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Pastimes, Art, Noir Films
Feb. 28th, 2008 03:41 pmHave been off work the past three days with a damn cold. Spent the time wisely, reading back issues of Knights of the Dinner Table and, when I was up to it, playing Medieval : Total War, a lot of which seems to based on the old wargame Empires of the Middle Ages, which I used to play a great deal of between 1994 and 1997.
On a related note, RPG.net has put up my review of Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the conclusion to the classic AD&D Giants-Drow-Lolth series. Our group has almost finished this, albeit with substantial - and necessary - rewriting. To fit with our "historical fantasy" game, Lolth has been turned into to much more delightful Arachne, the web is actually weblike, and the alternate locations are various points in time and space related to the development of weaving with a general arachnid motif. Goodness, imagine that - characters and settings which make sense!
Organdi, a peer-reviewed French cultural studies journal, has published my article on the Definition, History, Usage and Future of Computer Data Storage for their themed issue on "Archives". Last Sunday gave a presentation at the Unitarian Philosophy Forum on the Philosophy of Art. I'll put the full paper up this week, but in the meantime selections from the advertisement will do:
Also on last Sunday Went to the Astor to catch a couple of classic noir/crime flicks, both derived from novels: The Asphalt Jungle (1950), from W.R. Brunett's novel and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), from James Cain's novel. Both were quite good, but preferred the former to the latter. The genius in Asphalt Jungle is how each character has a weakness which unravels what should be a perfect robbery.
On a related note, RPG.net has put up my review of Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the conclusion to the classic AD&D Giants-Drow-Lolth series. Our group has almost finished this, albeit with substantial - and necessary - rewriting. To fit with our "historical fantasy" game, Lolth has been turned into to much more delightful Arachne, the web is actually weblike, and the alternate locations are various points in time and space related to the development of weaving with a general arachnid motif. Goodness, imagine that - characters and settings which make sense!
Organdi, a peer-reviewed French cultural studies journal, has published my article on the Definition, History, Usage and Future of Computer Data Storage for their themed issue on "Archives". Last Sunday gave a presentation at the Unitarian Philosophy Forum on the Philosophy of Art. I'll put the full paper up this week, but in the meantime selections from the advertisement will do:
Experienced in both the subjective world (sensuality and perception) and embodied in the objective world (technology and artifacts), developing a universal aesthetics has proven to be elusive over the centuries.
What does core philosophy - logic, ontology and epistemology - have to do with art? To what extent is aesthetic judgment determined by the individual? Do objective circumstances have a role to play? What about cultural conditioning? Can standards of beauty be reconciled with the functional production of goods and services? Does commodification distort aesthetic judgement? What happens when aesthetic judgments dominate the political landscape?
Also on last Sunday Went to the Astor to catch a couple of classic noir/crime flicks, both derived from novels: The Asphalt Jungle (1950), from W.R. Brunett's novel and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), from James Cain's novel. Both were quite good, but preferred the former to the latter. The genius in Asphalt Jungle is how each character has a weakness which unravels what should be a perfect robbery.