the dead city?
was leafing through an old book this afternoon which i have not looked at in a long while. titled the living city, written by frank lloyd wright, published in 1958, it is a very
outspoken bit of criticism, centered on what he saw as the overcentralization, dehumanized values, and waning sovereignty of the individual as wrought by our big cities. to say wright had a low opinion of the grid, the skyscraper, and the cubicle of our urban centers is an understatement.
i am fond of most of the frank lloyd wright buildings i have seen, though i am by no stretch of the imagination well versed in architecture. i am, however, well versed in the romanticism which is part and parcel of any philosophical ruminations about our place as reluctant animals in the un-animal friendly world we’ve created. additionally i am an urbanite through and through. in as much i find wright’s poetical shots across our metropolitan bows bitter sweet. on the one hand we are so far gone there is the temptation to dismiss his ideas as romantic or utopian pap, on the other there is the distinct pitch of something, somehow, ringing true.
what follows is only a short bit from the first chapter of the book.
——————————————————————————————————————
nature
earth
the value of earth as man’s heritage, or of man as earth’s great heritage, is gone far from him now in any big city centralization has built (but never designed). centralization- without plan -has overbuilt. urban happiness of the properly citified citizen consists in crowding in confusion- lured by the hypnotic warmth, pressure, and approbation of the crowd? the screech of mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills the citified ears- as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. he is sidewalk-happy.
but where and as he now stands, out of the machine that his big city of the motor age has become, no citizen creates or operates more than mere machinery nor is he going to be much more than a machine himself- if his big city stays.
thus the properly citified citizen becomes a broker of profit-system ideas, a vendor of gadgetry, a salesman dealing for profit in human exaggeration; a speculator in frailties continually dealing in the ideas and inventions of others- or becomes an avid spectator. this puller of levers, pusher of the buttons of vicarious power, has power of his own only by way of mechanical craft. a “graft” is this tide on which he rides.
so a parasite of the spirit is here; dervish in a whirling vortex. yes- from the top down, and enamored of the whirl.
perpetual to-and-fro excited this citified citizen, robs him of deeper sympathy, of the meditation and reflection once his as he lived and walked under clean sky among the fresh greenery to which he was born companion. on solid earth he was neither foolproof nor weatherproof, but he was a whole man.
but he has traded his book of creation for emasculation by way of the convenient substitute; traded his origins and native pastimes with streams, woods, fields, and animals for the ubiquitous, habitual to-and-fro; taint of carbon monoxide rising from him to his rented aggregation of hard cells on upended streets overlooking hard pavements. “paramounts,” “roxies,” nightclubs, bars- such as these are his relaxation, his urban recourse. for all this easy come and easy go he lives in some cubicle among other cubicles under a landlord himself a “hotshot”- one who probably lives up there above him in a penthouse. both landlord an tenant are the living apotheosis of rent. rent! always rent in some form is the city. if not quite yet parasites- parasitic all.
so exists the properly citified urbanite! still a slave to the heard instinct, fatally committed to vicarious power- a slave in any final analysis just as the medieval laborer, not so long before him, was slave to caprice of king or state. a cultural weed now, he grows rank in the urban field.
this weed goes to seed! children keep coming and growing, now herded by the thousands in schools built like factories, run like factories: all systematically turning out herd-struck teenagers like machines turning out shoes. in knowledge-factories.
and when urban men of commerce themselves succeed, they become more than ever vicarious. soon the very successful men sink into the sham luxury their city life so continually produces. but they create nothing! spiritually impotent, a fixation has them where impotence wants them: fixation in a cliche.
but life itself has become intolerably restless; a mere tenant of the big landlord: the “big city.” yes… above the belt, if he is properly citified, the citizen has long lost sight of the true aim of normal human existence. he has accepted not only substitute means but substitute aims and ends… a vicarious life virtually sterilized by machinery, by medicine, by more and more stimulants. his demoralization has only begun.
from part one of the living city by frank lloyd wright.
——————————————————————————————————————
pretty over the top huh? sounds almost like a bearded prophet’s biblical screed or a pre-civil war north hatin’ speech. to be fair this very beginning section is taken out of context a bit. the book goes on to explain further and offer ideas for the alternative city of the title. one of these days i’ll share some of his thoughts specific to new york. fairly interesting.
overall i’d have to say this- it strikes me as a very valid complaint, only leveled against the wrong target. these characterizations could easily encompass our entire culture, and i don’t for a second think it’s the urban mind frame that is to blame. i think the urban mind frame is a natural outgrowth of something deeper.
but what do i know? any thoughts?
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over the wall
i have not had too many pets of my own. when i was a lad a had a hamster, whose name i can not remember (forgive me o’ nameless bundle of twitching cuteness). he died quite quickly after becoming my ward. i remember wrapping him in a wash cloth and bringing him down the block to the churchyard. i buried him under some shrubs near the iron fence around the church parking lot. was a very sombre affair. being at that time scrotum deep in catholic school assured a suitably dark and weighty mood, wash cloth and parking lot or not. dead pets are sad. i’ve got two cats now and don’t want to think about that. but what about “lost pets?”
lost pets are legion. lost pets are at this very moment roaming the lands, sniffing shadowy crevasses, skulking and scurrying every which way. but are they miserable and scared searching desperately for that particular pant leg scent that will lead them home? or are they rather exultant, sharing stories down at the train yards about their daring escape, their animal cunning which fecilitated their newfound freedom? are they going to whither, their survival instincts flabby and foreign from years of hand feeding? or are they rather out there, invigorated, living fast and perhaps dying as they dreamt they might, in a blaze of predatory glory? i don’t have a clue.
i imagine birds whose wings are not clipped and manage the jailbreak must do o.k. not sure if parrots living in minnesota have a chance or not. cats who don’t have their nails clipped might fair alright joining the roving mobs of strays, competing in beat-itesque dance-offs with rival gangs in evening alleys. who knows. dogs? i think dogs can generally handle themselves. again, not really sure what happens to our furry and feathered friends when they find themselves, by design or dumb luck, out there in the great wide world.
