F(*^ Censorship!

I just watched Heart of the Beholder. It was pretty damn good. Alas, it hasn't been shown in theaters, and may never be, on account of the plot revolving around the neo-fascist tendencies of the Religious Reich. Loosely based on a true story, the owners of a small-yet-thriving chain of video stores are driven into financial ruin by the picketing and harassment of local fundamentalists, for the crime of carrying "The Last Temptaion of Christ". Unlike in reality, the good guys manage to turn the tables and get righteous vengeance on their oppressors, and justice triumphs over hypocrisy. While there is a distinct air of wish-fulfillment about the film, and a lot of overacting, it was a good movie. Go buy your own copy today.

As long as I'm shilling...

I also just finished reading Accelerando, by the wonderfully demented Charles Stross. It's probably the best Singularity novel ever written. When writing about a singularity (For non-nerds: "Singularity" = the point in time at which technological change becomes so fast that merely human minds are no longer running the show), the chief problem is making a story about superhuman intelligences comprehensible to readers. Charles manages to do so, in a way that preserves a sense of optimism for the merely human. I won't spoil the plot, save to say that in the end, what saves biological humanity from extinction is not the 'benevolent' manipulations of one of the superhuman AIs, but the dividends from an act of altruism in chapter one. The moral of the story is that even though we carbon-based sophants will some day be superceded by our hyperevolved mind children, our actions still matter. Go and read the free download right now, curse you!

Buy pictures!

divalea is a really cool indie comic artist. She takes commisions. She needs you to buy pretty pictures from her so she doesn't have to go work for Disney or something awful like that. Go look at her DeviantArt page to see pictures the likes of which could be YOURS for a reasonable fee. Then buy them.