The Standard Living Package

10 Gonzo Machines From Rogue Inventor Buckminster Fuller:

Bucky's interest in efficient design encompassed more than just external structure. Instead of assembling the comforts of home piece by piece, Fuller proposed a packaged set of everything necessary for comfortable human life, from toilets to tables, in one easy crate. Fuller envisioned such a Standard Living Package as being a family's simple starter pack.

via Great Map

Global Outlook: The Legacy of R. Buckminster Fuller

R. Buckminster Fuller, Dymaxion House Model, Third Version, 1929, mixed media. Photo: Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

Bucky Fuller is profiled in the November 2008 issue of Artforum.

via BFI

George Washington Carver: A True Renaissance Man

from Tonya Bolden’s George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver

via American Scientist

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)

Harry Smith - Early Abstractions (1946-57) Pt. 4

No. 10: Mirror Animations (1957)

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3

Harry Everett Smith (29 May 1923, Portland, Oregon – 27 November 1991, New York City) was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic. Smith is a well-known figure in several fields. People who know him as a filmmaker often do not know of his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, while folk music enthusiasts often do not know he was "the greatest living magician" according to Kenneth Anger.

Smith died, singing in Paola Igliori's arms, in Room 328 at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, and his ashes are in the care of his wife, Rosebud Feliu-Pettet.

via

Readings 5-29-08

I've been a bit lax on the readings lately. The weather has been unseasonably cool here in Savannah and it's just too beautiful to miss. It is going to be hot as hell real soon, so I'll have plenty of time and inclination to stay in and blog.

Nonetheless, some worthy items culled over the last few days:

A native Burmese account of the cyclone aftermath

I'm going to put it plainly, redneck stylee: The Burmese government are a bunch of pricks.

hat tip
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92.3% of all email in first quarter 2008 was spam

Great googly-moogly, that's a lot of spam!

I think there's something wrong with these people. Not just that they're greedy knuckleheads, but something deeper, more psychological. Perhaps a similar compulsion that motivates bloggers to spend endless hours on the internet seeking the holy grail of post material grips these enigmatic and insanely driven people; their muscles atrophying in a stew of caffeine and nicotine while the sun rises and sets repeatedly beyond brick walls they rarely pass. They need to be located, isolated, quarantined and probed. After that, they need to be taken out in public so that everyone that owns a computer can line up and punch them in the stomach.

via Advertising Is Good For You
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Forget the naysayers - America remains an inspiration to us all

Rumors of the demise of the U.S. have been greatly exaggerated.

The US economy is certainly in transition, made vastly more difficult by the spreading impact of the credit crunch. But the underlying story is much stronger. The country is developing the prototypical knowledge economy of the 21st century, an economy in which the division between manufacturing and services becomes less clear cut, in a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation.

What counts is the strength of a country's universities, research base, commitment to information and communications technology and new technologies along with a network of institutions that supports new enterprise. Here, the US is so far ahead of the rest of the world it is painful.

The figures make your head spin. Of the world's top 100 universities, 37 are American. The country spends more proportionately on research and design, universities and software than any other, including Sweden and Japan. Of the world's top 50 companies ranked by R&D, 20 are American. Fifty-two of the world's top 100 brands are American. Half the world's new patents are registered by American companies.

As I've said before, it's about time the rest of the world caught up.

Even from a more pessimistic view, Bruce Sterling put it plainly:

There's a swarm of guys in there insisting that America is toast. Listen, fellas, be reasonable -- the USA might collapse as abjectly as the USSR did, but the continent and the population would still be there. I mean, Russia exists, right? It's not like North America is going to vaporize just because the world's gone "post-American."

Personally, I'd be happy to see the world get over whatever preoccupations with the USA and find their own identity in this new future of ours. Besides, nationalism is a zombie only kept going because it's more convenient than dismantling it. De facto or contrived, it's a wide open global playing field we find ourselves on. Time to act accordingly.

Europe found a way to end three thousand plus years of perpetual warfare and disruption. Asia found a way to bootstrap vital and vibrant economies, in the process lifting a billion plus people out of poverty. Maybe we could learn something from them, just as they might learn that the USA is not doomed to go the way of the Romans because of a few defaulted mortgages and expensive oil.
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How To Be A Renaissance Man

Good, solid, manly advice, but you gals out there can benefit, too. We need Renaissance women.
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Underground gallery

The city’s most intriguing art gallery lives under Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s dark and it’s dirty. There are no formal openings. No curator. No reviews. No selling of the works.

The artists slip in and out. They do their work, then disappear from the underground concrete corridors. Runoff water pours from pipes into these toxic storm drains. Debris is everywhere. You’re glad you have thick shoes as you walk through water and muck. Sun shines through a few of the grates, lighting some areas, but most of what you see is what your flashlight catches.

Out of options in the above-ground world, these graffiti artists do their thing in the underground tunnels of Las Vegas.

Spray paint graffiti art is not an easy thing to pull off. I guarantee that if any of us with no experience or talent tried, it would look like crap.

Excellent article with video and images.

via crazymonk.org
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ends

Readings 4-24-08

The Foreign Policy/Prospect Top 100 Public Intellectuals

Here's their bios.

Who got snubbed? Who's undeserving?

I'll start you off: Al Gore?
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If you only read one of these items, read Tomorrow Museum's excellent Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men.

from:

Crisis happens when we fail to look at the large picture, but who is standing far enough away to see?

to:

Artist Fritz Haeg thinks we should follow Buckminster Fuller’s advice. “Basically, his theory is that the powers that be want us to be specialists,” he tells this month’s Art Review, “Because they don’t want us to see the big picture, because the more you see the big picture, the more you are apt to question things. He’s saying that decades ago, but I think its even more true today.”

and furthermore:

Public Service Announcements have always provided hackneyed obvious information (”Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”) We should have Public Education Announcements: 30 seconds of Spanish phrases, Newton’s Laws, or basic geometry theorems. Everyone would be able to explain the second law of thermodynamics as quickly as we can say “Shoulda Hada V8.”

