[spoiler alert: full plot details of both film and comic versions are discussed]

Any film adaptation is automatically a mixed blessing: the chance to see some beloved story translated from a book/comic/radio show/TV show/videogame to the big screen, counterbalanced by the risk that it will get fundamentally ruined in the process. Of these, the trials of moving from books to movies are probably best established—massive plot compression, reduced complexity, characters that don’t “look right,” jettisoning of descriptive language—but comic adaptations are a much newer phenomenon with their own pitfalls. To begin, one might argue that Watchmen is only the second true conversion (what in videogame terms might be called a “total conversion” from mod culture), following Frank Miller’s Sin City, with most other superhero and even explicitly comic book movies often closer to “inspired by” or “featuring characters from” than outright transfers from actual comic runs or specific graphic novels[1]. Even previous efforts to adapt Alan Moore in League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, and Watchmen director Zach Snyder’s previous outing with Frank Miller’s 300, diverged quite widely from the source material. By contrast, Sin City was almost a shot-for-shot remake of the Dark Horse series. But even it suffered in the process of combining multiple short story arcs into an attempt to create a coherent longer film, and from the innate limitations of the flat-affect noir patois in which it was composed. Watchmen was conceived first as a 12-part comic run and then collected as a graphic novel, ostensibly providing a more linear narrative to put into a film script. Once the initial jitters that the material would be handled indelicately had passed (Snyder went out of the way to reassure fans), the more apropos question became: does Watchmen even work as a movie? With Snyder’s Watchmen, we have a vastly ambitious attempt to convert what has been called an “unfilmable” work into celluloid. How well viewers think the effort turned out is breaking down along traditional party lines, with mainstream critics bothered by its structure, pulp excesses, and even its slavish devotion to the text (cf. the first two Harry Potter films); and fans thrilled to see familiar scenes brought to life. At the risk of rehashing overchurned ground, I think the movie succeeds and fails precisely by those measures and your ultimate enjoyment will be determined how much you give credence to each. Let’s start with the structure.
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Craft has been said to be the art of doing more with less. Part of the appeal of famous adaptationalists like MacGyver and The Swiss Family Robinson is how they take everyday objects and minimal materials and create sophisticated solutions through inventiveness and a deep command of basic principles. So it should perhaps not be such a delightful surprise that the Black Cab Sessions reconnect with a primal experience of musical performance, stripped down as they are to musicians stuffed in the back of London’s famous cabs and making the most of a limited space. Yet within that basic premise – “One song, one take, one cab” – some truly wonderful, understated experiences develop.

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Although I confess to being strictly an enthusiastic non-user of the technical application Mathematica, dating from when I managed a college computer lab, I still enjoy seeing it evolve over time and take on new roles. For example, Wolfram (the company behind it) uses it in a “Math Behind Numb3rs” feature that lets you see demonstrations of the principles that the show’s Charlie Eppes spouts off, which helps to anchor plots to real applied mathematics. And of course, who can forget cofounder’s Theodore Gray’s masterful presentation at the 2002 Macworld Expo when he infused an infectious exuberance into an otherwise lackluster roundup of early Mac OS X developers?

And so I’m befuddled that Wolfram last week launched a Home Edition of its flagship product at the economically tonedeaf price of $259. Seriously? Compare to the varying student Editions, which start at $45 for a Semester Edition license and top out at $140 for a full Standard Edition student license. Of course it compares favorably to the Professional Edition which runs a steep $2,495, but then, how many of those are actually sold to individuals instead of institutions? In the same way that Adobe Photoshop Elements relates to the professional Photoshop and the Creative Suite packages, Wolfram is offering their core tools enhanced with some common-interest tutorials (Decorate Easter Eggs with the Riemann zeta function! Explore the parameterization of Valentine hearts!) And yet they effectively price the average household out of the market, even were we not facing a severe recession and hence curb on extravagant spending.

