'aqtu' mellota'

Just a few quick things today.

I keep forgetting to pass this along: Musical Klingon Astroturf Update

I recently had occasion to think about the pilots from those old disney tv cartoons (by "pilots," I of course mean the first episodes, and not dudes like Baloo and Launchpad McQuack). Anyways, I suddenly realized that the first episodes of Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, and Darkwing Duck all involved the use an enormous beam weapon. I don't know what about the Disney zeitgeist of the 80s and early 90s led to this rampant proliferation of giant laserbeams, but it is certainly interesting to think about.

Lately I've been listening to podcasts while I exercise, instead of my usual books and such. Aside from The Changing World and the occasional Spanish language thing, I mostly listen to sciency stuff, especially Science, Nature, and New Scientist. And to be honest, my favorite part of the science podcasts is the commercials, which are like "Try BioRad's new Profinia protein purification system, the automated solution to purify and desalt affinity tank proteins in as little as 30 minutes!" I like to listen to them and pretend I'm living in the future.
Maybe I am.

Triangle Man hates Person Man

I know some of you were wondering how this went; unfortunately, it turns out that the thing sold out weeks in advance, so I didn't get to go. Instead we stopped by a charcuterie charcutier charcuteria...
Dreadful language, but they make a mean onion soup. Anyways, so we stopped by this pâté joint for a bite to eat, and saw Seven Samurai at the Aero. So, as backup plans go, that one was pretty dang successful.

It's strange; there seems to be some sort of disillusionment bug going around. I swear, everywhere I turn, people are increasingly wanting to leave philosophy. Copycats.

Speaking of philosophy though, Matt, Adam, Amanda, Sabrina and I are trying to throw together a panel for the Comic Arts Conference at this year's Comic-Con. After some discussion of our various ideas, it looks like we can organize something around the issue of personal identity. I mentioned Human Target as one particularly interesting contribution to the topic, and so now I'm trying to think of things that I might spend 15 minutes saying about it.
The sorts of general questions I've been coming up with seem to fall into three categories: metaphysical, ethical, and psychological. Rough examples of some of these include: "in what sense, if any, can we claim that Chance does actually become the people he is impersonating?," which leads to questions like "is it morally (or for that matter, I dunno, aesthetically) acceptable to live another (e.g. deceased) person's life that way?"
I think the psychological questions are actually the more interesting ones, and might complement the other panelists' presentations better...questions like "what are the implications of the possility that this sort of identity shift is not some kind of binary ability but rather exists in everybody to a (presumably much more limited) degree?" or, even better, "what claims does the series make about one's need for a sense of concrete identity, and what accounts for Chance's ambivalence towards his own mutability and unstable sense of self?"

I dunno. This is all very preliminary; I'm just tossing out ideas as they come to me.