Brava!

We need more renaissance (wo)men, omnologists, and generalists.

To navigate through this century we'll still need specialists, but as a standard, specialization is limiting. Over-specialization stems from old world guild secrets and old school paranoid nationalism. It is a defunct system and needs to be reformatted. (see)

What we're short on is people like Leonardo, Mary Somerville, Buckminster Fuller and Howard Bloom. What we're woefully bereft of is the "informed citizenry" necessary for a properly functioning democracy as well as an emerging global economy.

Fuse this with the speculative cast of science fiction and we're going somewhere. Science fiction has, collectively, been a sort of surrogate renaissance man in a society needing all the vision it can get.

It will be interesting to see how nascent fields like speculative fiction, future studies, omnology and generalism will grow, merge and transform over time. It would be helpful if more traditional disciplines were to adopt this kind of thinking and help facilitate connections. Entire new fields of study could emerge, like macro-omnology, comparative science, urban synergetics or psychohistory.

There are encouraging signs that this is already happening. Now we need to catch up with the "informed citizenry" part. Start with the kids.
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25 leading-edge IT research projects

Some cool stuff in there, including the Dark Web*, T-rays, vocal joysticks and honeybees.

* not to be confused with Deep Web
via KurzweilAI.net
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RFE/RL Study Explores How Al-Qaeda Exploits Internet

What it is:

"This is a study that really looks at two things," he says. "It looks at the global message that Al-Qaeda puts out and that its affiliates put out. It also looks at the network that is behind that -- and then, how...they get that [message] out to the world. What is the network that brings that [message] to people over the Internet -- because the Internet is really the primary delivery mechanism for Al-Qaeda."

very interesting:

"Al-Qaeda, which was very, very advanced and very, very impressive in its use of new technology, is, I think, a bit behind the curve," Kimmage says. "They are sort of stuck in Web 1.0. They are producing what they think is the coolest content, the best videos, the most impressive press releases. And they are creating the most sophisticated -- the best network -- to distribute it to the web. What's missing is interactivity in user-generated content -- a world in which users generate a lot of the content and in which people what to interact with others. Al-Qaeda really seems stuck in the old model.

via monochrom
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And now for something completely different...

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

KINSHASA, April 22 (Reuters Life!) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

People get a bit touchy about their penises.

via Clumsy Crooks
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Details interviews John Waters

Q: Who’s your most unlikely fan? Did Henry Kissinger ever come up to you and say, "Hey, John—I just loved Female Trouble"?
A: It’s funny you say that, because there is a picture of me and Henry Kissinger hanging on my bulletin board in Baltimore. It was taken at a magazine party. And I do send boxes full of my movies, T-shirts, and that kind of thing to soldiers in Iraq. One whole troop told me they were being bombed while watching Female Trouble.
I wrote the major back and said, "I feel like Bob Hope!" He wrote, "I promise more of them know who you are than Bob Hope!"

via Boing Boing
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ends

Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle and human evolution

(NSFW Alert: Language. He drops the f-bomb a few times.)

I love Howard. He chews off so much that sometimes I find minor flaws in a few of the details, but overall, the message takes.

In his book, The Lucifer Principle, he posits that evil is a by-product of nature's strategy and what drives us to survive, thrive and do great things is at the root of our potential downfall as a species. In the end he calls for us to transcend this by changing the wiring of our brains, how we interact and how we observe, measure and design our society. Some of this is happening on its own, some needs a little push. Becoming aware and unafraid of our hard-wired tendencies toward evil would, in itself, be a big step.

If you're an opponent of the Killer Ape theory, you won't like the message, but you should read it anyway. Chances are, many people wouldn't like his message. Leave your biases at the door.

From his prologue:

I've attempted to employ the subject of man's inborn "evil" like those who turned to the subject in the past--to offer up a restructuring of the way we see the business of being human. I've taken the conclusions of cutting-edge sciences-- ethology, sociobiology, psychoneuroimmunology and the study of complex adaptive systems, among others--to suggest a new way of looking at culture, civilization, and the mysterious emotions of those who live inside the social beast. The goal is to open the path toward a new sociology, one which escapes the narrow boundaries of Durkheimian, Weberian and Marxist concepts, theories that have proven invaluable to the study of mass human behavior while simultaneously entrapping it in orthodoxy.

As an omnologist and freelance generalist, I resonate with polymaths like R. Buckminster Fuller, Robert Anton Wilson, Ray Kurzweil and Howard Bloom, to name just a few. None of them are perfect, but the gems lie in the overall.

What comes through to me is the need for disciplines that coordinate human knowledge, in whole or in varied inter-related segments, in order to understand and manage the dynamic forces integral to large-scale human interaction and the formation of a global society, all the while providing a sort of 'connective tissue' between various specialized fields to promote better informed and integrated perspectives and strategies.

New problems will present themselves and new systems will need to be adopted in order to cope. The tools and methods of empire, as well as, nationalistic, hemispheric and racially-driven world-views will largely have to be abandoned. Specialized sectors, like information technology, have already moved on. Others are slower to adapt. A field of discipline like omnology, might help provide rudder. At least until someone like Hari Seldon shows up.

Howard Bloom's column

A good complement to The Lucifer Principle:
A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking. This means that the potentially-integratable-techno- economic advantages accruing to society from the myriad specializations are not comprehended integratively and therefore are not realized, or they are realized only in negative ways, in new weaponry or the industrial support only of war faring.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Here's the entire interview (24 min., better quality)
Thanks to Disinformation for making this video.