I’ll admit it: I’m late to the party, on this one. Since January 2011, the anime-watching public (online and off) has been enamoured of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and I’ve been scoffing at it. They said it was deep. I scoffed. They said it was meta. I scoffed. They said to give it some time. […]
Girls, Women, and Choice: Why you should watch Madoka Read More »
“What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to
And now a word from Ursula K. LeGuin re: abortion Read More »
I watched Moneyball on a flight between Toronto and Vancouver. I’d had no sleep the night before, and I was in the mood for a story about winning against severe odds. Moneyball is actually a story about winning because of extreme odds. It’s about the triumph of science over tradition, and in that respect it
Moneyball is the most pro-science film you will see all year. Read More »
I wrote this for a market that I was unaware didn’t pay. I figured that as long as it was written for free, I might as well publish it to my own site: Lately, it seems like everything wants to be a person. Corporations. Blastocysts. Personhood is the new black. So if brainless clusters of
5 New Candidates for Personhood Read More »
This supercut, called “Raiders of the Lost Archives,” details the decades of adventure serials that inspired George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan to make Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the left side of the frame is the 1981 film, and on the right are clips from various adventure films
The Art of the Indy-pendent Film Read More »
As a person who’s paid to imagine futures based on current trends, I spend a lot of time thinking about those trends. The one that sticks out for me this year is: power outages. Consider the signals: Osama bin Laden. Gaddafi. Kim Jong-Il. Silvio Berlusconi. Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Rupert Murdoch. Julian Assange. Steve Jobs. The men
2011: The year the power went out Read More »
There must have been something in the tubes last week, because I found three really excellent pieces about gender and feminist concerns that really stuck with me as I procrastinated on finishing the edits to vN. Given that the novel has a female protagonist for much of the story, you can see why I might
Three good pieces on gender Read More »
Since my story “Surfaces” appeared on BoingBoing, I’ve been thinking even more about the role the security industry has played (and continues to play) in my life. One of the more discomfiting aspects of writing “Surfaces” was understanding that I could only choose between depicting an invisible and ubiquitous model of border security, or a
As you may have noticed, part of my thesis is available on BoingBoing. Assuming this whole attachment thing works as planned, the project in its entirety should be available here, now. So if you feel like reading over a hundred pages of research on wicked problems, service design, and border security, take a look!
Loss Prevention: Customer Service as Border Security Read More »
I’ve recently had a breakthrough of sorts regarding my novel vN. Basically, it involved the need to cut a lot of material. One thing that always bothered me about the journey my main character Amy takes is that it was a bit too long, and didn’t go enough exciting places. More importantly, the exciting places
A little less conversation Read More »