strongest of the strange
this evening for your reading pleasure (and for my selfish, non-thinking, relaxation craving pleasure) i offer instead of a topical post on, let’s say, life on mars a poem i’ve always liked.
the strongest of the strange
you wont see them often
for wherever the crowds are
they
are not.
these odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.
and from the
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.
they are
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work.
sometimes i think
i see
them- say
a certain old
man
sitting on a
certain bench
in a certain
way
or
a quick face
going the other
way
in a passing
automobile
or
there’s a certain motion
of the hands
of a bag-boy or a bag-
girl
while packing
supermarket
groceries.
sometimes
it is even somebody
you have been
living with
for some
time-
you will notice
a
lightning quick
glance
never seen
from them
before.
sometimes
you will only note
their
existence
suddenly
in
vivid
recall
some months
some years
after they are
gone.
i remember
such a
one-
he was about
20 years old
drunk at
10 a.m.
staring into
a cracked
new orleans
mirror
face dreaming
against the
walls of
the world
where
did i
go?
-charles bukowski.
he was a drunk, a gambler, sure, but the man was a romantic through and through. you can see it in every poem. i used to read him a lot, listen to him a lot, not so much anymore. grew out of it i guess, but i still really like that poem. goodnight.
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In the land of the polite, the rude man is king
Politics, so boring, such a chore to follow. What we need is someone who will chew it all up and excrete it in a purer foulness, who will reduce it to its bilirubinous essence. We need the rude pundit.
Listen in as he pays tribute to Arthur Miller: “He fought, fuckin’ fought old school, for the good of those who were run over by governments, cultures, and moralities. And so, so much of what he wrote still has the ability to kick the ass of anyone inundated with the lies of the right wing and the powerful.” Hear him explain, repeatedly, “Why Bill O’Reilly Ought To Be Sodomized With a Broken Light Bulb”, or with a loofah, a microphone, a menorah, or whatever you got. Savor his willingness to go right ahead and use the dreaded c-word in reference to anne coulter.
Give this man a three-hour radio show. He’ll use it for good, not evil.
a late breaking valentine’s day recipe
I cooked dinner tonight in a thong and an
apron. I imagined you were there watching me.
I put on a little Bossanova and felt your gaze
upon me as I dice the shallots and garlic. I felt
your caress as I delicately simmered them in olive
oil, simmering underneath that apron. I gently poured
the tomatoes and the white wine, a delicious aroma
wafting past my nose, it was your smooth neck. Then
after patiently waiting, stirring and stirring, I put
the hot concoction to my lips. Ummmmm! Not too salty
not too sweet.
She, the pot, was ready for the main
ingredient, the mussels, violently debeared and
cleaned, seemingly too hard to possibly be edible upon
first glance. Could that shell, sleek and steely
gray, be pentrated, softened, coxed into opening up?
One by one in they went, so as not to splash, shocking
that perfectly simmering sweet pot. I closed the lid,
for privacy, but I knew what was going on in there.
All of her aromatic steam was working away at those
hard mussels one by one, until they secumbed,
releasing their equally integral, savory essense, and
mixing together to form an intoxicating gastronomic
orgy. When I shyly uncovered them, I was uncertain of
what I might find. Had I given them enough time to
bond?
Sure enough each of those dauntingly hard shells had
opened, some boldly and completely, and yet others
opened just enough to be edible, but threatening to
close up again. However, once the ritual was over and
the course was served, those shy mussels did stay open
and I ate them all licking my lips and fingertips.
Eating mussels can be a messy affair if not done
properly. The correct amount of pressure must be
applied or the eater will be splashed or worse the
mussel will go flying across the room. Yes, eating
mussels is a messy affair.
