![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
moonboy_'s Friends PageLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more
| You are viewing moonboy_'s Friends Page Log in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more | Explore LJ Culture Entertainment Life Music News & Politics Technology |
|
|
| |||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||
|
|
| |||||||||
| Etsy Buy Handmade Enlyl | |||||||||||
Folsom Street Events is a nonprofit organization serving the adult San Francisco alternative communities. Through the production of street fairs, Folsom Street Events promotes diversity within the leather/alternative lifestyle, highlighting entertainment, service and vendors. Proceeds from the production of the fairs are distributed to organizations which promote a sense of community, diversity, cooperation, health and human services.
Our mission is to create world-class volunteer driven leather events, providing the adult alternative lifestyle community safe venues for self-expression, emphasizing freedom, fun and frolic, while raising money to benefit San Francisco charities.
(http://www.folsomstreetevents.org/fair-i
: Our photo contests have become so popular that we thought we'd take a minute to look back at our favorite winners so far, from Holga, to Summer, to Transportation. The winners were selected by readers' votes over a two-week period of grueling competition. Enjoy!
Out next contest is Portraits. We want to see those soul-stealing photos we're always hearing about. Check out the contest page for more info.
Left:Eye of a Tokay Gecko, winner of the Macro contest.
Submitted by Alan M
Photographer's comment:
"A close-up shot of a Tokay Gecko. Their eyes remind me of old-fashioned keyholes. Thanks for looking!"
: Sunset Over Wheatfield, winner of the Summer contest.
Submitted by Andrew Brooks
Photographer's comment:
"Late summer 2006, in the south of England."
: After Flight, winner of the Holga contest.
Submitted by Vitala Tauz
Photographer's comment:
"Double-exposure shot with a Holga 120 S."
: The One, winner of the Water contest.
Submitted by Javier Uclés
Photographer's comment:
"Photo taken at sunset in Conil, Cadiz. Used Sigma 10-20 + Cokin Filter ND8."
: Payphones (Red Wall), winner of the Red contest.
Submitted by Kevin B
Photographer's comment:
"Captured these payphones on a supersaturated red wall in Venice Beach, California."
: Cubicles, winner of the Cities contest.
Submitted by Giant Ginkgo
Photographer's comment:
"Another evening at work, in Chicago's loop. If you take a close look, you might even see a superhero or two."
: The Needles at Night, winner of the Night contest.
Submitted by Jason J. Corneveaux
Photographer's comment:
"Taken in the back-country of the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park in Utah.
Captured at F4, 30 second exposure, ISO1600, 17-mm focal length (but two side-by-side vertical images were stitched together)."
: The Land of Ghosts, winner of the Transportation contest.
Submitted by Peter Bowers
Photographer's comment:
"Paddling in the Leslie Frost wilderness area, Ontario, Canada."
: One mistake and this turns into scrambled eggs, winner of the Food contest.
Submitted by eirikso
Photographer's comment:
"With the current fuel prices it's too expensive to drive twice."
: Wrong Era, winner of the Self-Portrait contest.
Submitted by Baron Von Foss
Photographer's comment:
"Born in the wrong era."
: Isla Azul, winner of the Blue contest.
Submitted by Eric Cabahug
Photographer's comment:
"White Island, Camiguin, Philippines."
1966: Star Trek makes its network television debut.
Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons -- 80 episodes -- and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings.
But if network numbers-crunching and the short-sightedness of advertising sponsors doomed it, Star Trek's long-term survival, evidenced by its ongoing syndication, not to mention the numerous TV spinoffs and feature-length films it inspired, is both a vindication of and a tribute to its creator and executive producer, Gene Roddenberry.
And Roddenberry was a guy badly in need of vindication. His career began promisingly: Roddenberry wrote scripts for some popular 1950s TV shows like Naked City, Highway Patrol and Have Gun, Will Travel. But the original Star Trek TV series, as well as the first feature-length film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, were conspicuous successes in an otherwise unremarkable and often problematic association with Hollywood.
The commercial success of the first Star Trek movie would spawn other films and a new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, although Roddenberry's involvement with those projects was diminished. But if his relationship with the industry had its rough patches, his reputation as a futurist and visionary -- which begins and ends with Star Trek -- is assured.
The original show's most visionary aspects were social, not scientific, and that had everything to do with the times. The country was in turmoil, embroiled in Vietnam and the growing civil rights movement. Roddenberry said later that these events influenced many of the themes, as well as the multicultural makeup of the crew.
Roddenberry remained in demand on the lecture circuit to the end of his life, speaking not only at universities but at some other pretty significant places, too, including the Smithsonian Institution and NASA.
Star Trek's impact on popular culture is matched by only a handful of other television shows, and surpassed by precious few.
The original cast members on the USS Enterprise's 1966 flight deck became household names: Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei). Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who joined the cast in the second season to give the Russians their due in space, was also a popular character.
Phrases like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Live long and prosper" and "to boldly go …" entered the lexicon, and the show's cult following, kept visibly alive by the numerous and rollicking Star Trek conventions, remains strong to this day. An 11-foot model of the starship Enterprise is on display at the Smithsonian.