i know what happens to the owners of these pets though. they get frantic, search in spaces too high up, too small, too cold, too absurd, hoping against hope to find hide or hair. they may perhaps become angry and paranoid feeling sure that someone must have broken in and stolen their loyal and goofily named friend. when all else fails they cobble together a “lost pet” sign (perhaps realizing for the first time that they did not in fact take many pictures of their friend), offer a reward (balancing what they can afford with what their loved one is worth to them), and hope for the best.
as it happens a book was published not too long ago called lost. lost and found pet posters from around the world. as it also happens i own said book and as accompaniment to my ramblings i present a few of them below-
aw. if any of you simply can not imagine any of these lost pets as happy escapees but instead are overwhelmed with visions of their possibly sad fates and hence feel brought down and mopey from this post i offer the antidote. kitten photos. yes that’s right i am about to post kitten photos on the nonist. below you will find my own two boys, when they were still spastic little stinkers, who are napping safe and sound at this very moment-
meet newton. named after isaac. he is a grunting, dirty, possessive, proud little monster who is built like a bull. he will eat anything and his favorite activity is standing between me and his brother henry.
meet henry. named after mr. miller. he is a fluffy, chunky, doe eyed, meek little fellow who loves him some whipped cream. i am personally of the belief he is an alien arrived from space who infiltrated my household in order to study the human race. seriously.
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intelligent microwave ovens! no fucking way
each and every time i come across a report or timeline put forth forecasting any aspect of the future i find myself with two separate reactions vying for mental prominence simultaneously: 1 fascination. 2 skepticism. the fascination is certainly easy to understand, any forecasting endeavor is engineered to illicit exactly this response. “oooh, robot cars powered by hamster farts! imagine that!” at the same time though, for me, this fascination can’t help but ultimately collapse under the shock waves of a mega-shrug. i mean, big deal. these forecasts are just gussied-up educated guesses right?
today i came upon a news story which reproduced a recent technology timeline offered by uk entity bt. it is a perfect example of the truly silly end of the futurist spectrum to be perfectly honest, but much like the involuntary reaction to swelling mood music in a hollywood drama, i can’t help but be just interested enough to read it through-
Here it is:
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2006-2010
EMOTIONALLY RESPONSIVE TOYS
RESPONDING to the sound of its owner’s voice, these toys will react with a variety of emotions. Sony’s Aibo dog robot can already simulate anger and fear, surprise, dislike, sadness and joy.
ELECTRONIC MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS
THE doctor will enter his diagnosis into a handheld computer, prescribe treatment and send instructions directly to a pharmacist via a text message.
VIDEO TILES
THESE will provide news or entertainment in the bath or shower. They can even change a scene to let you bathe under an African sunset, for example
2008 - 2012
MEDICINE DELIVERED VIA FRUIT
SCIENTISTS will be able to produce genetically modified fruit that carry medicines and extra vitamins. For example apples could contain the polio vaccine.
VIDEO TATTOOS
ONE worth waiting for ... ultra-thin polymer video screens stuck to the skin will act as as “moving tattoos”.
SENSITIVE FABRICS
CLOTHES made from smart fabrics will measure the wearer’s heart rate and temperature and transmit the data to a computer controlling the home. The computer will use the information to judge our mood - and light and heat the room accordingly.
2011 - 2015
SELF-DRIVING CAR
CARS will steer themselves, using enhanced satellite navigation and sensors to stop them getting too close to the car in front. Mercedes has already carried out tests on a closed track.
TOOTH REGENERATION
FILLINGS will become a thing of the past. Using gene therapy, lost or diseased teeth will be regrown in the mouth from a few cells. Scientists have already successfully grown mouse teeth in a lab dish.
MICROCHIPS IN FOOD
INTELLIGENT microwave ovens will automatically read the information on a chip hidden in the packaging of food and cook it exactly according to the instructions.
2013 - 2017
ACTIVE MAKE-UP
THE make-up is applied normally, but a small control unit in a handbag sends out electronic pulses that change the colours.
ROBOTS GUIDE BLIND PEOPLE
A PROTOTYPE robot which helps blind people shop or find their way around buildings already exists at Utah State university. Professor Vladimir Kulyukin designed the machine that locates items and avoids collisions. The robot could replace guide dogs.
2016 - 2020
ELECTRONIC LIFE FORM GETS BASIC RIGHTS
AS robots become more sophisticated and involve the addition of organic material into their construction there will be calls for their rights to be safeguarded.
VIEWERS PLAY FILM ROLES
USING computer-simulated versions of themselves, viewers will be in the thick of the action by introducing themselves into the movie.
EMOTION CONTROL DEVICES
THE most extreme use of emotion control devices would be to put a stop to criminal activity. It could suppress anger or stimulate feelings in emotionless psychopaths by sending electronic pulses to the brain.
2021 - 2025
E-TRANSLATION
WITH computers automatically translating every language there will be less need for humans to learn more than one. One universal language - probably English - will dominate.
HOLOGRAPHIC TV
INSTEAD of a flat screen, TV will become a three-dimensional affair, viewable from every side and projected into the middle of the room.
2026 - 2030
3D HOME PRINTERS
COMPANIES including the US-based Z Corporation are already working on technology which involves the printer building up layers of a material to create a solid model of a digital image.
2031 - 2035
BIOSTASIS IN SPACE TRAVEL
TECHNOLOGY will be available to slow the body’s metabolism enough to delay aging on space journeys lasting decades. Travellers will sleep the whole time, connected to drips to provide basic nutrients and vitamins.
COMPUTER GENIUSES
THE power of computers already doubles virtually monthly. At the rate the technology advances, they could become more intelligent than their creators.
