sketch me if you can

came across this online demo of some police sketch-artist software. thought i’d test it out, see if the fuzz would be able to identify me with nothing more than a witness’ limited memory and a computers’ limited imagination. the results? not too bad as you can see. though i detect what may be a fatal flaw in the system. i could not add the soul patch to my beard /mustache combo in order to create the all important tri-fecta of facial hair. “hey copper that guy in your sketch looks nothing like me man! he doesn’t have a pussy bumper!” also it seems anyone with a mono-brow or high top fade has free reign to pillage and plunder without recourse. the system did an excellent

job of sketching one particular wanted, fugitive, missing person. if he ever comes out of hiding and shows his face again somewhere other than in a plate of waffles or a grilled cheese sandwich they’ve got him for sure!

posted by jmorrison on 11/30 | lost & found | | permalink
the inner life of children

check out norwegian born photographer simen johan’s work. his work deals with the unseen fantasy life of children. his work is digitally enhanced in the extreme. the images are creepy, though not in the same way a loretta lux portrait is. this creepiness might be regarded as proof of strength or weakness depending on how you see things. in my opinion his better images are the less explicit more mysterious ones. his newest work takes a great stride in that direction by removing the children all together. in any case they are all interesting, give them a look.

posted by jmorrison on 11/30 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
the hedonistic imperative

a massive essay exploring how to eliminate suffering on planet earth. from the abstract “this manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. the abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.” well meaning utopians or strangely optimistic tin-foil hatters? both probably.

posted by jmorrison on 11/30 | lost & found - wtf | | permalink
new perspectives quarterly

npq’s fall 2004 issue is called the scientific imagination. it’s chock full of interesting reading. from questions like “will the future need us?” to genomics, to the koran and cloning, to stephen hawkings grumbles about the basic flaws of our science-fictional vision of the future. looking into npq’s archive offers endless pieces of interest like the father of chaos theory’s take on creativity in art and nature. good reading if you’ve got the time.

posted by jmorrison on 11/30 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
ape shit

i picked up an issue of national geographic at the train station the other day. mostly for the snarky nature of the cover. it read, “was darwin wrong?” the joke is when you open up to the story it says in huge letters, clear as day, “no.” hahaha. thought that was funny. i could just picture some of the mags’ vast readership in their living rooms picking it up and saying “finally! a major publication is outing evolution as the fraud it is!” only to open up to the article and get a 120pt seriffed slap. beeeeotch! anyhow, i went to their website to post the story for my compatriots here (the issue was actually pretty good) only to find that their firm stance on the issue was in fact not very firm. below a snippet of the article they presented a bunch of links for related reading, over half of which are intelligent design / creationist dookie, or centered on “the controversy.” kind of undermines the giant “no” doesn’t it? add to this the fact that they have set up a forum specifically to debate evolution and the “set the record straight” nature of their issue is essentially nullified.

backward christian soldiers

well, everyones favorite evangelist pamphleteer has released a new illustrated glob of bile (now with 60% more xenophobia!! yippee!) this time he speaks up about that insidious blight on humanity, islam. two young girls have a conversation with some new neighbors, amir and safiya. amir’s swarthy sex appeal has the two girls reeling and contemplating a conversion to islam. they spread the good news to their friend suzy. luckily though suzy’s eye patched grandpa is well versed in the contradictions and suspect origins of their holy book the qur’an and warns suzie about the danger. suzy confronts amir, intending to tell him about jesus, but amir and his whole muslim family need to get to the airport

right away. luckily she’s not too late to save her friends though. she breaks the news that mohammed was a slave owning, moon god worshiping, pedophilic scumbag then proceeds to tell them all about the true god jesus christ. wheeew! that was a close one, those two young children almost fell prey to an evangelizing religious zealot! good thing amir didn’t have any muslim propaganda done in a style traditionally aimed at children! thank you st. chick.