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the jilted and disgruntled haters of a certain manufactured holiday find a home
I really don’t get bitter at the thought of or passing of Valentine’s Day. I think everyone knows of its rather prefabricated beginnings in modern america. It’s not like being alone on this day is any more poignant or heartbreaking than any other day spent alone. Also, let’s face it, it’s a chick’s holiday. Don’t take that the wrong way as I am not trying to come off as a chavaunist (well, i guess using the word ‘chick’ isn’t exactly the best way to go about that. apologies.) but c’mon i woke up today and didn’t even realize it was valentine’s day until I overheard one of the female editors at my workplace remarking to another woman that her boyfriend had better be doing something romantic for her this year, after forgetting last year, or she was going to ‘dump his sorry ass’. the only thing men in relationships like about valentine’s day is the prospect of the red and pink lingerie their woman might be wearing and the only thing single men like about valentine’s day is how much easier it is to get a single woman of a certain age and disposition in to bed on that particular day of the year. but i digress. here is a website by and for people who really don’t like st. valentine’s day. via screenhead
carnival of the godless
a good idea. a traveling web magazine from the “godless” point of view. each week it is hosted on a different sympathetic site. it’s content is comprised of articles written and submitted by different bloggers. you can think of it as a weekly list of essays pertaining to the keyword godless aggregated for your convenience, or as, well, a carnival of the godless. from the submission guidelines: “essays must address something such as atheism, church/state separation, the evolution/creation debate, theodicy, philosophy of religion, etc. there is a huge amount of wiggle room…” there have been three issues thus far. the first posted at unscrewing the inscrutable, the second over at pharyngula, and the third was just posted today over at science and politics. i think it’s a fine idea. check it out and submit if you’re so inclined.
doin our part for darwin day
today is “darwin day” marking not only what would be darwin’s 196th birthday but also the 150th anniversary of the publication of “on the origin of species.” seeing as how even a century and a half after darwin’s most important work was published people still seem to have a hard time wrapping their minds around it’s implications, or are made nervous and upset by them, i thought it was high time that the efforts to educate the greater populous were updated and put into less technical terms which everyone who is still doubtful can understand. with that goal in mind, and after much market research and focus group hours, we give you what we think is a home run new-look makeover for darwin and his evolutionary ideas better fit to reach a doubtful american public…
now if we can only get the science community to sign on i think we’ll be on our way to true cultural enlightenment! (based of course on bob peak’s 1978 original.)
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astounding galleries
a couple of days ago when i was posting about charles fort i came across a french site which offered a gallery of covers from astounding stories magazine, which fort evidently contributed to. anyhow today i took the time to look closer at the site. initially i was simply impressed with their run of astounding which begins with the 1930 first issue, continues through it’s transformation into analog, science fact and fiction (at one point in 1960 the covers had both titles simultaneously, one overlapping the other), and goes all the way to 1973. fascinating to watch the style of both illustration and design evolve over 40 years. when i dug deeper though… well i have to say i was just blown away.
the site is by far the most expansive gallery of sci-fi / fantasy pulp covers i’ve ever seen. on the sci-fi side they present long runs of american titles like galaxy, infinity, if, imagination, galileo, nebula, beyond, planet stories, even omni just to name a few. on the fantasy side there are galleries of amazing stories, weird tales, unknown, startling stories, etc. but as amazing as these galleries are they’re really just the tip of the iceberg. the site offers galleries of specific pulp publishers like ace, ballentine, bantam, dell, and pocket books. they offer a nice section of hard cover sci-fi classics. they even offer a gallery of sci-fi reference titles. perhaps best of all though, seeing as how it is a french site, they offer a large gallery selection of french as well as italian publications and translations, including, in some cases, not only covers but interior spreads. if you’re a designer, an illustrator, or just a fan of the pulps or classic sci-fi there is some really wonderful and inspiring stuff to see. the sheer volume of images is, in fact, astounding. i spent a good two hours digging into this stuff and i’ve got some nonist project ideas brewing.
anyhow if you take your time you will come across both periodical and proper novel covers for some beloved heavyweights including: p.k. dick, sturgeon, asimov, bradbury, clarke, herbert, heinlein, pohl, stapledon, even the likes of james blish, robert silverberg, and alfred bester. seeing their work illustrated in “real time,” that is, seeing the visuals applied by illustrators working when these stories were originally published, is really enjoyable. if you happened to have been reading sci-fi when any of these were originally published you may have a seizure. just seeing some of those old omni magazines gave me a little shiver.
though normally i’d round up a bunch of images and post them here for your enjoyment there really are too many goodies for me to bother. so just take a look for yourself: here is the google translation of noosfere. here’s the original french page if you prefer. scroll down to the bottom for links to all sections. enjoy.