2036 - 2040
SPACE ELEVATOR
A SEATTLE company is already planning to connect the earth to space via a cable running between a floating ocean platform and a satellite. Passenger pods and cargo could travel up and down the cable.
2041 - 2045
MOON BASE
A VILLAGE will be firmly established on the Moon, serviced by regular shuttle flights.
2046 - 2050
MARS COLONY
A SMALL colony of scientists and explorers will be entirely self-sufficient, growing food in large greenhouse-style pods.
NUCLEAR FUSION
THE idea is to recreate the nuclear reactions which take place at the heart of the sun. Last month the EU, America, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea agreed to build an experimental £6.6billion nuclear fusion reactor in France.
2051+
BRAIN DOWNLOADS
EVERYTHING in your brain - thoughts, feelings and memories - will be transferred to a computer, ensuring a form of digital immortality if eventually uploaded into a human brain later.
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now you see what i’m saying? shrug…
to be fair to futurists (or futurologists, practitioners of future studies, or whatever the hell they are calling themselves today - not to be confused with these
similarly named futurists of course-) there are timelines and forecasts out there which are woven of a totally different fabric to be sure, forecasts which make you shiver and try to think of other things, forecasts which distract you from the impending mega-shrug through sheer force of fascination. this particular timeline suffers more than many because it is so obviously a “consumer” or gee-whiz public consumption list- VIDEO TATTOOS! HOLOGRAPHIC TV! INTELLIGENT microwave ovens! seriously why bother? who gives a shit? as for the serious pieces on the timeline, (2046 - 2050 mars colony! 2051+ brain downloads!) these are sufficiently theoretical and distant as to be pretty much safe inclusions, but as such they also… uh oh… here it comes… shhhhhrrrrruuuuuuug!
for more worthwhile and though provoking adventures in future studies check some of these bottomless pits of dark and fascinating pontification-
the millennium project
human knowledge.net
future is no science fiction
the human evolution gateway
institute for the future
principa cybernetica
accelerating future
better humans
and of course kurzweil.
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case 116
today we continue in our series of transcribed case studies from the classic psychopathia sexualis. for those who are just joining us psychopathia sexualis was first published in germany in 1886 and was an attempt by richard von krafft-ebinng m.d. to catalogue and illuminate every manner of “sexual perversion” bubbling under the surface in his day and age. (earlier entries in the series include cases 225, 123, 98 / 99, and 88) today’s case is filed under the pathological erotic fetishism heading-
case 116
l, aged thirty seven, clerk, from a tainted family. at five years old, he had his first erection when he saw his bedfellow -an aged relative- put on his nightcap. the same thing occurred later when he saw an old servant put on her nightcap. later, simply the idea of an old ugly woman’s head covered with a nightcap, was sufficient to cause an erection. the sight of a cap, or a naked woman or man alone made no impression, but the mere touch of a nightcap induced erection,, and sometimes even ejaculation. l was not a masturbator, and had never been sexually active until his thirty second year, when he married a young girl with whom he had fallen in love. on his wedding night he remained cold until, from necessity, he brought to his aid the memory-picture of an ugly woman’s head with a nightcap. coitus was immediately successful. thereafter it was always necessary for him to use this method. from childhood he had been subject to attacks of depression, with suicidal tendencies, and occasional frightful hallucinations at night. when looking out a window he became dizzy and anxious. he was a perverse, peculiar, and easily embarrassed man of bad mental constitution.
in this very peculiar case, the simultaneous coincidence of the first sexual reference and an absolutely heterogeneous impression seems to have determined association
a related case of accidental associative fetishism which is quite peculiar, is that of a married man, aged thirty, who in other respects, was physically and mentally healthy, who is said to have suddenly lost hi sexual power after moving into another house, and to have regained it as soon as the furniture of the bedroom had been arranged as before.
tune in next time when we will highlight the fetish for limping.
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snubbing the stuckists
the Tate Museum has turned down a proposed gift of 160 paintings offered by a group of artists known as the stuckists. Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota wrote to the Stuckists, who offered the gift: “We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation, or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection.” ouch. the ol’ hierarchical bitch slap from the local gatekeepers of art history. here’s the thing, in my view the tate was absolutely right in handing out said bitch slap.
the stuckists are a group which formed officially in 1999 by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish (who left in 2001) along with eleven other artists. The name was derived by Thomson from an insult to Childish from his ex-girlfriend, Brit artist Tracey Emin, who told him that his art was ‘stuck’. The Stuckists stand for contemporary figurative painting with ideas. They oppose conceptual art, mainly because of what they regard as its lack of concepts.
having chosen an ism they eventually issued a manifesto which begins like this:
Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.
-Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.
-Painting is the medium of self-discovery. It engages the person fully with a process of action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving breadth and detail.
-Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic. It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public. Modernism is a school of fragmentation — one aspect of art is isolated and exaggerated to detriment of the whole. This is a fundamental distortion of the human experience and perpetrates an egocentric lie.
they call their anti-conceptual, and anti-anti-art paintings remodernism.
i must say that i am very sympathetic to certain of the stuckists broad stroke ideals, in theory anyway. i happen to be less than enthralled by the prevailing winds of conceptualism, less than impressed with most of the propped-up “art royalty” getting coronated by the lucre chewing king makers, and i’d certainly be thrilled to see painting rise again to prominence. no question. they even have this bit in their manifesto Stuckism is anti ‘ism’ a sentiment i’m sure i don’t need to get into. but here’s the thing: by and large, to my eye at least (luckily the only eye i need to concern myself with) their paintings stink. for the most part. manifesto writing and monicker adopting is good fun for the whole self important family, but in the end, if your paintings don’t move me… well, then all those words which accompany them only serve as convenient kindling for my cozy crap-art bonfire.
course, you, reader, might eat and breathe stuckist. fine. subjective, etc etc. but should this work be in the permanent collection of the tate? maybe. should it be there today? seems a touch presumptuous for a “movement” which has existed for only 6 years to be represented by any museums permanent collection whatsoever. that’s what galleries are for. a venue that the stuckists are evidently doing just fine in. so hey, don’t get greedy stuck-ites. furthermore if you read the manifesto you might even be struck with the thought that “hey, wanting so badly to be enshrined forever in any institution sounds suspiciously un-stuckist…” haha, so is the trap of grand pronouncements manifest.
