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Hmmm. Maybe they'll have me come lecture about my not-terribly-famous Theory of RelativeTV.

Perhaps my assumption that you were actually *watching* that show for fodder to write your parodies is wrong though.

It's drifting slightly off-topic, so I removed my own karma bonus to respond, but since you asked: I got hooked on Y&R about 10 years earlier because a friend was watching it and watched it pretty faithfully for about 10 years before I started writing the parodies.

In fact, I think soap operas have a lot of (often unfulfilled) potential as an artform, exactly because they have the screen time needed to tell a story in the kind of detail that other kinds of shows don't. At their best, such dramas offer real chances to inform people about subtle effects of one person's actions on another in ways that packaged one or two hour dramas often can't do. Admittedly, they don't do that every time. But as with all of life's endeavors, it's what you make of the opportunity. And the Y&R writers were fully capable of delivering on the promise of the medium, they just often seemed not to care to on a regular basis. When they were "on", they were very good. But they seemed to slack a lot. My parodies, in what I like to believe is the best tradition of social commentary, were intended to remind them that more was possible if they were willing to work harder. Each "episode" was accompanied by a "moral" (a rationale for writing it, based on what was happening on the show).

So no, I wasn't reading to get fodder for the writing. I was part of the loyal fanbase that wanted to see the characters have a proper life of their own, and who did not want to see the characters as a mere platform for the delivery of products. We all had no doubt they wanted to sell us products, but that was mostly an issue of demographics, and it didn't creep much into the moment-to-moment of the show itself... except in the way plots were stretched to make certain plotlines peak during sweeps week, etc.

For myself, I have never been short of things to write about. If anything, my reason for eventually stopping was that I couldn't afford so much time spent on such a frivolous end. Especially if it wasn't making me any money--which comes back to the point about money as a risk to establishing priority. I'm not saying money shouldn't be involved, of course. I'm just saying it's hard to ignore its power, and so you have to acknowledge its power and confront it directly.

Perhaps my assumption that you were actually *watching* that show for fodder to write your parodies is wrong though.

It's drifting slightly off-topic, so I removed my own karma bonus to respond, but since you asked: I got hooked on Y&R about 10 years earlier because a friend was watching it and watched it pretty faithfully for about 10 years before I started writing the parodies.

In fact, I think soap operas have a lot of (often unfulfilled) potential as an artform, exactly because they have the screen time needed to tell a story in the kind of detail that other kinds of shows don't. At their best, such dramas offer real chances to inform people about subtle effects of one person's actions on another in ways that packaged one or two hour dramas often can't do. Admittedly, they don't do that every time. But as with all of life's endeavors, it's what you make of the opportunity. And the Y&R writers were fully capable of delivering on the promise of the medium, they just often seemed not to care to on a regular basis. When they were "on", they were very good. But they seemed to slack a lot. My parodies, in what I like to believe is the best tradition of social commentary, were intended to remind them that more was possible if they were willing to work harder. Each "episode" was accompanied by a "moral" (a rationale for writing it, based on what was happening on the show).

So no, I wasn't reading to get fodder for the writing. I was part of the loyal fanbase that wanted to see the characters have a proper life of their own, and who did not want to see the characters as a mere platform for the delivery of products. We all had no doubt they wanted to sell us products, but that was mostly an issue of demographics, and it didn't creep much into the moment-to-moment of the show itself... except in the way plots were stretched to make certain plotlines peak during sweeps week, etc.

For myself, I have never been short of things to write about. If anything, my reason for eventually stopping was that I couldn't afford so much time spent on such a frivolous end. Especially if it wasn't making me any money--which comes back to the point about money as a risk to establishing priority. I'm not saying money shouldn't be involved, of course. I'm just saying it's hard to ignore its power, and so you have to acknowledge its power and confront it directly.

Perhaps my assumption that you were actually *watching* that show for fodder to write your parodies is wrong though.

It's drifting slightly off-topic, so I removed my own karma bonus to respond, but since you asked: I got hooked on Y&R about 10 years earlier because a friend was watching it and watched it pretty faithfully for about 10 years before I started writing the parodies.

