28 posts tagged “pattern recognition”

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Dollhouse Callsigns

Dec 5, 2009
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When Dollhouse began, I quickly caught the NATO Phonetic Alphabet naming convention for Actives (Alpha, Echo, November, Sierra, Victor).

This latest episode revealed a second Dollhouse that has adopted a Greek God naming convention (Hades and Aphrodite). As an extension of this allusion, Summer Glau's character, Bennett Halverson, seems to be a representation of Hephaestus.

The Community College Chronicles

Nov 14, 2009
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Since the pilot episode of Community, Abed has been established as a character that possessed awareness of archetypes, cliches, and motifs. He's now created The Community College Chronicles within the show which captures the traits of the current characters and extrapolates upon them. The end result is a warped version of reality, but since there is a nugget of truth at the core, some of the fictional fictional developments turn out to be similar to the fictional developments.

Yet another recursive show-within-a-show.

The hazards of alphanumeric systems as observed in a sampling of music

Oct 30, 2009
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ttttttttttttttttttttt
UuVvWwZ
xbxrx

The limitations of alphanumeric systems as observed in a sampling of music

Oct 30, 2009
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Ponytail - "...,,,;;;:::!"

Frankenbehavior

Oct 27, 2009
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Big Brother is watching you and smelling good.

Melissa Bateson, "Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting"
Katie Liljenquist, "The Smell of Virtue"

All that remains is to overload our sense of taste, touch, and hearing with good vibes.

Gangs

Oct 22, 2009
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Dynamic Open-Participation Divisions

ZeFrank's Color War
Tumblr's Sharks vs Cats

Dynamic Closed-Participation Divisions

Hogwarts Sorting Hat

Furballs and Toasters

Oct 16, 2009
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Fictional prejudices, stereotypes, and slang which produce derogatory terms that reveal our own tendencies towards prejudices, stereotypes, and slang have been on my mind.

Mutants in the Marvel Universe are decried as muties. The alien race in District 9 is crudely referred to as prawns. Robots get toaster, tin can, and bucket of bolts which relate them to inanimate metallic objects of lesser value.

Then there is the seemingly rare viewpoint of the human being as a lesser being. Possibly only available to aliens, artificial intelligences, and ascended beings. The slurs that stand out tend to refer to our evolutionary tree (hairless ape) or our biological traits (meatbag or fleshling). Aaron Stack (the Machine Man) and Bender are perhaps the most noteworthy for their proficiency at demeaning humans.

As with all things that dwell on my mind, this has already been covered at tvtropes.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticSlurs

Crowdsourcing Crime

Oct 3, 2009
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At the start of this latest episode of Fringe a police officer receives a phone call that instructs him to carry out an enigmatic task. The immediate thing that came to mind was that some writers had finally got wind of Alternate Reality Games and worked them into a story.

What a sinister thing that would be - a flash mob or alternate reality game that would drive participants to unknowingly participate in crimes.

Or at least unknowingly serve as accomplices as the case of Anthony Curcio and his Craigslist decoys.