rocks and chaos

a target-rich environment

2010-12-21T20:13:00.000-05:00

"Zombies are like the Internet and the media and every conversation we don't want to have. All of it comes at us endlessly (and thoughtlessly), and — if we surrender — we will be overtaken and absorbed. Yet this war is manageable, if not necessarily winnable. As long we keep deleting whatever's directly in front of us, we survive. We live to eliminate the zombies of tomorrow. We are able to remain human, at least for the time being. Our enemy is relentless and colossal, but also uncreative and stupid. Battling zombies is like battling anything...or everything."

let's see who strikes the loudest

2010-11-28T21:27:00.001-05:00

Professor Elemental - Fighting Trousers.

the man who arranges the blocks

2010-11-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

Pig With The Face Of A Boy - A Complete History Of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker.

(via wondermark)

it's real, it is happening to you

2010-11-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

Dylan Moran, genius.

sunday cephalopods

2010-09-19T22:19:00.000-04:00

From China Miéville's Kraken:

"Beyond the gate the walls were not featureless. Billy's mouth opened. Still concrete and windowless, the walls were intricately moulded. Stained by London dirt no scrubbing could remove, a nautilus entwined with an octopus, with a cuttlefish, its flattened frilled mantle like a skirt edge. It encoiled limbs with an argonaut bobbing below its extruded eggcase-house. And squid everywhere. Shaped when the walls were wet.

What a corridor, this council-office walkway. A tentacular border of Disney-malevolent vampire squid; ornery Humboldt; whiplash squid in tuning-fork posture. Their bodies were rendered similar sizes, specificities effaced by shared squidness, teuthic quiddity. Their – the word came to Billy and would not lie down – sqiuddity. Architeuthis in the shabby manner of the building."

sunday cephalopods

2010-08-29T15:53:00.000-04:00

"Squidhouse in Wintertime," by Andy Helms.

(via thisisnthappiness)

hylozoic ground

2010-08-29T15:22:00.001-04:00

Philip Beesley's ambitious and somewhat eerie installation Hylozoic Ground is representing Canada at this year's Venice Biennale in Architecture.

The sculpture is described by its creators as "an artificial forest made of an intricate lattice of small transparent acrylic meshwork links, covered with a network of interactive mechanical fronds, filters, and whiskers."

Its individual elements are rigged with an array of sensors and microprocessors that react to human presence and other stimuli. Very cool.

(via bldgblog.)

coffee, please

2010-08-29T13:38:00.001-04:00

A short clip from Louis CK's Louie.

sunday cephalopods

2010-08-22T21:04:00.002-04:00

I realize I'm a few weeks late to the game here, but this Reuters story piqued my interest:

"Researchers have discovered four new species of octopus in Antarctica with venom that works at sub-zero temperatures...

Experts have long known there were octopuses in Antarctica, but what surprised Fry and his colleagues was the sheer biodiversity and how natural selection changed the way they hunted and the nature of their venom.

The octopuses would drill small holes in large, shelled prey, through which they inject their toxic saliva."

(via clusterflock)

a shared existence, if only for a minute

2010-08-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

How To Be Alone, by Tanya Davis.

(via clusterflock)

just looking out on the day of another dream

2010-08-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill.

sunday cephalopods

2010-06-13T20:46:00.000-04:00

U of T scientists Martin Smith and Jean-Bernard Caron argue in a recent Nature article that Nectocaris pteryx is actually the oldest known cephalopod species. Their research is based on 91 new fossils found in the Burgess Shale, which, if true, places their emergence some 30 million years earlier than previously thought.

Via Not Exactly Rocket Science:

"Until now, scientists had thought that the group's first representatives – the nautiloids – evolved from a group of creeping snail-like creatures called monoplacophorans, whose backs were covered with cap-like shells. These casings were gradually modified so that the animals could float. The living nautiluses and the extinct (but frequently fossilised) ammonites belong to the same shell-bearing group.

But Nectocaris had no shell despite being the earliest known cephalopod and an active swimmer. If Smith and Caron's interpretation is right, the cephalopods didn't inherit hard coverings from a monoplacophoran ancestor. These shells were a later innovation all their own."

