Nuestro apoyo a las tomas de los colegios en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, posible lectura:"La Escuela de Noche" de Cortázar y sugerencias para descargar música y escribir una crónica.
"The IT Crowd trata de las peripecias de Roy (Chris O'Dowd) y Moss (Richard Ayoade), dos ingenieros informáticos de Industrias Reynholm que conservan la clásica actitud de este tipo de empleados (vagos, geeks, BOFH y freaks) junto a su jefa Jen (Katherine Parkinson), que no tiene ni idea de informática y sin embargo es la directora del departamento.
Con un «especial» e informático humor inglés, nos encontramos con situaciones divertidísimas como los tópicos informáticos de «trabajar viviendo en un sótano», referencias a «detalles muy geeks» (como el monstruo pastafari) o términos informáticos variados. Sin embargo, la serie tiene su equilibrio justo para que -tanto la audiencia sin conocimientos informáticos como con ellos- pueda disfrutarla. "
Las ventas de la versión para Kindle de “The Lost Symbol” superan las de la edición impresa
Los lectores de libros digitales poco a poco van haciendo su mercado y si bien el cambio está siendo más paulatino que lo que sucedió con los reproductores de MP3, considero que dentro de unos años, sobre todo para los más jóvenes y amantes de la tecnología, tener un libro físico en sus manos será algo bien raro.
Una clara muestra de esto son los números de ventas en Amazon que está mostrando “The Lost Symbol”, el último libro del autor Dan Brown, el cual vendió más en su versión para Kindle que en su edición impresa.
Está clarísimo que poco a poco los tiempos irán modificándose y si bien soy un ferviente defensor de los libros físicos simplemente por el cariño que les tengo, también sé que esta tecnología no sólo es más barata (el libro cuesta US$16,7 mientras que el digital US$9,99) y cómoda (las largas filas en las librerías dejarán de existir y la transferencia del libro a través de WiFi durará segundos), sino también que, si se fabrica correctamente, es beneficiosa para la ecología.
Sea como sea, estamos viendo un verdadero antes y después ya que por primera vez las ventas de eBooks superaron a las ventas de ediciones impresas (al menos en Amazon).
En este caso hay diferencia....Veremos qué pasa cuando todo llega al Sur, la lástima es que por Best Sellers es que pondrán en la misma bolsa a todos al que descarga libros descatalogados y al desesperado que quiere el libro que salió ayer YA!! y gratis.
Lewis, Barbara Jo – Human machine: The treatment of the cyborg in American popular fiction and films
The researcher's purposes in this study have been to trace the evolution of the figure of the cyborg in selected American popular fiction and film, analyze the presentation of the figure as it changes over time within this century, and examine the attitudes, beliefs and values about the relationship of humans to technology codified and propagated through the narratives into which the cyborg is woven.
Zarlengo, Kristina - Inside the Nuclear Theater (Fiction, Propaganda and Imagination in the American Atomic Age)
ABSTRACT
My dissertation investigates the atomic age, an era of American history when civilian notions of nationalism were dominated by fictions that were sometimes propaganda, sometimes novels and films. The first chapter is a review of the pre-1945 official history of the Manhattan Project and the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. That chapter is a backdrop to the remainder of the dissertation, which is about not official history, but particular historical changes in consciousness and rearticulations of standing tropes that have spun out from atom bomb technologies, as reflected in fictions. I review different kinds of fiction about atomic bombs, from a variety of media: those generated by officials in public information campaigns (especially those that stitched together atomic age constructions of gender); those in several fictional accounts of life under the threat of nuclear war; those in films about nuclear armageddon; and those of Thomas Pynchon's novels Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49. In different ways, all of these fictions compose a public history of the atomic age; they are stories that chart the contents of secular knowledge about atomic energy. In that sense, are epistemological fictions.
In chapter two, I closely study motifs and metaphors in post-1945 public information. Chapter three is a review of how atomic age constructions of gender roles asked members of the public to miniaturize and personalize atomic power, to bring it into their imaginations. In chapter four, I study films about nuclear war, especially Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe; in chapter five I read some examples of atomic age fiction, including some pulp fiction, but with an emphasis on J.G. Ballard's "The Terminal Beach," John Cheever's
The Wapshot Scandal and Don DeLillo's White Noise. Finally, I read Thomas Pynchon's fiction as an elegant record of an age defined by hysteresis, the prominence of human-made environments, and culture that is supported by a death far different from the armageddon promised by nuclear war, a death that happens by degrees.
