Crowdsourcing; Mrs. Henderson; Pulp Fiction Week; Monster Movies' Marxist Metaphors; Critical Thinking; Roger Dean

A few things for Thursday:

• Here's an article I enjoyed in this month's Wired about the crowdsourcing phenomenon. Excerpt: But now the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts is attracting the attention of old-line businesses, too. For the last decade or so, companies have been looking overseas, to India or China, for cheap labor. But now it doesn’t matter where the laborers are – they might be down the block, they might be in Indonesia – as long as they are connected to the network.
• The other night we watched the recent film Mrs. Henderson Presents, a cute little film which has to do with one of my favorite subjects. Here's an article about the actual Mrs. Henderson.
• Slate magazine is celebrating pulp fiction this week. I like these pulp-coverizations of classic works of literature. Here's more on pulp from Michael Blowhard.

• Props to Annalee Newitz on her soon-to-be-released book on monster movies, even though I think that the U.S. economy makes things like enjoyment of monster movies possible in the first place.
• Good CSICOP article -- Critical Thinking: What Is It Good For? (And What Is It?). Excerpt: In short, since it is so easy to misperceive reality, a critical thinker is disinclined to take things at face value, suspicious of certainties, not easily swayed by conventional (or unconventional) wisdom, and distrustful of the facades and ideologies that serve as the ubiquitous cosmetics of social life. In other words, critical thinkers are necessarily skeptics.
• Reflecting on David Byrne's comments and Howard Finster's artwork the other day got me thinking of other album art I like, even though it's quite different from that used by the Heads. Here's the website of non-minimalist album-cover artist Roger Dean. He's the gentleman who did lots of cover art for Yes, Asia, and other British art-rock bands in the 70s and 80s (actually some stuff up through the present, too). Here's his Wikipedia entry. (Plus, an Asia fansite.) I just happen to have the image below set as my wallpaper.