This particular use of dancing as combat reminds me of the Zulu Nation, the primarily ’70s/’80s to today hip-hop movement which called for more dance offs, rap offs, and DJ competitions and less gang violence. It’s even in Guitar Hero. If you’ll notice from the following clip, the difference I see is that Zulu Nation used dance and hip-hop as a form of uniting the community:

The LXD specifically creates a chasm between two groups of dancers rather than uniting them in the joy of dance. You can see this in the story line of  ”Antigravity Heros.” Two friends find some special warehouse that gives them the ability to dance like no one has danced before. When one friend is invited to the LXD and the other friend’s invite gets stolen, there is jealousy in the “other friend’s” face. The emergence of one of “The Uprising’s” main characters implies that this guy is going down the evil path and will most likely be facing off against his friend at some point.

Now, the series is still going, so I can’t say that it’s foreshadowing because I haven’t seen the entire series, but having seen many a narrative played out, that is my educated guess as to how it’s going to go. Also, at the beginning of this clip, the two friends practice a form of capoeira, which was a form of dance that involved fighting/martial arts type of moves (and let me tell you from personal experience, it is not easy). Choosing a form of dance where these two friends appear to be fighting just tells me that they will be fighting/actually dancing competitively against each other in the future.

So, the idea of dancing rather than fighting is not a new one and the acting in this series is not the best I’ve seen by far, but I find the intent to recreate this idea important. It’s as if we as a society want to express our aggression, struggle, and conflict, but without the permanence of actual death. I’m interested in seeing how this story will play out–will there be the continued trite binaries of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. or will there be unity in a shared enjoyment? Is this purely a simple dancing super hero comic book or an exploration of our own humanistic desires?

In any event, they sure can dance:

The debate appears to hinge on motivation, with some health professionals advocating for the term “fat” with the argument that it will ostensibly shame them into improved weight management.  The flipside, of course, is that the pejorative connotations could reinforce a negative self-image to the extent that is demotivates.

Professor Steve Field, of the Royal College of General Practitioners, makes an insightful remark about the rhetorical consequences of the term obese: “I think the term obese medicalises the state. It makes it a third person issue. I think we need to sometimes be more brutal and honest.”  Field’s comment can be applied more broadly, I think, to the host of conditions that are now in the process of “medicalization,” with “disorder” being attached to a wide-range of conditions that not too long ago were tagged with more colloquial descriptors–and perhaps should remain as such.  The DSM-IV is replete with new classifications like “personality disorder” and “caffeine intoxification disorder.”  This trend toward medicalization is largely a rhetorical process and thus signals the need for understanding it along those lines, I would argue.

And, just for fun, Dog Town + Emmylou Harris (why not?):

It’s like this: our things (supposedly, at least) are made to engage us, but when these things are too engaging we can suffer from the consequences of being distracted from the things we’re supposed to be accomplishing. When I avoid writing because I’m on facebook, it’s because, well, facebook is just so engaging. Or email. Or tv. Or whatever. So, ProfHacker posts such articles as “6 Ways to Avoid Letting Your Computer Distract You.” This article is specifically reporting on programs which aim to reduce or eliminate the technological things that lure you into using them: email, internet, social networking sites, etc. The distracting devices/services/sites cannot persuade you into interacting with them because of these programs which eliminate the distraction altogether. You know where I’m going with this. That’s right, say it with me now: counter-persuasion.

These programs are made specifically to counter act the persuasive temptations that exist with current technology. If you could see the image in my head when I think about this, it looks something like this:

Original photo via Bruce Turner, flickr

But, I digress.

More or less, I like the cyclical idea here that the software itself is persuasive because it’s reducing the temptations and persuasiveness of other softwares; that the use of counter-persuasion is persuasive itself. It’s a bit convoluted, I grant you, but cool nonetheless.

By this point, you probably understand that I find facebook utterly fascinating. In this instance, she was charged with harassment, but why not fraud? Or defamation of character?

Just to get this part out of the way, I do not believe that having this woman convicted will mean that parents everywhere will have no supervision over their child’s internet activities. This particular case seemed to have a particularly high level of what was determined to be harassment. The actions appeared to be severe and, therefore, the punishment matched. Forbidding a child to use or post certain things in his or her facebook would not be the same thing.

But on to my thought. Wouldn’t inhabiting someone’s profile and misrepresenting them be fraud more than harassment, because your profile is like a synthetic being? There is this thing out there that stands in for you–it tells everyone who you are and connects you to the people you know, but in Invasion of the Body Snatchers style, it can be jacked and then suddenly, it does not represent you. It does not communicate what you want it to and you have no control over that. Perhaps the charge should be identity theft?

Of course, yes, in this case, it was harassment, but I certainly see the case for identity theft, but, perhaps, this is just semantics?

via facebook. Thanks Chris!

Are you human? from GDFB.tv on Vimeo.

Captcha is a necessary evil. It takes up time and makes users go through more steps than they’d necessarily want to in order to do whatever it is that they want to do: post a comment, sign up for a service, etc. Without it, though, one’s site can fill up with all kinds of spammers. What makes this project so interesting is the application of proving one’s humanness in the physical world. What does that communication of something purely technological into a physical presence convey to passers-by? Do they get it? How do you prove that you’re human in this situation? There is no input field. I would love to see someone interact with this. Maybe they could break it apart to form a real word or copy the captcha below it. Well, something more interesting and creative than that would be better, but I think the captchas are just begging to be played with.

via F.A.T.

I think this is the stuff that would make Brett Gaylor, the director of RiP: A Remix Manifesto, giddy in its hilarity. I think we all can appreciate the irony, though.

“Scientists hate the word spin. They get bent out of shape by the concept that they should frame their message,” says Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a National Academy of Sciences program that helps connect the entertainment industry with technical consultants. “They feel that the facts should speak for themselves. They’re not wrong; they’re just not realistic.”

To spin or not to spin… while the white-coats are trying to figure that one out, I should add that some scientists tend to think that denial is a potentially insurmountable force, perhaps even hardwired in our brains. See: “Living in Denial: Why Sensible People Reject the Truth.”  *sigh!* With such scientific evidence mounting against the powers of persuasion, why even bother?