In fact, I think soap operas have a lot of (often unfulfilled) potential as an artform, exactly because they have the screen time needed to tell a story in the kind of detail that other kinds of shows don't. At their best, such dramas offer real chances to inform people about subtle effects of one person's actions on another in ways that packaged one or two hour dramas often can't do. Admittedly, they don't do that every time. But as with all of life's endeavors, it's what you make of the opportunity. And the Y&R writers were fully capable of delivering on the promise of the medium, they just often seemed not to care to on a regular basis. When they were "on", they were very good. But they seemed to slack a lot. My parodies, in what I like to believe is the best tradition of social commentary, were intended to remind them that more was possible if they were willing to work harder. Each "episode" was accompanied by a "moral" (a rationale for writing it, based on what was happening on the show).

So no, I wasn't reading to get fodder for the writing. I was part of the loyal fanbase that wanted to see the characters have a proper life of their own, and who did not want to see the characters as a mere platform for the delivery of products. We all had no doubt they wanted to sell us products, but that was mostly an issue of demographics, and it didn't creep much into the moment-to-moment of the show itself... except in the way plots were stretched to make certain plotlines peak during sweeps week, etc.

For myself, I have never been short of things to write about. If anything, my reason for eventually stopping was that I couldn't afford so much time spent on such a frivolous end. Especially if it wasn't making me any money--which comes back to the point about money as a risk to establishing priority. I'm not saying money shouldn't be involved, of course. I'm just saying it's hard to ignore its power, and so you have to acknowledge its power and confront it directly.

I can understand how shows like Night Court (in which Harry Anderson, playing Judge Harry Stone, always had a Macintosh in his office) could feature a product without having it get in the way of a show. And certainly there are car companies that have had cars featured on shows or in movies, such as James Bond. But those were never central to the plot, so they didn't manage to drag things down like the proposed sponsor-centric content promises to. Even the show-within-a-show of The Truman Show didn't seem to have the nasty property they're talking about, since the plot focused on the character... the ads were just incidental ways to add revenue, kind of like hyperlinked ads in and around web articles or the hypertext-captioning of the Interstellar News Network on Babylon 5.

The significant point, however, is that the show comes first. By reversing the creative process and using product promotion as a starting point, not only is the quality of content likely to suffer, but the effectiveness of the advertising along with it.

Your putting it this way made me realize--it's not just the creation but the ongoing generation of new episodes, not to please a fan-base but to exploit a fan-base. Moreover, as the product evolves, the show has to evolve to match... not just as the starting point of the series but for each episode. This means they can't take it where the show wants to go, they have to take it where the product wants to go, and that's going to reach a divergence. It also means that if the product is upgraded or sold or someone wants a "fresh angle", the show is going to be canceled on a dime without any regard for what the public wants. Because shows are about "what viewers want" and ads are about "what we want viewers to want".

This divergence of purpose bodes ill.

I used to write regular parodies of The Young and the Restless (out of irritation for where the writers were taking the show). In the process, I found that writing for characters that viewers understand is something where you can't "lie" in the writing. If you do, you lose the viewers. I'd start to write something trying to make it go a certain way and the voice of the characters would tell me "No, you have to go another direction. That direction is not true to my character." And it worked best to just roll with it and see where the characters would naturally take me. I came to a belief that what makes good writing is when the characters are alive like that in your mind, and the characters are writing a "true" story--not in the sense of non-fiction, but in the sense of following how life would really go. Sort of like method acting but for writing... (Ah, I see. There are no new ideas in the world. Google tells me that the term method writing I just made up is an already elaborated theory. But yes, like that. Count me an instant believer that there is merit in this line of thinking.) Anyway, my point is that the kind of cynical "we can make it go where it needs to go" writing is quite suspect...

Because in the movies, you aren't partaking in the violence. So you aren't being encouraged to kill, or maim, and not face consequences. You aren't enjoying killing in movies.

A Clockwork Orange

Not that I agree with this stance.

Phew. :)

I think they should with movies, too. But I think it should be broken into catagories.

