more framed explanations
and now from the ever growing library of long explanatory paragraphs as art, come these two entries. first is jonathon keats’ conceptual auction of 6 billion neurons (more thorough, auxiliary explanatory paragraphs via wired, here). second is shelley jackson with her paragraphs on skin:// the mortal work of art”. (auxiliary paragraphs for this one, here). so as you can see the explanatory paragraphs really pile up, and as everyone knows the longer it takes to explain, the more paragraphs that need to be written, the better the art. enjoy, or not.
god and logical dodge ball
have ideas about god? suppositions? a line of logic that informs your beliefs beyond simple faith? play the battleground god game and see if there are irreconcilable contradictions in your logic so you can adjust accordingly. actually pretty interesting, all implied jibes aside.
i gotta wear shades
the brights. an old story which does not seem to have made any real waves. a movement for those with naturalistic world views to join under one banner and in the process assert themselves socially and politically. a movement for atheists, humanists, agnostics, and skeptics among others to get their voice heard among the din of religious mumbo-jumbo and rhetoric overpowering the airwaves and podiums. though you may not have heard of the brights movement it’s not for lack of effort.
in july of this year richard dawkins (an evolutionary biologist, oxford professor and author) and daniel c. dennett (a professor of philosophy, and author) wrote pieces for the guardian and the new york times respectively announcing the brights as a movement and moniker. now i don’t know these guys from jack, but luckily they are not figureheads as much as defacto mouthpieces of this embryonic movement. i missed both of these stories but caught another story dawkins did for wired. it peaked my interest (though caused me a little annoyance. he speaks about “brights” as being a meme and i could not help but wonder how something which is launched with press releases and editorials in major metropolitan newspapers as well as a web site can be considered a real meme? sounds like he is complicit in willing it to become one, but then he invented the term “meme”, so i guess he knows best) and i went looking to see what reaction has been.
somewhat predictably reaction has been a few degrees shy of tepid. by and large the most common reaction has been one concerned more with semantics than with the actual concept. many people simply think the term “brights” is arrogant and as such are turned off. as if atheists and their ilk needed any more negative connotations pinned to them, now they are not only godless hell bound heathens but arrogant and smug into the bargain. it was explained explicitly in every brights statement i’ve read that this word was not meant in it’s adjective sense but as a noun with a new meaning entirely. it is a neologism. and to be sure when coining a moniker from the inside there are inherent challenges. you’d want a term that makes people adopting it feel good, which people would be comfortable calling themselves, and one which manages to apply to all the disparate offshoots which might be contained within. “brights” is certainly meaningless enough to encompass all contingents but perhaps simultaneously too full of connotation for people, sympathetic or not, to stomach. most arguments put forth in support of the term use the example of the very successful modern neogism,“gay”. my favorite defense was the similar usage of the label “the right”, the connotations of which are obvious. even so, that these two evidently smart guys (popularizing a term coined elsewhere) thought that people would not simply take this as it sounds, is either extremely naive or just slightly miscalculated. in this case the moniker itself may doom the undertaking.
as usual the only people who seem to be able to muster any real fire or interest are those who dislike the idea, on semantic grounds or otherwise. some of the faithful, god fearing have chimed in of course. though perhaps not so relevant, in this case, i must say there is a distinct advantage for religious types in an argument in that they have doctrine on there side and thus a specific, codified viewpoint to prop them up and unite them utterly with their ilk, not to mention anything they might say which is contradictory or totally illogical can be smoothed over with that great cover-all, “faith”. such is the benefit of doctrine and indoctrination. secular types on the other hand, putting forth no claims on an absolute devine truth, need to come up with arguments themselves and often cant even agree with other secularists. this last is certainly relevant here because some of the most pointed criticism comes from people who might be labeled brights themselves.
i personally think the idea, however flawed in it’s execution, is a good one, and is something sorely needed. i am tired of hearing the president of the united states invoke the name of god in every address, i’m tired of hearing the word evil bandied about constantly, i’m tired of bombs and counter measures carrying a gods seal of approval, i’m tired of moral and ethical debates being polarized with god on one side. we were constantly reminded as children that this country was founded largely to allow for freedom of religion, this ought to include freedom from religion. as for “the brights” with so much derision and so little outspoken support it seems this may not even attain that desired status of true meme, let alone provide voice for the secular or precipitate any social change.