James, Edward and Mendleshon, Farah - The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction
Science fiction is at the intersection of numerous fields. It is a literature which draws on popular culture, and which engages in speculation about science, history and all types of social relations. This volume brings together essays by scholars and practitioners of science fiction, which look at the genre from these different angles. After an introduction to the nature of science fiction, historical chapters trace science fiction from Thomas More to the present day, including a chapter on film and television. The second section introduces four
important critical approaches to science fiction drawing their theoretical inspiration
from Marxism, postmodernism, feminism and queer theory. The final and largest section of the book looks at various themes and sub-genres of science fiction. A number of well-known science fiction writers contribute to this volume, including Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford, Andy Duncan, James Gunn, Joan Slonczewski and Damien Broderick.
Negotiating Culture, Identity and Anxiety 1950´s Science Fiction Invasion Films
This dissertation examines a popular 1950s film genre that both supported and was critical of Cold War ideologies-science fiction films, in particular, science fiction invasion films. I am primarily concerned with examining what the films can tell us about the tensions in the U.S.at the dawn of the atomic age. The film's "us" versus "them" nature reveals a great deal about the concerns and conflicting ideologies circulating in 1950s society. Working from the assumption that "invasion" films provided important visual and verbal narratives for U.S. citizens' trying to understand and negotiate the social and political changes that followed the allied victory in WWII, I focus on Hollywood science fiction invasion films made in the U.S. From 1950 through 1960. Taking a cultural studies approach to the film texts, I seek to "read" these invasion narratives as performances of middle-class, primarily white U.S.citizens' anxieties about “boundaries" and crossings/invasions of those boundaries.
Using the ideas of Mary Douglas, Susan Sontag, and others about the ways the human body and society become metaphors for one another, this analysis focuses on anxieties about three boundaries, invasions across those boundaries, and defense of the boundaries: I) the boundary between the individual and the group commonly represented as anxiety about individualism in a decade during which conformity was becoming highly valued; 2) the boundaries of women's bodies and their roles in the public and private spheres; 3) and the boundaries between "us" and "them," focusing on notions of "aIienness" and the racialized Other. Specifically, t want to examine how the films work to support other hegemonic narratives in 1950s culture. More importantly, however, I want to see if these films offer any ideological positions other than the dominant, hegemonic one. I am interested in examining the polysemic nature of these films to uncover the cultural tensions explicitly and implicitly evident in them.
Smith, John – Men of the cold war: Warrior, Ethos and Domesticity in 1950´s America
Typically, traditional histories of the United States consist of a series of narrative centered on significant male figures, usually military leaders or those with significant military backgrounds. Though this cultural focus on warrior males seems adequate for most Americans through the end of the Second World war, the advent of the Cold War brought this dependence upon traditional warrior models into question. The widespread dissolution of traditional familial bonds -occurring during a period when the nuclear family was touted as a bulwark against external aggression- the nascent civil rights and women's equality movements, along with major advancements in nuclear - weapons - and rocket technology, all call into question the validity and efficacy of the male warriors' dominant position in American society during the 1950s. A detailed examination of such disparate sources as war films, science fiction “B”movies, children's space literature, and popular magazines such as Life and Collier 's –alongside traditional poetry and fiction- presents a fresh, unique understanding of gender roles and social expectations in mid-Twentieth Century America. Focusing on the years 1945 through 1963- the period from just after the close of World War II - through the end of the Mercury space program - this dissertation helps to change the common perception that America's Cold War anxieties stemmed primarily from an external source: the threat of Communist expansion and aggression. In fact, what worried most white, heterosexual men in 1950s America was actually an internal threat to their traditional social status: pressure to abandon their warrior ethos in favor of domestication. Though the United States has made tremendous strides in recognizing the value of multiculturalism, such social advancements came only after much consternation by those who had to relinquish their traditional societal roles: the Warrior Males.
Davis, Doug - Strategic Fictions: Crisis, Invention, and Discovery in the American Narratives of Nuclear Defense
In his dissertation, "Strategic Fictions: Crisis, Invention, and Discovery in the American Narratives of Nuclear Defense," Doug Davis examines the central, troubled, and surprising role that storytelling, and specifically future war storytelling, played within the Cold War policy of nuclear deterrence. Combining the science studies theories of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway with science fiction genre theory and the nuclear criticism of Jacques Derrida, Davis analyzes a diverse body of literature that concerns the future prospects of nuclear war, including national policy documents, scientific texts, journalism, pro- and anti-nuclear propaganda, and numerous works of literary fiction and film. Davis shows how these strategic fictions participated in the construction of an American narrative of nuclear defense, a future imaginary of a world at war that prescribed Cold War American global policy. However, as the practice of nuclear defense also meant imagining and writing about a future when that defense failed, the American narrative of nuclear defense engendered military and political crises and reversals with its every articulation. After detailing how this inherently contradictory narrative came to define Cold War American global policy, Davis explores how nuclear defense's contradictions were negotiated in film, literature, and science. First, he examines Hollywood films about the Air Force, focusing on Anthony Mann's Strategic Air Command (1955) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), to show how Hollywood participated in the cultural politics of nuclear defense by telling cyborg love stories. He then considers two postmodernist novels, Kurt Vonnegut´s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow(1973), to show how literature about World War IIworked upon the imagination of World War III. Finally, Davis analyzes the geoIogica1 science of impact-extinction theory (the Alvarez thesis), which posits that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid or comet impact, as a metaphoric
product of the Cold War's state of nuclear defense. Davis concludes by considering how our understanding of Cold War America's strategic fictions of nuclear war may help us understand the strategic fictions of nuclear terrorism that are currently guiding the United
States' national security strategy of preemptive war.