FWIW, I tried this experiment and it's not all it's cracked up to be. My personal conclusion was that ratings work only because they are vague. The more specific they are, the more they reveal plot, which means people who want suspense (often the point of a movie) can't get it. "Does he boink her at the end?" is kind of a pointless question to ask when the rating is "explicit, unmarried sex between a guy and a girl". "does this sci-fi movie end badly?" is kind of pointless when the rating is "nuclear devices deployed in this movie". Ultimately, a complete description of the plot is the only clear rating, and is a real spoiler. The hyperlink above goes to some uses of my ratings, click here for a key to the ratings. Obviously, this wasn't a scientific experiment, it was just for fun. But because I had no serious preconceived end in mind, I had an open mind and learned a lot.

Because in the movies, you aren't partaking in the violence. So you aren't being encouraged to kill, or maim, and not face consequences. You aren't enjoying killing in movies.

A Clockwork Orange

Not that I agree with this stance.

Phew. :)

I think they should with movies, too. But I think it should be broken into catagories.

FWIW, I tried this experiment and it's not all it's cracked up to be. My personal conclusion was that ratings work only because they are vague. The more specific they are, the more they reveal plot, which means people who want suspense (often the point of a movie) can't get it. "Does he boink her at the end?" is kind of a pointless question to ask when the rating is "explicit, unmarried sex between a guy and a girl". "does this sci-fi movie end badly?" is kind of pointless when the rating is "nuclear devices deployed in this movie". Ultimately, a complete description of the plot is the only clear rating, and is a real spoiler. The hyperlink above goes to some uses of my ratings, click here for a key to the ratings. Obviously, this wasn't a scientific experiment, it was just for fun. But because I had no serious preconceived end in mind, I had an open mind and learned a lot.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think these guys can hide behind the parody protection laws. They aren't really looking to specifically make fun of the movie, they just need a starting place to hang their improv humor.

Ah, well, I'm just working with the limited info from the article.

I do agree that there is a fine but important line between "parody" and "fan fiction".

"Parody" is commentary on a particular story, and the latter is merely taking the stage of a particular item as a jump-off. "Fan fiction", by contrast,I would imagine the fair use restrictions are stronger.

The point of parody is to make humor and sometimes a political message as well. Certainly my parody tends to have its basis in parody, and (in part out of parody and in part out of paranoia) I've gone to trouble to meticulously document on a per-episode basis the nature of the political commentary in plain text, for those who are comedically challenged and might otherwise overlook it. (e.g., consider Episode 47 as an example) was accompanied by a corresponding "moral of the story" page (e.g., Moral 47). In fact, some of my readers tell me they have preferred to just read the morals directly, either in addition or instead, so I know the commentary itself had value in and of itself.

I have heard that others who have "fan fiction" sites have been contacted by studios asking them to cease and desist. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but I have never been contacted by Sony or CBS suggesting that I am outside my bounds in the site I've done. I like to think that this is because I've stayed to the correct side of the parody/fan-fiction line.

The strange thing is that if this group is as good at improv as it is, it seems like the backdrop would be more distraction than help... Fan fiction, by its nature, usually just starts with an existing something as a jump-off and then goes a separate way. Improv as well.

They are showing a movie in a theatre, so they need permission from whoever owns the movie.

I don't agree with this as either an isolated statement or a summary of our (or, at least, my) analysis. The copyright law makes no such clear statement, and I think for good reason. I can imagine situations where you'd need this right of "fair use" even when showing the whole of someone's movie.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think these guys can hide behind the parody protection laws. They aren't really looking to specifically make fun of the movie, they just need a starting place to hang their improv humor.

Ah, well, I'm just working with the limited info from the article.

I do agree that there is a fine but important line between "parody" and "fan fiction".

"Parody" is commentary on a particular story, and the latter is merely taking the stage of a particular item as a jump-off. "Fan fiction", by contrast,I would imagine the fair use restrictions are stronger.

The point of parody is to make humor and sometimes a political message as well. Certainly my parody tends to have its basis in parody, and (in part out of parody and in part out of paranoia) I've gone to trouble to meticulously document on a per-episode basis the nature of the political commentary in plain text, for those who are comedically challenged and might otherwise overlook it. (e.g., consider Episode 47 as an example) was accompanied by a corresponding "moral of the story" page (e.g., Moral 47). In fact, some of my readers tell me they have preferred to just read the morals directly, either in addition or instead, so I know the commentary itself had value in and of itself.