posted by jmorrison on 11/23 | lost & found - belief | | permalink
time keeps on slippin

came across this project undertaken by a photographer named douglas levere, called changing new york. essentially he has retaken photographs another photographer, named berenice abbott, took 70 or so years ago. he returned to the original sites, with the identical camera, an 8x10 century universal, at the same time of day and year to reshoot the photographs. the resulting photo’s, when seen beside the originals, are evocative but i also found them strangely unsettling. history is laid bare in a concrete way seldom achieved through simply viewing old photos alone. though intended, i suppose, as a document of change, it’s the lack of change which i found so fascinating. so much has remained the same from a physical standpoint. so many buildings appear exactly as they did in the 1930’s. this effect is amplified by the lack of color which strips away the cosmetics. for me these photos made the inherent feeling of anonymity and personal transience which new york imposes even stronger. whose city am i living in anyway? check them out.

posted by jmorrison on 11/23 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
a man and his monsters

ever heard of a fella by the name of Ray Harryhausen? i’m guessing not. and yet if you are a kid who grew up in the 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s i bet you know his work very well. i for one was pretty into it, though i’d never heard of ray or even thought to wonder who was responsible for so much cool stuff. his work indirectly lead me to steal a book from the library called of gods, men, and monsters which i cherished, (mostly for giovanni caselli’s rocking 70’s illustrations of herculese, the minotaur, icarus, etc) and still own. this book in turn lead me to the book which i truly believe everyone i’ve ever met still has on their bookshelf, namely edith hamilton’s mythology. ray’s work it turns out effected a great many film folk as well, influencing most of the “awesome!” movies of our childhoods. guess who he is yet?

posted by jmorrison on 11/21 | sights & sounds - film | | permalink
titles so grand and fertilizer

a few days ago i finished reading the portrait of mrs. charbuque by jeffery ford. a good little book. the main character is a painter in 1800’s new york who’s slipped into the easy life of doing portraiture for the moneyed class all the while regretting having abandoned his real dream of painting something “great”. i enjoyed it. anyhow, reading the acknowledgments page i noticed the book, what painting is by james elkins listed as inspiration. i read that book a few years ago and found it incredibly inspiring. it’s draws a parallel between oil painting and alchemy. gets real down and dirty into pigments, materials and process.  i remember rushing into the kitchen after finishing it to do a little home alchemy myself, grabbing the few jars, bottles, cans, and condiments we actually had to mix in with my paints. i seem to remember spices and under the sink chemicals featuring prominently… of course that’s back when we’d drink a bottle of wine every night topped with a splash of bushmills and most likely a few bong hits. needless to say the painting which resulted from that alchemical inspiration was shit, or atleast i assume it must have been, since i can’t remember what it was, where i put it, or if i finished it.

posted by jmorrison on 11/20 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
the whole shebang

found this nifty site via sciam’s science and technology web awards. it’s from tufts university and it’s called cosmic evolution. it’s an incredibly information rich timeline of the evolution of everything. obviously considering the scope there is a lot to take in here, including movies, etc. good stuff, how much you take as fact and how much you take as guesswork is up to you. check it out.

posted by jmorrison on 11/19 | tech & science - theory | | permalink
the reverse side also has a reverse side

hunt down and kill the evildoers? destroy the infidel? “if only it were all so simple! if only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” a quote which starts off this essay entitled getting beyond good vs evil, a buddhist reflection on the new holy war, which i found it pretty interesting. thoughts?

posted by jmorrison on 11/18 | lost & found - belief | | permalink
squashed philosophers

an ongoing project to compress the greatest books of western philosophy to a tenth or so of their original size to allow for a reading of the whole as a single narrative, as “the story of western thought.” how are these different from cliffs notes or the like? well…“what is different here is that these are neither the opinion of one person nor mere extracts. instead, each has begun with a very wide analysis of quotations, citations and, especially, past examination papers, to establish which passages, which phrases, which lines, which words and which ideas, are generally considered the most important. Those essential parts have, as far as is reasonable, been left complete and untouched in the authors’ or translators’ original words. It is just the stuff between which has been squashed up, except when it is really interesting- like st augustine’s mother’s alcoholism, hobbes on angels, or adam smith on why irish prostitutes are so very beautiful.” admirable project i think, and good reading for the autodidact in all of us here.

