Elsewhere: A collection of interesting links and articles that I’ve come across in the last week or so. For more of the same, follow me on Twitter.

io9 compiles a list of “What the Last Airbender TV series has that the movie doesn’t”. (Contains some spoilers if you’ve never seen the original series or M. Night Shyamalan’s movie.)

The Contemporary Relevance Of Augustine’s View Of Creation: “Consistent with the claim that Genesis 1-3 is difficult and obscure, Augustine repeatedly urges restraint, flexibility, openness to new interpretations, and openness to new knowledge that may provide insight into the text.”

The winners of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. My favorites are the winner of the “Detective” category and the entries in the “Purple Prose” category. Via

Better Facebook is a browser add-on that gives you more control over Facebook (e.g., tabbed interfaces for newsfeeds, greater control over what is displayed, highlighting new comments). I’m not entirely sold on it yet—it’s easy to add even more clutter to Facebook’s already tangled interface—but some might find it handy. If nothing else, it’s yet more proof that Safari extensions are taking off.

Speaking of Safari extensions, one of my favorites—Shortly—recently got updated with some slick new features (e.g., “Toolbar Mode”, better language support).

Being the sci-fi geek that I am, it’s not surprising that Concept Ships—which features concept art of spaceships and other sci-fi vehicles and visions—has become one of my favorite new blogs. And even if you’re not a sci-fi geek, you’ve got to admit that John Berkey’s artwork is pretty lovely.

The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time (As you might guess, this is not entirely work-safe, but it is awesome.)

Tullian Tchividjian’s “The Supremacy Of Christ” contains a wonderful quote from Malcolm Muggeridge.

Unfortunately, “Yes, abortion is killing. But it’s the lesser evil” by Antonia Senior requires registration to read, but it’s a fascinating article. An excerpt:

Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus—and thus killable.

So we are left with a problem. A growing movement in America, spearheaded by Sarah Palin, is pro-life feminism, This attempts to decouple feminism from abortion rights, arguing that you can believe in a woman’s right to be empowered without believing in her right to abort. Its proponents report a groundswell of support among young women looking to reinvent their mothers’ ideology.

But you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology. Abortion would have been legal for millennia had it been men whose prospects and careers were put on sudden hold by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery pondered on many a girls’ night out is how on earth men, bless them, managed to hang on to political and cultural hegemony for so long. The only answer is that they are not in hock to their biology as much as we are. Look at a map of the world and the right to abortion on request correlates pretty exactly with the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny.

As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.

Paste Magazine creates a bunch of Scott Pilgrim avatars for Cat Power, James Murphy, Zooey Deschanel, Kanye West, and a bunch of other hipster folks. Via

“Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” by Steve Martin with the Steep Canyon Rangers

American Cinematographer has named Amélie the best-shot film of 1998-2008 (based on the results of a recent online poll). The top 10 finalists contain some very fine films but In The Mood For Love should’ve been higher than #12.

If those who come to see your movie while dressed as your movie’s characters start dissing your movie, I think that’s a pretty good sign that your movie has gone off the tracks.

I’ve watched this video several times since coming across it on Looking Closer earlier this week, and I’ve gleaned something new from it with each viewing.

Sidenote: I can only hope that someday, my voice is even a fraction as sonorous as Wright’s.

It will be, if Roger Ebert has his way. His half-star review has just been posted and as you might guess, it’s pretty savage:

“The Last Airbender” is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.

[...]

The first fatal decision was to make a live-action film out of material that was born to be anime. The animation of the Nickelodeon TV series drew on the bright colors and “clear line” style of such masters as Miyazaki, and was a pleasure to observe. It’s in the very nature of animation to make absurd visual sights more plausible.

Since “Airbender” involves the human manipulation of the forces of air, earth, water and fire, there is hardly an event that can be rendered plausibly in live action. That said, its special effects are atrocious. The first time the waterbender Katara summons a globe of water, which then splashes (offscreen) on her brother Sokka, he doesn’t even get wet.  Firebenders’ flames don’t seem to really burn, and so on.

[...]

As “The Last Airbender” bores and alienates its audiences, consider the opportunities missed here. (1) This material should have become an A-list animated film. (2) It was a blunder jumping aboard the 3D bandwagon with phony 3D retro-fitted to a 2D film. (3) If it had to be live action, better special effects artists should have been found. It’s not as if films like “2012” and “Knowing” didn’t contain “real life” illusions as spectacular as anything called for in “The Last Airbender.”

I close with the hope that the title proves prophetic.

On a sidenote, it sounds like Ebert is a fan of the original cartoon, which is pretty cool.