I have heard that others who have "fan fiction" sites have been contacted by studios asking them to cease and desist. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but I have never been contacted by Sony or CBS suggesting that I am outside my bounds in the site I've done. I like to think that this is because I've stayed to the correct side of the parody/fan-fiction line.

The strange thing is that if this group is as good at improv as it is, it seems like the backdrop would be more distraction than help... Fan fiction, by its nature, usually just starts with an existing something as a jump-off and then goes a separate way. Improv as well.

They are showing a movie in a theatre, so they need permission from whoever owns the movie.

I don't agree with this as either an isolated statement or a summary of our (or, at least, my) analysis. The copyright law makes no such clear statement, and I think for good reason. I can imagine situations where you'd need this right of "fair use" even when showing the whole of someone's movie.

Parody IS fair use, and, more than that, constitutionally protected freedom of expression, but using actual Star Wars in the background is a violation of their IP.

[Disclaimers: I am not a lawyer; these are just my personal understandings as a member of the public. I am an advocate of existing strong controls by copyright owners. I am also, however, a strong advocate of the existing special protections for the work of parody authors. I myself am an author of works of parody that would not be possible absent such protection.]

As I understand it, the "fair use" criteria are not hard and fast. Substantial resources are available on the web for helping to understand this complex issue.

There are four criteria used in judging fair use. Among them, the principal one in controversy here seems to be "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole". The law doesn't say how the court is to address the amount and substantiality, just that it is to pay heed to it. What follows here is my own analysis of these issues.

First, and most obviously, by omitting the soundtrack, they are plainly taking only part of the work. This, it seems to me, is an acknowledgment of their need to not just rely on the power of the original piece in making their new work. (Note: I think there could exist situations where using the whole work might still be necessary to a proper public dialog through parody, but the case is easier to make when some parts have been omitted.)

Personally, I think the case for "fair use" in this case hinges on these issues: Are they using parody as a mere dodge for paying royalties on a movie they would just like to show for free? That is, are they negatively impacting the commercial stake of the movie? And secondarily, are they adding content which legitimately justifies the price they are charging on its own,or are they merely riding on the coat-tails of the movie to make money without adding any legitimate content of their own.

It seems to me very unlikely that a person who had never seen the movie would endure a parody session as a dodge for seeing it. It would be cheaper for them to just rent the DVD. Notwithstanding Lucas' desire that they not charge money, it seems to me that the fact that money is being willingly paid by attendees is a kind of proof that there is legitimate new content here. For far less, people could rent the DVD.

Additionally, and importantly, the work is not likely to appeal to anyone not having seen the movie. The movie would barely be intelligible to them. I'd bet that (to round numbers) everyone attending has seen (and paid for seeing) the movie several times. So I find it hard to imagine Lucas can make a case of losing money on this. If anything, the movie might create a desire on the part of attendees to go back and watch again to check on something, and that might generate new revenue for Lucas. So that seems a win/win, not an injury to Lucas.

Ironically, I further think that if Lucas made the materials routinely available for parody situations at an affordable cost, I might think they had more of a claim. It's the hard-line "you absolutely must not" stand that leads me to believe the courts should defend the individual rights of parody creators. Probably Lucas should just have a "parody-maker's price" for partial viewings,and then they'd have a new revenue source that people could tap into.

Further, if the work were not so ubiquitous as to make it likely that nearly everyone in the audience had paid at least once and probably many times to see the movie in some form already, one might be able to more easily make the claim that this was a dodge of the money-making version. But since the entire point rests upon the recognizability (presumably due to mu

I experimented with self-rating at my parody site of The Young and the Restless (daytime soaps). I made a self-rating system and, for a while, maintained ratings for each episode. (The stories themselves will be of no interest to anyone here who doesn't watch Y&R regularly, but the ratings system should be generally intelligible out of context.)