You can read more about the paper in the university's press release.

bohemias have dress codes

2010-06-13T20:11:00.001-04:00

William Gibson, on uniforms:

"The extent to which we are are [sic] all of us usually in uniform brings to mind Eno's definition of culture: everything we do that we don't really need to. Pajama bottoms beneath a raincoat? Out of uniform. Jeans with one leg cut off? Out of uniform. Contracultural apparel disturbs us. Countercultures are intensely cultural. Bohemias have dress codes as rigid as those of merchant banks. We all read uniforms, constantly, whether we're aware of it or not."

free fall

2010-06-13T19:53:00.000-04:00

This incredible short film by free-diving champions Guillaume Néry and Julie Gautier was shot on-breath at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas.

Notes Néry:

"This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT, I don't claim to have reached the bottom of the hole (202m) without rope and fins, as the world record in no-fins discipline is 95m."

(via kottke)

she's a star tonight

2010-06-07T21:47:00.000-04:00

Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside.

(via slant)

monday cephalopods

2010-06-07T21:33:00.000-04:00

Heyyyy, you guys! Here's a special weekday post in honour of the Goonies' 25th anniversary.

(via io9)

take my badge, but my heart remains

2010-05-30T17:11:00.001-04:00

Black Keys - Tighten Up.

(via stereogum)

how do I act so well?

2010-05-28T23:28:00.001-04:00

Sir Ian McKellen on Extras. Brilliant.

that's a cute little two

2010-05-23T20:37:00.002-04:00

Clip from Abbott & Costello's In the Navy.

sunday cephalopods

2010-05-23T20:35:00.000-04:00

Simple but fun wallpaper by Ed Reyes (click to embiggen).

(via schneier)

spring 2010 - the mayans stole tomorrow

2010-04-23T18:43:00.003-04:00

Hello all.

It's been a while since I last posted a mixtape, but I threw this one together last night and thought someone else might appreciate it. Drop me a line if the link below goes dark and I'll re-up as soon as I can. Enjoy!

(cover art shamelessly stolen from David Galletly.)

JPod Spring 2010 - The Mayans Stole Tomorrow

01. Animal Collective - What Would I Want? Sky
02. Jónsi - Boy Lilikoi
03. Hot Chip - I Feel Better
04. Besnard Lakes - And This Is What We Call Progress
05. Phoenix - 1901
06. Dum Dum Girls - Jail La La
07. Black Lips - Everybody's Doing It (Live)
08. Caribou - Odessa
09. Spoon - I Saw the Light
10. Black Keys - Tighten Up
11. Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill
12. Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun
13. Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches
14. New Pornographers - Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk
15. David Bowie - Modern Love
16. Tunng - Hustle
17. Xx - Crystalised
18. Monsters of Folk - Temazcal
19. Shearwater - Castaways

Grab It Here!

sunday cephalopods

2010-04-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

From Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton. Click below to embiggen, of course.

we may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us

2010-04-14T22:11:00.000-04:00

Excerpt from Charles Bowden's "The Wisdom of Rats," as featured in a recent issue of Harpers. Worth a read.

"This has always been contested ground...

Laws are passed, uniforms designed, theories float like butterflies over the mountains and valleys and deserts. Things are Mexican or things are American or people are settlers or pioneers or savages or aliens, men are outlaws or lawmen, boundaries are violated or secured, armies sweep through, order is insisted upon, revolutions come and go and succeed or fail and it is all under control at all times whether there is control or not. Havoc is disguised as police, violence parades as an economy, murder described as establishing peace or law and order, and the bugles blow, dust rises from the cavalry, warriors descend with lances and clubs, screams slash the blue sky and it weeps blood, governments tremble, the men gather on the mesa and puzzle out the science of mass murder, and the rains fail, cattle die, villages are put to the sword, entire nations of feathers and tongues fall dead at our feet, the books arrive—those histories—and all this is tidied up and made sense of, history becomes the final suicide where we block ourselves off from the earth, from the ancestors, from ourselves, and from the hungers that feed our dread. I go outside in the night and sit on the ground as it slopes toward the creek and rats appear and move all around me as the music plays in the house and spills out the French doors, yes, the rats mock the metes and bounds of my world and they have been here since before the beginning, were here when Cortés rocked on a ship off Veracruz dreaming of conquest, back then, even earlier, but certainly back then. The rats came out in the night and moved right here where I sit, a continuous thread of rats reaching far back with love and anger and lust and dreams and reaching past any place my world will ever attain, and the rats know but will not say what they know and so we must find out, experience the fantasy of power and control, and finally we will go under like every one of our kind they have ever seen and still they will come out in the night and move around, not making a sound, not a single sound, but move around and thrive as the creek purls along in the black love of the night. We must not play it safe if we wish to share the wisdom of the rats.

