Ark Codex ±0 video
Video object for the Ark Codex ±0 book object which is forthcoming from Calamari Press.
on reading The Atrocity Exhibition in Brighton
«There are one or two other bits and pieces, but together the inventory is an adequate picture of a woman, who could easily be reconstituted from it. In fact, such a list may well be more stimulating than the real thing. Now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions.»—JG Ballard
More musings on Brighton, Ballard, Quadrophenia, Joy Division, presidential pubic hair, Beachy Head, mods, rockers, cars, crashes, 911, partying, sex & suicide.
neighbor’s house
Remembered from winter.
Zombie Sister Smackdown is Come For Her Flock
(Well, for Cindy anyway…)
What do these people have in common?
(Aside from being mental as anything.)
I just learned via Roger Ebert that I share a birthday with David Foster Wallace.
I already knew about my natal link with Nina Simone, W. H. Auden, Sam Peckinpah, and Anaïs Nin.
Watson
The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating profile on “Watson,” IBM’s Jeopardy-playing computer, which is set to take on a couple former champions in the coming week. The article covers the usual anecdotes about creating and testing the computer’s algorithms, but it also had some pretty sober insight into what building such a machine says about us as humans:
For humans, knowledge is an entire universe, a welter of sensations and memories, desires, facts, skills, songs and images, words, hopes, fears and regrets, not to mention love. But for those hoping to build intelligent machines, it has to be simpler. Broadly speaking, it falls into three categories: sensory input, ideas and symbols.
Consider the color blue. It’s something that computers and people alike can perceive, each in their own fashion. Sensory perception is the raw material of knowledge. Now think of the three-letter word “sky.” Those letters are a symbol for the biggest piece of blue in our world. Computers can handle such symbols. But how about this snippet from Lord Byron? “Friendship is love without his wings.” That sentence represents the third realm of knowledge: ideas. How can a machine make sense of these? In these early years of the 21st century, ideas remain the dominion of humans—and the frontier for thinking machines.
Over the next four years, Mr. Ferrucci set about creating a world in which people and their machines often appeared to switch roles. He didn’t know, he later said, whether humans would ever be able to “create a sentient being.” But when he looked at fellow humans through the eyes of a computer scientist, he saw patterns of behaviors that often appeared to be pre-programmed: the zombie-like commutes, the near-identical routines, from tooth-brushing to feeding the animals, the retreat to the same chair, the hand reaching for the TV remote. “It’s more interesting,” he said, “when humans delve inside themselves and say, ‘Why am I doing this? And why is it relevant and important to be human?’ “
Thank You
#couldbeanywhereusa
It simply happens to be Dubuque, Iowa.
Dear Clusterflock: The New Year…
Hopes? Dreams? Aspirations?
(Sigh)
Sarah Palin went on Glenn Beck’s radio show to discuss the current situation on the Korean peninsula:
CO-HOST: How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea? [...]
PALIN: But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies. We’re bound to by treaty –
CO-HOST: South Korean.
PALIN: Eh, Yeah. And we’re also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.
Italics mine.
(via)
Harley and the Ivy
My offering for the silent auction at DIFFA’s Holiday Fund Raiser this weekend.
Little Girl Lost
Wilma had two versions of her favorite saying. I wish I could go back and ask her about that. I’d be quick, not greedy with any time travel favors. I would give her a serious hug and ask, “Why did you say ‘I’ll swan’ sometimes and ‘I’ll swanee’ other times?” Also, “What exactly does that mean?” In truth, this would be a cover for hearing Wilma laugh. For a while, we lost Wilma’s laugh.
Wilma had a little daughter, who played with my sister. Wilma’s son was my brother’s friend. One day, the little girl got sick, went into the hospital and never came out. She had an enlarged heart. No one knew.
We went to the funeral. The brother cried hard. Then, we watched the doctor walk down the steps of the church. He was sobbing. This was the country doctor who took care of everyone for miles around in a clinic where you did not make appointments. You showed up and sat with the farmers and the women with babies and the grandmothers and waited to be called. Then, you picked up prescription bottles from the same front desk where you signed your name. No one had ever seen the doctor cry.
For a long time, Wilma’s laugh was absent in the neighborhood. And the doctor was even quieter.
Years later, my father had heart problems, and the doctor insisted that he travel to see a cardiac surgeon who helped to pioneer life-saving procedures at a university hospital where people came from all over the world for surgery. This physician and his team knew the country doctor well.
It was obvious to me what had happened. The country doctor poured himself into learning everything he could about the heart because so many, including his own, had been broken when the little girl was lost.
things I hadn’t posted
Buffalo family’s painting could be a Michelangelo
Census shows connectedness of world’s marine life
Real-Life ‘Iron Man’ Mechanical Suit Unveiled
One Man’s Discarded Ticket Can Be Another Man’s Salary
Stonehenge skeleton came from Mediterranean
Study shows how scientists can find missing species
US often weighed North Korea ‘nuke option’
‘Flying Car’ Approved for Production
Where does the dollar symbol come from?