My ratings system is, itself, intended as subtle parody of the concept of ratings systems. The real problem with ratings systems is that the choice of what to rate is itself political. Unless you're committed to exposing in the ratings the inherent political tensions among various users, you're either going to provide no information or you'll serve one side or the other. Toward that end, I offered both "gay" and "intolerance" ratings; I personally don't like intolerance, but I understand it's fashionable in some camps. I offered both "irreverance" ratings and "evangelism" ratings. I abhor evangelism, but I guess some people are the reverse.

But the list of things people find to dislike in others could be endless, and the question becomes: how much burden can one place on the individual site to acknowledge things people might choose to dislike? Does the Bill Cosby show get labeled as "racial"? The open-minded among us would wish this were never an issue, but to some it is. I'm not advocating catering to the audience that thinks that's a useful rating, but I'm highlighting the obvious presence of that audience to point out that any ratings system immediately confronts the political.

And what of "Darwinism"? Do we just counter with a "Evolutionism" rating, requiring every show on earth to recognize that it confronts this issue and takes a side? What if one or the other side wants to simply call their category "Common Sense"? Who gets to pick the label names? The "Pro-Life"/"Pro-Choice" people have this problem, that the opposite sides label the opponent tactically, as in "Anti-Choice"/"Pro-Abortion". Even in this world-wide war (not yet referred to as World War III) going on now, both "sides" are claiming it's Good against Evil, but they each disagree on who's playing which role.

I've also found the issue of graphics to affect things. People ask me all the time if I run an adult site. Of course I do. It's intended to be read by adults! It doesn't have any pictures of nude people, of course, but I resent being told that the generic word "adult" has been co-opted for something as narrow as it has come to mean.

For my parody, there is also the issue of subtlety. This is an article that tries to treat the issue of politics even-handedly. Does that make this a political or an apolitical article? If I mentioned Darwinism in a derisive way, does that make it anti-Darwin? What if I only did so to make a humorous or ironic point and I'm really pro-Darwin? What if I write a story that takes a pro-violence or pro-drugs position to show the dangers of violence or drugs? How do I rate that? Ratings that are mere keywords, and not "relational expressions", capture none of this subtlety. Simple keywords ("use of") is not good enough. "comparison_of(darwin,evolution)" is different than "beats(darwin,evolution)" (or vice versa). Depiction of naked bodies having sex is different in educational contexts than in erotic contexts.

Depiction of nudity can also be essential in medical contexts. Must "medical" be a "rating" in order to enable this distinction? Once you do that, is "rating" much different than "search"? What is not a rating? Perhaps the key to rating is for Google to simply add a prompt to its search box saying "Type a rating:". Then the whole Internet will be suddenly already rated.

And, finally, as a writer, I note that any ratings system that is detailed enough to really be useful can spoil storylines. If the "ratable" part is too close to the end, then rating it can spoil the ending. Consider that I have a rating for "use of Atomic Devices" in my story; now how would rating Failsafe or Dr. Strangelove with this have affected the surprise of the endings? Or rating "use of single-person self-propelled vehicles" affect your appreciation of Citi--oh, never mind.

I think self-rating is time-consuming and probably pointless in that it won't satisfy any but a few. I have concluded that community ratings are perhaps more practical, but only if the set of categories isn't fixed or there is some way for politics to express itself. I don't think Slashdot quite has the notion right because it doesn't allow multiple points of view on the same article, but I applaud their experiment in community participation and I consider it much more right than most of the other systems out there. I hope to see (and perhaps myself do) more experiments in participation. The cyber world started out to be participatory. We shouldn't let it fall back to being just like going to the movies, full of pre-packaged content fitting into neat little categories, just because we're too lazy to offer alternatives.

I experimented with self-rating at my parody site of The Young and the Restless (daytime soaps). I made a self-rating system and, for a while, maintained ratings for each episode. (The stories themselves will be of no interest to anyone here who doesn't watch Y&R regularly, but the ratings system should be generally intelligible out of context.)