Taylor, Aaron – World without end: Historicity and the contemporary science fiction cinema.
This thesis is an analysis of North American science fiction cinema, from 1985-1999, in which the role of history and historicity is evaluated. Time has always been a central preoccupation of SF, but the thematic importance of the past as temporality has long been undermined by critics. History plays a much more constructive role in contemporary SF than previous critics have allowed. Theliteral "presence" of signifiers of the "past" services narratives which are often fundamentally moralistic in nature. Science fiction's historicity is employed to prevent the alienation of "future shock" - the estranging tendencies of new technologies - which necessitate newmodes of epistemological and ontological adaptation. In such films, history plays the vital functionof conscience. Representations of familiar futures are not necessarily conservative, but are indicative of a development in SF that refuses to celebrate progress at the expense of history.
Sanders, Steven (ed.) - The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film
The essays in this volume explore some of the ideas and possibilities that science fiction films take as their starting points. Since the essays are philosophical, they aim to increase readers’ understanding and appreciation by identifying the philosophical implications and assumptions of The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Terminator, and a dozen other science fiction film classics. The questions these films raise are addressed by philosophers, film theorists, and other scholars who take a variety of approaches and perspectives. No single method or school of thought predominates. Of course, there is a consensus among the contributors that intelligent and well-informed discussion of films can lead to greater appreciation and understanding of them. And each contributor would no doubt agree that it is desirable for readers to have a firsthand acquaintance with the film he or she has chosen to write about.
Noonan, Bonnie – Representation of women in the “B” science fiction films of the 1950´s
This project shows how central representations of women in science were to the “B” science fiction films of the 1950s and uses these films as valuable indicators for cultural analysis. I argue that the emergence of the modern American science fiction film in 1950 combined with the situation of post-W.W.II women in science to create a genre explicitly amenable to exploring the tension between a woman’s place in the home and her place in the work force, particularly in the fields of science.
Out of a context of 114 “B” science fiction films produced between 1950 and 1966, I offer substantial readings of seven films that feature women in science. Using changing gender roles after W.W.II as an analytical focus, each chapter explores relationality within films, among films, and between films and the culture in which they were produced, distributed, and consumed in order to make visible overall gender patterns, kinship systems, and possibilities for imagining change. The conclusion to the project uses the conceptual framework that has been established to suggest possibilities for a more thorough analysis of the American science fiction film genre, in particular as that genre resonates with concerns relevant to feminist theory.
Science fiction, for many decades, was dominated by male writers writing
about past, present, and future patriarchal societies, and these authors became
visionaries about the direction human society was taking. As women became
more interested in science and science fiction, some male authors attempted to
incorporate this "new" woman into the futures about which they were writing.
Because society has changed so drastically in the decades since the 1960´s, it is important to analyze the characterization of women in mainstream science fiction novels and visual media. As women are reflected in various stages of visionary or cautionary modes, it may be possible to determine how women can or should prepare themselves for the twenty-first century.
This study will be a comparison which will focus on four science fiction
novels and their visual adaptations by means of formal critical works and
personal analysis. In comparing and contrasting science fiction novels and
visual adaptations, it is of great benefit to be able to look at the filmic
interpretations of the novels in question. In the filmic versions, the influence of
society is seen more clearly because filmmakers adapt novels in such a way as
to draw the largest possible audience. When one determines what society views as important, intriguing, and/or interesting, the findings can be extrapolated to show that the influence of a specific segment of society on a specific author at a specific time can be very different than on society as a whole. It is also possible to see how societal views may differ from the author's view. In this way, a determination can be made as to the validity of the visionary or cautionary aspects of each work. The hypothesized results will show that the films are skewed in terms of the filmmakers' views on society's stand on patriarchy versus feminism, rather than, the author's presumed intent.
La historia del maquinista Odd Horten, quien encuentra una gran dificultad de adaptacion a su nueva vida de jubilado. Cuando el tren sale de la estacion sin el maquinista Odd Horten a bordo, se da cuenta de que el camino que tiene por delante es un viaje sin horarios fijos ni paradas muy bien conocidas. Horten se ha jubilado y el anden ya no parece seguro.
Parece que a lo que dejaron en taringa hay algún archivo que no funciona, si es así, deje en los comentarios de ese sitio (taringa) en dónde puede descargarse lo que falta.