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aspen? ah yeah again and again
the truly great ubuweb has put up all of the content of a nice mid 60’s mag-in-a-box called aspen. it was a high minded affair with lots audio visual goodness. every bit of it’s varied content is here. good list of contributors. you can listen to duchamp, burroughs, beckett, robbe-grillet, glass, and bill evans, read some barthes or watch some rauschenberg and hans richter, just for starters. it is a bit dated in parts as you can well imagine but overall it still manages to out shine a good deal of the empty calorie crap magazines put forth now-a-days. check it out.
the contextual do-gooder
it happens, has happened, to you and to everyone. a person walking ahead of you drops something unknowingly. the question is what do you do? simple question really. what do you do? do you pick it up? do you call out, however uncharacteristically perhaps, and draw their attention to it? do you pretend not to notice? do you laugh out loud and find your day instantly brightened? there is no wrong answer. you are not being graded… not sure? thinking “it depends”? wondering “well, what did the person drop”? alright, fair enough…
it’s a glove. cold winter morning, turning into a revolving door, someone drops it. do you pick up your step and try to return it to them with a tap on the shoulder maybe? it’s a leather glove. it has chestnut colored fur poking out of the opening. do you pick it up? it’s expensive looking. do you call out? it’s palm side down. do you look at it only momentarily, like it were a chinese menu stuck to the pavement, and walk right by? it’s a woman who dropped it incidentally. does that matter at all? she’s young, pretty. if your into women you find her attractive. reaction? if your a woman yourself you think she looks nice enough, not too pretty, not excessively well dressed. what do you do? not sure?
o.k. she’s elderly. 80 years old at least. half hobbled. scholiosis. shabby coat. does sympathy or some notion of chivalry enter into your decision? hmmmm… she’s not old. no, she’s middle aged. she looks like a real bitch. small featured, bit of a sneer, cold. she looks rich. she looks like a girl who cuckolded you in 10th grade. do negative associations play any part? maybe?
alright you pissed off when you hit the sack the night before. bit of a cold and a fight with your significant other. you were rushed and didn’t watch the weather report, now your freezing. you see the glove hit the ground, your eyes are right on it. it’s a tiny rainbow colored mitten with a hello kitty pom-pom on the end. do you give a shit? it’s raining a bit. the small kid who dropped it has yellow rain boots on. she’s adorable. you pick it up right? your stock is down, you’re late, you’re sterile and can never have children of your own. she is small and angelic and you can see the other glove poking out of her pocket…
o.k. the kids not cute, the kid is loud mouthed and obnoxious, teasing a smaller child. do you laugh inwardly when you see the glove fall, thinking “karma, hahaha justice”. maybe you feel a small pang for him but are of the opinion small losses are a large part of life, get used to it, learn it now… who knows? there’s the glove. what exactly do you do? possibly you see a mitten, palm up in a puddle and find it somehow poetic? you watch it as you walk past never even noticing it’s owner, it having been dropped never even crossing your mind? it’s only a moment in time.
what if it’s not a glove at all but something else entirely? is there a sliding value scale wholly dependent on your feelings, associations, mood, biases, etc? is it based on the items monetary value? is it based on the items usefulness or replaceablity? if the person drops a pice of trash, lets say, do you call them out on it? is it in fact dependent on the item itself or the person who drops it? is it a combination of the two? what if it’s an old man who drops a snapshot? what if it’s a guy in a suit who drops an envelope? how about a cop who drops a slip of paper? a krishna who drops a pamphlet? a woman in scrubs who drops a metrocard? a kid who drops a notebook? a bum who drops a plastic bag? what happens in that fraction of a second, that makes you decide?
i ask because though i am a staunch holder of doors, a religious giver of cigarettes and occasional giver of change, a happy offerer of directions, and am unfailing at allowing people to exit the subway before entering, there are invisible lines of goodwill i rarely cross, and i wonder why. for instance i never accept a circular, going so far as to curse the offerer with an acerbic “get the fuck out of here”. i rarely hold an elevator, often laughing giddily to myself, silently taunting the people who arrived too late. also i stand my ground and curse people who try to come down on the right side of the subway stairs, saying things like “your a genius”, or “haven’t learned to us the stairs yet huh?” where are the lines and what is the mechanism? is it just the balance of things?
