Of course, you should be watching lots of cool stuff at the San Francisco International Film Festival. But tomorrow will be especially fun for me because I’m on a panel with a bunch of amazing filmmakers to discuss “film as a tool for social and political change.” I’ll be talking about how the internet is changing film, as well as the future of revolutionary film online. Here’s a description of the panel, which is at 2 PM in theater 2 at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco’s Japantown:

The Revolution, Now Playing: Film as a Tool for Social and Political Change
New technologies are enabling and empowering new variations in political and social organizing—flash mobs, blogs, issue-oriented DVD clubs, etc. This energetic panel of activists and filmmakers will discuss current and future ways in which film and media can be used to effect meaningful change.

Moderated by Susan Gerhard, bureau chief, sf360.org

Panelists include Ian Inaba, founder, Guerilla News Network/director, American Blackout; Keith Morikawa, supervising producer, UTHTV.com; Annalee Newitz, writer, techsploitation.com; Adam Werbach, president, Ironweed Films; Jeff Zimbalist, director, Favela Rising.

My column this week is about one of the biggest issues facing average internet users, as well as the companies who service them: whether it will start costing money to send e-mail. Two of my favorite tech/culture nerds, Danny O’Brien and Esther Dyson, recently had a public debate about whether you’ll be paying a nickel to e-mail your sweetie on AOL. Will paying to mail solve the spam problem? Should we get over the old-school monetary economy and move into better economies like the social or attention economy? Find out in this week’s Techsploitation.

For a month last fall, I lived in an intentional community on New York’s Staten Island called Ganas. I found them online, and thought this group of roughly 100 people living together in 10 houses sounded fascinating. I’ve always wanted to learn more about living communally, since I’ve spent most of my life in group houses that were more or less communal.

This week, New York magazine ran an article I wrote about Ganas. It’s a slice of life piece that focuses on a few people in the group. What you won’t find in the article is a sense of what everyday life is like among people who have chosen to devote themselves to a social experiment in group living. For me, the everyday stuff was a terrific experience — the Ganasians proved to me that it’s possible to set up a tiny, stable economy in which resources are shared and many people are supported materially and to a certain extent emotionally too. I made lots of friends at Ganas, and am going out to New York this weekend to stay at Ganas for a few days.

It’s too bad more people can’t see how well group living works firsthand, because I think a lot of us would try it if it didn’t seem like such a scary unknown. Living with friends and sharing household responsibilities is a great alternative to the standard nuclear family meltdown.

My column this week is about a weird study conducted by a bunch of Belgian scientists who researched what happens to the videogame-playing abilities of people who are sleep deprived. Perfect information for people who like to stay up all night playing Civ. Not that I know anybody like that. At all. Nope.

I’m on the panel of people who will be judging submissions for Phoenix Rising, the first academic conference devoted to all things Harry Potter. It’s going to be in New Orleans from May 17-21, 2007 (yes, that’s next year), and the submissions deadline is Nov. 1 of this year. If you’re a Harry Potter nerd — whether academic or fan — consider submitting a proposal! The call for papers says:

The overarching conference themes focus on rebirth, cycles, and the rise of the hero at the end of the sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Additionally, special attention will be given to the arts, including examinations of Harry Potter and its convergence with music, visual arts, and film. The programming will not be limited to those themes, however, and presentations that address the Harry Potter series, related works, and phenomenon across all disciplines are encouraged as well. A non-exhaustive list of sample topics includes literary analyses of the novels; studies of the cultural phenomenon; use of the novels in schools and libraries for education; examination of related business and legal issues; scientific explanations of magic in the series; media and fan studies; craft-based workshops in writing, art, and publishing; and overviews of how the series and films fit into larger contexts.

No, I can’t guarantee you’ll be picked — I’ll have to let other judges decide on submissions from friends — but I can guarantee that hanging out with Harry Potter devotees in New Orleans next year will be awesome!

I’m on a comic book reading binge. And it’s Passover time. So here’s Dave Campbell’s review of the incredibly silly comic book Passover. He’s an angel. He’s on a mission. And, as Dave says:

He has big fluffy dove wings and wears a skirt over his pants. He’s got this weird bib thing going on, and he stole Thor’s boots. It’s not a flattering ensemble.

This week in my column, I talk about whether popular geek blog Slashdot is evolving away from its all-boy, sexist roots. I discuss a couple of incidents where my articles have been Slashdotted and huge chunks of the comment threads have been taken up with discussions of whether I’m hot or ugly.

A lot of readers have already written to me to say that they think men are just automatically sexists — or that geeks are so sex-deprived that they can’t look at women without thinking about fucking them. I don’t think either of those things is true, and that’s what I argue in my column. There are a lot of feminist men on Slashdot and elsewhere in the world, as well as men who wouldn’t call themselves feminists but who still value a woman for the content of her character instead of her hotness.

I’m a fan of Slashdot, and I hope my column encourages more women to join the debates on the site. The best thing we can do to stomp sexism in the geek world is to join that world and challenge all those guys’ stereotypes of women.

I’m the editor of a fabulous and weird indie magazine called other – we’ve been around since 2002, publishing general interest stories for freaks, geeks, queers, and political radicals. You can find us in your local independent bookstore, or in Borders, Tower, and Chapters. Anyway, we’re looking to expand our staff of writers, editors, bloggers, layout gurus, and ad sales folk. If you’re interested in finding out more about us, and possibly getting involved with a bunch of publishing dorks, come to our first-ever open staff meeting.

My article about new scientific evidence that humans have continued to evolve up to the present day — and will probably start evolving a lot faster — is the top story on Wired today.

I prepared for my first weekend working on the San Francisco Sex Information training staff as an intern by staying out really last last night watching James Gunn’s excellent horror flick Slither. If you have to get up at 8 AM to teach an all-day class on how to be a sex educator, I don’t necessarily recommend late-night movies about squirmy sperm-like creatures from space, largely due to the sleep-deprivation problem. But make no mistake — Slither is about sex.

My favorite kinds of horror movies are equal parts social commentary and big slimy monsters, the more grotesque the better. Slither is a hilarious satire of dead-end marriages, life in a small town, and what happens to sex in the context of both. Big hint: the sex is a little bit awful. It involves arm-sized sperm creatures plunging into various people’s mouths, and sharp tentacles penetrating their bodies, pumping them full of goo and turning them into barn-sized blobs who snarf dead animals and eventually “give birth to” the aforementioned alien sperm thingies via gory explosion.

Our main character is a Starla (Elizabeth Banks), a nice-girl teacher married to a philandering older man who pressures her to have sex and manipulates her with his status and money. Not surprisingly, he’s also the first person infected by the alien creature, and later becomes the giant drippy mastermind of the sperm (who eat people’s brains and turn them into sperm zombies). Lots of running and sperm-zombie killing fill out the main action sequences in the film, and a witty script makes the violence more like slapstick than sadism. At every turn, Starla is pursued by the sperm-zombies, whose minds are controlled by her husband — they alternately leer at her, berate her for neglecting her “wifely duties,” and call her a cheating slut.

Slither is great fun for anyone who loves gloopy special effects, and for people who like to analyze the crap out of pop culture. Plus, Nathan Fillion (AKA Firefly‘s Captain Tightpants) stars. Check it out!