Gerard Malanga has an impressive collection of rare photos of artists, musicians, writers and poets, many never before published. Prints are available.
via suwaowa.log (welcome back!)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
William Burroughs and Frank Zappa at The Nova Convention, 1978
Sending and Receiving
The first radio lecture being delivered by radio from Tufts University, 1922.
tout-fait (The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal):
Everything that we call electronic mass media today begins with the sending and receiving of signals without any material connection, with the miracle of "wireless" that started shortly before 1900. From 1920 on, this transmission technique of then primarily strategic military use develops into radio broadcasting. As a result, material things disappear from mass distribution and the media turn into something "immaterial". The uniformity of all products for all people caused by industrialization - as is expressed by the lexical term "ready made" - is only a preliminary stage towards a globally synchronized perception of a "radio-made" experience world.
This is one of the best articles I've read all year. If you're a fan or student of radio, media, communication, the Internet, hacking, the occult, Duchamp, Cage, Baudelaire or Baudrillard, do not miss it. Although it dates back to 2000, it is no less relevant to the present day.
via :::wood s lot:::
stray bullets
Texters hurt as they walk, ride — even cook ER docs warn of serious injuries, deaths from text-message mishaps. I've seen people walk into phone poles and out in front of moving vehicles while texting. (via)
More Performance and cognitive enhancement “Within the next few years, we’ll see the second generation of these drugs,” says Mark Gordon, an endocrinologist in Los Angeles. “Like all second-generation drugs, they will be stronger, longer-lasting, and have fewer side effects.” (via)
Floatation tank horror A 30-year-old became the first person ever to drown in a floatation tank, an inquest heard yesterday. James Richardson, of Woodley, died in Floatnation in Oxford Road after taking the drug ketamine – used to tranquillise horses. Well, I can scratch that off my list of things to do before I die. (via)
also:
How to build a free computer from spare parts
76-year-old experimental music legend Pauline Oliveros on WFMU
Are figs really full of baby wasps?
19 Portrait Photography Tutorials (via)
The 7 Biggest Asshole Computers in Science Fiction (via)
Montana Meth Project does not pull any punches. (via)
viddy:
Intriguing Bigfoot video (real or hoax, it's pretty good)
Social engineering: How to Get Into Any Club (this method probably won't work forever, but it is worth a look) (via)
419 - the Nigerian Scam trailer (via)
Iran Missile Test (yeah, that one)
Darth Vader Meets Wolfman Jack!
Abkhazian Kosak
From the comments on vintagephoto:
One can read about africans from Abkahzia in the book of Fazil Iskander "Sandro from Chegem". Author wrote about africans lived (still live?) in Abkhazia since nobody knows what time... I think local people may clear the situation. But Iskander did not... The local africans according to Iskander lived in the villages and married to local villagers-women etc but their children became africans with local (Abkhazian) mentality...
The Value of Science Fiction
aboutsf:
Nine legendary authors present their ideas on why SF is important to readers and what it teaches them. These excerpts are from a series of interviews and lectures done from 1968-1978 by Prof. James Gunn at the University of Kansas. Full interviews are on the Literature of SF DVD available at http://www2.ku.edu/~sfcenter/. It's brought to you by AboutSF and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. For more info, visit http://www.aboutsf.com.
It was most interesting to see these guys speak. I was never one to look into the authors, I just like to read their books.
via SF Signal
William Gropper's America: Its Folklore, c1946
People Are My Landscape: Social Struggle in the Art of William Gropper:
Cartoonist, painter, lithographer, and muralist William Gropper was born on the Lower East Side of New York City into a working-class Jewish family that labored in the sweatshops of the garment industry. Like many of his peers–such as Philip Evergood, Joseph Hirsch, Louis Lozowick, and Anton Refregier–Gropper rebelled against the formal theories of art that were prevalent at the time. Preferring to depict the harsh reality of social injustices as they were played out in everyday life, Gropper became a defender of the working class. He was best known for his satirical portrayals of the elite and powerful and the effects of capitalism and war on American life.
via coisas do arco da velha
Some Facts About Owls
Tony Dusko:
This is a film I made for science class to get my fifth graders interested in owls. It worked! They love this film (even though a cute little bunny does get eaten).
There is hope for the education system in this country.
