Rachel's Blog

Fri, 27 Jul 2007
Sugarshock #1

Joss Whedon has wrote a new comic. It's called Sugarshock. It's right there. Go read it!

(Where the f@#$ did that come from?)

(via Whedonesque)

Cheerer-upper

The world can't be all bad while people continue to do things like this...
:-)

(thanks, Mum!)

Fantasy films to watch out for...

Couple of movies I'm keen to see...

Movies that I am not convinced by, judging by the trailer alone...

On the other hand, now is a good time to have already written a successful fantasy series.

Tue, 17 Jul 2007
Lapsarianism vs Singularity

The natural endpoint of Lapsarianism is apocalypse. If things get worse, and worse, and worse, eventually they'll just run out of worseness. Eventually, they'll bottom out, a kind of rotten death of the universe when Lapsarian entropy hits the nadir and takes us all with it.

Running counter to Lapsarianism is progressivism: the Enlightenment ideal of a world of great people standing on the shoulders of giants. Each of us contributes to improving the world's storehouse of knowledge (and thus its capacity for bringing joy to all of us), and our descendants and proteges take our work and improve on it. The very idea of "progress" runs counter to the idea of Lapsarianism and the fall: it is the idea that we, as a species, are falling in reverse, combing back the wild tangle of entropy into a neat, tidy braid.

Of course, progress must also have a boundary condition � if only because we eventually run out of imaginary ways that the human condition can improve. And science fiction has a name for the upper bound of progress, a name for the progressive apocalypse:

We call it the Singularity.

Cory Doctorow: The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights

Noise Pollution

For those who may have missed it, The Ghost is now contributing to The Age's Noise Pollution music blog.

Mon, 16 Jul 2007
Huge friendly kinetic scaffolds

You won't be sorry you watched this.

(via Endicott Studio)