Behavioral Advertising Today, Privacy Issues Tomorrow?
"It appears incredibly benign," he said of the categorization that Google and Yahoo were doing. "It almost makes some people who worry about privacy look foolish, because it says, 'You like bicycles.'"
"What is not shown in this kind of thing, and possibly because Google doesn’t do this sort of thing — maybe because they don’t implement it yet — are the various kinds of psychographic, demographic activities that go on behind the screens."
Also interesting is the fact that both Yahoo and Google allow you to opt-out of categories that you've been sorted into via their ad algorithms (Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin).
I'd been to Google's new Dashboard before, but hadn't realized that, well, there's where you need to go to opt-out, if that's what you wish to do. To opt-out of Yahoo's categories, visit their Interest Manager (nice Orwellian ad-speak, no?).
via At F.T.C. Conference, Concerns About Advertising and Privacy - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com (via Prof. Tuthill).
Helen Mirren With A Sniper Rifle
Warren Ellis' graphic novel Red is being made into a film, and Warren has been kind enough, as is his wont, to answer questions about what's being changed in the adaptation from 66 page comic to hour and a half blockbuster movie.
The tone: no, the film isn’t as grim as the book. The book is pretty grim. But it’s also pretty small. When I sell the rights to a book, they buy the right to adapt it in whatever way they see fit. I can accept that they wanted a lighter film, and, as I’ve said before, the script is very enjoyable and tight as a drum. They haven’t adapted it badly, by any means. People who’ve enjoyed the graphic novel will have to accept that it’s an adaptation and that by definition means that it’s going to be a different beast from the book. The film has the same DNA. It retains bits that are very clearly from the book, as well as, of course, the overall plotline. But it is, yes, lighter, and funnier. And if anyone has a real problem with that, I say to you once again:Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.
I mean, if you don’t want to see a film with Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle, I’m not sure I want to know you.
via Warren Ellis.
Going West Brings Paper To Life
Incredible, haunting stop-motion animation of Maurice Gee's Going West, produced for the New Zealand Book Council.
(via Daring Fireball)
Life of Pi Follow-up In The Works
I loved Life of Pi, so it's great news that the author, Yann Martel, will be publishing a new book in the near future.
Like Life of Pi, it will be an allegory involving animals – this time tackling the Holocaust via the medium of a donkey and a howling monkey. Jamie Byng, who will publish the book at Canongate in 2010, said it was "one of the most ingenious, heart-breaking and strangely beautiful books" he had read in years. "The absorbing pair of relationships that lie at the book's heart, one between a donkey and a howling monkey and the other between a writer and an elderly taxidermist, also make this one of the most original books I have ever read," Byng added.
The book will also, Byng said, deal with the very issue Martel himself is facing: the challenge of how to write another book when you've had a success "as unexpected and huge" as Life of Pi. Martel told the New York Times that he decided to tackle the Holocaust in this new novel because he felt that there was a paucity of metaphorical, or imaginative, works produced about it. "I've noticed over the years of reading books on the Holocaust and seeing movies that it's always represented in the same way, which is historical or social realism. I was thinking that it was interesting that you don't have many imaginative takes on it like George Orwell's Animal Farm and its take on Stalinism," he said. "My novel is an attempt to get a distillation on it, and see if there is a way of talking about the Holocaust without talking about it literally."
via Martel signs multi-million deal for Life of Pi follow-up | Books | guardian.co.uk.
As we all wait for Martell's next work, the closest parallel I can recommend is Pixar's beautiful film Up. While the themes are quite different, both tell fantastic tales and, well, if you haven't read/seen one, I don't want to ruin it for you. Let's just say that after you've read Pi, go back and re-watch Up...
Meeting Inspiration
I had the rare opportunity to meet Dave Eggers today, one of the great writers and advocates of my generation.
More directly, Eggers was the first person I'd ever known who found a way to express the daily frustration, anger, despair and isolation associated with being part of a challenging family.