More educational fun on Notebook Babies
via Drawn!
see also: Gunnar fångar en uggla (Gunnar catches an owl)
Cytherea (Blue Venus)
Evil Dr. Ganymede:
Here's how I constructed this map: I rendered a global topography map of Venus as a heightfield object viewed from high above with a shadowless light source behind the camera, and a blue plane (the water) set at a water_level of 3 km. I then projected my Earth cloudmap over it (still rendering onto a planar surface) to create the final map. Note that the land colours aren't real, they're just a POV texture (Rusty_Iron) added for a bit of variety.
see also: Blue Mars
via Kenneth Hite
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Cola Life Campaign
photo: Nick Gripton
In 1988, Simon Berry, Chief Executive of ruralnet|uk was working as a development worker in remote north east of Zambia, conscious that while he could buy a bottle of Coke anywhere, 1 in every 5 children under the age of five die in these areas through simple causes such as dehydration through diarrhea. Twenty years later, through the power of social media technology, Berry has launched a simple campaign asking Coca Cola to use a small part of its incredible distribution capacity to get medicines, such as rehydration salts, to dying children.
Read more and see how you can help.
stray bullets
How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry Most researchers agree that the value of the U.S. marijuana crop has increased sharply since the mid-nineties, as California and twelve other states have passed medical-marijuana laws. A drug-policy analyst named Jon Gettman recently estimated that in 2006 Californians grew more than twenty million pot plants. He reckoned that between 1981 and 2006 domestic marijuana production increased tenfold, making pot the leading cash crop in America, displacing corn. A 2005 State Department report put the country’s marijuana crop at twenty-two million pounds. The street value of California’s crop alone may be as high as fourteen billion dollars. (via)
For Some Products, Prices Have Been Falling A fair bit in the last ten years, too. (via)
Unidentified Flying Threats A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States. (via)
Extradition appeal for British hacker dismissed A British hacker who admitted breaking into U.S. military computers hoping to uncover evidence of UFOs looks set to be extradited to the U.S. after the highest British court dismissed his appeal against the extradition on Wednesday. This guy is facing 60 years in prison for "hacking" wide open, non-password-protected military computers using a 56k modem. It was found afterward that entire suites of computers were unprotected by the most basic login passwords. They should give this guy a medal and throw their sysadmins in prison. Our government is an embarrassment. (more)
Hacking Without Exploits Black Hat researchers will demonstrate how the bad guys are quietly raking in big bucks without ninja hacking skills, tools, or exploit code (via)
Man deposits millions, one tattered bill at a time For years, authorities say, he and his family have popped in and out of U.S. banks, looking to change about $20 million in decaying $100 bills for clean cash, offering ever-changing stories... (via)
Building 'The Matrix' Now physicists have created a rudimentary prototype of a machine that simulates quantum phenomena using quantum physics, rather than using data kept in a classical computer. While the new device can't make people fly like the Matrix does, it demonstrates a technique that could enable physicists to create, in the virtual world, materials that don't yet exist in nature and perhaps figure out how to build, in the real world, superconductors that work at room temperature, for example. (via)
One teabag, one spoonful of neurotoxins The PBOI says of aspartame: “The chemical caused an unacceptable level of brain tumors in animal testing. Based on this fact, the PBOI ruled that aspartame should not be added to the food supply.” Add to that all the microwaves pumped into your brain by cellphones and you have quite a toxic brew. (via)
also:
Widespread Flaws in Online Banking Systems
Bush Administration Scandal Map (via)
Six Vacation Photos That Can Kill You (via)
Fly 1950s style From the end of July until the end of the year, Finnair’s retro plane, Silver Bird, will fly to several destinations. The cabin crew will wear 1950s-style uniforms and the beat of music from the 50s will spur the takeoff. (via)
10 Most Bizarre Restaurants
The Bureau of Atomic Tourism (via)
Billy Bob Thornton on his music and movies Big Zappa and Beefheart fan. (via)
Laurie Anderson Interview (via)
Glitter And Doom: Tom Waits In Concert Hear A Stunning Performance, Recorded At Atlanta's Fox Theater (via)
Steve Reich Interview (podcast) (via)
Voodoo Funk Record Digging in West Africa (via)
viddy:
Julie Driscoll - Season Of The Witch (groovy)
More Traffic in Tehran (even better)
I Love Sarah Jane Excellent zombie short. NSFW
Tank Man A documentary about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
Abe's ghost
That's Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of her husband, as captured by "spirit photographer" William H. Mumler. (more)
More images at The American Museum of Photography
Hiroshi Sugimoto
.JPG)
Earliest Human relatives, 1994
Dioramas
Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing. Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I'd found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real.