Meanwhile, Keith Phipps over at The A.V. Club gives the movie an “F”:

Adapting a well-regarded, epic-in-scope Nickelodeon animated series, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has failed to do right both by his source material and his own strengths as a filmmaker. Set in a world in which the population is divided amid the four elements, and some skilled practitioners can control those elements to their own ends, the film vomits out complicated mythology in mouthfuls of exposition, when not putting a supporting character’s voiceover narration in charge of relaying major developments. Shyamalan manages a few striking images, most of them involving otherworldly landscapes created in Greenland and Vietnam. But none of the care and craftsmanship evident in projects he originated, even lousy ones like The Happening, find their way into this movie.

The movie currently has a score of 6% at Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 13 at Metacritic, and I don’t really foresee it getting much better. I had a feeling that this would be the case, which is a real shame considering the awesomeness of the source material.

Note: This article contains spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.

I began exploring Hayao Miyazaki’s films long before any of them had been released on DVD. And given that I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska, the chances of any of them ever making it to a local movie theatre were slim to none (Princess Mononoke arriving at The Ross was a supreme cause for celebration). In order to watch the few Miyazaki films that were readily available—i.e., My Neighbor Totoro—I had to spend some time in the children’s section of my local video store—and I’m sure it looked odd to see a man in his late twenties wandering through the aisles of Pokémon and Power Rangers videos. It certainly felt that way.

I feel somewhat similarly when I talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender. Here I am, a man in his mid-thirties, singing the praises of a Nickelodeon series aimed squarely at 6 to 11-year-olds. But good, worthwhile, and honorable culture can be in all places. So let me cut right to the chase: I was very impressed by this series.

The term “Miyazaki-esque” doesn’t at all feel like an overstatement, here. While the series didn’t necessarily conjure up within me the same sense of awe and wonder that I attribute to Miyazaki’s works, it aims for and achieves similar levels of myth-making, world-building, character depth, and moral complexity.

Continue reading…

On June 7, 2010, Apple released Safari 5, the latest version of their web browser. In addition to performance increases, better HTML5 support, and Safari Reader (which I wrote about earlier), Safari 5 also offers support for extensions. Extensions allow third-party developers to add new features and functionality to Safari in an Apple-approved method that doesn’t require hacks. (Other browsers, e.g., Firefox and Chrome, have had similar functionality for awhile.)

Since Safari’s release, dozens of extensions have been released that add features ranging from ad blocking to Facebook modifications to browser tab management. Some are humorous, while some tackle significant and serious issues. Below is a list of my favorite Safari 5 extensions, the ones that I never knew I needed until they came out.

• Beautifier - Beautifier adds extra text-smoothing to websites using the “-webkit-font-smoothing” CSS property. Your mileage may vary, though: overall, the “beautified” text looks nice but the extra smoothing can make smaller text a little too light and thin.
• Defacer - Defacer hides the Facebook “Like” buttons and links that are on websites everywhere these days.
• Facebook Zen - This extension removes some of the Facebook-related clutter that is so prevalent on the web these days. For example, it disables the list of ads and suggestions that appear in the right column on your Facebook page.
• HelvetiReader - A port of script previously developed by Hicksdesign (see the original), HelvetiReader turns Google Reader’s interface into something more streamlined and minimal—and Helvetica-centric.
• JavaScript Blacklist - This extension lets you block JavaScript that is hosted on other sites. This is great for doing away with annoying scripts such as those from Tynt, Intellitxt and Snap. No more copy-and-paste hijinks or pop-up website previews, huzzah!
• Oldschoogle - Oldschoogle allows you to disable to left and right columns that Google added to search results. I’ve disabled the right column, which means no more ads.
• Shortly - Adds a button to your toolbar that, when clicked, will automatically shorten URLs for usage in Twitter, e-mail, etc. YouTube URLs will be shortened using “youtu.be”, Flickr URLs will be shortened using “flic.kr”, and all other URLs will be shortened with “bit.ly” or “goo.gl”.
• View Background Image - Adds an item to your contextual menu that displays the background image of any element in a new browser tab.

New extensions are being added all the time to the Safari Extensions blog (Apple’s official extensions gallery will open later this summer). Here are a few that I hope to see added in the near future:

• Faviconize - The FaviconizeTab extension for Firefox seems trivial until you actually use it. If you’re one of those users that has lots of tabs open, being able to collapse those tabs to display just the favicon—and thereby freeing up space in the browser window (for more tabs)—is quite nice.
• HelvetiMail - HelvetiMail is currently availabe to Safari only if you have Greasekit and SIMBL installed. It’d be really nice to see it reborn as a native Safari extension, if only so that my Gmail and Google Reader screens match.
• Web Developer—According to this random tweet, the incredibly useful Web Developer extension will be making its way to Safari (a Chrome version was recently released). If you’re a web developer, this extension is a must-have, giving you a Swiss Army knife-like array of functions that can aid in development, testing, and debugging.
• Coda Notes - Panic announced this extension shortly after Safari 5’s release, but it’s not yet available. Coda Notes lets you annotate, mark up, and draw on the website that you’re currently looking at, and then e-mail a screenshot with your annotations. Not only could this prove really useful as a communications tool between developers and clients, but given that this is Panic we’re talking about, I’m sure it’s going to look and function great.