It might make some sense if this were intended to act as an introductory version of the product for prosumer applications, like Final Cut Express does with the full bundle of Final Cut Studio. But they go so far as to restrict the Home Edition for purely non-commercial home use, stating that it “is not licensed for commercial, nonprofit, academic, or government use.” So what kind of armchair data analyst are they really trying to reach with this expensive yet license-restricted package?

I won’t make any promises, but I am going to see if I can’t restore some life to this place. Be aware that I may end up posting in both directions, chronologically speaking, as I have a lot of material stored to write about that makes more sense to me when put in the correct calendar context.

Albums added in June: 13,347

RIP George Carlin

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Anything pertaining to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band duopoly garners exhaustive attention nowadays. So it’s no surprise that Neversoft’s major follow-up to Guitar Hero III is bigger in most every way in a bid to unseat Rock Band with its immersive group play.

IGN: Guitar Hero World Tour Preview

But under the face-melting surface, World Tour’s greater influence may ultimately be in the steady march towards unifying simulation (pretend you’re a rock star!) and emulation (make actual music!). In the past we’ve come to this junction from the other direction, using game platforms as engines for music production: MTV Music Generator series on the Playstation 2 (used by artists like Boomkat to sketch out songs), Nanaloop on the Game Boy (part of the 8-bit music movement), and upcoming touch-studio offerings for the iPhone like MooCowMusic’s Band and Intua’s BeatMaker. Meanwhile, rhythm games by the likes of Harmonix (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero) and Konami’s Bemani division (Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, GuitarFreaks) have gradually introduced ever more elaborate interactions between players and underlying musical performances. In FreQuency, for example, a secondary mode allowed players to ‘remix’ songs in freeform fashion after unlocking them through normal play.

Based on this early preview, World Tour is even more ambitious with its Music Creator mode. While normal gameplay will center around the established note-matching mechanism for various instruments, the proposed editor supports multi-track note creation for each of the supported instruments (minus vocals, evidently for legal reasons—cross apply the perversities that abound in most online smack talk and this makes regrettable sense). Premade loops, tempo control, and beat quantizing are provided within a wizard interface to simplify the learning curve. For laying down tracks, the guitar controller provides extensive options: you can program drum machines through the new touch-sensitive fret strip on the guitar controller, trigger samples by fret buttons, change pitch with the strum bar and sample speed through the Star Power tilt control. Need more crunch? Licensed Pod modeling technology from Line 6 lets you can choose your amplifier. Want to generate notes algorithmically? Use the built-in arpeggiator. Once you’ve finished laying down tracks, a separate mix mode is available for looping and editing. Finally, you publish your creation (complete with custom cover art) to an online community store where others can download and play it within the game. User ratings will drive online charts. Voilá, you’re a published musician.

One of the most common comment-thread trolls since the release of Guitar Hero has been purist backlash: "why not play a real guitar?" Up to now, the typical answer is along the lines of, "because this [playing a simplified game]  is more fun than learning the real thing." And certainly, to remain successful, World Tour will need to retain that sense of rock star power at mere mortal effort levels. But the potential for the Creator mode, and whatever follows it, to create a new level of musical expression suggests an exciting future of entertainment all its own.

I have never watched The Sopranos, and my knowledge of plot points is mostly limited to examples given in a lecture from The Sopranos and Philosophy (specifically about Tony Soprano as an ethical manager). Yet I still found this exhaustingly detailed argument about the final moments of the series finale to be compelling reading. The unattributed author calls on intertextual references, cinematographic clues, symbology, authorial intent, film precursors, and philosophical precepts to make the case "why Tony died in Holsten’s in the final scene of The Sopranos." Even without any of the necessary background as a viewer, I can certainly appreciate the obsessive passion to craft a canonical resolution to a long-running and well-regarded series, as well as some of the formal elements that are particular to fan discussions (e.g. unnamed characters discussed by acronym—see the comments for a suitably pedantic mini-debate over the correct abbreviation for "Man in Member‘s Only Jacket").