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
art: 21 - Hiroshi Sugimoto (bio, interview, video, slideshows, the works)
via Shoot! The Blog
The art of Tim Powers
Tim Powers character sketches: Declare
J.K. Potter illustrations from the Subterranean Press edition of Declare
timpowers.de has a nice collection of cover art and illustrations from various works of Tim Powers, as well as a number of drawings by the writer himself.
see also: Tim Powers Art Gallery
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Jurassic Amber Soap (with insect)
Description
This amber-colored bar has cracks, bubbles, and inclusions like real amber. It also features a (fake, of course) insect trapped inside. The scent is classic and gentlemanly - a bay rum heightened with bergamot and citrus, and grounded with bay leaves and labdanum. Just the kind of old-fashioned aftershave I imagine a turn of the century paleontologist would wear when presenting a large specimen such as this to his colleagues.
Squeaky Queen soaps, potions and oddities
Julien Pacaud - Cluedo
Julien Pacaud:
Pr. Violet and Miss Rose killed the whole humanity from Grimsvötn volcano, with two ray of lights.
via βereníκe
via .PICAPIXELS
stray bullets
Pirates won't rob writers of riches Of course, if ebooks catch on, most publishing firms will go out of business. But I cannot think of many writers who will be sorry to see them go. Whenever authors gather around a bottle of wine, the sole topic of conversation is how terrible their publishers are. Their editors are illiterates, the publicity departments are staffed by airheads and the people responsible for designing their dust jackets should be shot. I blaze through ebooks about four times as fast I do print. I'm blind in one eye and dyslexic, so the medium is a help for me, but most people I know can't read ebooks. (via)
Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light. (via)
Glass Does Not Flow. Except in Space? In 1999, Christie’s East in Manhattan auctioned off an assortment of space memorabilia, including a flashlight that Buzz Aldrin used during a Gemini 12 spacewalk in 1966. The auction catalog mentions: The flashlight lens became deformed while in the vacuum of space. I saw the flashlight in person. The lens is definitely deformed, just as if the glass had flowed. It’s not cracked. It’s deformed.
Police: Man Stole Miami-Dade Buses, Drove Them On Routes Police: Teen Dressed As Bus Driver, Returned Buses At End Of Day I really hope they don't send this kid to prison. (via)
Hiphop LX (linguistics) In Hiphop the WORD is the message. Language is a system of sounds and symbols and communication in any language is based on how to use that system. If you know the system, you have power over ideas and imagination. You can build, change, plan, play and destroy. Many words and expressions in hiphop represent regions, neighborhoods and cities. Hiphop Lx is dedicated to representing the words and expressions that represent and serve as a symbol for a region and area. It explores the language system of hiphop and how the word came into being, meanings and the overall development of the word and expression. It challenges everyone to represent their region with true bona fide words and present them to be researched, examined, challenged and celebrated. (via)
also:
Renaissance Men Are Evolving Into Renaissance Networks (via)
Top 100 Executives by Total Compensation (via)
The Top 10 Mad Scientists (via)
10 Things You Should Know About the Internet
25 Ways To Earn Money When You’re Broke On The Road
Dalí: Painting and Film (via)
Frank Zappa's Jukebox out Aug. 4 (via) (via)
viddy:
Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Pedal Up (awesome funky)
Wanda Jackson - Mean Mean Man
Dr. Ronald Chevalier – The Art of Relaxating (wth?)
Traffic in Tehran (traffic in UT)
Francis Fukuyama: What Kind of World Power China Will Be?
Marshall McLuhan Quotes
Woz the Wiz meets Captain Crunch (via)
Bill Drummond on Robert Anton Wilson
Man with No Arms Plays Guitar well (via)
Patti Smith Sings 'You Light Up My Life' (don't miss it)
Amazing Audio Illusion (it is amazing) (via)
Remedios Varo - El Paraíso de los Gatos
Varo Registry:
Remedios Varo (1908-1963) was born in Spain and educated in Spanish convent schools. Her father was a hydraulic engineer, which had a recurring influence in her work. Her artistic training was strict and academic, from which she fled into Barcelona's bohemian artistic circle. She was married to the poet Benjamin Peret, and her widower, publisher Walter Gruen. She moved to Paris where she became involved within the Surrealist movement. Forced into exile by the Nazis, she settled in Mexico City where her numerous retrospectives have drawn record crowds.
Nice selection of her work on alienchildren
Mary Ellen Bute - Tarantella (1940)
Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound:
Using an eccentric modern composition by Edwin Gershefski, Mary Ellen herself animated most of the imagery, using jagged lines to choreograph dissonant scales.
recent news @ { feuilleton }
AnimArchiv
Monday, July 28, 2008
Working China
Dror Poleg:
China at work. Shot in May-July 2008 in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changzhou, Shenyang, Xi'an, Chengdu, and Chongqing.