My ratings system is, itself, intended as subtle parody of the concept of ratings systems. The real problem with ratings systems is that the choice of what to rate is itself political. Unless you're committed to exposing in the ratings the inherent political tensions among various users, you're either going to provide no information or you'll serve one side or the other. Toward that end, I offered both "gay" and "intolerance" ratings; I personally don't like intolerance, but I understand it's fashionable in some camps. I offered both "irreverance" ratings and "evangelism" ratings. I abhor evangelism, but I guess some people are the reverse.

But the list of things people find to dislike in others could be endless, and the question becomes: how much burden can one place on the individual site to acknowledge things people might choose to dislike? Does the Bill Cosby show get labeled as "racial"? The open-minded among us would wish this were never an issue, but to some it is. I'm not advocating catering to the audience that thinks that's a useful rating, but I'm highlighting the obvious presence of that audience to point out that any ratings system immediately confronts the political.

And what of "Darwinism"? Do we just counter with a "Evolutionism" rating, requiring every show on earth to recognize that it confronts this issue and takes a side? What if one or the other side wants to simply call their category "Common Sense"? Who gets to pick the label names? The "Pro-Life"/"Pro-Choice" people have this problem, that the opposite sides label the opponent tactically, as in "Anti-Choice"/"Pro-Abortion". Even in this world-wide war (not yet referred to as World War III) going on now, both "sides" are claiming it's Good against Evil, but they each disagree on who's playing which role.

I've also found the issue of graphics to affect things. People ask me all the time if I run an adult site. Of course I do. It's intended to be read by adults! It doesn't have any pictures of nude people, of course, but I resent being told that the generic word "adult" has been co-opted for something as narrow as it has come to mean.

For my parody, there is also the issue of subtlety. This is an article that tries to treat the issue of politics even-handedly. Does that make this a political or an apolitical article? If I mentioned Darwinism in a derisive way, does that make it anti-Darwin? What if I only did so to make a humorous or ironic point and I'm really pro-Darwin? What if I write a story that takes a pro-violence or pro-drugs position to show the dangers of violence or drugs? How do I rate that? Ratings that are mere keywords, and not "relational expressions", capture none of this subtlety. Simple keywords ("use of") is not good enough. "comparison_of(darwin,evolution)" is different than "beats(darwin,evolution)" (or vice versa). Depiction of naked bodies having sex is different in educational contexts than in erotic contexts.

Depiction of nudity can also be essential in medical contexts. Must "medical" be a "rating" in order to enable this distinction? Once you do that, is "rating" much different than "search"? What is not a rating? Perhaps the key to rating is for Google to simply add a prompt to its search box saying "Type a rating:". Then the whole Internet will be suddenly already rated.

And, finally, as a writer, I note that any ratings system that is detailed enough to really be useful can spoil storylines. If the "ratable" part is too close to the end, then rating it can spoil the ending. Consider that I have a rating for "use of Atomic Devices" in my story; now how would rating Failsafe or Dr. Strangelove with this have affected the surprise of the endings? Or rating "use of single-person self-propelled vehicles" affect your appreciation of Citi--oh, never mind.

I think self-rating is time-consuming and probably pointless in that it won't satisfy any but a few. I have concluded that community ratings are perhaps more practical, but only if the set of categories isn't fixed or there is some way for politics to express itself. I don't think Slashdot quite has the notion right because it doesn't allow multiple points of view on the same article, but I applaud their experiment in community participation and I consider it much more right than most of the other systems out there. I hope to see (and perhaps myself do) more experiments in participation. The cyber world started out to be participatory. We shouldn't let it fall back to being just like going to the movies, full of pre-packaged content fitting into neat little categories, just because we're too lazy to offer alternatives.

I experimented with self-rating at my parody site of The Young and the Restless (daytime soaps). I made a self-rating system and, for a while, maintained ratings for each episode. (The stories themselves will be of no interest to anyone here who doesn't watch Y&R regularly, but the ratings system should be generally intelligible out of context.)

My ratings system is, itself, intended as subtle parody of the concept of ratings systems. The real problem with ratings systems is that the choice of what to rate is itself political. Unless you're committed to exposing in the ratings the inherent political tensions among various users, you're either going to provide no information or you'll serve one side or the other. Toward that end, I offered both "gay" and "intolerance" ratings; I personally don't like intolerance, but I understand it's fashionable in some camps. I offered both "irreverance" ratings and "evangelism" ratings. I abhor evangelism, but I guess some people are the reverse.