posted by jmorrison on 11/18 | lost & found - ideas | | permalink
takin it to the streets

who knows what the future brings my soft flabby american compatriots? will we be called forth to defend our homes from insidious haters of freedom? will we be sent abroad to hunt and kill the demonic minions of terror where they live? only jesus and his apostles in government know for sure, but i, and a couple of news agencies, think it’s high time we brush up on some urban warfare strategies just in case. it’s also high time we check in with our ass kicking brethren over at frugal squirrel. grab your survivalist bible, do some learnin, polish your urine purification apparatus, and gear up for the final quest... seriously, i’m not kidding, these people will be the only ones left after “the shit” goes down. wolverines!!!!!

posted by jmorrison on 11/18 | lost & found | | permalink
daddy, how are planets made?

well son, the “core accretion” model says that planets form little by little, as material slowly congeals within the disk of gas, dust, and ice known to swaddle young stars. first, gravity gathers together bits of dust, which merge to form boulder-size bodies, which themselves coalesce into bigger and bigger objects. In about a million years, these form rocky planets, like earth and mars. alternately the “gravitational instability” model predicts a situation in which an object’s self-gravity exceeds opposing forces such as internal gas pressure or material rigidity, and the object collapses. for a gas, gravitational instability sets in when the mass is greater than a certain critical value known as the Jean’s mass. In the early universe, instabilities were large enough to produce whole galaxies.

uh, dad, you don’t really know what your talking about do you?

no son, no i don’t.

posted by jmorrison on 11/17 | tech & science - space | | permalink
the nonist’s cabinet of wonders (1)

ah, a cold sunday morning, coffee in hand, cats laid out luxuriantly on cushions, relative calm and quiet… what better time to lazily click through my own archive of links and begin fresh? you see in my travels i inevitably come across stuff which though eye catching, funny, or interesting never make it into their own post. maybe i simply don’t know what to say about them so they languish in unimaginatively titled folders, or maybe they seemed more naturally part of a larger post which never materialized. in either case i’ve decided to simply round a bunch of them up and share them, a bit of autumn cleaning as it were. today i’ll focus on links which would fit snugly in the sights & sounds category. don’t be fooled though into thinking that their belated posting marks them forever with the scarlet “f” for filler. there are some truly worthwhile sights within.

posted by jmorrison on 11/14 | sights & sounds | | permalink
nyc cultura part1: post election gallery going

the following piece was contributed to the nonist by artist, filmmaker, and critic mathieu borysevicz*

So I finally managed to break out of my work around the clock habits and venture out into the cultural elitism of grand New York City. It was my first gallery going experience in the newly arrived era of political despondency and as might be expected the stakes and positions have been dramatically shifted. Art was no longer to be seen in the pre-election light of anticipated hope and cheap shot complacency. However most of the shows, hung in an altogether different atmosphere, did not benefit from the election results but instead were put in the same pathetic glare that most good Americans find themselves burning in right now. It has always been easy to critique but not so easy to create. yet in an age of desperation and destitution real alternatives must be sought whose ingenuity exists somewhere out of the box, because that’s where we’ve been all along, a citizenry boxed and warehoused in altogether incommunicable and different ideologies.

posted by jmorrison on 11/13 | sights & sounds - art | | permalink
the sciences and ethics

interesting and obviously relevant piece from the skptical enquirer posing the question, “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?”. a caveat to the conclusion they come to: “We are continually surrounded by self-righteous moralists who claim that they have the Absolute Truth, Moral Virtue, or Piety or know the secret path to salvation and wish to impose their convictions on all others. They are puffed up with an inflated sense of their own rectitude as they rail against unbenighted immoral sinners who lack their moral faith. These moral zealots are willing to repress or even sacrifice anyone who stands in their way. They have in the past unleashed conquering armies in the name of God, the Dialectic, Racial Superiority, Posterity, or Imperial Design. Skepticism needs to be applied not only to religious and paranormal fantasies but to other forms of moral and political illusions. These dogmas become especially dangerous when they are appealed to in order to legislate morality and are used by powerful social institutions, such as a state or church or corporation, to enforce a particular brand of moral virtue. Hell hath no fury like the self-righteous moral fanatic scorned.” could not have said it better myself. give it a read.

posted by jmorrison on 11/13 | tech & science - theory | | permalink
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