Droorism
via Danwei
George Christopher: 1910
Shorpy:
Nashville, November 1910. "George Christopher, Postal Telegraph messenger #7, fourteen years old. Been at it over three years. Does not work nights." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.
That's me peeking around the corner.
An obliquely related, but irresistible quote from Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown:
Although Bell himself was an ardent suffragist, the telephone company did not employ women for the sake of advancing female liberation. AT&T did this for sound commercial reasons. The first telephone operators of the Bell system were not women, but teenage American boys. They were telegraphic messenger boys (a group about to be rendered technically obsolescent), who swept up around the phone office, dunned customers for bills, and made phone connections on the switchboard, all on the cheap.
Within the very first year of operation, 1878, Bell's company learned a sharp lesson about combining teenage boys and telephone switchboards. Putting teenage boys in charge of the phone system brought swift and consistent disaster. Bell's chief engineer described them as "Wild Indians." The boys were openly rude to customers. They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick's Day off without permission. And worst of all they played clever tricks with the switchboard plugs: disconnecting calls, crossing lines so that customers found themselves talking to strangers, and so forth.
This combination of power, technical mastery, and effective anonymity seemed to act like catnip on teenage boys.
Edison's Light
Robert ParkeHarrison: The Architect's Brother
Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
Strange and beautiful images. Sousreal. I had to force myself away.
via Darkened Forest (A weblog I like. I hope they post more in the upcoming months)
stray bullets
Nukes Are Not the Best Way to Stop an Asteroid Although Schweickart has a great deal of faith in the agency, enough to risk his life piloting their lunar lander, he feels that they issued the misleading statement -- under immense political pressure. It was a nefarious excuse to put nuclear weapons in space.
Adventurer Steve Fossett 'may have faked his own death' "I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.... "It's not like we didn't have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We're pretty good at what we do." (via)
Headline of the Day: Human sperm from dental pulp via mouse testicles
Despite pain, woman believes in better days thanks to 'X-Files' Rock on, Kathy Green. (via)
Her Own Society A new reading of Emily Dickinson.
also:
"Comments on Comments" (a must)
Does everyone have claustrophobia?
Schneier Interviewed by RU Sirius (transcript) (via)
RU Sirius banned from Facebook for using a pseudonym (via)
Tomb reveals ancient trade network (via)
Smithsonian Podcasts (wow) (via)
Medpedia (via) (via)
Twitter me Ishmael Starting today, this Twitter account will post one paragraph from Moby-Dick every hour from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
viddy:
Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness (via)
Joel Hodgson's Jollyfilter Test Video proof of concept is sound (via) (via)
Hans Richter - Vormittagsspuk (1928) The nazis destroyed the sound version of this film as "degenerate art".
Of course unmoderated anonymous comments on the internet can be incomprehensibly awful and frustratingly stupid. They can also be heartbreakingly sincere and shatteringly honest. That’s because they’re written by real people, and real people are complicated, messy, and weird. -- Derek Powazek (via) (good one, Guy)
Marx Brothers Rule
Uh.... (picks jaw up off floor)
from A Day at the Races
prev
elias12186 has quite the collection of classical and baroque.
seen on (and again later)
Stevie Wonder - Living for the City
I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel no where could be much colder
If we don't change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, stop giving just enough for the city....
Rarely does a single song capture the vibe of an entire generation.... and more, the entire human race.
We are all responsible. We are the sum total.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
stray bullets
All Streets All of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. (via)
also:
The Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy
Sweden's Underground Naval Base at Muskö
Musicovery Mood Music (via)
viddy:
Dog Years Ben 39, Leo, castrated mongrel needs love, G.S.O.H essential. (via)
Orson Scott Card Interview Ender's Game is fine and dandy, but Speaker for the Dead is one of the greatest novels ever written. I have a hard time getting my non-sci-fi friends to read it because I have to get them to read Ender's Game first. (via)
Tesla Coil Guitar Amp
Spoilsbury Toast Boy 2 Warning: Do not watch this if you are easily depressed, easily offended, moderately easy to offend, at work, or a kid. Truly some of the most bizarre shit I've ever witnessed. Spoilsbury Toast Boy 1 (they run in reverse order) Spoilsbury Toast Boy (I loved it.) (via)
Picturing the Museum
Museum staff painting background and mounting animals for Tiger Group, Asian Hall
AMNH:
Visual display of natural science has been a cornerstone of the mission of the American Museum of Natural History since its inception. Albert Bickmore, acknowledged as the founder of the Museum, became the superintendent of public education and gave lectures to New York City schoolteachers. He illustrated them with hand colored lantern slides reproduced from the growing collection of photographs created and collected by the Museum staff. Bickmore’s lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was constructed to hold the crowds. (more)
via Pruned
Dream Anatomy
Dream Anatomy:
The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body's internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.
via BURNLAB
Earth - A Plague of Angels (live)
Earth (band):
Earth is an American drone band based in Seattle, Washington. Although they have played various styles of music, they are best known as pioneers of a minimalistic, long, and repetitive form of heavy music known as drone doom. The band's early albums could be seen as a variation of the experimental doom-influenced metal of The Melvins. Earth's sound, however, currently has little to do with metal.
