition of skin. Around half the participants ended up reliving their co-elf days in a mad dash to the capital city. Of course, everyone had their own idea of what to do next and the crowd dispersed with only a matter of seconds to reorganize.

NudeCraft is an idea I have for brief, massive gatherings of player characters in World of Warcraft (and other games) for "spontaneous" action similar to real world events like
Critical Mass (an exodus of bicycles). How amazing would a few hundred characters standing on the bridge to Stormwind using the "jump" feature to do the wave be? Or a long streaking procession sprinting across the Burning Steppes (Warcraft's equivalent of Mordor from Lord of the Rings) past uber-characters desperately trying to survive dragon attacks? An endless cycle of cliff divers along the sea shore?

Despite being Massively Multiplayer, the environment of ORPGs is often one of simply being a better individual than others, the American dream. The goal with a NudeCraft effort would be to let people of all classes and levels be a tiny part of some great, bizarre, momentous social force. Each section regardless of hours logged or cunning exploitation is equalized for a moment. Maybe it's communism, but it's the joyous part of communism. For just a few minutes, we could revel in that joy and then return to the unending quest for a level 60 Mage with a white picket fence.

Timewise, organized events would be just long enough to reach their peak and dissipate; players would be asked to put their clothes back on and head off to their usual haunts at the conclusion. This way, to the non-participating world, the instances remain random and incredible. The occasions are not about meeting people and developing life-long relationships; they're simply about being part of something huge and unexpected.

I'm not sure if such events or organizations already exist or have existed in MMORPG worlds but would be curious to learn more about them.

Madden Madness : Week 1.0

John was pretty low-key last night and Dave kept changing the channel to Hannity and Scarborough (he loves them for comedic value, and when I say "loves" I mean "loves"). But, I did run into one highlight, which acts as a lesson on the wit and wisdom of John Madden.

Plaster, plaster, plaster.

For about a minute, John Madden talked about the Carolina corners intent to "plaster" Green Bay receivers. While the discussion itself was fair enough, Madden became obsessed with the word, repeating it, defining it, using it in context until the word was all there was... at the core of a nebula of exposition. It was like some morbid study guide for an aptitude test.

Albeit downplayed among Madden satirists, this is one of the true joys of Madden. Most of what you'll see in Madden Madness will be statements like last week's, obscured statements of the obvious. However, one should not overlook John Madden's obsession with words as words; the way he delights not so much in the strategy but what the strategy is called. Indeed, John may very well be a strapping, young rhetorician trapped inside the body of a football commentator.

Plaster.

Next Week! : Philadelphia Eagles vs. Minnesota Vikings which are on paper the same team. Should be a doozy.

Madden Madness : Week 0.5

New feature here at TMSO:

The NFL is back in force with a shifty close season opener between the Colts and the Patriots last night. TMSO Official Source of NFL Broadcast Amusement, John Madden was also back in action. For the rest of the season, I'll be taking my favorite Madden befuddlement from every Monday Night Football game or other such Madden Trailer broadcast and post it here. If there are multiple quotes, we'll have a run-off of some sort to determine the winner; this is not soccer, there will be no ties. At the end of the regular season, I will devise some sort of baffling playoff structure so that we can determine the best Madden quote of the year in National Football League fashion.

It all starts today (or yesterday?).

He's kind of a one-man running-back tonight.

-On Corey Dillon's limited but effective job in that position.

A Tale of Two Puppets

Ben sent me this link to a They Might Be Giants video starring a few odd puppets, which reminded me of the popular puppet rendition of "Istanbul" some friends and I performed at various official high school functions, which opened up an entire catacomb cinema in my head.

So, let's talk about puppets.

Puppets are a bit like comic books in that the wide view of them is as a "kid's thing" although gifted alternative artists have managed to tap into the potential of their respective medium. Puppetry is at a very difficult point in its exploratory maturation, though. The reason is the Popular Puppet.