We stand on the deck, Cortés is pacing, it is early in the sixteenth century, an empire is in the offing, he paces, and within twenty years, men just like him will cross what we now call the border, as men have been crossing that line on our maps for thousands of years.

Our idea of history is the end of history, of tracking a concentration of power that finally reaches critical mass, and by an explosion of force solves all problems and ends all change forever, amen.

No rat has ever believed our history."

game over, man. game over...

2010-04-13T21:18:00.000-04:00

Pixels, a new short film by Patrick Jean, features 8-bit game icons attacking NYC. Fun stuff!

Related: Röyksopp's Happy Up Here.

(via bb)

what have the romans ever done for us?

2010-04-13T21:02:00.000-04:00

Monty Python's Life of Brian. Blessed are the cheesemakers!

the day that she stands up for everything she chose

2010-04-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

Caribou - Odessa.

in the dark you wonder what I see

2010-04-13T20:50:00.001-04:00

Tunng - Hustle.

I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial

2010-03-11T22:48:00.000-05:00

Some enchanting compositions by flickr user mikrotom.

(via thisisnthappiness)

logorama

2010-03-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

Logorama is an Oscar-winning animated short by directing team H5 (François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy et Ludovic Houplain).

(via monoscope)

sunday cephalopods

2010-03-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight's offering is a delightful piece by Polish artist Agata Nowicka. Entitled "Clothing," it's the latest entry in Kitsune Noir's Desktop Wallpaper Project. As always, click below to embiggen.

(via sp)

the coming barbarism

2010-03-07T21:00:00.001-05:00

Douglas Haddow for Adbusters:

"Thus we should consider postmodernism today as analogous to the counter science of the renaissance-era Catholic church. That is to say, anyone caught wearing shutter shades in 2010 shouldn't be considered just a hipster douche bag but an obsolete zealot. The reemergence of the grand narrative in the form of global ecological disaster has rendered all forms of postmodern thought dangerous anachronisms."

and dreams of us that moves without sound

2010-02-28T21:42:00.001-05:00

Shearwater - Hidden Lakes.

sunday cephalopods

2010-02-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

Dive, by artist James Jean. Click below to embiggen, then stop by Pressure Printing for a fascinating look at how this incredible drawing was reproduced as a large format intaglio print.

(via bb)

times new roman and chicken scratch

2010-02-20T21:54:00.000-05:00

Chris Jones, profiling Roger Ebert for Esquire:

"There are places where Ebert exists as the Ebert he remembers. In 2008, when he was in the middle of his worst battles and wouldn't be able to make the trip to Champaign-Urbana for Ebertfest — really, his annual spring festival of films he just plain likes — he began writing an online journal. Reading it from its beginning is like watching an Aztec pyramid being built. At first, it's just a vessel for him to apologize to his fans for not being downstate. The original entries are short updates about his life and health and a few of his heart's wishes. Postcards and pebbles. They're followed by a smattering of Welcomes to Cyberspace. But slowly the journal picks up steam, as Ebert's strength and confidence and audience grow.

You are the readers I have dreamed of, he writes. He is emboldened. He begins to write about more than movies; in fact, it sometimes seems as though he'd rather write about anything other than movies. The existence of an afterlife, the beauty of a full bookshelf, his liberalism and atheism and alcoholism, the health-care debate, Darwin, memories of departed friends and fights won and lost — more than five hundred thousand words of inner monologue have poured out of him, five hundred thousand words that probably wouldn't exist had he kept his other voice. Now some of his entries have thousands of comments, each of which he vets personally and to which he will often respond. It has become his life's work, building and maintaining this massive monument to written debate — argument is encouraged, so long as it's civil — and he spends several hours each night reclined in his chair, tending to his online oasis by lamplight. Out there, his voice is still his voice — not a reasonable facsimile of it, but his.