But the list of things people find to dislike in others could be endless, and the question becomes: how much burden can one place on the individual site to acknowledge things people might choose to dislike? Does the Bill Cosby show get labeled as "racial"? The open-minded among us would wish this were never an issue, but to some it is. I'm not advocating catering to the audience that thinks that's a useful rating, but I'm highlighting the obvious presence of that audience to point out that any ratings system immediately confronts the political.

And what of "Darwinism"? Do we just counter with a "Evolutionism" rating, requiring every show on earth to recognize that it confronts this issue and takes a side? What if one or the other side wants to simply call their category "Common Sense"? Who gets to pick the label names? The "Pro-Life"/"Pro-Choice" people have this problem, that the opposite sides label the opponent tactically, as in "Anti-Choice"/"Pro-Abortion". Even in this world-wide war (not yet referred to as World War III) going on now, both "sides" are claiming it's Good against Evil, but they each disagree on who's playing which role.

I've also found the issue of graphics to affect things. People ask me all the time if I run an adult site. Of course I do. It's intended to be read by adults! It doesn't have any pictures of nude people, of course, but I resent being told that the generic word "adult" has been co-opted for something as narrow as it has come to mean.

For my parody, there is also the issue of subtlety. This is an article that tries to treat the issue of politics even-handedly. Does that make this a political or an apolitical article? If I mentioned Darwinism in a derisive way, does that make it anti-Darwin? What if I only did so to make a humorous or ironic point and I'm really pro-Darwin? What if I write a story that takes a pro-violence or pro-drugs position to show the dangers of violence or drugs? How do I rate that? Ratings that are mere keywords, and not "relational expressions", capture none of this subtlety. Simple keywords ("use of") is not good enough. "comparison_of(darwin,evolution)" is different than "beats(darwin,evolution)" (or vice versa). Depiction of naked bodies having sex is different in educational contexts than in erotic contexts.

Depiction of nudity can also be essential in medical contexts. Must "medical" be a "rating" in order to enable this distinction? Once you do that, is "rating" much different than "search"? What is not a rating? Perhaps the key to rating is for Google to simply add a prompt to its search box saying "Type a rating:". Then the whole Internet will be suddenly already rated.

And, finally, as a writer, I note that any ratings system that is detailed enough to really be useful can spoil storylines. If the "ratable" part is too close to the end, then rating it can spoil the ending. Consider that I have a rating for "use of Atomic Devices" in my story; now how would rating Failsafe or Dr. Strangelove with this have affected the surprise of the endings? Or rating "use of single-person self-propelled vehicles" affect your appreciation of Citi--oh, never mind.

I think self-rating is time-consuming and probably pointless in that it won't satisfy any but a few. I have concluded that community ratings are perhaps more practical, but only if the set of categories isn't fixed or there is some way for politics to express itself. I don't think Slashdot quite has the notion right because it doesn't allow multiple points of view on the same article, but I applaud their experiment in community participation and I consider it much more right than most of the other systems out there. I hope to see (and perhaps myself do) more experiments in participation. The cyber world started out to be participatory. We shouldn't let it fall back to being just like going to the movies, full of pre-packaged content fitting into neat little categories, just because we're too lazy to offer alternatives.

I doubt this query will bubble up to be among the questions I'm supposed to answer for the interview, so I'll answer it ahead of time here.

I wish I had the time to experiment with automatic episode-writing for Another Way Out (AWO) using Lisp. I think it would be both well within the limits of technology and a lot of fun. Right now the only Lisp involved happens when I edit the stories in emacs (which is implemented in a lisp dialect). The stories are written the hard way, but at least they keep my writing skills honed, which sometimes helps out in work on the sci-fi novel I'm writing in background. (Drop me a line if you want notification if/when that comes available. But don't hold your breath--it won't be in time for Christmas.)