The Popular Puppet today is a sort of smarmy wink. Take that TMBG video, for instance... Aesthetically, the video is a throwback to the barbaric age of televised puppetry, with a converted-hand-down-stuffed-animal style of character and a type of puppetry performance that is intended to look like puppetry. Puppetry is an art of taking an inamitate object and - by guiding its motion - making it appear really alive. But the predominate form of puppetry in our culture is a weird meta-puppetry.

And there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. I think the TMBG video is cute; Being John Malkovich is an excellent meditation on the high philosophy of manipulation while poking fun at the puppeteer-as-artist; I saw Sock Puppet Showgirls and enjoyed it; as a puppeteer, I pulled out the metapuppet jokes - one-handed push-ups, "nothing on me actually works", etc - and got laughs...

The conundrum is that the satirical genre has overtaken the actual base. So, at some point, the parody is, in a way, cruel. The entire artform exists simply to destroy the artform.

This becomes particularly accented since the method and style of puppeteering are an intended regression. If we were winking at our audience while at the same time pushing the form, the effect could be completely opposite. This is something Jim Henson era Muppetry did well. (Although, I do think Henson largely avoided any kind of admission that his characters were simply puppets; he was very serious about the artform.) Even when not taking themselves totally seriously, the Muppet crew was pushing the barriers of where puppets could go and what puppets could do.

Is there actual puppetry being done? Yeah, but the continuing assault on it by the Popular Puppet drives it deeper and deeper underground. Here in Chicago, there was a brief period a few years ago where the city hosted an international festival of puppetry that exposed people to its more exploratory and art-minded forms. To my knowledge, the festival no longer exists. We do have Red Moon, but they have changed their focus to spectacle theater (a more appropriate name for what they primarily do), which implies masks and elaborate constructions - puppet-type things but not the life-breathing idea of puppetry proper. (Red Moon is a case where, I believe, the directors felt so derided by the kinder-connotation (a term I just made up, but hope to use more frequently) of "puppet" that they abandoned it. Very full of themselves based on my interactions and witness.) Generally, this is the type of thing you see under the moniker of artistic puppetry: artists interested in the medium but without the skill, training or patience to manipulate a puppet artistically.

So, we have a difficult rift to surmount. But, that's why every time I see a rag puppet, I cringe.

We Can Be Happy Undergound!

We'll be dressed in all black, watching Hitchcock; fantastic!

Parisian officials have discovered a fully-equipped cinema in the vast network of catacombs beneath the city.

It's strange to think that whole worlds exist under the modern streets of the world's largest cities. But they're there.

Patrick Alk, a photographer who has published a book on the urban underground exploration movement... told RTL radio the cavern's discovery was "a shame, but not the end of the world". There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.

"You guys have no idea what's down there."

Futur-Pano-Rama

Punk Ass Punk has been stitching together pan shots from the Futurama DVDs to create full panoramic images.

One of the guys at work (I work for Ritz/Wolf Camera), printed a few up and the resulting 15 inch long archive prints are gorgeous.

I wonder if there are other instances where one could do this type of stitching (software for such a project is fairly easy to get with most digital cameras using a panoramic stitch mode). Animation is the immediate culprit, since little changes in a backdrop as the camera pans over it. The classic instance would be the walk through the Itchy and Scratchy Studios in The Simpsons. Regular films may have similar instances as well.

Any come to mind?

Guys! Don't Forget!!!

There's a post about REAL aliens somewhere below this!

And, my Eightball review is up at Pop Matters.

Cerebus Meets Sandman

You (that's right, you) have the ability to get a free, Dave-Sim-autographed-copy of the Cerebus parody of Neil Gaiman's Sandman as part of an experiment of Sim's.

The condition is this:

You have to send a letter to Dave Sim, telling him you want one and why. The reason doesn't have to be good; if you're just a mindless materialist, say as much and you'll be getting a little piece of alternative comics history.

Dave Sim wants to see how many people on the internet will actually do something beyond clicking links for a so-to-speak reward. Sim's a good guy, and apparently, he's not backing out of the deal regardless of the thousands of letters he's received thus far.

