Book Cover Out of Context
Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book, but I have been on a bit of a bear kick lately.
(via)
Did Dropping Acid Make Steve Jobs More Creative?
Slate Magazine is discussing the question, citing several experiments during the 50′s and 60′s that seem to point to LSD as a catalyst for innovation and creative thinking:
Taken as a whole, the studies suggested that people who are creative to begin with may experience a slight increase in inspiration or insight during and after an acid trip. That’s not true for non-artistic types, although psychologists did find that most participants thought they got more creative on LSD, regardless of what the tests actually showed…
Despite the relative paucity of rigorous scientific data, Steve Jobs—who once suggested that Microsoft products would be better if Bill Gates “had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger“—is far from alone in his belief. Francis Crick reportedly claimed to have envisioned the structure of DNA during an acid trip. John Lennon attributed the Beatles’ album Revolver to the group’s acid use.
Connecting the dots, the author doesn’t seem convinced by the studies, but it’s still a fascinating idea. Jobs was obviously a visionary, predicting technologies years or sometimes decades before they would be fully realized by Apple (this 1996 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air seems to include prediction for both the iPad and Apple TV). That’s either serendipitous prescience or the product of some very constructive acid trips (or more probably, a combination of both). Either way, it reminded me of something Deron once shared (or maybe a book he was reading) that discussed the proposition that human culture evolved through the use of hallucinogens. Humans have had the same DNA for something like 250,000 years, yet only developed complex societies and culture in the last 15,000 or so – Steve Jobs just took it all a massive step further.
The Decade Since
I realize now that those in history whose lives were short and mean and threatened by sword and disease gathered and told stories not as leisure, but as desperately needed distraction, and reassurance that they were not alone.
So if art cannot contain or describe this event, and if for now the suffering is too keen to be alleviated by parable… if stories are for the moment not as critically needed, as courage, as medicine, as blood, as bacon, they can at least revert to this social function. As time goes on, this will all pass away into memory, into a story with a beginning and a middle and finally an end.
The above quote is from John Hodgman’s McSweeney’s column on September 25, 2001, where he discusses narrative in the context of the attacks. This morning, for probably the first time since maybe 2002, I sat down and actually pondered the events of 9/11. I sat and looked through the many photos provided by The Atlantic and read columns from that strange time, reflecting on what this would all mean. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it a decade later, but I think most striking is the sheer sadness and emotion captured through the lens and in the words that were written.
I jokingly told a friend last night that I remember where I was the last time someone asked me if I remembered where I was on 9/11. Nowadays, I tend to think in broader terms about September 11th – namely how we’ve responded with irrational fear to the slightest threat of terrorism in our post-9/11 reality. But I had a moment this morning where I felt almost shameful at how much I had allowed things to gloss over in the years since. Not in a hollow sort of “remembering 9/11 as a form of dime store patriotism” way, but more in how much we’ve let the genuine feelings of unity and pride we felt for our neighbors slip, thrown away as talking points in elections or manipulated as tools of demagogues.
If September 11th was ever meant to be a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, I sometimes wonder whether we’ll ever get the closure of a happy ending.
As the Spirit Moveth
A pentecostal minister has provoked the ire of her fellow believers after praying in tongues via her Facebook wall.
(The Dish)
That Inspired Extra Seventh
Scholars at the Hebrew University have spent the last 53 years studying variations on the ancient text in order to publish an authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible. Along the way, they made some interesting discoveries about the evolution of the holy book:
The Book of Jeremiah is now one-seventh longer than the one that appears in some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.
Interesting to see that the predictions of biblical scholars are now being verified – though, I imagine for many, these sorts of things won’t matter. Fun fact: the last member of the original team of scholars, who started with the project in 1958, died last year at age 90.
Photos Out of Context
Last ones – promise.
Wugazi, Sleep Rules Everything Around Me
Wu-Tang Clan meet Fugazi.
Thank you, internet.
Photo Out of Context
Of Fox & Facebook
Fox News invited the spokesman for an Atheist group onto one of their programs to discuss a recent lawsuit opposing a cross-shaped memorial at Ground Zero. Almost immediately afterwards, the Fox News Facebook page was flooded with thousands of comments:
Following the appearance of Blair Scott, the Communications Director for the American Atheists, Inc., on Fox News’ America Live show, the network’s Facebook page was overrun with death threats and other violent commentary—more than 8,000 messages advocating rape, murder and crucifixion of any and all atheists, in fact.