On the tech front, the communicator used by Enterprise crew members is said to have been the inspiration for the flip-open cellphone.
The original pilot episode for the series, "The Cage," was filmed in 1964 but not aired in its entirety until 1988. After the original pilot was rejected by NBC, "The Cage" was chopped up and heavily edited, and eventually shown under the title "The Menagerie" during Star Trek's three-year run.
Nimoy's Mr. Spock was the only character from the pilot to later appear in the TV series, although he was most un-Spock like, showing a lot more emotion than your average Vulcan. In the pilot, the Enterprise was commanded by Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter).
Because of all the spinoffs that resulted from it, Roddenberry's Star Trek is often referred to as The Original Series. For a lot of us who came of age watching Shatner chewing on all that alien scenery and nibbling on all those alien necks, it was The Only Series.
Have some favorite Star Trek moments you'd like to share with us? Wired.com wants to hear about your favorite Star Trek series, episode and feature film. Have a copy of the Animated Series on Laserdisc? Please, do share.
Source: Various
Many Japanese gals lead double lives: Mild-mannered students in plain-Jane uniforms by day; French maids, furries, and goth Lolitas by night. Legions run around Tokyo, wheeling suitcases full of makeup and costumes. But Superman had a phone booth — where are schoolgirls supposed to suit up? Luckily, Japanese company COS-Pa has introduced tiny dressing rooms for women in the trendy Shibuya district, where 500 to 700 yen (roughly $5 to $6) buys 30 minutes of private mirror time, free Wi-Fi, beauty supplies, and a nonalcoholic beverage. Says COS-Pa's owner firmly: "Ladies should not have to get beautiful in a bathroom."
A few years ago, Constance Steinkuehler -- a game academic at the University of Wisconsin -- was spending 12 hours a day playing Lineage, the online world game. She was, as she puts it, a "siege princess," running 150-person raids on hellishly difficult bosses. Most of her guild members were teenage boys.
But they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses. One day she found out why. A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they'd dump all the information they'd gathered about how each boss behaved: What potions affected it, what attacks it would use, with what damage, and when. Then they'd develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked -- and to predict how to beat it.
Often, the first model wouldn't work very well, so the group would argue about how to strengthen it. Some would offer up new data they'd collected, and suggest tweaks to the model. "They'd be sitting around arguing about what model was the best, which was most predictive," Steinkuehler recalls.
That's when it hit her: The kids were practicing science.
They were using the scientific method. They'd think of a hypothesis -- This boss is really susceptible to fire spells -- and then collect evidence to see if the hypothesis was correct. If it wasn't, they'd improve it until it accounted for the observed data.
This led Steinkuehler to a fascinating and provocative conclusion: Videogames are becoming the new hotbed of scientific thinking for kids today.
This makes sense if you think about it for a second. After all, what is science? It's a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And videogames are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren't "real" world, of course, but they are consistent -- the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules.
This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method.
This is what Steinkuehler reports in a research paper -- "Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds" (.pdf) -- that she will publish in this spring's Journal of Science Education and Technology. She and her co-author, Sean Duncan, downloaded the content of 1,984 posts in 85 threads in a discussion board for players of World of Warcraft.
What did they find? Only a minority of the postings were "banter" or idle chat. In contrast, a majority -- 86 percent -- were aimed specifically at analyzing the hidden ruleset of games.
More than half the gamers used "systems-based reasoning" -- analyzing the game as a complex, dynamic system. And one-tenth actually constructed specific models to explain the behavior of a monster or situation; they would often use their model to generate predictions. Meanwhile, one-quarter of the commentors would build on someone else's previous argument, and another quarter would issue rebuttals of previous arguments and models.
These are all hallmarks of scientific thought. Indeed, the conversations often had the precise flow of a scientific salon, or even a journal series: Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out.
"It blew my mind," Steinkuehler tells me.
And here's the thing: The (mostly) young people engaging in these sciencelike conversations are precisely the same ones who are, more and more, tuning out of science in the classroom. Every study shows science literacy in school is plummeting, with barely one-fifth of students graduating with any sort of sense of how the scientific method works. The situation is far worse for boys than girls.
Steinkuehler thinks videogames are the way to reverse this sorry trend. She argues that schools ought to be embracing games as places to show kids the value of scientific scrutiny -- the way it helps us make sense of the world.
One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present it as a fusty collection of facts for memorization. This is precisely wrong. Science isn't about facts. It's about the quest for facts -- the scientific method, the process by which we hash through confusing thickets of ignorance. It's dynamic, argumentative, collaborative, competitive, filled with flashes of crazy excitement and hours of drudgework, and driven by ego: Our desire to be the one who figures it out, at least for now. It's dramatic and nutty and fun.
And it's pretty much how kids already approach the games they love. They're already scientists; they already know the value of the scientific method. Teachers just need to talk to them in their language, so that the kids can begin to understand the joy of puzzling through the offline, "real" world too.
At one point, Steinkuehler met up with one of the kids who'd built the Excel model to crack the boss. "Do you realize that what you're doing is the essence of science?" she asked.
He smiled at her. "Dude, I'm not doing science," he replied. "I'm just cheating the game!"
- - -
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
chipper