slow-clap

waffle-based ontology

the city as undulating carrot cake waffle grid.
people as bananas within the waffle system,
ice cream as building and landscape
these are produced and consumed by interstellar mediums, i.e. pissed off paranoid sugar addicts.

negotiating between curve (banana) and line (carrot), 
the waffle surrenders its form to accommodate its contents.

context

doing nothing is doing something

I think there is a way of living with vulnerability and grief that for most Americans is not easy. It’s not easy to abide with grief and not to resolve grief [through] action. 

Grief marks something.

 It marks loss.

I think it was only September 21 when Bush said “We’ve finished grieving and now it’s time to act.” And I thought, “Oh, that’s not bad. Ten days of grieving and we’re done with it?” And then what? And then military action, striking back, doing harm to others in the way they’ve done harm to us.

The quick move to action is a way of foreclosing grief, refusing it, and even as it anaesthetizes one’s own pain and sense of loss, it comes, in time, to anaesthetize us to the losses that we inflict upon others.

In this way, the pain we inflict on our 'Others' enables us to hide the inevitability of loss  from ourselves. It allows us to skip the process of mourning, and re-create the illusion that we are not vulnerable to loss.

An entirely different politics would emerge if a community
could learn to abide with its losses and its vulnerability.

Judith Butler interview with Jill Stauffer (May - 2003) 72 hours after the start of the Iraq War

nothing: shadows without the other.

'Go on, go on,' exclaims Delacroix, 'That's not the end!'

'It's not even a beginning. Nothing will come ... 

nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. 

I'm trying to find the right color, but I can't even get the form ...'

'You won't find the one without the other,' 

says Delacroix, 

'and both will come together.'

'What if I find nothing but moonlight?'

'Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.'

Marquee

This is a function of the electronic dance music (EDM) phenomenon, which blew up in America about three years ago when the Black Eyed Peas recorded "I Gotta Feeling" with the French DJ David Guetta. If you want to understand the message and vibe of the music, go YouTube that one. It's cotton candy, it's confection, pure upness, not so much a song as an anthem, almost remedial in the simplicity of its message and lyrics (tonight's gonna be a good night), that sounds a little like if the heightened heartbeat of someone on Ecstasy were amplified and musicalized. It means only one thing: Yay! Fun! Yay! Fun! Woo! Yay! For a more recent version, see Rihanna's collaboration with Calvin Harris, "We Found Love."

source

read more!

What are the external costs of the extravagance of Vegas? What is it that makes us cringe; what is the 'bad' about this kind of hedonism?

bear with me through this one...

Savage man is a nonhuman animal, lacking instinctual repression, while primitive man is human infant, lacking individuation and rationality.

'Then what is the civilized man?'

Through this lens, the brutal murders and public torching of four American civilians by a Fallujan mob in March 2004 converge with the torture scenes orchestrated by American troops in Abu Ghraib revealed a month later. Both could be read as a decline of individual deliberation, conscience, and restraint in the context of morally depraved group enthusiasms. Yet this convergence still permits a divergent assessment of the two peoples from which the acts emerged - such that President Bush could declare that the Fallujan incident or Nicholas Berg's decapitation confirmed "the true nature of the enemy" while insisting that the torture at Abu Ghraib did not express the "nature of the men and women who serve our country".

'How does this happen?' 

Freud says that through the group idealization of a loved object, overvaluation of the object occurs. Brown clarifies his position by stating that idealization is essentially narcissistic projections of the group-self, inhibiting the rationalizing individual instinct. It is this over-idealization by group-think which feeds back unto itself, growing until it overtakes the ego ideal of the individual altogether: "the ego [of the individual] becomes more and more unassuming and modest, and the 'object' more and more sublime and precious, until at last it gets possession of the entire self-love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus follows as a natural consequence”.

read more

I try not to post about American politics

I feel like its too ordinary and as a subject it lacks any in depth or complex discussion. This isn't bad though if you think about it analytically; it makes it more understandable and easier to relate with discussion if its not complex.

Aside from this, I really don't understand why Romney is running. Does he think he has a chance at winning?

This is the mental health delivery system that I helped build.In 2008, at age 23, Tim moved to San Francisco and has lived mostly on the streets there ever since. This is heartbreaking.

I can’t point to a single time when I first realized Tim’s problems were not just normal. The day he lay down in the middle of the road — just to see if a car would run him over — comes to mind, however.

More than one educator has told me that I shouldn’t blame the schools: Their purpose is to educate children, not to treat them. I understand this. But I also learned from personal experience that ignoring a child’s special needs makes meaningless the special-education concepts of “appropriate” and “least restrictive” education that are embodied in the laws we passed.