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the gates (update)
was over at kottke a couple of days ago, i think, and noticed jason had put up a link to a new blog dedicated to christo’s soon to be completed “the gates.” no surprise there. his comment though gave me a moment of pause. “almost here! can’t wait!” hmmm. those exclamation points… “jason can’t wait for ‘the gates?’ really?” i thought. it surprised me. i guess the idea that any new yorker’s were genuinely excited by this project just never occurred to me. now as tom so often reminds me i do tend to be cynical, or “extremely cynical” as he put’s it, but i for one am not even remotely excited about “the gates.” i can say without reservation that i don’t like it thus far, and from the concept sketches i fully expect to continue not liking it.
in april i posted about the project’s imminent arrival and will repost here, now that it’s actually topical, before moving on:
—- in february of 2005 central park will become the latest staging ground for one of the artist christo’s massive artworks. evidently he and his partner in crime jeanne-claude have been trying to get the green light on a central park project for decades. unfortunately, even though it will be on par in scale to some of christos other works, the quality of the work strikes me as decidedly sub-par.
since becoming aware of christo i have felt a begrudging respect for his work. sure, it is basically an exercise in logistics and spectacle, but at its best his work can also be surprisingly elegant, and yes, dare i say it, even beautiful. this new piece as planned, however, is far from elegant and conceptually shoddy. evidently i am not the only one who thinks so. found this on a site called forgotten delights-
What message will The Gates convey? None at all. If you examine every fiber of the million square feet of fabric, you won’t be a nanometer closer to knowing what sort of person you’d like to be, what you should focus on, what sort of world you’d like to live in. Prominent art historians and critics at the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art and The New York Times haven’t even tried to proclaim any meaning in The Gates. They merely assert that it will draw attention to Central Park. “It might work and it’s not permanent, so why not give it a shot?” asked the publisher of the New York Observer. The twenty-year controversy over whether to allow The Gates to be erected in Central Park was driven largely by fears of the work’s environmental impact. In fact, there’s a much more basic reason for rejecting the project: the lack of any impact on the minds of those seeing it. If it conveys no message, it isn’t art. And if it isn’t art, why allow it in the Park? We might just as well grant permission to The Picket Fences or The Discarded Taxi-Bumpers. If you want to enjoy art in Central Park, do your best to avoid Christo’s giant slalom poles. Instead, seek out the dozens of figurative sculptures scattered through the Park, from Duke Ellington to the Delacorte Clock, from the Maine Monument to Samuel Morse, from Still Hunt to the Untermeyer Fountain. Like genuine works of art ever since the caveman’s time, these have the potential to speak to you - to inspire, provoke and amuse you in a way that Christo’s Gates never will.
the author might go a little far in saying so flatly it isn’t art. i’ve long ago resigned myself to the pointlessness of the what is and what is not art argument. it’s enough to just take someone’s word that his pile of rotting fish, or his room of hard to detect smells is indeed art, just a spectacularly terrible piece of it. all subjective. aside from that little glob of bile though i agree with their approximation. it has no specific ties to the site, a site which you’d think would be rife with things to explore, and as such falls very short. it just does not have the elegance of a running fence or the “wow” of a wrapped reichstag, or the unexpectedness of a valley curtain.
to be honest, i wish the city had not given it the green light at all. central park is one of the few places in new york you can go to escape the meaningless, ugly spectacle. central park should not be gussied up. it should not be crowded with vertical lines and orange fabric. it’s unexpected nooks and crannies should not be homogenized with 8,000 identical “gateways”. and for god sake it should not be turned into any more of a tourist attraction than it already is! instead of this christo piece i would far prefer phony pamphlets handed out to each and every arriving visitor explaining that central park is now a biohazard and should be avoided at all cost. an even quieter, more peaceful, more secluded park… now that would be beautiful.