Charles Thomson, co-founder of the Stuckists, called the decision “a massive snub”. Noting their recent stuckist exhibition’s success, he added: “It shows the Tate is completely out of line with the rest of the country and the public, whose money it spends on things the public don’t want.” touchy touchy mr. high minded “new spirituality” in art, mr. anti “the ego-artist’s constant striving for public recognition”... haha. maybe next decade.
see the work and judge for yourself, maybe you’ll dig it.
international stuckists
uk stuckists
some of the specific works rejected by the tate.
oh, p.s. click the first thumbnail to see the actual non-snide painting.
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this is like porn to me
Cheap real estate in France. Need I say more? Okay, maybe a little. First off, euros are currently about 20% above the dollar, so 80k euros is in the neighborhood of 100k dollars. Now know that the wine country of france is lousy with old barns for 50k dollars or so, for conversion; or, if you’re a wuss who needs a house that you can actually sleep and shower in, like, now and shit, figure a hundred thousand. not so different from backwoods usa prices, true; but you can own your own vineyard, and get f’rinstace 500 bottles of free wine a year (basically, you just sell the grapes to a vintner in exchange for payback in cash or wine, and pay a bit to have it bottled).
how about this: 5 acres with a lake for about 40k american.
this house, for about 70k murkin, needs no work, but seems overrun by triffids (use the shotgun!)
And then there is this rather cryptic entry for about 90k yankee bucks. The description is as follows: “A wonderful view under a small lake for this house dated XVIII century. It just need renovation.” Is it sunk, like a little piece of atlantis in bretagne?
anyway, it’s been pointed out in one of the lefty websites that france is looking pretty good. buy a cheap house, drink wine, eat cheese and bread, work a little if you’re bored (but not as friggin’ hard as you’d work here!) and be safe from the bushists in a free country with nukes. like i said, this is like porn to me.
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the olden days, when actors only acted crazy
the period 1870 to 1920 saw a huge growth in “variety theater” in america. it drew greater audiences than the “legitimate” theater which presented serious literary works and appealed to “elite” audiences. by contrast the variety stage was democratic and broad in approach. The variety stage strove to attract all classes of people from every cultural background by offering varied programs and relatively low admission fees. To succeed at show business entrepreneurs provided public entertainment that transcended the specific tastes of a particular class or ethnicity. It emphasized action and caricature. more below
it’s the caricature part which i want to focus on here.
when i was redesigning the nonist i searched pretty deeply into the library of congress image collection for inspiration. one thing i was particularly struck by were the vaudevillian performers who billed themselves as simply “entertainers” offering everything under the sun, magic, music, drama, usually with a strong focus on caricature work. the wonderful thing about it all is that their broadsheets, advertisements, and program guides invariably depict the “entertainer” in a wide range of over the top guises which are, if you’ll excuse the language, fucking incredible. hilarious.
the interesting thing is that even though they are ridiculous to our naturalism adapted eyes you cant help but look at these entertainers and imagine them hustling
hard for their bread. sweating, flopping about, hamming it up, acting the fool, doing any god damned thing they had to on stage to get ahead and continue on the circuit. looking at them the thought of some of our modern day, ultra-wealthy, preening, pompous ass-hats, (tom cruise anyone?) acting like morons off the stage seem even less deserving of our interest than they already do. perhaps i’m romanticizing a bit, (in fact i’m sure i am) but take a look for yourself.
below you’ll find a tiny sampling of what the library of congress site has to offer on the subject. focuse here is on the “impersonators.” click all for larger images. enjoy.
haha. c’mon. gotta give em an a for effort.
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meanface
came across (via j-walk) this cool little experiment going on at the moment called meanface. from the site’s info section: meanface is the result of combining all of the user submitted faces to form one average (or mean) face. the more face submitted the more evolved and definite the meanface should become. the thumbnail is a scaled down version of the current mean of the 2163 submitted thus far. go visit and add your own. see below for more.
a few points of interest:
it seems that in drawing the indication of a nose far more people draw a line (between the eye and the nostril) on the right side. it shows up pretty clearly in the mean. wonder why?
it seems most people are using the full space and cropping the face at forehead and chin for the most close up view possible. wonder why? i drew a full head, the eyes, then nose, then lips, only adding the actual head indications last. perhaps this is the most common method for drawing a face and in that the actual head is an afterthought this explains the cropping of forehead and chin?
lastly i was curious whether the mean would end up representing the symmetry that human’s evidently prefer and find more pleasing to the eye. i took the current mean and split it to test this-
actual mean of first 2163
left side of face mirrored.
right side of face mirrored.
so, thus far, no symmetry. perhaps as it resolves itself further? right now it actually looks like one side of the face is happy while the other is sad. neat.
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name these tunes. round 1
below you will find 15 verses from various songs. let it be known that he or she who can best identify the artists responsible for these verses will receive… something… sometime. if you identify the most you win, that simple. but here me now and here me well: no cheating!!! “but how could you know if i cheated?” i hear the devious among you asking… i just will. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) as not to tip off your competiors. you have until friday. good luck.
1.
And I know what’s right
But I’m losing sight Of the clues
for which I search and choose
To abuse
To just unlock my mind
Yeah
and just unlock my mind
2.
I’m on the outside looking inside
What do I see
Much confusion, disillusion
All around me.
You don’t possess me
Don’t impress me
Just upset my mind
Can’t instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time
3.