Mental illnesses cost as much as cancers to treat each year, and the National Institute for Mental Health notes that serious mental illnesses can reduce life expectancy by more than 25 years. That reduction is almost twice the 13 years of life lost, on average, to all cancers combined. When Tim needed hospitalization, an insurer sent him to drug rehab. Imagine the outcry if the insurer had tried to send a smoker with lung cancer who needed hospitalization to drug rehab.

Perhaps, even if Tim had gotten earlier, more effective and better integrated care, he still would have become homeless. But I don’t believe that. Tim is where he is today because of a host of public policy decisions we’ve made in this country. It took a nation to get Tim there. And it will take a national commitment to get him — and others like him — back.

In 2008, at age 23, Tim moved to San Francisco and has lived mostly on the streets there ever since.

READ MORE!

teary-eyed Neil Armstrong after walking on the moon

Alternately, he was a bit overwhelmed by the power and size of humanity, able to summon the resources and energy to leave their own planet. All of human history had pushed Neil out of that lander onto the surface of the moon; billions and billions of people, countless civilizations, and millennia of science and math.

photo by Buzz Aldrin

read more

when a solution for solving a problem could actually make it worse

The term 'Cobra effect' stems from an anecdote set at the time of British rule of colonial India. The British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes. The Government therefore offered a reward for every dead snake. Initially this was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually however the Indians began to breed cobras for the income.

A similar incident occurred in Hanoi, under French colonial rule, where a program paying people a bounty for each rat pelt handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats.

PaPriKa: now I want to know if you people are real

On the chest of energy chemical foaming

Limousine and old tires and blood and flesh as go.

That is a parody of liberty utopia

Limousine or a gigs movie of gorgeousness of sunny tree-lined

_____________

Brandon Skemp Says: 
May 3rd, 2012 at 5:38 pm

An ignored dysfunction polishes a blackboard. The banal citadel listens to an on style. A formula causes? The perfect be sad participates under the champagne. Below a syndicate lights an applause. A lad deranges the dealt milk.

Best Business Colleges Says: 
June 9th, 2012 at 1:20 am
Some genuinely fantastic info , Sword lily I observed this. “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” by Bertrand Russell.

Brendan Roll Says: 
March 21st, 2012 at 12:46 am
Nice post. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely useful info particularly the last part  I care for such information much. I was seeking this certain information for a very long time. Thank you and best of luck.

_____________

Wilbur Radune Says: 

February 13th, 2012 at 6:12 am

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night – professors, officials, the Minister of Finance – but there were decisions that I had to make.

imaginary landscapes

5:45 to Santa Monica - now boarding by Aleksander Novak-Zemplinski

I think my favorite part about this piece is that, as it loaded, I initially thought "happy post-apocalyptic" after seeing the greenery growing over what looked like old machinery--but it's actually deeply Utopian  It's the same bucolic ideal of "returning to Nature," but in this case the return is through the continual development of a complex technological civilization that can support a large population, rather than the collapse of same.

Anyway.

Sky Bridge by Daniel Dociu

I like the flow, the two sides of the chasm combining. Aesthetic and sporty, and also very sci-fi-esque (may have just made up a word).

more!

Whiskery History; or the 'original hirsute hair suit'

This is a riot! As an aside, it makes me want to move to Portland.

read more

Stop the City: “The City of London is where the arms race starts, oppression is financed and exploitation organized. Come and create a peaceful protest for life.”

As articulate, polarizing demagogues, Crass ushered in a new era of Anarcho-Punk, using Punk’s aggressive music and subcultural mode of self-definition in service of serious radical ends. These were not bomb-hurling anarchist folk devils, nor the aesthetic provocateurs of early Punk: the new vanguard were genuinely, and at times puritanically, committed to opposing war, capitalism, religion, sexism, racism, and animal abuse.

read more!

I have yet to read the book, but I love the chapter.

of mice, and men, and the machine

Surgeons:

"They use a scalpel. Their cuts are precise down to the millimeter. Once in a great while there is a slip of the knife, a catastrophic mistake. In those cases, the surgeon is held accountable and the victim lavishly compensated. Oh, and there's one more thing about surgical procedures: while the person being cut into is occasionally victimized by a mistake, there is never a case where the scalepel is guided to imprecisely that it kills the dozen people standing around the operating table. For that reason, orderlies  and family members don't cower in hospital halls terrified that a surgeon is going to arbitrarily kill them. And if he did, he'd be arrested for murder.

So no, drone strikes aren't like surgery at all."

read more!

Food & Drink: Pre-Peeled Bananas Incur the Wrath of Humanity

After days of hiking, we finally came to the summit of the mountain. He sat in the full sun, unresponsive to any stimulation. Presently he turned to us, and said, "You may ask but one question".

We asked, "why?"