anyhow, to look on the bright side of (what appears to be) bad art, it’s only up for two weeks and those weeks are in the middle of february, when i will most likely be holed up in my quiet, peaceful, secluded apartment.—- (repost 04/09)
well as it turns out, in that i have a photography show to prepare for in the spring, i have not been as “holed up” as i expected to be. in fact just last weekend i took a photo excursion into the park. christo’s frame works were in various stages of erection throughout the park and having been there, amongst them, i can say i hold to my previous opinions. granted, i can be cynical. granted, the much ballyhooed “safron” fabric is not up yet. granted, in a concept drawing where you can choose your perspective and viewpoint the project looks dynamic and harmonious, but in the parallax shifting of reality? granted, from a helicopter the completed project may provide some fascinating and novel views, but from the ground,
inside the project… i can’t help but feel the whole thing is an ostentatious train wreck. very simply put, it is not particularly successful as far as site specific artwork goes. if anything the gates themselves seem to transport the familiar sense of oppressive crowding of the city proper into the park. our congested city’s counterpoint of peace and space is effectively nullified because the gates are unavoidable.
i live a block from the park, so every morning on my way to the b train i get to see “the gates.” it does not please me in the slightest. it simultaneously diminishes and complicates one of the few simple pleasures of my daily grind. add to this the fact that the project has shut down all central park drives at various stages of its instillation, screwing with native new yorker commuting, and what exactly is it we are supposed to be so excited about? pomp? fuck that.
one positive was a realization “the gates” afforded me. while i trekked through the park, taking photos of mud and dirt and snow and dead flora, of tiny crevices and unassuming 6 inch stretches, i was struck with how lucky i am in some ways. that i can get my creative rocks off fully with a quiet walk through the park is a blessing. that i don’t need to stop traffic and transform huge swaths of public space, that i don’t need to drape entire buildings, or dam valleys is wonderful. i don’t mean that in a snide way at all. i’m being totally serious. i’m thankful that finding and capturing the beauty inherent in the natural processes under our feet and under our noses brings me pleasure rather than feeling the need to tackle the mountains of red tape, contracts, manufacturing, assembling, installation, maintenance etc needed to complete work like christo’s. the photos i took that day will always bring me just that little bit of extra pleasure being invisibly contrasted with “the gates” project which was being constructed just outside of their frames.
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the great chicken shack in the sky
“people always ask me about my sound. it’s probably best explained in my approach to the organ. while others think of the organ as a full orchestra, i think of it as a horn. i’ve always been an admirer of charlie parker and I try to sound like him. I wanted that single-line sound like a trumpet, a tenor or an alto saxophone…” jazz legend and hammond b-3 organ slayer jimmy smith died last night. there are not too many old schoolers of his caliber left out there.
here are a few j.s. related links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. see below for a gallery of some classic j.s. lp covers.
“ever since I was a child, i wanted to play the better type of music, even
classics. I haven’t done anything like that, but I’m going to. i’m going to
scare a lot of people with the incredible number of tones on the Hammond
Organ before I die.” -1964. you did jimmy, no worries.
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One measures a circle, beginning anywhere
“I believe nothing. I have shut myself away from the rocks and wisdom of ages, and from the so-called great teachers of all time, and perhaps because of that isolation I am given to bizarre hospitalities. I shut the front door upon Christ and Einstein, and at the back door hold out a welcoming hand to little frogs and periwinkles. I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written. I cannot accept that the products of minds are subject-matter for beliefs.” -charles fort. sounds decidedly nonist does it not?
admire him as a herald of paranormal studies or demonize him as an enemy of both science and religion. Thank him from your sci-fi easy chair for coining the term ‘teleportation’ or curse him from your lab for helping to bolster countless pseudosciences. Praise him from the pages of your leonard nemoy fan club newsletter for indirectly helping to employ nemoy not once but twice. Curse him for unintentionally helping to magnetize and attach ologies to root words they have no business attaching themselves to. Praise him because in his writings you detect satire, or curse him because until pointed out, you did not. Whatever. One thing is for sure fort was unabashedly anti-dogma and for this he deserves a florid doffing of the nonist hat, and perhaps a poised curtsy from the ladies.
I am in no way a fort expert, in fact I am only now starting to make my way through his writings, so I will not try to offer any cogent commentary. For that check out these links:
wikipedia entry on charles fort.
bibliomancer extraordinaire by franklin ellsworth clarke
seeker of the damned biographical info via about.com
politics of the imagination a short section of the biography by the same name.