Dylan Carlson founded the band in 1990 along with Slim Moon and Greg Babior, taking the title "Earth" from Black Sabbath's original name. Carlson has remained the core of the band's line-up throughout its changes. Outside of the underground music world, Carlson is perhaps best known for having been a friend of grunge music icon Kurt Cobain, as well as the person who purchased the gun that Cobain later used to commit suicide....
Earth official
Earth fansite
via documents
Fiona Apple - Across The Universe
Fiona Apple
Across the Universe has been covered by many artists.
seen on Gatochy's Blog
Ferenc Cakó - Sandanimation - Spring
Sandanimation by Ferenc Cakó
score by Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons
Summer Autumn Winter
via
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes 1/5
Jon Ronson has a peek at Stanley Kubrick's archival boxes.
See the rest here.
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes
Happy Birthday, Mr. Kubrick
via Lined & Unlined
stray bullets
Ebola-like virus returns to Europe after 40 years Marburg is back. (via)
Why Microwave Auditory Effect Crowd-Control Gun Won't Work Experts say you'd fry before you heard anything (via)
Look At the State You’re In: Absaroka In its short-lived attempt at existence, the US state of Absaroka (pronounced ab-SOR-ka) managed to acquire quite a few trappings of statehood: a governor and capital were selected, Absarokan car license plates issued, and there even was a Miss Absaroka 1939 (the first and only one).
Exit Unusual methods adopted by suicide victims, compiled by George Kennan for a report in McClure's Magazine, 1908. Hugging red-hot stoves? You will certainly twist and shout your way through this list from the incredible Futility Closet.
also:
Savannah River Site Eyeball
Interesting Tricks of the Body
Unnecessary Knowledge
viddy:
Epic 2015 The state of the online world in 2015. (via)
In hiding for exposing Tanzania witchdoctors I am living in hiding after I received threats because of my undercover work exposing the threat from witchdoctors to albinos living in Tanzania. (via)
Late George Carlin Interview Good. Don't miss it.
bleep vs blorf. 4 out of 5 children can’t tell bleep from blorf. (via)
zombie-zombie - Driving this road until death sets you free
zombie-zombie
directed by Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann
starring G.I. Joe
found on SF Signal
Friday, July 25, 2008
Homemade record sleeves
guardian.co.uk:
This is probably for Lou Reed's self-titled debut album, but we hope the pretty flowers are hiding Metal Machine Music underneath
images: Stephen Fowler
via Nag on the Lake
stray bullets
Arctic has 90bn barrels of crude The Arctic holds as much as 90bn barrels of undiscovered oil and has as much undiscovered gas as all the reserves known to exist in Russia, US government scientists have said in the first governmental assessment of the region’s resources.
The Top Ten Myths in FBI History Well, according to the FBI, anyway. (via)
In Africa, No Coke Can Mean No Stability (audio) Coke is a big business all around the world. But in Africa, the soda is so pervasive that it acts like a key indicator of political stability. In other words, if you can't get a Coke somewhere, you might want to get out of the country — fast. Alex Cohen talks with Jonathan Ledgard from The Economist about this unusual political indicator.
CalTech: Intelligent space robots will explore universe by 2020 Before the year 2020, scientists are expected to launch intelligent space robots that will venture out to explore the universe for us.
Counterfeit Chic A periodic collection of news about counterfeits, fakes, knockoffs, replicas, imitations, and the culture of copying in general around the globe. (via)
also:
Reclaim Your Time: 20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time (via)
It takes us two days, nine hours and 25 minutes to fully relax on holiday
The &%£§$‡@?!!-ing grawlix (via)
Fantasy Cartography is a blog that posts maps from science fiction and fantasy books. (via)
Mike Patton interview
Anecdotage Anecdotes from Gates to Yeats. We'll start you off with a good one about Steve Martin (via)
Japanese sitting etiquette at a Japanese home
viddy:
Tiny Blue Dot Mind-blowing cosmic perspectives. You think our sun is big?
The Shining (With Robots)
If I want a female to go away, I play this track. It works every time.
Word Spy: DWT abbr. Driving while texting; driving a car while reading or sending text messages. —DWTer n.
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