And all your two-bit friends
Have gone and ripped you off
They’re talking behind your back saying, man
You’re never going to be no human being
And you start thinking again
’bout all those things that you’ve done
And who it was and what it was
And all the different things you made every different scene
Ahhh, but remember that the city is a funny place
Something like a circus or a sewer
And just remember different people have peculiar tastes
And the -
glory of love
4.
Your everlasting summer
You can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
You wouldn’t know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can’t understand
5.
there never really is a good time,
there’s always nothing much to say,
pretty good not doin that fine,
gettin up most everyday.
6.
i know you’ve had a fucked up life,
growing up in a stupid town,
your mother was a mixed up jerk
and you’re father, he just fucked around,
a little too much for his own good,
i’d kill the bastard if i could,
i’d kill all the boys with their fucked up noise
and all the bullshit they seem to enjoy.
7.
Broke my pace and ran out of time
Sometimes I’m so full of shit that it should be a crime
Broke a promise cause my car broke down
Such a classic excuse it should be bronzed by now
8.
a cheerless child on a swing,
reminds you of you’re own again,
she took away you’re troubles,
oh, but then again, she left pain
9.
Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
10.
the memories of a man in his old age
are the deeds of a man in his prime
you shuffle in the gloom of a sick room
and talk to yourself as you die
life is a short warm moment
and death is a long cold rest
you get your chance to try
in the twinkling of an eye
80 years with luck or even less
11.
I don’t mind working, ’cause I used to be jerking off most of my time in bars,
I’ve been a cabbie and a stock clerk and a soda-fountain jock-jerk
And a manic mechanic on cars.
It’s nice work if you can get it, now who the hell said it?
I got money to spend on my gal,
But the work never stops, and I’ll be busting my chops
Working for joe and sal.
12.
Drive up and down thru water
Live where poor
Big dreams nice
Sighing babies go to work
13.
such a mystique
when the writing gets weak
break up coherence
with a cut cut cut-up technique
when you’ve got nothing to say
shut up
or show
that you’re willing
to play…
14.
i sent my love in a letter girl
but hugs and kisses weren’t the same
and then i called you on the telephone
till the bill came that i could not pay.
15.
Oh it’s so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl.
And with the way you look I understand
That you are not impressed.
But I heard you let that little friend of mine
Take off your party dress.
I’m not going to get too sentimental
Like those other sticky valentines,
’cause I don’t know if you’ve been loving somebody.
I only know it isn’t mine.
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the book of the hunt
completed in 1388, and based on the author’s personal experience,the book of the hunt by Gaston Phoebus deals with different types of game, the care and training of hounds, methods of hunting stags and other wild animals, as well as traps and snares. An exceptionally beautiful manuscript of the book was produced early in the fifteenth century. The animal imagery is outstanding; it brings vividly to life the way hunting and related activities were practiced in the Middle Ages. from the national library of france’s manuscript division. the thumb is a detail from hunter staked out behind a decoy.
giant fish-headed soldiers are just the beginning
i’m heavily digging nicholas di genova’s drawings today. now has a capsule review of his current show. after a bit of art flimflam they get to the point nicely: Art-speak aside these drawings are fucking cool. They tap directly into the giddy kid in all of us who revels in the idea of armies of giant fish-headed soldiers, saurian mutations ripping each other to shreds and towering three-headed crab robots. wurd. check out some of his work at le-gallery on this flickr set and via his own site- newer work, and older work.
a nonist public service pamphlet
there is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it’s dark touch. we’re speaking, of course, about blog depression.
we here at the nonist have spoken before about the “blog life crisis” which is a natural part of any blog’s life-span. what we turn our attention to now, however, is the more insidious, prolonged strain of dissatisfaction which stays with a blogger, right below the surface, throughout a blog’s lifetime. the diligent and self aware blogger can resist this destructive undercurrent, make changes, adapt, rationalize, but for many, untreated, it can cause much needless suffering in the form of full fledged blog depression.
below you will find a 6 page pamphlet meant as a public service to help educate bloggers about this growing problem. feel free to download the complete pdf and disseminate this work to those you know and love. otherwise click each to see the larger version. “the more you know…”
the sooner bloggers realize they have options the better. us included.
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philosophical toys
check out jack & beverly’s optical toy collection. these toys, once called philosophical toys, have an important place in the history and development of photography and cinema but they are also fun!. We have several examples of the magic lantern, Zoetrope (wheel of life), and Praxinoscope, as well as a Phenakistoscope, a Polyrama Panoptique, a Kinora, Mutoscope, and flip books. be sure to check their site map for other points of interest. as well as the page devoted to camera obscura. good fun. (via eotg via bibi thanks guys.)
stars in a jar
came across a post at we make money not art this morning about a project called camera lucida, an interactive “sonic observatory” allowing participants to view sonoluminescence in action, till now a phenomena only viewable in a highly specialized sonochemical laboratory. along with some historical information they offer a video of the camera lucida in action. it’s a fine idea and i’m sure in person the effect must be pretty amazing, the video i suspect does not do the project justice. so what exactly is at work here and what is sonoluminescence?
the most simple concise answer: the process by which acoustic energy is turned into light. offering slightly more detail is this definition: Sonoluminescence is the conversion of sound into light, in which acoustic waves aimed at a water tank create bubbles which collapse to release light flashes.
a scientific american article from 1995 puts it this way:
Imagine you are riding a roller coaster. First, you chug up a long incline slowly. When you get to the top, your car free-falls, speeding up until it reaches the bottom of the drop, where the deceleration crams you into your seat. That sensation is what you would feel if you were riding a pulsating bubble of air trapped in water—except that the drop would reach supersonic speeds and at the bottom you would be crushed into your seat with a force equal to 1,000 billion times your weight.