last week someone outside my office dropped a glove. i said nothing, but someone else who noticed spoke up, and the glove was returned. clearly a “not my problem” response on my part. later that same day, as i sat outside smoking, a guy walking past dropped a piece of trash (a wrapper or napkin or something) he looked down at it as he dropped it, and decided to leave it there. i watched him, and though i have, of course, littered my self, the act of looking at the thing he dropped, seeing that it was trash, and deciding to leave it there, struck me as particularly assholish. in an uncharacteristic moment of moral superiority i went over to pick it up and throw it away. don’t ask me why, perhaps penance for the glove thing, i have no idea. as i stooped down to pick it up i saw that it was actually a tiny bundle of trash and in the center of it was a dollar bill. now i drop change sometimes and just leave it there, laziness, small gesture of disdain toward our lust for money, whatever, but this guy clearly thought he’d only dropped trash and left it. “haha, dickhead.” i kept the dollar of course, fee for garbage collection. i had a good laugh and wondered about justice. i also wondered though weather i’d have returned it had it not been for the garbage thing, had he just dropped a dollar? most likely. or what if he’d pulled the asshole move and i found a fiver inside? or a twenty? would a larger bill be sufficient to override my annoyance with the guy? what if it were a fifty? would i just think the justice of it were even a greater justice? or at a certain value would the fine no longer befit the crime? don’t know. just curious.
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sine fiction
very interesting idea. people composing imaginary soundtracks to science fiction novels, created by whomever (we may need to do one ourselves huh?), and their conception of what constitutes a sci-fi book is nicely broad. they have covered samuel delaney’s dhalgren, italo calvino’s t-zero, and burroughs’ soft machine among others. my favorite thus far is the 1984 soundtrack. (ignorance is strength!) it’s a service of n((o))type which is a pretty cool place in and of itself. enjoy.
the low, lost life
great article by luc sante, (author of the much loved low life) in which he speaks about the “old” new york. a new york most of us only sniffed the lingering fumes of in the early nineties, when there were still a few sections of downtown that could be called communities. when there were still places that students, musicians, artists, and drug addicts could afford to live. when it was on the whole still dirty, crumbling, stinking and dare i say it, alive. now the only reason to go down there it seems is to buy a five hundred dollar t-shirt or pick over the bones of bars, clubs, and cafes that once had heart, soul, and balls.
feeling down?
hey. feeling down? having a bad day? forgot your umbrella? your team lost the big game? your favorite show got cancelled? got a big pimple on your nose? humidity wreaking havoc on your hair? got the flu? lonely? can’t get a date? got some bad feedback on friendster? left your cell phone in the back of a cab? lost your keys? have an awful hangover? didn’t get that promotion? well boo hoo. read this and shut up.
the picture of everything
remember being a kid and drawing your favorite cartoon or comic characters in your notebooks? i mean a young kid, before you got cool and started drawing them with joints hanging out of their mouths or eyes x-ed out holding a bottle of mad dog, thinking foolishly “this would be a dope t-shirt man.” i mean when you still loved them for what they were and not the “hilarity” that could be achieved by using their visages in unexpected contexts. this drawing, titled the picture of everything, manages to overcome the insistent gravitational pull of irony through sheer scale of it’s own, to become perhaps the greatest slathering pop doodle of all time. use the “picture key” to zoom in and get prompts on who everyone is. my favorite part is the placement of freud and jung with the three stooges. perfect. for extra credit try to find chaka from land of the lost or ian curtis or vincent from the black hole. enjoy.
archeography project
the nonist project: archeography went live this weekend. you can access it through the link in the left side bar. you will need the latest flash player as well as a decent internet connection. if your using dial up be prepared to wait and curse and possibly give up. i will try to get a non-flash version up in the future. enjoy.
if you’d like to comment on the project you click contact on the main page, or return here and comment in this post. whatever floats your boat.
bringing up baby
for those of you out there with kids, expecting kids, or belonging to religions which prohibit the use of prophylactics, here is a collection of educational sites. they were all created especially for your lads and little ladies by everyone’s most concerned big bro, the u.s. government…
1) the us treasury’s moneyfactory. what fun! where you’re 5-8 year old can learn all about counterfeiting from a clown named bucky.
2) the federal emergency management agency’s fema for kids where among other things they can learn what they might feel during a disaster, how to pack a fun filled disaster activity kit, or just peruse the today in disaster history calendar.
3) the c.i.a. for kids page where they can join in ginger the blue teddy bear’s c.i.a. adventure .
4) the kids department of justice page where they can learn about gun saftey, or they can“get it straight” from the prevention posse, asking questions like “what’s up with methamphetamine?”. they can download the pdf version of i’m going to federal court with mark and julie”.
5) of course the list would not be complete without the k-5 f.b.i. page, or the a.t.f. kids page... and hey while we’re at it might as well include the whitehouse’s page where they can get to know their president a bit better.
enjoy, parents and parents to be.
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confluence and conceit
came across this story last week. evidently there is an new “because it’s there” type project going on world wide. it’s called the degree confluence project. it’s interesting but ultimately pointless, much like this sort of related project. actually, looking at these two projects side by side reinforces my opinion that when doing a pointless though perhaps interesting thing the assertion that it is “art” really makes it much less enjoyable.
evolutionary tale
it was a long long time ago. pre history. a man, scarred and striated was covered in sweat. he hauled a rock two hundred miles from a sacred site where men of his kind had first seen the elephants morn their dead, past the thick and brutal beasts of the field, through the unknowable angers of the air. he hefted it on his back, crouched low and stumbling.
then, at his destination, and with blood under his fingernails, he meticulously chipped out of the rock’s surface his symbol for the panther with a smaller, hand sharpened, stone; making careful note that the panther’s tail curl downward as when ready to pounce, that the eyes were discernible. finished, he hefted the rock once more climbing through a wet quarter mile stretch of cave, his second trip through this place that had scattered in its shallows the waste of animal meals and the blood soaked feathers of true feather beds. he was here weeks before, hefting, as now, but hefting a different weight. the remains of his father, mauled and torn to nothing by the great cats. in a naturally occurring pool deep in this cave system he submerged his fathers gathered and wrapped bones. he labored through this cave a second time to wedge his sacred stone over the pools narrow mouth, to seal forever the remains of that great man, his father, where they might rest undisturbed by the slathering snouts and hard hands that find use in great men’s bones. having done so, having sweated and bled, he sat there in the dark corridor, running his palm over that fierce panther which would forever after guard his father and his resting pool, full of sadness but satisfied.
ten thousand years later a man in denim shorts is breathing heavily. his legs are coated in Deet, the metalicized wrapper of a chocolate Powerbar crinkles in his pocket as he moves. he is by most peoples standards portly, which hinders his headway somewhat. the Maglite in his helmet is at mid-beam and still illuminates the entirety of the cave walls around him. he moves slowly, checking his GPS to make sure he is on the right course. he knows full well that up ahead somewhere is a narrow alcove at the end of which a large stone is unnaturally lodged. this is his second trip to these caves. the first was with a colleague from the university. having come upon this artificial formation he feigned a charley horse and begged out of the session, concealing his find from his colleague. if there was something behind that stone it would be his to find, his to claim. no matter it was his colleague who revealed the cave system to him, his colleague who stressed that this system was pristine and needed to be explored. truth be told he despised his colleague, his colleague snorted once at his rat-cult theory and that was enough, he’s hated him ever since. hated his foppish wavy hair, his height, his baritone voice, hated most of all the giggles and doe eyed looks his colleague elicited from the female faculty. a great find here might change some of that. seeing the passage narrow he knows he has arrived. he soaks in the moment, imagining what might lay in store for him, headlines in some of the papers, publication of his findings in some of the bigger journals. maybe some discovery channel coverage… certainly a promotion to chair… and there in front of him is the stone. it’s edges are calcified and will need to be chipped away. grabbing his brush he sweeps the dust first from the rocks face. he notices a series of depressions… he catches his breath and digs his fingertips into the dirt there, first carefully then more frantically… the ancient dirt comes away and to his complete surprise it’s a carving! a carving in the face of the rock! he was dumbstruck. stepping back to focus his helmet Maglight on the stone he saw the carving for what it was and knew that all the sucking up, all the feigned smiles, and doctored credentials would finally pay their weight. it was a primitively carved rat, complete with long tail and beady eyes. it was more than he could ever have hoped for, proof positive of his rat-cult theories. he nearly fainted. now everyone would see him for what he was, even his father, that “great man”, could no longer begrudge him his own greatness!
