I like ideas which make us understand and respect other point of views, which try to bring people and cultures together.
Recently I stumbled upon two of such ideas while getting my daily dose of TED talks.
The first one is “The 99″, a superhero comic book. Although the back-story and the base rule set is heavily influenced by Islamic culture and history, its world is very open: the 99 superheroes are from all over the globe, they are citizens of 99 countries. (Even Hungary has one lol.)
It is quite refreshing to see a bit different kind of storytelling. I’ve read a boatload of comics (Marvel/DC) back in the day, so I learned much about American ideals, their way of life.
The 99 is not like that. It somewhat reminds me of the TV series “Heroes”, but the Islamic concepts give it a different flavor which makes it interesting.
After superheros here are some regular but much funnier guys from the Middle East: The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.
Three fellows with middle eastern roots doing stand-up comedy about hatred, fear, extremism, prejudice, stupidity, hypocrisy… on both sides of the fence. The western and the mid-eastern world both have more than enough things worth mocking.
Quite a few jokes are “edgy” (politically is sooo not correct), so much so that only someone from that community and cultural background could tell them without being of bad taste. They make fun of things without becoming self deprecating or “anti-western world”.
The aim of AoECT is to be funny and to show that we all have the same faults and virtues regardless in which country we live in.
I think they succeed spectacularly on both counts.
I updated IllusTweaks. These are the changes in v1.1:
I extended the IllusNav script with a pie menu. (Also renamed it to IllusTweaks.)