'It is saving me,' he says through his speakers.

He calls up a journal entry to elaborate, because it's more efficient and time is precious:

When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be."

I'd like to have an argument please

2010-02-20T21:37:00.002-05:00

Classic sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

brother wolf

2010-02-14T20:39:00.000-05:00

New work by Amy Ross.

(Previously.)

sunday cephalopods

2010-02-14T20:24:00.001-05:00

Hard-hitting journalism from The Oatmeal:

"Mothers love to complain about child birth. We've all heard it: 'I went into labor and it lasted 36 hours!' or 'When I farted out my last baby it hurt like a sonofabitch.' When an octopus mother gives birth, she blasts out nearly 200,000 babies and then hangs onto them within her tentacles. If food becomes low, she'll scoop them up like nachos and eat a few thousand in order to survive. I bet your mom never carried a few hundred thousand infants in her arms and ate a few when she wanted a snack, now did she?"

sunday cephalopods

2010-02-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

Here's a video featuring the lovely Vampyroteuthis infernalis effectively turning inside out to confuse predators. It accompanies a report by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute urging protection of deep-sea species threatened by global warming and other human activities such as overfishing. (Previously...)

(via ntl geo)

the time we had those pancakes

2010-02-06T15:01:00.001-05:00

From the Mighty Boosh:

dinosaur ballet

2010-02-06T00:45:00.000-05:00

(via bookslut)

oh! you pretty things

2010-02-05T22:06:00.000-05:00

Incredibly, a team of paleontologists led by Li Quanguo and Jakob Vinther has been able to determine the colouring of Anchiornis huxleyi, the oldest-known feathered dinosaur, which lived some 151-161 million years ago.

Fossil analysis of a well-preserved specimen revealed that these small predators featured dark grey plumage with striped black and white wings and a badass reddish-brown crest.

From Wired Science:

"Almost all of the feathers the team scrutinized contained well-preserved remnants of pigment-bearing structures called melanosomes. Feathers lacking melanosomes were probably white, the researchers note. By comparing the size, shape, density and arrangement of melanosomes in each fossil feather with those in variously colored feathers of modern birds, the team then sketched out what A. huxleyi looked like.

[...]

Bold patterns of plumage, such as those seen in A. huxleyi, could have served any of a number of functions, Vinther and his colleagues speculate. Besides communicating to members of its own species — a 'come here, cutie' to members of the opposite sex, say, or a 'back off' message to rival suitors — a quick flash of boldly colored plumage could startle an attacking predator or flush prey out of hiding, the researchers say."

Swing by Ntl Geographic for a rotating 3d render, then head over to Not Exactly Rocket Science and GrrlScientist for some excellent discussion.

how dare I feel this and do naught but sit on my hands?

2010-02-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

Ramona Falls - I Say Fever.

(via wondermark)

this is just to say

2010-02-04T16:49:00.000-05:00

This Is Just To Say, By William Carlos Williams.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(via meaghano)

walkie-talkie and vox pops

2010-02-04T16:19:00.003-05:00

Charlie Brooker on Newswipe:

(via bb)

the true magic of this broken world

2010-02-04T16:05:00.000-05:00

Indonesian artist Agan Harahap has cleverly inserted superheroes into historical photographs. See the rest of the series over on flickr.

sunday cephalopds

2010-01-24T14:51:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of the Wikipedia hivemind, here's a great shot of a broadclub cuttlefish (Sepia latimanus). Click to embiggen, of course!

(via pz)

ikornnes, norway

2010-01-20T19:30:00.001-05:00

First glimpse of the sun 2010 Originally uploaded by njaal1301

make some reassuring noises

2010-01-10T00:42:00.000-05:00

Bruce Sterling on the State of the World, 2010:

"Okay, you've treated your future as an 'unpredictable lurching thing...' and now you're all morose about that... You and your generation CREATED that situation! Ever heard of 'disruptive innovation,' 'disintermediation,' 'offshoring,' 'small pieces loosely joined,' 'de-monetization,' 'plug and play,' 'the network as a platform'? Of course you've heard of all that crap, because you've been tub-thumping it your entire adult life, but what the hell did you think that was all about? Did you think you were gonna bend every effort to virtualize reality, and then get a gold railway-retirement watch and a safe place to park the cradle? Guys with stacks of gold bars and working oil wells don't have any stability now! Much less guys like you, who move their fingers up and down on keyboards for a living.