From what I have read thus far I can recommend fort’s work to anyone who frequents this site. The “nonist ideal” is certainly in harmony with fort’s philosophies, paranormal flights of fancy aside. For anyone suspicious of the dogmatic (religious, scientific, or otherwise), unconvinced by the accepted notions of reality, or just annoyed at the pretension and arrogance of humanity’s truth-tellers fort is really enjoyable reading. a large portion of his surviving works are available online, all are in the public domain. this wiki entry sets expectations fairly well:
“Fort’s experience as a journalist coupled with a contrarian nature prepared him for his real-life work, mocking at the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize away the scientifically incorrect. Understanding Fort’s books takes time and effort: his style is complex, violent and poetic, satirical and subtle, profound and puzzling. Ideas are cast offhand into the scrum of thought and then recalled a few pages on; examples and data are offered, compared and contrasted, conclusions made and broken, as Fort holds up the unorthodox to the scrutiny of the orthodoxy that continually fails to account for them. Pressing on his attacks, Fort shows the ridiculousness of the conventional explanations and then interjects with his own theories.”
His 5 surviving books (The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, Wild Talent, and the novel The Outcast Manufacturers) as well as some short stories are available, via mr.x’s site, resologist. It’s not really computer screen fare in my mind. Ideally a old worn out leather bound book with yellowed pages and liberally peppered with etchings would be best. Failing that, however, I recommend printing any and all of this stuff out in full and reading it at your leisure. in a comfy chair perhaps. maybe in the early evening or on a quiet Sunday. on the porch if you’ve got one. with a glass of wine or whiskey if you’re not in the rooms. Or, if that’s not you’re style, just when you are feeling especially smug and knowledgeable about the universe and it’s workings.
If a loose conglomeration of laser prints is not quite up to snuff for you to become intellectually invested an edition of his collected works is indeed available out there. Alternately if all you need are some images to
fire your imagination or help stir your book lust you can go to the fortean image gallery offered by the fortean times online and print out relevant images for inclusion in your pile. Lastly, as a service to my beloved nonists out there I’ve slapped together some fort related imagery which you can browse, praise, curse, ignore, or (for the industrious) print out and use as a bookmark.
Happy reading.
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today in history
something unique surely happens everyday. not to you or i, but to someone. on this day in 1984 something very unique happened. navy captain bruce mccandless become the first human being to fly untethered in space. unteathered! the man floated through space with a fucking nitrogen powered jet pack. a jet pack! he exited the space shuttle challenger and maneuvered freely. did i mention the pack was of his own design? his own design god damn it! mccandless orbited earth in tangent with the shuttle at speeds greater than 17,500 miles per hour. did you catch that? 17,500 miles per hour! he flew about 320 feet away from the shuttle. wanna see? check this out. wow. evidently they don’t do untethered space walks anymore. safety and all that crap…. makes bruce a lucky guy huh? what the hell did you do today? i’m in the wrong line of work.
oh what a joy! here come the leech-charmers!
before the combo of photoshop and the internet spawned 100 billion wry photo mashups there was max ernst. what follows are some plates with accompanying text from the 1930 collage novel by ernst, a little girl dreams of taking the veil. from the books translator’s note: “each one of these collages uses cuttings often from the most banal of pre-photography illustrated penny novels, and from popular tomes about nature, science, and exoticism. the result may seem to embody our most frequent tragedies, our wriest enslavements, our most terrible solutions. specificity dissolves in the timeless and the general.”
as the title suggests it’s the story of a girls dream. it begins-
academy of science.
the night will come when the academy of science itself will not disdain to cast its gaze on the sewers of the world. the night will come when, covered with all their jewels, the secondary skeletons that one calls scientists will ask themselves this question:
what do little girls dream of who want to take the veil?
on that night a violent storm will break against the doors of the academy of science and the water will roar in the pipes.
the water will remember the shameful year 1930, the year it would have liked to see all the cathedrals of the universe parade in far-too-short dresses. it will remember above all a certain night because…
on good friday night of the shameful year 1930 a child hardly sixteen years old dipperd her two hands in the sewer, pricked her skin and with her blood traced these lines”
to love the holy father and to dip one’s hands in a sewer,
such is happiness for us, children of mary.
what eventually follows are 77 ernst collages, separated into 4 sections, which along with short lines of accompanying text for each, tell the tale of young marcelin-mary’s decidedly monstrous and poetic dreams. here are 8 of those collages. click each for larger versions. enjoy.