(Italics mine) I don’t think it’s any secret that the comments on Facebook posts tend to resemble the graffiti on bathroom stalls, but even I was shocked by the comments. In fairness (and balance, I suppose), Fox News did make a point to delete the post (before it got too out of hand, I guess) and made the following statement:
We make every attempt to keep our Facebook page as safe as possible and we take immediate steps to remove all hateful and dangerous language.
Irony noted.
quote out of context
My guess is, my pretty confident guess is that yet again, Churchill’s dictum will prove correct. Churchill says the United States does the right thing, but only after exhausting the alternatives.
Dear Clusterflock
Anybody out there attending Comic-Con?
(Photo via Peteski)
Screw it, we’re doing a music festival too.
The Onion’s A.V. Club just announced that they’re holding their own music festival. They’re calling it A.V. Fest and, true to their ethos, they seem to have slapped the plan together over the weekend:
We hope to see you there. I’m going to try and convince my co-workers to have a “nerding booth,” which is like a kissing booth, but you get to come nerd out with us instead.
The announcement mentions a 12 band line-up, including Archers of Loaf, Tokyo Police Club and Eef Barzelay (of Clem Snide) playing the music of Journey. If I were Texan, I’d be all over this.
Photo Out of Context
Cults
Grace and I just returned this week from vacationing in Michigan and visiting family. While we were back, religion was brought up often, as Bible-Belters are wont to do in such an environment. In one of the more interesting conversations I had with my mother-in-law, I wondered aloud to her whether the belief systems of modern cults were really so far fetched, compared to their more established Abrahamic counterparts. One has to wonder whether those reading the centuries-diluted accounts of Jim Jones a thousand years from now wouldn’t wonder whether he was, indeed, more than a man after all.
Does anyone remember the Jonestown massacre? I’d really like to understand how the collective American psyche grappled with that experience.
(Video: “Go Outside,” Cults)
Is Tropical – The Greeks
I was completely drawn in by this home video music video for Is Tropical’s “The Greeks,” which leads you in with promises of charming neighborhood children playing war games, before blowing your mind with its unexpected integration of animation and effects.
(Maxlab)
From The Annals of Creepy
The Public School shared this collection of frighteningly creepy portraits of vaudeville-era ventriloquists with their dummies.
Just look at that thing and tell me it isn’t going to murder you.
Image Out of Context
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Letterpress: An Instructional Video
The River Hades “Likes” This
Annals of Americus has a brief and interesting profile on Envoy, a new social media start-up that specializes in reanimating the Facebook profiles of the deceased:
“Two certainties in life exist: You are born and you die,” says Envoy’s Max Doughherty. “We know this is fact, yet when a loved one passes it’s still very distressing. Loss disrupts life. Envoy uses new technologies to assist in these moments, and it starts with a very unlikely source: Facebook.”
According to Dougherty, that very unlikely source is then manipulated by an application that uses social algorithms and “patented language tools” to mimic the speech and online personality of the deceased user, down to the slang he or she used when still alive. And in some cases (see: sad guy dining alone at end of video), the service can continue a relationship beyond death.
The jury is still out on whether it’s all an elaborate hoax, but here’s hoping.
Writers At Their Typewriters
So you know, The Guardian has a fantastic slideshow of prolific authors with their trusty sidearms.
One’s Teaching Philosophy
I suspect he might be too modest to share it here himself, so you should all take a moment and read through Luke Neff‘s teaching philosophy, which I found to be a wonderful collection of thoughts, ideas and hopes for educating a future generation of students (and non-students).
Tweet of the Day
A Lonely Hunter
This human heart has had the fat and extra tissue removed, leaving pure angel-hair blood vessels to make up its shape.
Via this wonderful collection of curiosities. The internet is a wonderful thing, yes? Yes.
Photo Out of Context
Holy High Gas Prices!
A Georgia pastor is gathering his congregation and assembling at gas pumps to pray for lower gas prices:
WMAZ-TV reports the Beacon of Light Christian Center is planning the Saturday prayer gathering at gas pumps outside a Kroger grocery store in Dublin.
Pastor Marshall Mabry said he believes that if church members come together and pray as a community, they can make something happen.
Mabry said that with prices reaching almost $4, he says he plans to ask God for help.
He said it’s the third time members of his congregation have met at gas pumps to pray.
Mabry said he wants to start a movement which spreads from the small town of Dublin to the rest of the nation.
I find it ironic that, for folks who believe in prayer, it hasn’t occurred to ask instead for an end to war in the Middle East, as opposed to an arbitrary dip in the price of a barrel of oil.
