Over time, I’ve learned to be pragmatic when talking to others about politics. I myself have some incredibly strong opinions, but I know plenty of my good friends & favorite family members have very different opinions, and rather than ruin relationships with petty arguments, I tend to just avoid the subject entirely.
Occasionally, though, I feel the need to blurt something out. This is one of those times. (Keep reading…)
Quick point of interest: while reading a post from socialmediaexaminer.com (don’t judge) about social media trends in business (I beg you don’t judge), I somehow found my way to a different article about what’s new this week in social media (for the love of Pete don’t judge). I took the time to watch a video about an iPad-only magazine, because for some reason every video I’ve ever seen on Vimeo has been between moderately and awesomely cool. I don’t know how Vimeo attracts cooler users than YouTube, but it does.
Print is not dead. Don’t say print is dead. Not even cassette tapes are dead, so print certainly still has a place in the world.
Print is, however, more specialized than it used to be. There aren’t quite as many books or magazines as there were ten or fifteen years ago, and there are definitely fewer news publications. In my time here in Chicago, I’ve seen at least three highly popular weekly print papers cease paper production altogether.
What this means – among other meanings – is that people who print things are much more discerning about what to print and what not to print. The e-mail revolution is a win for trees, but for writers, it narrows your chances of getting your work into print, and it drastically reduces your odds of getting paid to write. (Keep reading…)
I’ll say this for having a day job: it provides a lot of food for an actor. And I don’t just mean people food. I mean artistic food. As both an actor and a human being, I would like to be able to step into any job and kick ass at it. I know that’s not really possible with just any job as a human being – I would never trust myself with open heart surgery – but as an actor I should be able to pull it off. And with a day job, I actually get to execute this challenge. (Keep reading…)
I read a New York Times Opinion article recently about our human tendency to anthropomorphize machines and assign the badge “Artificial Intelligence” to robots that simply aren’t intelligent. (I suspect he’s referring to articles like this one.) The opinion article is a great read, but it’s kinda long and it seems to conclude in a different place than it starts out, so if I were a high school English teacher, I’d give the essay a B.
At its core, this piece is a warning to us humans not to infuse our technological advancements with religious or philosophical ideologies. And I must say, I completely agree with that statement. My favorite point the author makes is this:
In fact, the nuts and bolts of A.I. research can often be more usefully interpreted without the concept of A.I. at all. For example, I.B.M. scientists recently unveiled a “question answering” machine that is designed to play the TV quiz show “Jeopardy.” Suppose I.B.M. had dispensed with the theatrics, declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based search engine. This framing of exactly the same technology would have gained I.B.M.’s team as much (deserved) recognition as the claim of an artificial intelligence, but would also have educated the public about how such a technology might actually be used most effectively.
It punctuates exactly what he’s trying to state before going on to make grander observations about religious wars and the concept of personhood.
However, it did get me thinking – not so much about personhood or religion, but about the meaning of intelligence. (Keep reading…)
It’s just as well that LeBron James decided not to come to Chicago. What Chicago does NOT need right now are two things: 1) continued pointless media frenzy over a national-spotlight athlete, and 2) another super-rich celebrity who doesn’t tip his waiter. (Keep reading…)
So - as I took a break from preparing for the future to take a glance at what’s happening in the present, I couldn’t help but notice World Cup scores. Team USA is out, but for once in our lifetime, we got closer to the cup than England, France, and Italy did. Had I been paying closer attention to Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, I might have known that sooner.
But something struck me: I didn’t need to know that any sooner than I did. Its relevance to my life is pretty low. The World Cup is just something I take a mild interest in every four years. (Keep reading…)
The amazingest news of the week is that Dream Theatre won both Best Off-Loop Theatre Company and Best New Play (for the Agon Trilogy) from the Chicago Reader! The second part is especially amazing since “Orestes,” the third play in the trilogy, hasn’t even opened yet.
And speaking of “Orestes,” it occurs to me that June has flown by and we open in a few short weeks now. I am going to have to memorize my lines at some point. (Keep reading…)
It feels pretty strange, I will admit, to switch so suddenly from show mode back into rehearsal mode. Like shifting from fifth gear to first without depressing the clutch. I even make that awful grinding noise. But back into rehearsal mode we must go, ready or not, so onward and upward…or, in this case, downward, since the whole second half of Orestes takes place in hell.
Filed by Bil at 3:29 pm under Fightin' Words, Politics
1 Comment 
