Author: James Pynn
Published articles: 12
While I have no talent for painting a picture with words or enticing a reader to a flight of unbridled fancy, I can say with some confidence, I know what sells. In a word? Technology. To be sure, above and beyond sex or value saved, technology, especially in the form of gadgetry — and that is key — makes for the most compelling copy online or in print.
I have been asked, of late, if I have screened James Cameron’s Avatar. The answer is no, but I have read a great deal about the film. So, with that disclosure addressed, I must say its popularity has less to do with its hackneyed plot as it has to do with its unimaginable display of computer-generated world-crafting and design. A film based on the exploits of a human “inhabiting” the body of an alien creature seems to herald an age that is fast approaching. Our need to supersede “virtual” reality has become the drive to sculpt our reality and augment it with a touch of other-worldly flair. There is a time coming that to exist will beg the question of “in which reality will we choose to exist?”
What is karaoke but an opportunity to laugh and be laughed at? Belting out your rendition of Sinatra’s My Way — not recommended in the Philippines, by the by — is meant to either prove you have the chops to audition for American Idol or are nothing more than some half-drunken sod with a voice that could crack glass. While indeed the threat of public humiliation is palpable, anyone with even a modicum of vocal skill can manage to mildly entertain a crowd of enthusiastic drinkers.
To ensure lives are saved and injuries treated accordingly, medical personnel require access to an array of state-of-the-art devices, the least among them being a viable medical PC. Triage and point-of-care specialists typically use these powerful diagnostic and data-compiling devices. They are, to borrow a phrase popular in the American Northeast, “literally” the front line in the war against pain, injury, disease, and death.
The next big thing — the star that will unseat the likes of Johnny Depp, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt — will surely come from the humblest of origins. This is a truism that is particularly apt in the entertainment industry. The actor that comes from an MFA program or carries PhD credentials is the actor doomed to play the FBI section chief or the bumbling father in a Doritos commercial. No, the great stars are never academic, and are always a generation removed from the blue-collar toil their parents were burdened with.