For Amanda’s Friend, Luke Wilson
Amanda interviewed the actor Luke Wilson recently. He said he liked being in Texas because for one thing he could just ride his horse to this place and that. It reminded me of my hometown ( Hazel Green, AL) where I saw this while driving down the U.S. four-lane this summer.
Then I wondered, is this unusual in small towns?
potentially habitable planet found
The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than our own solar system. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly circular orbits.
The most interesting of the two new planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and that it has enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, according to Vogt.
Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has a somewhat checkered history of habitable-planet claims. Two previously detected planets in the system lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.
(via marginal revolution)
Being Geek
I love the tasty video goodness of lonelysandwich.
[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/15113923?byline=0&portrait=0 640 360]
From my Notepad, Today
very sick man (chemo) buying pumpkins and ornamental gourds
median grade on readings quizzes: 52
El Greco sky today, over the lake. but no figures–just the light
Listening to Son House: “I wanna be a Baptist preacher, so I don’t haf to work….”
Watch Your Feet
This bad boy was found by a couple of men at their hunt club in Screven, GA. Conrad Greene said the eastern diamondback rattlesnake measuring 6 feet, 6 inches, “didn’t even rattle. It merely lifted its head up above the grass, surveyed the scene and tried to slither away. But it didn’t make it far. Conrad popped it with the .44 mag he carries for such occasions.”
As reported by Georgia Outdoor News…
Pete Campbell’s Bitchface
A tumblelog dedicated to everyone’s favorite little shit from Mad Men and his beautifully bitchy facial expressions.
things I hadn’t posted
A Russian milestone: 1st black elected to office
Before the CIA, there was the Pond
‘Mystery plumber’ may have designed the new BP containment cap
Brazilian men swapped at birth work, live together
Butch Patrick of ‘The Munsters’ Set to Marry Big Fan
China Plans Huge Buses That Can DRIVE OVER Cars
eBay Find of the Day: Darth Vader’s Z28 proves there’s still good in him
El Chupacabras can’t be found in Hood County or anywhere else
Every dog has its day… and new ice cream van ensures every dog can have its sundae
Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring
Frogs Jump Farther When Competing at County Fair
Hacker builds $1,500 cell-phone tapping device
Insecure People at Higher Risk of Heart Attacks
Impulsiveness Tied To Brain Chemical
Man with neo-Nazi ties leading patrols in AZ
Roy Rogers’ dog Bullet fetches $35K at NY auction
Singer’s Life Turning Into Sad Country Song
Sales of big SUVs surging faster than small cars
Vatican reverses itself, painting not a Caravaggio
Why You Can’t Lose Those Last 10 Pounds
Workers in NYC begin to dismantle ground zero ship
fragments
I worked with an autistic kid who was pretty aggressive. My first week — until I figured out what to look for and how to respond — I went home everyday with concussion headaches. In addition to his aggressiveness, he was pretty large. So large in fact he was unable to reach himself to wipe.
*
If you wrote it long hand, and intend to edit on the computer, transcribe it as you wrote it. Your editing mind is less effective at what it’s good at when preoccupied with other things. You will find that changes that sound good while transcribing may not work as well as you thought. If you absolutely must edit or add while transcribing, put these in parentheses.
If I think about it at all I burst out laughing
A couple days ago I was in Oakland at my best friend’s apartment and she was trying to explain that the family dynamic in the series, Modern Family, is just like my own. She put on an episode where Al Bundy sprays a water bottle at his wife’s teenage Casanova for lusting so blatantly over his vapid granddaughter. Now that is what I call hilarious. Does it do it for you? What funny lines or scenes really stick with you?
dear clusterflock
What band, author, director, artist, etc. would you keep, in the public record?
things I hadn’t posted
WA town glad so-called ‘Barefoot Bandit’ in jail
Brain Cells in Lab Dish Keep Time
Heavy, rough and hard – how the things we touch affect our judgments and decisions
Lake Michigan shipwreck found after 112 years
Mysterious Ex-Con Draws Comparison to Jason Bourne
Bit Off a Bit More Than We Could Chew…
the dining room, as it stands tonight. With a dinner party on tap tomorrow evening.
David Milch on obscenity in Deadwood (or Clusterflock)
since Andrew posted The Periodic Table of Swearing, we may as well let David Milch chime in:
… every sentence is so soaked with obscenity as to bleach out the expectation that any civility can be expected to govern in any scene.
from this MIT podcast (iTunes)