[...]

People have stymied sense of denial about the situation. It's very neurotic, anxious, and repressed. It's feeding into a strongly Gothic political temperament where popular culture is haunted by vampires and zombies. The population *identifies* with vampires and zombies, wants to marry them, settle down with them. There's an autumnal hush over the cultural landscape. People really hope they won't be hit between the eyes with the two-by-four again, but they also know that they are helpless to defend themselves against the sources of the blows."

(Previously.)

sunday cephalopods

2010-01-10T00:15:00.002-05:00

Time Magazine investigates recent mass octopus deaths in Portugal:

"Twelve hundred pounds is a lot of dead cephalopod, especially when no one seems to know for sure what killed them. Local biologists have ruled out pollution or contamination because no other species were affected...

Evidence points to some sort of disease: a parasite, bacteria or powerful virus. 'It affected octopus of all ages and sizes,' says Mike Weber, director of the Aguda coastal station, an aquarium and biological research institute in Gaia. 'That suggests that it wiped out the entire local population.'

There is one other option. In December 2007, Portuguese police confiscated 9.4 tons of cocaine in a shipment of frozen octopus from Venezuela. 'I suppose it's possible that someone defrosted the animals, took out the cocaine, then threw their bodies overboard,' says Weber."

(via clusterflock)

camden, uk

2010-01-09T23:12:00.003-05:00

Frozen canal Originally uploaded by Simon Crubellier
(via ellis)

the orchid hypothesis

2010-01-09T23:01:00.002-05:00

David Dobbs for the Atlantic:

"This vulnerability hypothesis, as we can call it, has already changed our conception of many psychic and behavioral problems. It casts them as products not of nature or nurture but of complex 'gene-environment interactions.' Your genes don't doom you to these disorders. But if you have 'bad' versions of certain genes and life treats you ill, you're more prone to them.

Recently, however, an alternate hypothesis has emerged from this one and is turning it inside out. This new model suggests that it's a mistake to understand these 'risk' genes only as liabilities. Yes, this new thinking goes, these bad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts—but they can also enhance function in favorable contexts. The genetic sensitivities to negative experience that the vulnerability hypothesis has identified, it follows, are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience.

...

The Swedes, Ellis and Boyce noted in an essay titled "Biological Sensitivity to Context," have long spoken of 'dandelion' children. These dandelion children—equivalent to our 'normal' or 'healthy' children, with 'resilient' genes—do pretty well almost anywhere, whether raised in the equivalent of a sidewalk crack or a well-tended garden. Ellis and Boyce offer that there are also 'orchid' children, who will wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care.

At first glance, this idea, which I'll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to the vulnerability hypothesis. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it's actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior. Risk becomes possibility; vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness. It's one of those simple ideas with big, spreading implications. Gene variants generally considered misfortunes (poor Jim, he got the 'bad' gene) can instead now be understood as highly leveraged evolutionary bets, with both high risks and high potential rewards."

Fascinating.

(via kottke)

a wave of ill-informed goodwill

2010-01-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

The Economist:

"Although you might expect people who seek out obscure products to derive more pleasure from their discoveries than those who simply trudge off to see the occasional blockbuster, the opposite is true...

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read 'The Lost Symbol', by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it."

holiday monday cephalopods

2009-12-28T13:30:00.002-05:00

Ntl Geographic News:

"Octopuses have been discovered tip-toeing with coconut-shell halves suctioned to their undersides, then reassembling the halves and disappearing inside for protection or deception, a new study says.

'We were blown away,' said biologist Mark Norman of discovering the octopus behavior off Indonesia. 'It was hard not to laugh underwater and flood your [scuba] mask.'

The coconut-carrying behavior makes the veined octopus the newest member of the elite club of tool-using animals—and the first member without a backbone, researchers say."

a merry messy christmas

2009-12-19T11:58:00.000-05:00

From Blackadder's Christmas Carol, 1988.

I hates christmas and I hates mistletoe and I hates kissing!