Obviously, more than your stomach would react to such a ride. As for the bubble, it responds to the extraordinary force by creating a flash of light only a tiny fraction of a second long.
ah, i see. very simple.
well, not really. in fact, though It was first discovered by scientists at the University of Cologne in 1934 (as a an unintentional result to work on sonar), no one is 100% sure what really causes the phenomena. with advances in reaserch, namely “single bubble Sonoluminescence” where by a single bubble, trapped in the acoustic standing wave, emits a pulse of light with each compression of the standing wave, the physical mechanics of the process have become more evident but the mystery of how a low-energy-density sound wave can concentrate enough energy in a small enough volume to cause the emission of light is still unsolved.
one theory posits that the puzzling glow emitted may be caused by a tiny jet of liquid that shoots across the interior of the bubble at supersonic speed and slams into the opposite side.
another theory argues that the collapse of a bubble produces a shock wave, something like the one in a sonic boom but spherically symmetric. The wave crushes the gas in the bubble, heating it up as the wave passes. Then, when the shock wave reaches the center of the bubble and rebounds, it heats the gas again, and in the process can produce temperatures as large as 100,000o C. with this theory in mind a few physicists have speculated that the collapsing shock wave could raise the temperature so much that nuclear fusion, the combining of small nuclei to make a larger nucleus, with a substantial release of energy, might be possible.
a few interesting factoids:
1) the temperature inside the collapsing bubble is hot enough to melt steel. in fact recent temperature measurements of 20,000 degrees Kelvin [35,540 degrees fahrenheit] make it over 4 times hotter than the temperature of the surface of the sun.
2) when using a single bubble the flash of light lasts an incredibly short time, a few tens of trillionths of a second. the entire spectrum of colors in an SL flash shines for 35-380 picoseconds.
3) Sonoluminescence bubble collapse at more than four times the speed of sound.
4) The only liquids that have produced sonoluminescence are pure water, aqueous solutions and ethanol at -115° C.
anyhow the video which accompanies the camera lucida project, as i’ve said, does not necessarily dazzle the eye as i’m sure seeing it in person would, and since i’d rather not ply you with nothing but dry science i’ll instead do what i do best- i’ll ply you with pretty pictures. below you will find a Sonoluminescence related gallery of images. i particularly like the “frankenstein feel” which results from the various funky apparatus set ups combined with the, well, luminescence.
without context but beautiful none the less.
lastly i’ve reproduced some of the “historical notes” from the camera lucida website below because i found them particularly interesting and found the flash scrolling text particularly annoying.
There are very ancient traditions probing the connection between light, sound and color, which have usually lead to rather pertinent cosmological implications. The Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Pythagoras, speculated that there must be a correlation between the musical scale and the rainbow spectrum of hues. That idea fascinated several Renaissance artists including Leonardo da Vinci (who produced elaborate spectacles for court festivals), Athanasius Kircher (the popularizer of the “Laterna Magica” projection apparatus) and Archimboldo who (in addition to his eerie optical-illusion portraits composed of hundreds of small symbolic objects) produced entertainments for the Holy Roman Emperors in Prague.
Although very much a part of his scientific imagination, Sir Isaac Newton had never applied the idea of colors corresponding to musical tones, for example by constructing an instrument that would produce colors and tones simultaneously. Nevertheless, he invented (and we have to call it that) the seven colors of the spectrum, based on the analogy with the seven notes of the diatonic scale. It appears that it was his assistant, endowed with better eyesight, who divided up the spectrum of sunlight refracted by a prism, but it was certainly Newton who had instructed him to make seven divisions. As a result of this decision, most people today believe unthinkingly that the rainbow has seven colors, called red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.
In searching for the rationale behind the spectrum, Newton discovered another musical dimension. It was while experimenting with the colored rings that appear when two pieces of glass are pressed together (“Newton’s rings”). He calculated the spaces between the two plates that gave rise to different colors - spaces of the order of a ten-thousandth of an inch - and found that they were proportioned as the cube roots of the squares of the string lengths that would have given the corresponding intervals. It was through such calculations that he later discovered the wave lengths of light.
be sure to visit the camera lucida page for further information including a bit on the ocular harpsichord.
for more info on Sonoluminescence from the scientific perspective try mit’s links page, or check out the sci-am article mentioned earlier.
for more related visual stimuli see here.
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xilogravuras
from brazilian popular prints published by redstone press. this is the first book to appear in english devoted to the startling woodcuts that illustrate the brazilian literatura de cordel. this ‘string literature’, the work of virtuoso popular poets, originated in the harsh back lands of north east brazil. these passionate narratives, by turns realistic and fantastic, now comic, now tragic, at once reflect the realities and the dreams of the brazilian poor.
it’s a wonderful little volume full of down and dirty woodcuts from folhetos, small poetry chapbooks, cranked out on simple hand presses in the manner of the broadsides and pamphlets popular in europe throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
from the essay which accompanies the prints:
the striking woodcuts, known as xilogravuras, are a familiar sight throughout brazil. as illustrations on the covers of cheap pamphlet poetry, bold prints on paper or more elaborate designs on cloth in the form of wall hangings, they are found on sale in many fairs, market and street stalls. although simple in style, even at times naive, this popular art form captures much of the richness and complexity of contemporary brazilian culture, where wealth and poverty, the traditional and the modern, the rural and the urban constantly merge together to produce new modes of expression and cultural products. many are humorous and playful, with satyrical images which mock modern fashions or rebuke the arrogant and the pompous, though others convey sharp social protest. a myriad of themes and issues are given expression by the popular imagination and conveyed in simple images.
the following are some examples from the book. click all for larger images and (readable) text.
the power of st. bartholomew
the boy who turned into a donkey
lampiao fights the devil
the scandalous ways of today
the marriage between the jaguar and the monkey
the smoke of death that is destroying a generation
the mysterious warning of the image of the mystic rose
the example made of the sun who killed his parents to gain his inheritance
the prankster and the skull
and when he saw the skull again,
he couldn’t run anymore,
for he was completely exhausted,
so he leapt into the water
to try and save himself,
but ended up drowning.
and the skull said:
you must never joke at other people’s expense,
and now you’re going to live where i live,
for a century that will never end, amen.
you made fun of a skeleton,
-now you’re a skeleton yourself.
the girl who got married 14 times and still remained a virgin
cafu, the king of laughter
the woman who deceived the devil
the girl who died and the dog who wouldn’t let her be buried
that’s all folks! hope you enjoyed.