He was signing copies of his latest book, Zeitoun, at Green Apple Books and, because he only advertised via the McSweeney's newsletter, there were only a few people there.
As the line was short, Dave took the time to chat with just about everyone, and he was as humble and open as his writing leads one to expect.
The Worst Sort Of Foreshadowing
Hal Incandenza, speaking to his older brother, Orin, about how he (Hal) dealt with an impossible-to-satisfy shrink after being first on the scene of his father's gruesome death, an apparent suicide.
I even tried telling [the grief-counselor] that Himself was miserable and pancreatic and out of his tree half the time by then anyway . . . that even work and Wild Turkey weren't helping anymore, that he was despondent about something he was editing that turned out so bad he didn't want it released. That the ... that what happened was probably kind of a mercy, in the end.
- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest p. 253
Also see...
- Infinite Summer
- Kottke's extensive DFW coverage
Faith-based Hate Mail
Sir David Attenborough
They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.
[Via Kottke and Jack Shedd Image by ethe.]
McSweeney's: A 1608 Holiday Catalogue
More hilarity from McSweeney's. This time, it's The Gutenberg Christmas Catalogue, 1608. Imagine it's the turn of the seventeenth century, and you're not sure what to get that certain someone. Maybe one of the world's hottest new books could be the ticket.
The World Is Flat
BY ANONYMOUS
An excerpt: "As I recline on a plank made in East Lancaster, writing with a quill made in North-East Lancaster, tracing these very words with ink from my neighbour's cat, it hits me: We are all part of the same amazing porridge."
Recommended for readers who enjoyed Anonymous's Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Strategick Proposal. Enjoy a 10 percent discount if you preorder the author's forthcoming sequel, I Insist, the World Really Is Flat.
The Da Vinci Code
BY ANONYMOUS
Might the mysterious shapes Leonardo da Vinci drew inside the breech-cloth areas of his human figures be more than just hilarious squiggles?
I'm sure people will be talking about the Kindle and about some of our the things our leaders are currently saying when they're revisited in 2408.
A Tour of Contemporary India
Do you want to better understand the Mumbai siege? Would you like to increase your understanding of contemporary India? Have you wondered how this whole "outsourcing" thing has come to pass? Then pick up this page-turning Man Booker Prize winner.
The White Tiger is part A Confederacy of Dunces and part Life of Pi, with a touch of Machiavelli's The Prince and a little bit of Atlas Shrugged thrown in for good measure.
Our tale is dictated and recorded by the protagonist, Balram Halwai. Given no name but "boy" because his family worked too hard to think up a real name, Balram is the prototypical Indian entrepreneur.
Upon hearing on the radio that Mr. Jiabao, the Premier of China, will be visiting India to learn about the sub-continent's tremendous entrepreneurial spirit, Balram decides that, for the Premier's sake, he must intervene. Knowing that the official guides will give China's Premier a false account of what is happening in India, Balram takes it upon himself to record his own life story as a means toward understanding the true India.
Told as a collection of spoken recordings, made each night for a week in the wee hours of the morning and addressed directly to Mr. Jiabao, our Bangalore entrepreneur guides the reader, along with the Premier, through modern India as experienced by someone who started out among the poorest of the poor and wound up a wealthy man.
Inspired wit and ignorance, lust and greed, corruption and murder, reason and pride, cunning and madness, luck and careful planning. All play a role in this allegorical work.
Dollhouse: The Best Show On Television
Do dolls dream of electric sheep?
C and I have been watching Joss Whedon's (Buffy, Firefly, the bat episode of The Office) Dollhouse all season. It was slow to take hold, but the most recent episode was so unabashedly brilliant that if you haven't been watching, I can only urge you to spend this weekend catching up. It's the best show on television*.
Dollhouse is available on Hulu and, if you don't act soon, it'll likely be canceled. Smart science fiction, doomed to air on Friday evenings? Go figure.
Once you've watched a little bit, read this analysis of the show. The author has put a great deal of thought into their post, and does an excellent job delving into the depths of the metaphor.