Am I missing any extensions? What extensions do you find useful, and which ones would you like to see developed?

Elsewhere: A collection of interesting links and articles that I’ve come across in the last week or so. For more of the same, follow me on Twitter.

Did you know you can create your very own Scott Pilgrim avatar?

M. Night Shyamalan responds to the accusations of racism that have been leveled at The Last Airbender, his live-action version of the Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’d quote from the article, but it does contain some potential spoilers, especially if you’re watching the cartoon. Suffice to say, Shyamalan sounds pretty pissed by the accusations. (For what it’s worth, I’ll be posting an in-depth analysis of Avatar: The Last Airbender in the next few days.)

A guy who goes by the moniker of “Sillof” has put together an awesome collection of Star Wars and comic book-inspired artwork, figures and dioramas, including a set inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s movies, a set inspired by World War II, and a set inspired by the films of Pixar. Via Kottke

Josh Hurst reviews Woven Hand’s The Threshingfloor: “This isn’t an album that’s meant to act as a musical extension of your youth group; this is music made by a man without shoes, for he knows he’s standing on holy ground.”

You’d think that “Soccer: The Perfect Socialist Sport” was from The Onion, but it’s neither good enough nor funny enough. Via @RaeWhitlock

The impending Akira live-action remake will now likely be PG-13, which doesn’t bother me—after all, The Dark Knight was PG-13—so much as the director’s apparent discontent with the studio and the script issues.

Tiffany and Debbie Gibson will be duking it out in Mega Python Versus Gatoroid. I have a feeling that the title is going to be the best part of the movie.

All of Solspace’s ExpressionEngine add-ons are now 30% off until July 28th, 2010.

Roger Ebert’s “My vocation as a priest” is a beautifully written account of his religious upbringing, though he no longer believes.

“The Twitter of Doom”:

I am glad that World Cup scores are delivered to my phone while I travel. My phone cannot match being at a match, however, for good and bad. The sun of South Africa, the joy of fellow fans, and the deafening sounds of the vuvuzela are all missing. When all I want is the result, my phone is good enough, but sometimes a fan has to go.

This is even more true about the biggest human events. Humans cannot be baptized with online water, because we are not just minds, but bodies. Only a coward breaks up with an email, because some news deserves eye-to-eye contact.

Death is such an event. It is physical and spiritual. A man created in the image of God has passed through the greatest and final challenge. Cultures that debase this event, debase their own humanity. The death of any human being is an awful thing. It is momentous and sacred. Reporting on it requires thought, compassion, and a human touch.

This is why it was wrong for a government official to “tweet” the news of an execution. Twitter can convey information and the writer’s immediate feelings, but any death, especially one sanctioned by the state, demands more seriousness.

PopMatters reviews Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments: “[it] embraces an existential melancholy, accentuating quiet moments, mystery and introspection over space opera. Call it zen in the art of window-washing… in space.” More information, including some samples, can be found here.

Michael Spencer may no longer be with us, but Chaplain Mike et al. have been doing a wonderful job of continuing his legacy of thoughtful-yet-passionate discussion of the many issues that face today’s Church. And one of the biggest issues is the apparent “war” between science and religion. And so, the Internet Monk is going to spend the next week at “the front lines of the Creation Wars”.

Do Christians really want to be the ones who deny, not merely the scientific model of biological evolution, but whole swaths of accepted scientific findings in geology, astronomy, physics, and many other fields based on a passage in the Bible that was never intended to address such matters?

[...]

I am no expert on questions of science. You won’t find me holding forth on these matters from a scientific perspective, because, well…because if I did you’d laugh at me and go read some other blog. At this point in my life and study, it is enough for me that many fine, thoughtful, committed Christians believe we don’t have to view this whole subject as a site for trench warfare.

We can talk.

On a related note, thanks to Elastic Heart for bringing to my attention “Adam and Eve: Literal or Literary?”, a fascinating article on possible explanations for the Bible’s first humans that are faithful to both the Bible and science. For more on this topic, I’ll refer to an entry I wrote back in March on Tim Keller’s essay, “Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople”.