“i already find myself alone. too alone with myself, face to face with myself…”
“...oh what a joy! here come the leech-charmers!...”
“...and to all of us a theatrical death…”
“...upsy-daisy! upsy-daisy!...”
“...you won’t be poor anymore, head-shaven pigeons, under my white dress, in my columbarium. i’ll bring you a dozen tons of sugar. but don’t you touch my hair!”
the superior of the convent: “i saw myself in the form of a wolf. i sped through space with the rapidity of words.”
the assistant mother superior “separated from everything i went with god into his vast interior.”
marceline: “you are in especially bad taste.” the celestial bridegroom: “certainly, i always charge too much. i am the weed of palaces, not hovels. i’m going now and i leave you my anger.”
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how i learned to stop worrying and love dr. kaku
does anyone else feel strangely conflicted about michio kaku? it’s irrational i know, almost like the fear of clowns, who want nothing more than to engage your interest, and open your eyes to the greater glory of their balloon animals. he’s a necessary and even admirable quantity. a scientist who seeks above all to popularize science to the “average” person. a latter day carl sagan. i appreciate his mission. and yet this very mission which has him constantly being called upon to consider the science of pop culture (the matrix, the x-men, star trek, alien civilizations, ufo’s, time travel, teleportation, etc) seems to diminish him somehow. the pop culture contexts he chooses to place himself in tangentially put him on par with some of the most laughed at and derided quantities going. par for the course i suppose.
he is a theoretical physicist after all. there are certainly links to the more fantastic ideas of science fiction inherent in that. i mean it’s the most natural avenue of popularizing science available to him. people love star wars, star trek, the matrix, the x-files… quantum leap (wink). these are million dollar franchises. obviously there are large groups of people behind those dollars, just waiting to be enlightened about the “reality” of string theory, the tenth dimension, and wormholes. but then, i can’t help but assume sci-fi heads are already predisposed to being open to science and all it’s seemingly outlandish possibilities. i would contend they are not only open but crave it. are sci-fi heads really “average” people in the intellectual or cultural sense? are these the folks who need to be illuminated?
i have to assume “average” people like their scientists the same way they like their science, distant, silent, and invisible, working behind the scenes as it were. does dr. kaku’s ice skating and pontificating on phasers inspire any confidence in the non-science hungry populous? do they look upon him and think, “hmmmm, well, scientists aren’t so bad! they don’t all cram fetuses into test tubes, worship monkeys, and concoct crazy stories about the globe getting warmer! let’s listen to what this fellow has to say!” or do they look at him and see just another bit of shiny fantasy entertainment fit to be aired snugly between reruns of in search of and ripley’s believe it or not? part of me sympathizes with the desire for unapproachable and impossibly distant scientists, so brilliant and focussed they forget to put on their pants and can barely communicate with “average” people well enough to explain what cold-cuts they need at the deli counter. people so god-damned smart that they inspire some kind of begrudging awe. people who though you can never hope to understand or relate to, you can at very least respect, and who when discussing important issues, you feel compelled to simply “take their word for it.”
i guess in that i’m sympathetic to dr. kaku’s cause, and do myself enjoy a good essay on “the physics of time travel” now and again, the conflict is rooted in my own perception. i guess i’m a victim of preconceptions and pop culture poisoning myself. i have a hard time reconciling a conversation on the merits of minority report’s “precogs” with a discussion about the “stability of fundamental quantum super membranes.” one seems somehow silly, one seems somehow serious. that they both come from the mouth of the same man casts odd shadows in my mind. i’m an “average” person, if there is such a thing, and i for one don’t mind my science reportage being devoid of sci-fi movie references. i don’t tend to look to a single source for my portions of each. but why not? my own stubborn preconceptions i suppose. if i take a moment to really think about it all, these are the facts as stored in my brain:
1) science interests me.
2) science fiction interests me.
3) science fiction is largely fantasy.
4) i suspect advanced theoretical physics is largely fantasy.
5) i would like science to be more popular culturally because it interests me and so-
6) i approve of dr. kaku’s mission of spreading science
7) dr. kaku has lustrous hair but does not seem to wear as many turtlenecks as carl sagan so-
8) i suspect dr. kaku’s method of spreading science will not be effective
9) what i suspect has no effect on science, science fiction, or the “average” persons view on them.