Regarding technology and writing, though, it continues to amaze me how sophisticated the editing tools are for programming and how weak they are for fiction writing. I consider the two to be virtually the same kind of activity, and it's been on my list sometime to write some better tools for supporting my writing. But there are always so many things to be doing...

Back on AWO for a moment, though, I use all kinds of mechanisms for coming up with plots and there's one that went over the heads of most of my readers but the nerds of this forum might get a kick out of. Each of my parodies comes with a "moral of the story" page (i.e., "editor's notes"), and you might find the moral for Episode 47 to be of special interest if you're the sort to care about mechanical story understanding/generation issues. I borrowed some tricks I'd learned from Pat Winston at the MIT AI Lab years before. The technique was almost like programming. The story came out more fun to read about than to read, frankly, but was a lot of fun to make.

And, for extra credit, those of you who are soap fans (no, you don't have to embarrass yourself by self-identifying) might also enjoy my Theory of RelativeTV, which explains some otherwise perplexing effects of time/space that occur in soaps.

I doubt this query will bubble up to be among the questions I'm supposed to answer for the interview, so I'll answer it ahead of time here.

I wish I had the time to experiment with automatic episode-writing for Another Way Out (AWO) using Lisp. I think it would be both well within the limits of technology and a lot of fun. Right now the only Lisp involved happens when I edit the stories in emacs (which is implemented in a lisp dialect). The stories are written the hard way, but at least they keep my writing skills honed, which sometimes helps out in work on the sci-fi novel I'm writing in background. (Drop me a line if you want notification if/when that comes available. But don't hold your breath--it won't be in time for Christmas.)

Regarding technology and writing, though, it continues to amaze me how sophisticated the editing tools are for programming and how weak they are for fiction writing. I consider the two to be virtually the same kind of activity, and it's been on my list sometime to write some better tools for supporting my writing. But there are always so many things to be doing...

Back on AWO for a moment, though, I use all kinds of mechanisms for coming up with plots and there's one that went over the heads of most of my readers but the nerds of this forum might get a kick out of. Each of my parodies comes with a "moral of the story" page (i.e., "editor's notes"), and you might find the moral for Episode 47 to be of special interest if you're the sort to care about mechanical story understanding/generation issues. I borrowed some tricks I'd learned from Pat Winston at the MIT AI Lab years before. The technique was almost like programming. The story came out more fun to read about than to read, frankly, but was a lot of fun to make.

And, for extra credit, those of you who are soap fans (no, you don't have to embarrass yourself by self-identifying) might also enjoy my Theory of RelativeTV, which explains some otherwise perplexing effects of time/space that occur in soaps.

I doubt this query will bubble up to be among the questions I'm supposed to answer for the interview, so I'll answer it ahead of time here.

I wish I had the time to experiment with automatic episode-writing for Another Way Out (AWO) using Lisp. I think it would be both well within the limits of technology and a lot of fun. Right now the only Lisp involved happens when I edit the stories in emacs (which is implemented in a lisp dialect). The stories are written the hard way, but at least they keep my writing skills honed, which sometimes helps out in work on the sci-fi novel I'm writing in background. (Drop me a line if you want notification if/when that comes available. But don't hold your breath--it won't be in time for Christmas.)

Regarding technology and writing, though, it continues to amaze me how sophisticated the editing tools are for programming and how weak they are for fiction writing. I consider the two to be virtually the same kind of activity, and it's been on my list sometime to write some better tools for supporting my writing. But there are always so many things to be doing...

Back on AWO for a moment, though, I use all kinds of mechanisms for coming up with plots and there's one that went over the heads of most of my readers but the nerds of this forum might get a kick out of. Each of my parodies comes with a "moral of the story" page (i.e., "editor's notes"), and you might find the moral for Episode 47 to be of special interest if you're the sort to care about mechanical story understanding/generation issues. I borrowed some tricks I'd learned from Pat Winston at the MIT AI Lab years before. The technique was almost like programming. The story came out more fun to read about than to read, frankly, but was a lot of fun to make.

And, for extra credit, those of you who are soap fans (no, you don't have to embarrass yourself by self-identifying) might also enjoy my Theory of RelativeTV, which explains some otherwise perplexing effects of time/space that occur in soaps.