Ear Pierced
I got my ear pierced at that place on St. Mark’s Place because they said they’d do it while I waited.
Why We Fight
. . . is now available on DVD. It will break your heart.
US $
more money, chips, and candy at www.derekstroup.com
Ant Steps
Ants use an internal pedometer to find their way home without getting sidetracked, a new study reports.
Radiographer (Perry Blake Now Owes Me $156)
My final was yesterday, orientation for the next semester is tomorrow, and today, with no plans, I sat around and was bored, that is, until I read a review of the Adam Sandler film “Click”. Memories started flooding me from my old life in Hollywood. I had to see the film because there were a few things I had to know.
Movies You’ve Seen the Most
Slate has an article on movies a handful of directors and various movie people have seen the most. In the spirit of continuing the discussion, the movie I’ve seen the most is Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia.
Beavis Would Be Pleased
“You’ve found your new home for Cornhole on the web! CornholePlayers.net is devoted to becoming your source for everything “Cornhole.” There is plenty of great information about Cornhole on the web, but this is the one site that puts it all in one place for you!”
Radiographer (Gets Scared Straight?)
“Some of you think radiography is going to save lives. You aren’t going to save any lives,” said the guest instructor.
A dramatic pause.
He let the gravity of this statement hang in the air. The only problem with this scenario was that none of the students really believed they were going to be saving any lives. Anyway, he kept going with this line of thought.
My “faith” issue
Faith is, well, a matter of faith, isn’t it? Faith by definition requires a leap, doesn’t it? One isn’t required to have faith in the proposition that oxygen is required for human life, because that requirement is demonstrable. One isn’t required to have faith in the proposition that water flows downhill: it’s likewise demonstrable. Faith is a holding on to, an acceptance of the reality of, something which is not demonstrable, right. Or as the writer of Hebrews would have it, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Now despite the fact that those two phrases have interpretational difficulties of their own, they would seem, at the least, to point toward the idea that “faith” and “facts” aren’t the same thing. Why then. . .
Leary
It is true, yes, that in our drug education program in the ‘8Os we realized that set and setting–that is what you expect and what your environment lays on you–determines 99 percent of the experience. It’s not the drug, it’s your expectations and environment. So we went around saying, “Take LSD, you’ll improve yourself, you’ll be a loving person, you’ll be smarter, you’ll find God, you’ll suddenly feel at one with all nature.” Plus, plus positive, we were openly, nakedly, advocating feeling good, being smarter, being a nicer person, being nonviolent, loving yourself, unity with nature…We were deliberately trying to brainwash since we knew that seven or eight million people were taking LSD and we were deliberately trying to brainwash them into hopeful, utopian, positive, loving experiences. At the same time the drug enforcement establishment was running around saying, “Take LSD, jump out a window,” “Take LSD, become homicidal,” “Take LSD, go to a mental hospital…” I admit we were brainwashing. We were trying to brainwash people to become better, to believe in themselves and to believe in the glorious ness of life. But the narcs were brain washing, too, and they inevitably controlled more of the media than we did and for those who were foolish enough to listen to them, yeah, they had bad trips.
Livestock
“As we approach a monoculture, we really have to wonder if that’s the wisest decision for 200 years from now,” Schrider said. “We really are selling ourselves short if we don’t find a way to maintain our diversity.”
Post-holing towards collaborative fiction
“Sidebrow (www.sidebrow.net) — an online & print journal dedicated to innovation & collaboration —seeks fiction, poetry, art, essay, ephemera, found text, & academia, as well as creative response to current posts and ongoing projects. Submissions to Sidebrow are evaluated both as stand-alone set pieces& as points of departure for establishing multi-authored/multi-genre works. Submissions that re-imagine, depart from, or explore the intersticesbetween posted pieces are highly encouraged.”
In particular, join in the post-holing project seeded and propagated by me (Derek White), Ed Skoog, Greg Mulcahy, Norman Lock, and Joanne Tracy:
http://www.sidebrow.net/2006/posthole.php
“This Justin” Becomes Real Blog
This afternoon I bethought myself to take a stroll down Memory Lane and revisit a couple of Websites I discovered five or more years ago. Imagine my glee (go on — try!) on discovering that not only is JustinSpace still up and running but that Justin’s really bloggin’ at This Justin . Justin says:
There’s still much work to do but here you go. Notice you can leave comments now, and subscribe to my feed, and all those other bloggy things. Enjoy.
After I checked out the blog, I re-viewed a few hardy perennials (Obscene Interiors, Crazy Happy Lunch!, and Joan’s Monets), then took one more fond look at The eBay Conceptual Art Gallery, which still makes me want to scream and shout.
Uranus Is Pretty Big
Why Religion Must End
Laura Sheahen: You’ve said that nonbelievers must try to convince religious people “of the illegitimacy of their core beliefs.” Why are these beliefs dangerous?
Sam Harris: On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them. Propositions like “Jesus is going to come back in the next fifty years and rectify every problem that human beings create”–or, in the Muslim world, “death in the right circumstances leads directly to Paradise.” These beliefs are not very contaminated with good evidence.
Breedlove
Having several older brothers increases the likelihood of a man being gay, a finding researchers say adds weight to the idea that there is a biological basis for sexual orientation.
“It’s likely to be a prenatal effect,” said Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada, “This and other studies suggest that there is probably a biological basis for” homosexuality.
S. Marc Breedlove of Michigan State University said the finding “absolutely” confirms a physical basis.
“Anybody’s first guess would have been that the older brothers were having an effect socially, but this data doesn’t support that,” Breedlove said in a telephone interview.
The only link between the brothers is the mother and so the effect has to be through the mother, especially since stepbrothers didn’t have the effect, said Breedlove, who was not part of the research.
Dear Bono, Love Jesse
“Incidentally, your 21 February letter meant a very great deal to me. Our friendship, while not a long-term one (yet), is very dear to me. You are remarkable not merely in terms of your extraordinary musical talent, but for your decency and the sincerity of your caring for suffering peoples already suffering with AIDS around the world —- and the millions likely to be infected if people like me don’t face up to the enormity of peril confronting the entire world.”
Correspondence to Bono from Jesse Helms dated February 28, 2002.
Burned
In 2001 I met a burn survivor who allowed me to photograph her. She told me that she wanted to be photographed so that people could stare at her without feeling embarrassed. It was such an extraordinary experience that a few months later I flew to a burn conference and set up a makeshift studio in a hotel room, and asked people to let me know if they would like their portraits made. I was astonished at how many people did. What I learned from this extraordinary experience was that every burn survivor has a tale of courage to tell, and that the burns have their own eerie beauty. I also learned that after a few hours it becomes very difficult to see the burns anymore. When I returned and developed the photographs, I had to keep asking my wife “does this person look burned to you?”, because they all looked quite normal to me. My only regret is that I didn’t continue with this project longer than I did, but life intervened.
Philanthropy
“Brace yourself,” Buffett warned with a grin. He then described a momentous change in his thinking. Within months, he said, he would begin to give away his Berkshire Hathaway fortune, then and now worth well over $40 billion.
GLBT Archival Footage on YouTube
This announcement from The Advocate online:
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society announced the launch of its own YouTube channel Friday. The channel will build a growing archive of historical GLBT video clips that will be accessible to the public.
“We are thrilled to dig into the trove of our extensive archive and netcast historic queer video to the world,” said GLBT Historical Society executive director Terence Kissackt.
The first two features are currently up and running on the channel. One commemorates the 25th anniversary of the public mention of AIDS, while the second video is called Sporting Life: LGBT Athletics and Cultural Change from the 1960s to Today.
“These two clips are just the beginning of a project that goes to the heart of the Historical Society’s mission to preserve and convey our community’s stories in accessible and powerful ways,” said Kissack.
My own YouTube search on “GLBT Historical Society” turned up not only an assortment of “AIDS at 25″ and “Sporting Life” features but five clips of Super 8 footage documenting San Francisco Pride Parades, 1975-1983.
Just a recommendation
One could certainly do worse than take a listen to “Fires Which Burn Brightly” by Procol Harum, originally issued on Grand Hotel in 1973. Especially impressive is the wordless vocal (provided, I believe, by one of the Swingle Singers from France!) which begins about 4 minutes into the 5-minute song.
Equally impressive, and quite different musically, is “Song for a Dreamer,” the Robin Trower showcase from 1971’s Broken Barricades.
The World Cup and Prostitution
“For us, soccer and sex go very well together,” he said. “In soccer there is always a winner and a loser. One needs a party, the other one needs consolation, and we can offer both.”
Robot Ethics
“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy? “The question is what authority are we going to delegate to these machines?” said Professor Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “Are we, for example, going to give robots the ability to execute lethal force, or any force, like crowd control?” The forthcoming code is a sign of reality finally catching up with science fiction. Ethical problems involving machines were predicted in the 1950s by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov whose book I, Robot was recently turned into a Hollywood film. The Terminator and Robocop series of films also portrayed mechanical law enforcers running amok.
Dodo Bones
Cyanide and Happiness