10) i am the only “average” person whose views i need to concern myself with (see #‘s 1 & 2)
so all in all i have no reason to do anything other than enjoy science, enjoy science fiction, and enjoy the points in each where dr. kaku’s mug and lustrous hair intersects them. popularizing science to the “average” person is not
my chosen mission so why should i worry about how or if it’s accomplished? i don’t really care about the “average” person, in that i’m extremely doubtful there is such a quantity. so screw it. from here on out i embrace dr. kaku, be he scientist or the hack mo-rocca commentator of science. what’s the difference? it’s all gravy to me.
with that in mind i offer you this kaku-centric list of material:
escape from the universe “the universe is destined to end. before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a ‘wormhole’ into a parallel universe?”
the physics of extra terrestrial civilizations “the late carl sagan once asked this question, “what does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? we have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old… an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque.”
the physics of interstellar travel “some scientists tend to scoff at the idea of interstellar travel because of the enormous distances that separate the stars… similarly, investigations into UFO’s that may originate from another planet are sometimes the “third rail” of someone’s scientific career…”
how to survive the end of the universe (In 7 Steps) stingy discover magazine never put up the full text of this article so i’ll sum up for you-
step 1) find and test a theory of everything
step 2) search for a naturally occurring worm hole
step 3) send a probe through a black hole
step 4) create a black hole in slow motion
step 5) create negative enrgy
step 6) create a baby universe
6a) build a laser implosion machine
6b) build a cosmic atom smasher
step 7) send in the nanobots.
a users guide to time travel “trips to the past were previously seen as preposterous. not anymore. having examined einstein’s equations more closely, physicists now realize that the river of time may be diverted into a whirlpool - called a closed timelike curve - or even a fork leading to a parallel universe.”
paralell universes chat via bbc horizons
borrowed time a lenghty sci am interview with he of the flowing locks mainly about time travel. more time travel here via pbs.
quantum computers that think. from tech tv, includes video.
of course if you are looking specifically for star trek, the matrix, etc, that and much more can be found on mkaku.org.
and finally the explorations radio show. actually this is really good work listening. (expect a full fledged “science on internet radio” post eventually.)
in closing let me say this, perhaps in today’s climate a theoretical physicist is not the best or most useful candidate for science mouthpiece. perhaps a biologist, a nutritionist, a pediatrician, or a hell, a high school earth science teacher, would be more useful to the “average” person of today. in the meantime lets all eat doritos and dig on that crazy kaku. the end.
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before irony ruled the earth
pistil book’s (the folks behind some of the coolest journals and sketchpads i’ve seen recently) offer for your perusal this modest museum of weird books. “either there is a naïveté that strikes us as outmoded in our postmodern society or the earnest intentions of the publisher seems forced to our liberal minds. we present these titles to you without malice nor do we mock the creators of these choice documents…” the thumb is from how babies are made some very odd tom friedman-lite. see below for a few personal favorites. via pcl linkdump.
in the steaming grotto indeed. haha. good stuff.
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alphabet city
was checking out wooster collective today and was surprised to see an old friend represented in their ongoing “my working space” image collection. evidently he put a book out in december. it’s an interesting mix of children’s book and street art monograph. it’s sweet and gritty at the same time. i love it. think it’s brilliant. his name is mike de feo (mentioned quite recently here by coincidence), and though your first reaction might be “never heard of him” it’s a good possibility you’re already familiar with some of his better known handiwork. i’d never been to his site and was thrilled to see the amount of work he’s been pumping out through the years. (loved these!) anyhow old friend’s who lost touch, like myself, and strangers alike might enjoy a stroll through his site. as for his book, titled alphabet city click “read more” to see a couple sample pages.
if you’d like to know more about the book or pick it up online it’s available via the new museum shop.
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the chainsaw and the log
boing boing posted a link to this min-graphic novel project which i thought was kind of cool. Johannes Grenzfurthner, from monochrom, found a chainsaw box in his grandfather’s old shed. on it were some operational illustrations. he’s enlisted the web to come forth and add voice to these four little images. lot’s of good submissions so far. here is mine:
