is free expression actually powerful? at all?

article over at reason about art, and whether the supposed power that it has, which proponents claim needs protection, and opponents claim is dangerous, is real or an over dramatic figment.

posted by jmorrison on 04/29 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
the sleeper awakens?

or the philosophical verisimilitude of a man named gurdjieff, a man, who incidentally, until today, i’d never heard of. evidently he was a philosopher of sorts, or perhaps a mystic. depends on your point of view i guess. he was a russian who traveled widely in asia, attempting to find clues to the answers of the big questions. why are we here? is there a God? what is love? what is life? what is death? in any case he seems to have come upon a somewhat unique philosophy, one that not only anticipated quite a few science fiction plots, but also much of quantum physics. it attempts to synthesize western scientific rationality with eastern philosophy and he called it the fourth way. i have no intention of attempting to sum up the man or his beliefs. luckily john shirley, one of the early practitioners of cyberpunk, has done it for me. here is a short but interesting piece about gurdjieff. philosopher or crank? up to you. (thanks to weblogsky for pointing me there)

posted by jmorrison on 04/29 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
recreational brain scanning

slate article offering a sort of consumer guide to brain scanning on the cheap. includes biofeedback, neurofeedback, cortisol tracking, and fMRI. fun for the whole family!

the zompist

i have no idea what a zompist might be, and all the better. perhaps zompists and nonists have something in common. anyhow, i clicked a metafilter link titled the zompist phrasebook this morning. it was funny. so, as i often do, i checked out the homepage to see exactly who served me this morsel.

posted by jmorrison on 04/24 | sights & sounds | | permalink
the origins of american animation

amazing collection of short movies from the early 1900’s, showcasing some of the earliest known american animation. some really fantastic stuff.

posted by jmorrison on 04/23 | sights & sounds - film | | permalink
artifacts of the future

the first science fiction museum and hall of fame is due to open it’s doors in a little over a month in seattle washington. its a great idea, and the list of advisors is really pretty impressive, assuming they are actually doing some advising. all that’s left to see is how it gets executed.

posted by jmorrison on 04/23 | news & views - op ed | | permalink
visiting the digital village

found the audio archive page for a radio show called the digital villiage. it’s a tech show concerned mostly with tech’s effects on society. the archive has discussions with many interesting folks. laurence lessig, bruce sterling, neil stephenson among many others.

posted by jmorrison on 04/23 | sights & sounds | | permalink
supermodels are people too

they get jet lag. they feel insecure sometimes. they crap, when a months worth of frisee and edamame add up to an ounce. they get sad. they even get lonely, just like you. or so the blogger responsible for these super model personal ads likes to imagine.

posted by jmorrison on 04/23 | lost & found | | permalink
unbearable lengths of time

time passes, as it has long been observed to do. the quality of that passage varies wildly. achingly slow, with each wedge of the clock face growing imperceptably like a stalactite, or painfully fast, with clock faces forgotten in a mess of blurred dots and double digits. groan, grumble, curse the sun, no matter as the days pass, as fingers twitch toward your poor prostate, as hopes for silver hair counterbalance the dread of none. the one and only certifiable quality of time remains true, that there is too little of it for you.

strange science

came across this site called strange science which illuminates the path to knowledge by cataloging a whole slew of science’s many mistakes, specifically in the field of biology and paleontology. interesting and heartwarming to any nonist. of particular interest is their so called goof gallery which offers many images of the creatures science got wrong. take a gander.

posted by jmorrison on 04/20 | tech & science - theory | | permalink
tips for the burgeoning misanthrope

or the anti-social primer. includes beginner, intermediate, and advanced tutorials. go prime yourself.

posted by jmorrison on 04/20 | lost & found | | permalink
art (or irony, commercialism, and crib notes)

found this deceptively titled article at the guardian called death of the gallery. the piece really has little to do with the mutation of gallery space, and more to do with fine art’s frenetic attempts to distance itself from the “low” culture of “dirty commerce” it increasingly draws from, mainly through irony which is too thin and paragraphs of explanation which are too thick. i found it a gratifying read if for nothing else than the last lines, which sum up nicely one of my own pet peeves. “perhaps the growing reliance on curatorial exposition serves as a safety rail of sorts, there to stop us falling into the hole where the art should be, but isn’t.” bravo.

posted by jmorrison on 04/16 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
dissecting the colossus

five new books are out right now debating the old question of american power, are we or are we not an empire? if so what is the character and logic of the colossus? this article tries to sum up some of the prevailing views. interesting read.

posted by jmorrison on 04/16 | news & views | | permalink
the panoramic equinox

found a new section at the geo-image project which is pretty fantastic. evidently on march 20th 170 photographers in 39 countries shot quicktime VR panoramas to celebrate the equinox. they are all posted by region here. i have to say there are some of the best VR’s i’ve ever seen here. many beautiful far off places to see though as usual, in projects like this, there are far too few entries from africa and the middle east, which is a shame since they would be infinitely more interesting than many of the american entries. check them out. (p.s. new paltz is even tucked away on the list for any of you hudson valley readers.)

posted by jmorrison on 04/16 | sights & sounds | | permalink
word and picture in a media age

well, i never would have expected to be posting anything by camille paglia, but, well, this is the nonist after all, so i’ll not let my deep snooze inducing attempt to read sexual personae in college keep me from my appointed rounds. here is an essay titled the magic of images which explores some negative consequences of a student culture inseparable from the pop culture which surrounds it…. or something like that. takes a meandering route through baroque art, prehistoric painting, iconoclasm, and the pre-columbian skull. pretty good read.

posted by jmorrison on 04/15 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
zen gardens

all of us metropolitan folks can REALLY use some peace, quiet, and stillness. with that in mind try and stifle your stream of urban bile long enough to look longingly at these japanese zen gardens. there is a small recreation of a zen garden in the MET which is as close as i have ever gotten to one of these magnificent places. check out the short quicktime movies for each site for a better sense of them. breath deeply and enjoy.

posted by jmorrison on 04/15 | sights & sounds | | permalink
more mind control

no, not in the orwellian sense, we’re talking the real deal. in the vein of this october post evidently the fda has approved human trials for tiny implants to be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. “If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send.” how long before this is the technology used for our t.v. remotes? wild.

posted by jmorrison on 04/15 | tech & science - bio | | permalink
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