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friendly reminder to religious fanatics
to any of you out there strapping a bomb to your transmission, pouring lighter fluid on a cross, shaking a spray paint can in a temple, etc, let me just offer this: the beliefs you are so fanatical about proliferating and defending are most likely not your own. that is to say, statistically, you almost certainly inherited those treasured beliefs. your religious affiliation is based on the exact same criteria which dictates the baseball or soccer team you follow. that is a fact.
your beliefs are based on two factors. ancestry and geography. if your father was a cubs fan and you live in chicago, then you are a cubs fan. most likely your father’s father was also a cubs fan. it’s that simple. weather or not the cubs suck.
if you look at a map of religious affiliations world wide you can see this very clearly. for example although hinduism is the third largest religion in the world, the VAST majority of adherents are located in india. the same applies for all major religions. though there is a world wide dispersion, the geographical boundaries for popularity of any one faith holds hard and fast. the majority of all cultural affiliations are inherited and only a small percentage of overall religious affiliation is composed of converts. i.e. people who choose their religion as adults when their brain is capable of little things like informed comparison and rational thought. ( in point of fact, as far as converts go, the largest growing belief system planet wide is secularism. it is not considered a religion, of course, so it’s riseis not easy to track in comparison to other belief systems, but among adults freely choosing their beliefs based on personal ideals rather than those passed on, secularism has been steadily on the rise for a hundred years. ) most peoples religious beliefs are cemented by the age of 12.
so what does this mean for you, oh righteous lifter of the sword, oh espouser of moral and spiritual imperatives? it means you are indoctrinated into fandom. it means every time you call someone a saint or martyr your giving them an m.v.p. award. it means every time you give money to fund some extreme religious action your buying a six dollar hotdog and watered down plastic cup of beer. every time you gather into a mob all you’re doing is painting big blue letters on your collective chests spelling out the name of your team. it means when you act violently on behalf of your religion all you are doing is raising a big foam hand that says, we’re #1.
in short it means you are a follower, that you are offering nothing new or vital to this planet and it’s inhabitants, and sadly, it probably means you’re not very smart. ( don’t like that conclusion? well their have been studies since the 1920’s showing the inverse relationship between intelligence and religious fervor. and here’s a nice quote for you “So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” —Bertrand Russell. ring any bells? ) but hey, it’s not up to me to preach, i know better. the fact remains though that the only difference between you and any average everyday sports fan is that your expressions of fandom hurt people, and make the world just a little bit worse. truth be told a lot of us rational folks are sick and tired of you. i mean really. who the fuck cares which team you root for? just buy a jersey and a hat and watch the game, because you are most certainly not fit to be a player in it. the end.
AFTERWORD.
if indeed you are an adult convert to an organized faith, well, whoopee for you, i hope you don’t have gunpowder under your fingernails, because if you do then, well, you have no excuse at all.
if you are on the fence about your beliefs, rejoice! that’s easily solved, because weather you realize it or not religions are evidently so simplistic that their basic tenants can be summed up in a short internet quiz. input your beliefs and this quiz will graciously tell you which religion you in fact belong to.
now, can we get on with our lives please? (go yankees!)
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monkey mind control
according to a washington post article“Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.” yes, you read correctly: a monkey moves a robot with his thoughts. lets just hope they don’t start hooking these monkeys up to say, these guys, or any of these. they might consider hooking these furry folks up to some electric typewriters though, since this simulation seems to be coming up empty.
cause i’m alive!
after all these years of wishing and hoping and longing you can finally see the motley crue live wire video in bright green ascii, played entirely in crappy midi tones… o.k. i admit the whole concept of metal videos rendered in ascii is disgustingly ironic but at least you don’t have to look at mick marrs’ old lady face. “cause it’s bight green and running free, a little bit better than it used to be”. on a side note sabbath’s paranoid in midi sounds exactly like a trans-am song… strange.
aesthetics in a vacuum
well in the coming year humanities visual aesthetics will be yet again put on display in that great gallery in the sky, space. two pieces of human artistic bric-a-brac are en route to mars as you read this. one, dubbed the first artwork on another planet, is damien hirst’s target painting aboard britian’s beagle2. the other, which is not nearly as presumptuous in it’s claims, but certainly related is bill nye’s sundial aboard two of nasa’s mars exploration rovers. as diminutive as they are i like these things, i like the idea of them, but in aesthetic terms i’m not sure weather we have really improved upon the venerable voyager’s gold record, or the pioneer 10’s plaque. maybe it’s like all the space art critics say, space painting is dead.