Excerpt from Alan Moore's interview at Wired:

One thing is that with the comics medium, it has been proven—I believe by Pentagon tests in the late '80s—that comics are actually the best medium for imparting information to somebody in a form that they will retain and remember. That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. I personally feel—and this is just pseudo-scientific hippie bullshit—I feel this might be because the unit of currency of what used to be called our left brain is the word. Our left brain is what goes about speech and rationality. The unit of currency for our right brain, conversely, would be the image, because the right brain is preverbal.

So perhaps it is because of the combination of words and images in a readable form that comics does have this unique power. Now, of course, movies are a combination of words and images, but they have a completely different structure and completely different way of working. With a movie you are being dragged through the scenario at a relentless 24 frames a second. With a comic book you can dart your eyes back to a previous panel, or you can flip back a couple of pages to check whether there is some reference in the dialog to a scene that happened earlier.

You can also spend as much time as you want absorbing every image. This is especially true of something like Watchmen, where I was trying to take advantage of Dave Gibbons' brilliant capacity as a former surveyor for including incredible amounts of detail in every tiny panel, so we could choreograph every little thing. The little symbols and signs appearing in the background, every little touch could be choreographed to the last detail, and we knew that the audience—because they'd be reading at their own pace—would be able to study each panel and to take in these almost subliminal details. Even the best director in the world, even a person as talented as Terry Gilliam, could not possibly get that amount of information into a few frames of a movie. Even if they did, it would have zipped past far too quickly. Because the audience at the movie theater is not in control of the experience in the same way somebody reading is.

One of my big objections to film as a medium is that it's much too immersive, and I think that it turns us into a population of lazy and unimaginative drones. The absurd lengths that modern cinema and its CGI capabilities will go in order to save the audience the bother of imagining anything themselves is probably having a crippling effect on the mass imagination. You don't have to do anything. With a comic, you're having to do quite a lot. Even though you've got pictures there for you, you're having to fill in all the gaps between the panels, you're having to imagine characters voices. You're having to do quite a lot of work. Not quite as much work as with a straight unillustrated book, but you're still going to do quite a lot of work.

And I have to agree. Comics are comics; you read it at your own pace, you analyse the details like it held the secrets of the universe, you enjoy the little hidden things both in the art and story, and you fill in the gaps. That's what makes it great, and that's why, no matter how well the movie is done, the comic will always be better.

(Well. In normal circumstances at least. I've seen mediocre books or short stories become great movies, but that's a separate story altogether, and to date I haven't seen it done with comics yet.)

On the other hand, I think dismissing the flick like he does is a waste of good entertainment as well. Time to quote from Dave Gibbons' interview in the same issue:

The most bizarre thing was to actually be inside the Owlship, you know? As I kind of implied in an earlier answer I've always loved drawings and measured plans of things. I went to a lot of trouble to make the Owlship convincing and make room for everything that we saw inside it. So, to actually be inside this thing—the thing that had been inside my head, I was now inside that. It felt exactly like the space that I'd felt when I'd done the drawings. I think that was really the strangest thing, to sit in the command chair and play with the joystick and press the buttons and watch all the lights flash on.

And that's where the magic really is. That's why those geeky movies are so great. It's like, well, going to a theme park, except usually with higher quality results. These things have lived in our imaginations for years, and now we get to see them there, big and real-looking. It's, well, fun.

Another important thing missed there is that movies can be a social experience. Comics, by the very merit of being read at your own pace, are solitary; you can get together with people to read comics, but you don't actually read together — well, you can, but it kind of ruins the experience. That's what is (well, used to be) so great about Heroes; it's kind of like reading a comic book, only I do it with my girlfriend, and we react together.

Short version? Absolutely do go watch the Watchmen, but not if you haven't read the comic yet. :-)

Here's my latest archeo-neurological or archeo-psychiatric theory: “muse” is really an old term for bipolar disorder type 2.

It is my impression that old artists would sit around (or walk around) for days, weeks, doing nothing remarkable, or sometimes doing the hard, mechanical work of polishing up their creations. They would wonder where their “muses” are, why their genius is dormant.

And then one day, without warning, they feel that creativity, that exhilaration, that burst of awesome ideas, and a touch of insanity, that we've come to call genius; and they would attribute its less-than-constant presence to an invisible entity, the “muse”.

I believe, in our age, we call it hypomania, instead. A symptom of bipolar disorder type 2, a very common affliction that is frequently found in creative people. Paraphrasing Wikipedia, it's unknown whether creative types are more prone to be bipolar, or bipolars are more prone to be creative, or both are caused by a third, unidentified factor. What we do know is that the overlap is too great to be a coincidence.

Why is this interesting? Well, bipolar 2/creative people also tend to be romantics. So if you don't mind, I think I'll start referring to my hypomania as a muse, thankyouverymuch. It just sounds so much more desirable that way.

