Thursday, September 29, 2016

Collection

Never trust anyone (man or otherwise) who decides anyone (woman or otherwise) must not be TRUSTED on the basis of any aspect of their personal tastes.

Star Trek: Axanar and the legality of copyrighting Klingon*. What a fandom buzzkill, Paramount. Fan produced entertainments for *generations* (b’doom pssshhhhhhh) have been fun, hallowed, and even considered canon at times. So much for that thing where “CBS has a long history of accepting fan films” and “…realizes that we’re just making their brand that much better.”. Bummer. Thanks to Dena Pawling for pointing to the suit. (*Or Klingonee, if you're really old school. I like the ring of it myself, but am not - well, aggressively Klingon about that.)

Alan Turing sings? Well no, but the mathematics of music have long been of fascination to scientists. One of my favorite Douglas Adams novels (not a Hitchhiker's outing) waxes poetic on the magic of fractals. Wendy Carlos' Switched-On Bach was still an exciting innovation when I was a kid. And then there was Alan. Arguably barer bones in terms of musical talent, still the recording is a tantalizing look at early creativity in electronic music.

In even more GEE WHIZ news, how about an app that allows you to create in thin air, scale, and print? How Tony Stark can you get? Pretty Tony Starkish, as it turns out. Also, "mixed reality" could become the next phrase I'm impressed by while simultaneously kind of hating it. To use an 80s-ism I haven't dusted off in a while: whoa.

It's been too long since I linked The Arrant Pedant, so how about a short trip to that illuminating and amusing blog? "the most noteworthy thing about the split infinitive is that there are still some people who think there’s something wrong with it. ... If they're good enough for Star Trek, they're good enough for you too."

(A) common pattern of prescriptivist complaints: a new usage arises, or perhaps it has existed for literally millennia, it goes unnoticed for decades or even centuries, someone finally notices it and decides they don’t like it (often because they don’t understand it), and suddenly everyone starts decrying this terrible new thing that’s ruining English.

G-d, I love the demystifying work of The Pedant. I also love that Blogger's idiotic spellczech finds fault with the word prescriptivist. Shut up, Blogger.

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