" 'Gee, I would enjoy this banana so much more if I didn’t have to take off the peel,' said no one ever. "

Read more!

First grader with severe allergies uses his robot to attend school

Still, through the eyes of Devon's classmates, he's one of them, according to Winchester educators. That was silently proven last spring, when his first-grade class made Devon some "get-well" artwork after a nearly fatal allergic reaction again landed him in Women & Children's ICU.


"They drew a picture of a boy," said Brachmann, explaining the class identified with Devon as a person and not as the VGo machine. 

read more!

ramble

Cars are the [new] great Gothic cathedrals. Supreme creation[s] of an era; conceived with passion, consumed in image by a population which appropriates them as magic.

 

read more!

travel

Imagine one day having this for a map.

Schmitt's Conception of the Friend & Enemy

It is the silence that is killing them, eating them alive, and that's what they are waging war against.

SYNESTHESIAC

To do: the Curious Power of the List

It's really quite odd, isn't it? (It is!)

So soothing, its like

1. mentally cracking my fingers

2. rush of sugar for the head

3. a judge shouting order in a chaotic courtroom

4. bubble-wrap.

OR, ALL IN ONE;

simply divine.

Having nothing to do with the above, yet nonetheless being so cute I want to vomit.

knowing

My big 'n frizzy pumpkin pie,

you are the apple of my eye.

I'd lie in bed all day with you,

'cept I've way too much to do.

Here's a pic:

Protests Rage Over Film Depicting Muhammad

As is ever the case, the media seems preoccupied with the Who? Where? and What? of the situation. I think for better conflict resolution we need to think Why?

From the protests in Sydney

I linked to the hard atheist forum on r/atheism on purpose: to show the fear elicited from the non-Muslim world. Violence only begets more violence.

Why?

"There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand."

read more!

Sao Paolo, Brazil: A Happy, Flourishing City With No Advertising

Estimates say some Americans now look at upwards of 4,000 ads per day. When is enough enough?

______

read more!

To All; pay attention to this. it's huge.

Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design

What do you think? Should businesses be able to use predatory techniques? Does this hurt or enhance economic growth?

7 hours work for free? 

i doubt it. pay money, for, 

it'll 'look' right too.

Ron Swanson

What two words do you fear the most?

Trust me. Card declined. It's in?! It's malignant. Daddy? Help. Who's this? You failed. She's gone. It's over. It's cancer. I'm pregnant. Its dead. 

What are yours?

Kim Dotcom Raid Video

2 choppers, dogs, special tactics group, semi-auto weapons.

What in the fuck made anyone think that any of this was necessary? They acted like this was a drug kingpin.

The FBI was there

Why?

Was Bernie Madoff treated this way? Were any of the thieves at Barclays treated this way? Oh, I forgot, they weren't arrested.

What a fucking joke.

read more!

coyote: the trickster

The Paiute outlook is less a religion than it is a comprehensive philosophy.

Every Paiute story involves recurring themes. One of these themes is change. Necessary to this change is its agent; a force of chaos which is neither evil nor good. This is coyote, or it is water. Both of these are seen as the essential communicator between worlds, and so they are transitive constants. 

The flows of water shape the landscape through carving the sandstone, just as the chaotic trickster reshapes the world around him through his impartial actions. Similarly, the coyote, as an animal spirit, represents a deeply primal part of the human psyche, capable of both good and bad. Water, the advent of which brings on life, and in so many cultures the transition of which is the final passage to death, symbolizes the intangible links between heavens and earths; this world, the next ones, and the ones before ours.

Regardless... 

Glenn was telling us about how the trees and rocks came to their present state. 

People, animals, and water are able to move over the earth, and to us freedom of movement feels natural, and  inherent in our state of being. 

Long long ago, Glenn said, the rocks and the trees wandered over the earth, much as we are able to do so.

One day, coyote played a trick on these rocks and trees, and they lost their ability to move, and so became permanent fixtures in the landscape. So now they sit, stuck where they were brought into existence.

We know this to be true, because people, animals, trees, and rock; still they drink the water.

today: meet with Glenn and "Beans"

The two are older Paiute Indians. 

Beans is a bit deaf from his tour in Vietnam, so we shout a bit at him so he can understand us. His beard is an inch thick, his hair, equally gray, is long and flowing beneath a floppy hat with beads around the top. When he mumbles, we tell him to speak up, and when he yells, we tell him to quiet down. The process is devoid of emotional investment: nobody takes offense.


Beans knows everything there is to know about the Paiute traditional and medicinal knowledge: about the plants that surround us in this South Western Utah landscape. He knows the 'Anglo' words (as he calls them) and he knows the Paiute words, which he learned from his Grandma, Mama, and the other elders growing up on the reservation.

Glenn is the more gregarious one, which I've been told is really rare for Native Americans. The hair around his ears is bic-ed clean, smooth and stubble free. He has hair that is black and thick which compliments a thin mustache. His eyes peer out inquisitively from behind slightly polarized glasses. When he speaks, he is long-winded but incredibly eloquent and persuasive. 

A few minutes before, he had paused, kneeling in the cracked mud, where he pointed at a deer track. "Doe, passed through four days ago."


Now we were at the top of a lookout, to our east is the proposed trail network, to the west a small town.

"I'm a Mormon," he says, turning to face us as he speaks.

"No way." Glenn's jokes are frequent and funny; so we laugh along with him.

The exchange continues, until we realize, for once, he isn't kidding.

"Yeah, they baptized me when I was eight, back when I didn't really know what they was doing. When I was a teenager, well, before that, when I was even younger, that's when I really first felt angry.  

'I felt really angry because at that stage of your age, you're young and you don't know how to deal with that anger, and your anger is thrown at the white people of what they did and you're really angry, you're frustrated, and you try to take this anger out in different ways on different Anglo people, um I was angry but as I grew into adult, and as years kept going by, I start understanding that that's history and from then to now we have to work with history in order to make our tribe better, the Shivwits band a better tribe and to deal with these issues that was back then, and you learn how to deal with it... even with the pioneers, of what they did.  I'm still angry. I get angry, but I learn to deal with it.  

When I gave up that chip on my shoulder, I rejoined the Church for a bit, really learned all the teachings of Joe Smith, and Brigham Young. That's how I understood, here's this person here, you have to talk to them like this, you have to understand their side because they understand your side, and they're ignorant about your culture and they don't understand it and so it's better to understand them because they're the dominant and you have to use it within your means to deal with them, the pioneers of what they did of how they killed my people off and how they murdered them, and there's a lot of these things that aren't recorded that they were murdered and the tainted food, the blankets... yes I'm angry, but there's nothing I can do about it.  I'm here and now.  The only way I know how to deal with it is to learn by looking at them and to learn how to deal with them in different ways, not only of retaliation but those can be... the retaliation can be solved in different ways... in different ways than how you are angry, like physical anger, so those things can be dealt with...'

Nowadays, I don't go back to the Church but every once in a while, about once a year I reckon. But now I know their ways, the majority white people around here, I got to know them, I understand them, and I see now.  That right, yeah, Beans?"


Beans peers across the group, with a penetrating, blank, and yet inquisitive, stare. His voice is deep, rumbling. "Yeah."


"It's like what I always say. No group gets everything right." Glenn starts up again. "There's folks that say the Indians couldn't do no wrong. Well thats not totally right either. The Mormons, they have a great outlook on family, such that you really can't disrespect them. Their origin story is a little iffy, but overall you can't totally disrespect them."


Glenn pauses next to a low bush. "Beans whats it called, this here, this is ee’see. The Anglo name for ee'see?"


Beans had paused, totally lost in the stillness of the moment. He chews his lip reflexively, staring at the small bushy plant. Far overhead some hawks were circling a cliff. Time seemed to stop, until a small breeze snaps him back into the moment. 


"Squawbush," he says.
_________


read more!

mapnificent

Added a new site to the sidebar. Quite interesting stuff.

exploit: a Petrified Forest Cave story

noun

1. a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act: the exploits of Alexander the Great.

verb (used with object)

1. to utilize, especially for profit:  to exploit a business opportunity
2. to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.

Not many words are capable of carrying such binary connotations. 

When used as a noun, it implies bravery and virtue. 

As a verb, the word is more sinister; it suggests subversiveness. 
Money grubbing, gambling, and greedy manipulations. 

Reading this section out of Alfred Stucki's 1966 thesis dissertation 
A HISTORICAL STUDY OF SILVER REEF: SOUTHERN UTAH MINING TOWN
all of these nuances crossed my mind.

Henry Freudenthal and Louis Hassell, chloriders in the Thompson and McNally mine, were putting a hole into unusually bare rock when suddenly the entire face of the drift before them gave way into a black abyss two hundred feet deep. 

Mr. Hassell, who was turning the drill at the time, instantly sprang backward thereby saving himself from being carried downward with the huge mass of rock. 

Two hundred feet overhead could be seen by candlelight, the dome-like ceiling. Two hundred feet below, firm and upright, stood a forest of huge trees. 

Ropes were procured and the chloriders descended into the forest which was found to be petrified.

On some of the trees strange characters were inscribed. Various mosses, also petrifications appearing green and life-like, covered the ground. All of these petrifications carried silver assaying as high as $200 per ton. A number of people visited the cave including Judge A.H. Parker, Mining Engineer. 

The petrifications of course were mined for their silver thus 

destroying the remarkable cave.