I have, on a number of occasions, stated that XML is harmful, and should be taken out and shot. So here I am today, to explain why I think that, and offer alternatives.

I think I've seen this argument for the first time in a Slashdot comment, years ago. I've since adopted it, refined it, and used it a lot myself; but now in light of the Android release, I think it's worth mentioning again.

The big problem I see with “Open Source” is that there are, in fact, two groups there. Fortunately the same is not true of Free Software, but even our arguing that it's about freedom still doesn't help... well, read on.

The thing with “Open Source” is: who is it open to?

Arguably, Open Source, as a vague, undefined thing, has existed for decades. But as a conscious, named movement with its own marketing, it spun off from the Free Software movement in the late 1990s, after the “open-sourcing” of Mozilla and the publishing of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. (Or, according to some, it spun off a few weeks later, when RMS noticed those guys were talking about something else and split off from the Open Source initiative.) Still, in hindsight, one can say things like the BSDs, and even the original Unix, were done more in the spirit of Open Source than of Free Software.

Now Free Software, with all its GNU/FSF writings, has always been very clear about its goals. We're here for the freedoms of the user. If you get a piece of software, you have a bunch of inalienable rights, rights that aren't being respected by most software, and which we intend to uphold and defend. Nice, eh?

Open Source people, on the other hand, seem to be a little confused about this. It's like watching two madmen (or drunks) arguing, each founding an argument on an entirely different premise. Some, perhaps still in touch with the “origins” of Open Source in the 90s, believe it's about being “open” to the users of the software. Others have adopted the belief (from BSD maybe?) that it's all about “openness” to the developers.

(More importantly, some of them don't realise Free Software ≠ Open Source, and mistakenly argue this in even more confusing terms; like the old fallacy that the GPL, and viral licenses in general, are bad for Free Software because they give “less freedom” than BSD-style licenses. They do, if you're thinking of other developers, who will then have the “freedom” to “steal” my software and use it in their own closed software, and not give back to the project in any way. I don't care the least about those; I'm writing software for the freedom of my users, and those have their freedoms enforced by a viral license. Now are viral licenses bad for Open Source? Honestly, I couldn't care less.)

The Android platform seems to be firmly planted in the latter camp, sadly. (Or maybe not so sadly; I rejoice with every Java-based product that fails.) It's “open”, first and foremost, for handset makers and network operators, and a distant second, to application developers. “Openness” for the end-user doesn't seem to even be a consideration. Now of course, both things are pretty much incompatible; being “open” to the operators means, really, “open” for them to “close” it in whatever ways they want; so yeah, no VOIP.

Oh well. At least I don't need to be conflicted about whether I want an Android device, whether I can stand Java long enough to actually like the OS. Clearly, that won't be a consideration, and OpenMoko — or, if they fail, someone else, probably using LiMo or FSO stacks — will be the mobile phone for me. Eventually :-)

You know what... I do understand and respect a family's right to believe any idiotic nonsense they want to. Who knows; it's a seriously messed up universe we live in, they could even be right.

But whether or not they're factually right is not what matters most in my book (which is not a holy book). Rather... their theories are grounded in a larger belief system, which has at its core a moral and ethical code. Telling the children in absolute terms that their parents beliefs are wrong, understandably, undermines the whole system, which in turn undermines the code.

(I'm not saying American creationists have a great code. Those are often the same people who are racists, xenophobes, or quick to judge someone by the bank account. But it's built on a good stem of what Americans call "work ethic", and arguably, it's better than no code at all.)

At the root of the argument is, in fact, a completely different wrong, which is the one I actually wanted to address in this post. The problem actually does lie with the (majority of) science teachers, who fall for the trap I call "the religion of science".

Good, respectable scientists almost never talk about facts. A fact, or rather an absolute rule, is anathema to good science; the only facts useful to scientists are the results of their experiments, everything else is theory.

What about bad scientists? Oh, those are frequently 100% sure of obvious truths, like, "the atom is indivisible" and "heat is a fluid" and "there's no such a thing as a memristor". (They're particularly eager to label things "impossible".)

The pattern here is: an open mind is the first pre-requisite for science, even more important than genius.

But in school -- and not only America, but many other places -- you only start hearing this kind of talk in college, or if you're really lucky, high school. Basic science, the teachers who were supposed to be giving children the basics of science and awakening potential future scientists, generally fall for "the religion of science". They "teach" absolutes; this is so, because that is so. Which is specially funny since some things they teach in basic school are known to be untrue, like Newtonian physics.

We wouldn't be even having this argument if school science teachers could behave like good scientists and formulate their teachings like, "evidence suggests that..." and "it is believed that..." and "apparently, ..." and, often, "this and that evidence points to the conclusion that...".

What, actually teach creationism in schools? No, now you're pushing it. Come on, the other parents also have the right to keep their children safely away from your nonsensical idiocy.