Category Archives: mlp

The Dark Knight deconstructed

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This story articulates my inchoate thoughts when I walked out of the theater after seeing The Dark Knight.

This blockquote will hook you or repel you:

Wayne uses his position as an Anglo-Saxon capitalist to marshal vast resources to develop military grade technology and materiel in the ‘fight’ against the ‘gangs’ in Gotham. Missiles, grenades, various projectiles, military or special-forces transportation methods (Fox borrows ideas from the CIA’s assassination squads quite overtly, i.e. “Skyhook”), mass surveillance, and old-fashioned brutality are Wayne’s stock-in-trade. All the while, he obfuscates his identity as the “Batman” in order to protect his position as capitalist, and to avoid public responsibility for his extra-legal violence. Of course, the actual Gotham police have no intention of arresting Batman for vigilante savagery, despite public acrimony over the rule of law.

I’ve written stuff in this tone, but this fellow is a master.

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Howard Roark!

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From the article:

The drink request Sunday, said Simmermon, who was visiting from Brooklyn, was denied by a barista who told him that Murky doesn’t do espresso over ice. Irked, Simmermon said he asked for a triple espresso and a cup of ice, which he said the barista provided, grudgingly.

Apparently Murky Coffee would prefer to do it right or not at all. Brilliant. I completely respect that.

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Texas techno-ants

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Completely unrelated: this set of photos on flickr is really neat. Fashion students at Virginia Commonwealth University were given an assignment to design an abaya. Heard about it on The World on PRI.

Now to the main point. This is why you don’t mess with Texas. We already have fire ants, which can literally breathe fire. And now, we have ants that will eat your iPod while you watch. From the article:

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.

They’re clearly saving NASA for some darker purpose.

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants — which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season — appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

“The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good,” said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.

It’s not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.

Hell yeah. I’m rooting for the ants. Let this insectocalypse begin!