2009-12-19T11:55:00.000-05:00

Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol, 1979.

seeds in the wind

2009-12-11T23:00:00.002-05:00

seeds in the wind Originally uploaded by Txan Cardona

fog clearing by noon

2009-12-11T22:35:00.004-05:00

Richard Rodriguez in Harpers:

Something funny I have noticed, perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle of vineyards on soft blowy afternoons. (You can click your bottle of wine online. Cheaper.) They want to go shopping on Saturday afternoons on the Avenue Victor Hugo; they want the pages of their New York Times all kind of greasy from croissant crumbs and butter at a café table in Aspen; they want to see their names in hard copy in the “New Establishment” issue of Vanity Fair; they want a nineteenth-century bookshop; they want to see the plays in London, they want to float down the Nile in a felucca; they want five-star bricks and mortar and do not disturb signs and views of the park. And in order to reserve these things for themselves they will plug up your eyes and your ears and your mouth, and if they can figure out a way to pump episodes of The Simpsons through the darkening corridors of your brain as you expire (add to shopping cart), they will do it.

Read Final edition: Twilight of the American newspaper.

(via meaghano)

ding dong

2009-12-11T21:56:00.002-05:00

The Muppets perform Carol of the Bells.

(via /film)

I triple-dog-dare ya

2009-12-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

From A Christmas Story.

everything is waiting

2009-11-22T00:11:00.000-05:00

Autumn Waiting, by Tom Hennen.

Cold wind.
The day is waiting for winter
Without a sound.
Everything is waiting—
Broken-down cars in the dead weeds.
The weeds themselves.
Trees.
Even sunlight
Is in no hurry and stays
For a long time
On each cornstalk.
Blackbirds are silent
And sit in piles.
From a distance
They look like
Something
Spilled on the road.

the future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday

2009-11-22T00:04:00.003-05:00

leaving Originally uploaded by .ultraviolett
(via synthetic pubes)

deciduous

2009-11-21T23:54:00.002-05:00

deciduous Originally uploaded by jenny downing

underwater autumn

2009-11-19T22:58:00.000-05:00

Underwater Autumn, by Richard Hugo.

Now the summer perch flips twice and glides
a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,
the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.
Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart
locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)
above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams
and curves beyond the sudden thrust of bass.

Surface calm and calm act mask the detonating fear,
the moving crayfish claw, the stare
of sunfish hovering above the cloud-stained sand,
a sucker nudging cans, the grinning maskinonge.

How do carp resolve the eel and terror here?
They face so many times this brown-ribbed fall of leaves
predicting weather foreign as a shark or prawn
and floating still above them in the paling sun.

(via merlin mann)

the king stay the king

2009-11-19T20:38:00.002-05:00

From The Wire.

a cutout of infinity

2009-11-15T00:17:00.001-05:00

Umberto Eco on lists:

"The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries...

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die."

(via marginal revolution)

sunday cephalopods

2009-11-15T00:03:00.000-05:00

The Muppet Show performs Octopus' Garden, 1978.

(via bb)

we'll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all

2009-11-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

NASA's announcement that last month's LCROSS impacts confirmed the presence of water at the moon's south pole inspired me to track down this old sketch from Mr Show.

all my tracks in the snow were gone

2009-11-14T23:25:00.000-05:00

Grizzly Bear - Ready Able.

(via stereogum)

it takes a lot of hope to grieve

2009-11-14T22:52:00.004-05:00

Monsters of Folk - Say Please.

(via stereogum)

never take the tundra lightly

2009-11-14T00:35:00.000-05:00

From Mighty Boosh.

can we talk about the mail, please, mac?

2009-11-14T00:22:00.000-05:00

From It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

the past inside the present

2009-11-08T21:39:00.000-05:00

Some fantastic work from designer Mark Weaver. See more on his Make Something Cool Every Day flickr set.

(via graphikaddict)

sunday cephalopods

2009-11-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

Tony Wu captured this stunning photo of a sperm whale eating a giant squid off the coast of Japan earlier this year (click below to embiggen). Details and additional images can be found over at the UK Daily Mail. From the article:

"The captivating pictures show adult sperm whales feasting on a rare giant squid. Though the squid looks small beside the enormous whales, it is thought to be an incredible eight to ten metres long.

[...]

Experts now think the pictures could be some of the rarest ever captured beneath the ocean's surface, showing as they do the sight of five adults teaching a hungry calf how to catch its prey."