So, there you are. Information is at the bottom of this post on Neil Gaiman's journal.

Pleased to Meet You

Some word from MIAndy:

Here is a fun fact about life in Milwaukee: UWM
has a massive music library. For the philistines, there is a 20,000 + CD
collection, but for the connoisseur, like me, there are 70,000 long players
just waiting to be played in a long fashion. I listened to Beggars Banquet
the other day and nearly cried. The record had been checked out a grand
total of three times and sounded better than any CD I've ever heard. As I
stood silently before the devil music, I remembered sitting in Fran Navakas'
History of Ideas 5 class and fighting with you over the value of the record.
In that moment, I knew that I had been foolish.

The debate in question was me trying to espouse the visceral connection we have with physical objects, especially the idea of sound turned physical in the form of records. Andy argued for the more accurate and timeless nature of progressive audio technology.

It warms my heart to see him finally come around.

Message from Space.

What may be possibly, very, very big news...

SETI (that screensaver thing people run to help process information in search for extra-terrestrial communication) has discovered what could be a message from an alien race. This news from New Scientist whose website is (at the time of posting) bogged down to slower than sluggish.

Here's the CNN write-up.

And here's a related link to a New Scientist story on how aliens may have, essentially, messages in bottles already here on Earth. The idea being:

Assuming the aliens do not care how long it takes for their message to arrive, beaming a radio signal that can be detected 10,000 light years away, for instance, would take a million billion times as much energy as just shooting out matter in which data is embedded. "If energy is what you care about, it's tremendously more efficient to toss a rock," Rose says.

But it looks like we may have gotten the radio signal first. Cynics, though, are still welcome.

I Need a Hero

One of my generalized complaints of the current artistic community is its penchant for brash editorialization. Opinionated works have long been hallmarks in the artistic canon and, with good reason, the art world takes a hard stance against human suffering. I can't say all overt editorializing is bad; I'll admit that. Even so, Picasso's Guernica isn't totally upfront with a viewer and Pablo himself said of the piece, "It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them."

But why in a relatively relativist, post-post-modern age are we so incapable of transcending the opinion piece and exploring the interconnectivity of philosophies? Politically charged work has largely failed in recent years, from Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" to that Beastie Boys single I can't even remember the name of. They've enjoyed popularity in circles, sure, but talk radio earns the same type of audience. The drive may be that if you've only got three words to be heard, you're going to make sure those words are "Four More Years" or "Cheney Eats Babies".

My hope is that it's just immaturity; we've had so little of any monumental importance to discuss in the past 25 years that we've forgotten how to deal with such things. Faced with actions which will determine how the course of our civilization will continue, we suddenly find that we're out of practice and out of shape. All the meta-construction we've learned in this era is useless to expressing strong convictions coherently. So, we naturally reach for propaganda because, unlike art, it gets results. My hope is that we outgrow this. My hope is that we're not just ignoring the good political art because of our convictions.

All of that said. Hero is fantastic, in great part because it treats the political turmoil at its heart (the unification of China through war) as a three-dimensional issue. Through an increasingly honest repetition of the story's central events, Zhang Yimou makes clear that the pivotal decisions a civilization must face are not as clear cut as our zeal would have us believe. There is an outcome and that outcome is tied to a certain degree of historical accuracy, but what's important is how Zhang portrays it, how he explores the decision the torn Nameless Hero must make. It's successful, and it leaves room for the audience to sympathize with any of the chorus of characters around Nameless depending on their own understanding of Zhang's symbols.

RF 2.1 : The Revolution

For those who have the actual blog bookmarked and prefer to skip that weird splash page I made, you might be interested to know that I've started to truly, deeply, madly rebuild the Robots Fighting index. My goal is to rebuild the site into a site, acting as a hub to various RF projects and products.

It's all about branding.

That said, my continued infatuation with the whale vs. squid motif has produced a sexy new logo and a more sleek, professional and just plain palletteable website interface. Hopefully, it will be something we can all enjoy.