Omega Point

LOLcat art show? I am definitely going to this.

Read­ers, I ask you: how many times have each of us stared wist­fully out into space, lost in thought, hop­ing against hope that one day, some­how, there would be a local exhi­bi­tion of pen-and-ink LOLcat-inspired art? I know that I myself have lost too many hours to count. Finally, just when things seemed at their bleak­est, with moral­ist crack­downs on LOL­cat macro images tak­ing place across the globe, the day has come at last!

Van­cou­verites, LOL­cat con­nois­seurs and art enthu­si­asts rejoice!

This Mon­day, July 21st, Clack­Clack Empire in Vancouver’s Chi­na­town hosts the open­ing recep­tion for I can’t believe we both got cats: LOL­cat art, fea­tur­ing works by Seattle-based artist Mar­i­anne Goldin! Sweet!

For details, check out the list­ing on Upcom­ing, or con­sult the artist’s state­ment. I liked this part:

LOL­cats can take on a mer­i­to­cratic tone, since not all cats are made equal — an ideal model oozes with pathos and pho­to­gene­ity. There are even Weber­ian “ideal types” to be found — styles and fam­i­lies of LOL­cat: the terse Zen koan, the Invis­i­ble (fill in the blank), and the var­i­ous motifs of Ceil­ing Cat. Many instances use cats to alle­go­rize human frus­tra­tions with technology.

You should def­i­nitely come. It’s free! Also, LOL­cat art.

If kids don’t learn about making tasers in school, they’ll just learn it on the streets.

The CBC is run­ning a story on enter­pris­ing young hooli­gans mak­ing good enter­tain­ing use of readily-available giant capac­i­tors. Oh no, home­made tasers! Well, no, not exactly. They sure hurt and make you pee your­self though!

This actu­ally reminded me of things I did in high school, so maybe this is some­thing we want to encour­age! (“Hi, Cather­ine? About din­ner next week? Yeah, I’m not sure we’re totally com­fort­able with you hav­ing any oppor­tu­nity to tell our kids any­thing at all, actually…”)

Look, part of liv­ing in a tech­no­log­i­cally sophis­ti­cated soci­ety is under­stand­ing that there are things peo­ple will do with tech­nol­ogy that doesn’t mesh up with what its design­ers intended. Fur­ther, we can’t stop that from hap­pen­ing, except through fur­ther edu­ca­tion. (“…and that’s why we don’t lick elec­tri­cal sock­ets, class.” “Ohhhhh!”)

The prob­lem is that peo­ple all too often want a quick fix for run­away knowl­edge, and that usu­ally takes the form of leg­is­la­tion, or of ceas­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of doc­u­ments con­tain­ing Iraqi nuclear “secrets”.

So in this case, what’s the leg­is­la­tion we’re sup­posed to sup­port? Inter­net hack­ers must be stopped from threat­en­ing chil­dren? Cam­eras must be licensed to pro­hibit the extrac­tion of their inter­nal com­po­nents? Cam­eras should not con­tain flashes? No energy weapons at school? Oh wait. That last one is actu­ally pretty smart.

Upon read­ing the CBC arti­cle, one notes that there’s def­i­nitely a “oh no, inter­net!” vibe to it, but nobody quoted in it is actu­ally sug­gest­ing that the cur­rent “leave your knives and things at home, please” laws and school poli­cies aren’t enough. Truly a refresh­ing change.