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today in history: a black basalt slab
for 1400 years, no one knew how to read egyptian hieroglyphs. during napoleon bonaparte’s egyptian campaign, a french soldier discovered a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing. the irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: greek, egyptian hieroglyphics, and egyptian demotic. the ancient greek on the stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests of Ptolemy V in the second century B.C. more startlingly it announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. thus the artifact held the key to solving the riddle of a written language that had been “dead” for nearly two millennia.
on this day in 1799, the rosetta stone was discovered.
president of the lambs
Our unwell nation is surrounded by a thousand doctors, all claiming to know what is ailing her; but so few understand; they look at what is on the surface, when the malady is in her very entrails; it is as if worms had eaten away at her vitals. And so they have. I am deeply troubled that very, very few people think about the deep systemic implications of whatever is happening on the surface on any given day. This is why the Far Right became so powerful; the warning signs have been there for well over a decade, but few saw them.
What is it that sets the Far Right of the Republican Party apart from normal Americans? What enables them to lie, and lie again, spill innocent blood, steal, steal, and steal, claim up is down and patriots are traitors, and wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep and do it all again, with no pang of conscience?
To answer this question, look at the field of physics: if an Einstein or Hawking goes public with a crazy-sounding new theory which is later proven correct, it is because they believe the math. If the equations work out perfectly, a good physicist knows that they must be believed, no matter what ‘crazy’ things they might imply. If the equations tell you time slows down at light speed, then by golly you’d better believe it slows down.
This is where so many observers went wrong: no matter how many times the Far Right acted like they had no conscience, no matter how many times conservatives lied or colluded in murder in faraway places or stole from the public, few people could accept the truth: that the Right was infested with sociopaths.
Now, it is true that no formal diagnosis by a mental health professional exists (that I know about) stating that George W. Bush is a sociopath. However, the meme is out there: google the words Bush and sociopath together, and you get 50,900 hits! Moreover, there are some convincing circumstantial arguments that the label fits; see Mary Shaw’s article the sociopathic bush administration or Beth Conover’s bush isn’t a moron, he’s a cunning sociopath. If you think they, or I, am throwing the word ‘sociopath’ around loosely, please read the wikipedia entry for antisocial personality disorder, which is the most ‘modern’ if somewhat cumbersome term.
But I am not simply suggesting that the President is a mentally ill, heartless, incomplete human. I am suggesting that the ranks of his party and supporters are a mutually supporting horde of mentally ill, heartless, incomplete humans! Consider the behavior of high-ranked Republicans from Bush and Rove on down to many of their foot soldiers, their friends in the media such as Rush, corrupt ‘religious’ figures such as Pat Robertson, and such Wall Street robber barons as Ken Lay, and review this list of symptoms from the aforementioned wiki:
Arrogant/Deceitful Interpersonal Style
* Glibness/superficial charm
* Egocentricity/Grandiose sense of self-worth
* Pathological lying
* Conning/Manipulative
Deficient Affective Style
* Lack of remorse or guilt
* Callous/Lack of empathy
* Shallow affect
* Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Impulsive/Irresponsible Behavioral Style
* Need for stimulation/Proneness to boredom
* Parasitic lifestyle
* Lack of realistic, long-term goals
* Impulsivity
* Irresponsibility
Good lord! About the only relevant symptom the Conservatives do not (obviously) display is ‘proneness to boredom’! (Some would argue that ‘flat affect’ is rare among the people I refer to, but any Method actor can manufacture emotion, and so can any real politician; act angry, and you start to feel it for real, for instance).
The Hare checklist has some other symptoms, less relevant to the current topic, having to do with juvenile delinquency, etc.:
Quote:
* Promiscuous sexual behavior
* Many short-term marital relationships
* Criminal versatility
End quote.
On the Hare PCL-R test, there are 20 traits:
Quote:
Score 0 if the trait is absent, 1 if it is possibly or partially present and 2 if it is present. The item scores are summed to yield a total score ranging from 0 to 40 which is then considered to reflect the degree to which they resemble the prototypical psychopath. A score higher than 30 supports a diagnosis of psychopathy. Forensic studies of prison populations have reported average scores of around 22 on PCL-R; control “normal” populations show an average score of around 5.
A note of caution: the test must be administered by a trained mental health practitioner under controlled conditions for it to have any validity.
End quote.
Another informative page is the malignant personality: These people are mentally ill and extremely dangerous! The following precautions will help to protect you from the destructive acts of which they are capable.
quote:
First, to recognize them, keep the following guidelines in mind.
(1) They are habitual liars. They seem incapable of either knowing or telling the truth about anything.
(2) They are egotistical to the point of narcissism. They really believe they are set apart from the rest of humanity by some special grace.
(3) They scapegoat; they are incapable of either having the insight or willingness to accept responsibility for anything they do. Whatever the problem, it is always someone else’s fault.
(4) They are remorselessly vindictive when thwarted or exposed.
(5) Genuine religious, moral, or other values play no part in their lives. They have no empathy for others and are capable of violence. Under older psychological terminology, they fall into the category of psychopath or sociopath, but unlike the typical psychopath, their behavior is masked by a superficial social facade.
End quote.
So perhaps we are actually considering ‘malignant personality’, which is something slightly different? Especially note the proclivity for pretending to be moral and religious as a tactic, rather than a true sentiment. In any case:
Consider the matter more systematically from the standpoint of affinities. What do I mean by ‘affinities’? Put yourself in the shoes of an ambitious and sociopathic person desiring lots of power, money, etc. Looking around, you see two major American parties.
