Do You Think Your Equipment Hinders that Pursuit: How Times Have Changed and the Mirren Interviews

This is amazing: What I find particularly interesting about this video is the way in which Sir Michael Parkinson cannot seem to get off the topic of Helen Mirren’s body. In fact, though her body is not that voluptuous and she is not dressed in a particularly revealing way. One of the best/worst parts happens [...]

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Commercials Done Right

I am often critical of advertisements on this blog because commercials are so often horrible: they reinforce rigid gender roles; they attempt to instill dissatisfaction in the viewer to urge purchases; they use emotional manipulation to get us to buy products that have little to do with the emotion; and they are increasingly turning up [...]

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Help! The Capitalist Broke Into My House!

I am writing this simply to boost the signal on another post “Microsoft Conducts a Home Invasion” over at The MassOrnament. I agree with them about the absolute outrageousness of this commercial: Note that her computer is only FOUR (4!) years old. Having a four year old computer apparently justifies Microsoft in breaking into your house and harassing you [...]

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Shielding the Privileged to Protect Ignorance

I just watched this news report on a terrible case in which Ikenna Njoku, a man from Auburn WA, tried to cash a cheque at Chase bank and ended up in jail (a full transcript is available here). I thought the news report might offer an interesting example of shielding the white viewing public from [...]

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Cancer Treatment Centers of America: Hope, But Don’t Hope

I often see these commercials for the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and I find them misleading and unethical. I can’t seem to embed the video, but it can be found at this link. Most of their commercials are all about giving the patient “hope” where there was no hope before. But each commercial also carries [...]

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The Uncanny Valley of L.A. Noire

Update: SLee and Topher now have an entire case guide out in e-book form. Even better, it is FREE! Update 2 (May 5th 2012): If you want some help answering the questions, but don’t want the spoilers of the actual answers, SLee and Topher now have a guide with tips on how to deduce the correct [...]

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Advertisements and Appropriating Mundane Affective Moments

Probably many readers have seen this video of Jessica who is in a good mood and is talking about all the things she likes and how great she is. It is really cute and uplifting. Whoever was filming her captured one of those family moments that make parenthood worth its hardships. This is an emotive [...]

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Watson “Makes a Joke”

    I have been watching Watson playing Jeopardy! It is really interesting. I am impressed by Watson’s performance and ability to analyse questions in natural language (although sometimes it seems like Watson’s performance is at an advantage due to reaction times). But what really amazes me is the “interaction between” Watson and the audience [...]

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I Played a Commercial and I Didn’t Like It

Almost nobody likes commercials. Since technologies such as VCRs, DVRs and TiVo are now available, many people prerecord TV shows and skip through the commercials. So marketers and advertisers are trying to come up with commercials that we are willing to watch, or that we cannot get around watching (for example, because they are part [...]

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Law and Order: SVU and the Bechdel Test

[Trigger Warning for discussions of violence against women and rape.] One of my guilty pleasures is watching crime shows on TV. I explain why I like crime shows in this post, but I am also aware that crime shows have a number of problematic elements. Crime shows are often problematic because of the way they [...]

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