The Sopranos: Definitive Explanation of “The END”

Albums added in May: 13,572

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John Timmer reports on studies from the journal Science which suggest that ineurotransmitter levels influence perceived fairness:

Exploring the neurochemistry of fairness

First, consider the notion of innate fairness. People who participated in a experimental transaction called the Ultimatum Game (a simple 2-party example of game theory) tended to reject offers they perceive as ‘unfair’ even though doing so results in them receiving less. This reinforces a recurring theme in current economic theory that participants often act fundamentally irrationally (e.g. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational and other efforts in behavioral economics). One hypothesis drawn from the Ultimatum Game is an underlying evolutionary selection of a shared ‘golden rule,’ given the comparative advantage of group cohesion this might reinforce.

Second, the implications of the neurochemistry itself are more sobering. Even basic negotiation is often based on latent manipulation through psychological leverage; more advanced techniques sometimes exploit physiological factors such as room temperature or sleep deprivation to affect pliability. The casino industry has invested heavily in psychological profiling both in developing comp systems and interior design to lower inhibitions and increase the desire to stay on the gaming floor (high ceilings, rounded walls, indirect lighting, running water)—some examples are given in a short featurette on the DVD for Ocean’s Thirteen. Pushed a little further, you can see some of the same techniques deployed in the fields of law enforcement and the military as interrogation aids, as well as within specialized training such as SERE. In each case, the environment and physical comfort of the targeted participant are manipulated to lower their resistance, gain their trust, or ultimately obtain some concession.

Moving from science to science fiction, you can find ready parallels to controlling serotonin and oxytocin with the Pax used to curb aggression on the Outer Rim planet Miranda in Joss Whedon’s Serenity; the drug Prozium in Equilibrium and Soma in Brave New World; and more obscurely, the hormones produced by alien Powers that activate the ‘god module’ (aka neurotheology) in humans from Walter Jon Williams’ Voice of the Whirlwind. In each, the population is effectively controlled through their own neurochemistry by instilling languor, reducing aggression, suppressing emotion, etc.

Remember the instant photo? Almost four months ago, Polaroid announced that they were no longer planning to make their trademark instant film, following the end-of-life status for their instant cameras last year. instant film stocks are projected to last only through 2009. They have also shut down their other film lines, including large-format and professional-grade lines. At the time, they announced a partnership with ZINK (Zero Ink) Imaging to market a new product based around their crystal-based dye paper. And now they have announced the PoGo portable photo printer, due later this summer:

Polaroid PoGo

The PoGo - short for "Polaroid On the Go," a seemingly unnecessary repetition of the cultural meaning of "Polaroid" - is about the size of a compact digital camera and can accept digital prints from camera phones via BlueTooth or from PictBridge-capable cameras by cable. Rather than normal dye- or ink-based photo printers that rely on quickly-exhausted cartridges, the Zink process embeds all of the color technology within the special photo paper itself. Embedded dye crystals are manufactured molecules that generate the necessary additive hues to create color prints under heat. The paper currently produces "2×3 in. borderless sticky-back prints" in about a minute.

Despite the claim of "fade-resistant, long-lasting images," it will be worth testing just how long these instant photos hold up, like their spiritual predecessors and other home printers. The entire class of photos that have been produced by digital cameras and never committed to professional printing raise rather wide-ranging questions about future provenance. What will we hand down to our grandchildren in place of unfinished photo albums and shoeboxes of snapshots? Will we still be able to read even now-ubiquitous formats like JPEG and the various RAW flavors in 50 or 100 years, like we can with earlier generations of photography going back to examples like daguerrotypes? As with the physical book, the printed photograph requires no special reader, no software, no compatibility matrix. Until flexible, non-volatile media like E-Ink or Zink develop equivalent endurance, we risk losing entire generations of family history to the junkbin of obsolete media.