One, the Democrats, is the party of regulation, the party that prefers to tax the rich and give welfare money to the poor. The Democrats want to tell a businessman he can’t dump poison in the river, can’t bust unions and make employees work extra hours for free, can’t steal their pensions, can’t this, can’t that. The Democrats are a bunch of wet blankets!
The Republicans, on the other hand, are swell guys. They want to get the government out of your way. You can make a ton of money without red tape, you can corner the market and charge the suckers top dollar for gasoline, medicine, electricity, or whatever you’re selling. The GOP will get rid of those annoying labor regulations. You can treat your workers like the peons they are. You can keep most of the money you get, instead of giving it away to bums. Taxes are for little people. Greed is good. Why protect the suckers? The stupid, weak monkeys fall out of the tree. The strong survive.
Corporations can be seen as ‘artificial sociopaths’, potentially immortal paper persons which only care about winning and profit. Corporations, too, prefer the GOP.
The evidence all points the same way: one can look at the American political scene and reliably predict that clinical sociopaths, persons with truly abnormal prefrontal lobes and no feeling for their fellow humans, will mostly flock to the party that most aligns with their natural proclivities, and that party is the Republican Party now in power. Where the Democrats have also gone after big money and corporate funding, they have only gone against their own natural affinities, against their natural populist base. Big mistake; why (as Jim Hightower and others have said) should the voters choose fake Republicans when they can have the real thing? And there are a few Democratic sociopaths, if I’m reading Zell Miller right; but he’s a straggler, or a mole.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing to note about the sociopathic personality is that it is not that uncommon. The wiki tells us that “Approximately 3% of men and 1% of women have some form of antisocial personality disorder (source: DSM-IV).” If you know a hundred people, you probably know at least one sociopath. In a nation of 300 million people, that works out to a million women and four million men! Hare believes the number is lower, around one percent of the population; this still gives a couple million sociopathic adults. What this tells me is that in the United States, or any other nation, one can find enough sociopaths to staff the government, fill the top slots of the corporations, man the Army, Navy, Air Force, and police, and still have enough left over for the pulpits and news rooms. Suddenly the Far Right’s ability to march in lockstep makes perfect sense.
For an excellent article exploring the ways sociopaths exploit business organizations, see “psychopath in a suit” by Leon Gettler.
Quote:
“(Dr. Hare) says there would be a higher proportion in such areas as business, politics, law enforcement agencies, law firms, religious organizations and yes, the media. “They have a predatory quality to them and the prey is always around certain areas,” Dr Hare said. “In the business world, if I was a good psychopath and I was well educated, bright, intelligent, grew up in the proper way, knew how to talk and dress and how to use a fork, I’m not going to go out and rob banks.”
end quote.
Did I mention that 8.8 billion dollars went missing last year after it landed in the hands of the Bush appointees running the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq? George Clooney and his Oceans Eleven pals only took 160 million bucks from Andy Garcia’s casino; they’d have to go back and rob the Bellagio 54 more times to catch up with Bremer et al.
Now consider the situation when this nation was founded. At the time of the Revolution, there were about 2.5 million people in the Colonies, a fourth of them slaves; Philadelphia had 25,000 people, and only three other cities had more than 5000 inhabitants. We could expect, then, that Philadelphia would have 250 true sociopaths in it at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and every other place less than that. And, in those days, even men like Washington and Franklin had to meet face-to-face with those they wished to influence, or spread their ideas through pamphlets as did Tom Paine. Personal reputation was everything; mass media did not exist. I suspect, though I could be mistaken, that smaller populations made it a bit harder for sociopaths to operate without being noticed; the bad seeds were easier to keep track of. The Constitution, as it was first written, reflected that more innocent world.
In view of all this, I propose an Amendment to the Constitution:
___________________________________________________
Amendment XXVIII
1. Recognizing the danger of persons without conscience in positions of great responsibility, and recognizing the danger that such persons can cooperatively foil the checks and balances on which an open, democratic government and a free people depend, all government employees and certain non-governmental workers shall pass psychological tests as a prior condition of employment, as follows:
2. Testing shall be designed to detect and remove psychopathic/sociopathic (Antisocial Personality Disorder) persons from sensitive positions, using Hare Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R), Babiak and Hare B-Scan, or such improved tests as may become available. No other disorders shall be subject to testing under this Amendment. No new test shall be adopted which weakens or alters the intent of this Amendment.
3. Persons to be tested shall include: all government career employees, federal, state, and local, including but not limited to Civil Service positions and appointed positions, and judgeships; all commissioned military ranks; all elected positions, federal, state, and local, including but not limited to the posts of President, Vice President, Senate, and House of Representatives; and any government posts not otherwise enumerated.
4. Persons not in government positions to be tested shall include: all those involved in administration or design of tests under this Amendment; all executive officers and board members of corporations employing at least 2,500 employees, and subordinate corporate officers in such corporations overseeing at least 1,000 employees; all executive officers and editorial staff of media outlets with actual circulation, listeners, or viewership of at least 50,000 persons per year. Failure to comply shall be a felony offense, and in addition result in the revocation of the corporate charter.
5. Persons denied employment as a result of tests indicating psychopathy may apply to be retested and reinstated, but shall have no legal recourse nor compensation otherwise if the second test has the same result.
___________________________________________________
Although I have done my best to make this Amendment airtight, foolproof and immune to tampering, I read Gödel, Escher, Bach; I understand it’s impossible to create a truly infallible formal system, and this includes legal language. Likewise, I’m not trying to be cruel; if a sociopath can earn a living without making the rest of us miserable, I’m all for it. It’s simply that these people are lit matches, and don’t deserve jobs in the powder magazine. An Amendment which makes it all but impossible for sociopaths to ascend to great power may transform the nation from the plaything of the ruthless into something verging on Utopia. Or, well, better than the Orwellian mess we keep waking up in now. Think of it as a powerful vermifuge for Lady Liberty.
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