(via dsn)

the unquiet republic of the maze of planets

2009-10-25T16:12:00.001-04:00

Today's infographic porn comes courtesy of National Geographic. Designers Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco created a map which composites each (successful and failed) mission from the past fifty years of international space exploration.

Ntl Geo has a zoomable pan-and-scan version, but I strongly recommend simply clicking through the above for an embiggened image. Note that gaps in some of the lines are presumably due to explanatory text boxes removed from the online maps.

yellow cake

2009-10-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

An incredible and haunting short film by animator Nick Cross.

(via bb)

sunday cephalopods

2009-10-25T15:21:00.001-04:00

Since 2008, Isabella Rossellini has been exploring the mating practices of insects and other animals in a fun series of educational shorts called Green Porno.

A recent entry focused on the sexual behaviours of squid and the consequences of overfishing, but I'm unable to embed the actual video, so please hit the image below to check it out.

the sky calls to us

2009-10-22T14:17:00.000-04:00

John Boswell's video A Glorious Dawn (Cosmos Remix) features an auto-tuned Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. Nicely done.

(via snarkmarket)

welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

2009-10-22T12:21:00.000-04:00

Colin Nissan for McSweeney's:

"I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, 'Aren't those gourds straining your neck?' And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, 'It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not.'"

(via 3qd)

ty wilkins

2009-10-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

Illustrations by Ty Wilkins.

autumn 2009 - through the dark

2009-10-15T23:48:00.000-04:00

Greetings all. I threw together this music mix this evening in honour of an old friend. I hope you dig it.

(album art yoinked from threadless)

Autumn 2009 - Through the Dark

01. Karen O and the Kids - All is Love
02. National - So Far Around the Bend
03. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
04. Monsters of Folk - Say Please
05. Cloud Cult - Story of the Grandson of Jesus
06. Metric - Twilight Galaxy
07. Fiery Furnaces - Lost At Sea
08. Sunset Rubdown - You Go on Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)
09. Why - Into the Shadows of My Embrace
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric
11. Flaming Lips - I Can Be A Frog
12. Grizzly Bear - Slow Life
13. Fever Ray - I'm Not Done
14. Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
15. Shearwater - Leviathan, Bound
16. TV on the Radio - Family Tree
17. Antony and the Johnsons - Kiss My Name
18. Imogen Heap - Wait It Out
19. Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice - Sudden Oak Death
20. Led Zeppelin - Ramble On

GRAB IT

My previous mixes are available here. Please do not hesitate to request a re-up should any of these links go dark.

oh, it seems like she can be anything

2009-10-01T19:42:00.001-04:00

Flaming Lips ft Karen O - I Can Be A Frog.

(via igif)

sunday cephalopods

2009-09-27T21:15:00.000-04:00

From the depths of Reddit comes: Bearsharktopus!

The horror, the horror...

(via bb)

the bureau no longer exists

2009-09-27T21:13:00.000-04:00

Clay Shirky, in a speech last week on the dissipation of accountability journalism:

"I think a bad thing is going to happen, right? And it’s amazing to me how much, in a conversation conducted by adults, the possibility that maybe things are just going to get a lot worse for a while does not seem to be something people are taking seriously. But I think this falling into relative corruption of moderate-sized cities and towns — I think that’s baked into the current environment. I don’t think there’s any way we can get out of that kind of thing. So I think we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.

To use the historical analogy from Eisenstein, from The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, there was a long hundred years between the Protestant Reformation and the Treaty of Westphalia. And that was a hundred years in which people almost literally did not know what to think. The old institutions were visibly not functioning any longer, but the nation-state as a new organizing principle was not yet in place. And those were, for many people, not a great hundred years."

Previously: Shirky on the future of journalism and the significance of participatory media.

(via snarkmarket)

king of thieves

2009-09-24T21:13:00.000-04:00

Wired Science brings news of fossils recently smuggled out of northern China which belong to an exciting species of early tyrannosaurid named Raptorex kriegsteini. The find is significant because it "proves that the T. rex’s distinctive features predated its scaling up."

Ed Yong has a fantastic write-up on the nature of the transitional fossils over at Not Exactly Rocket Science:

"Raptorex is a new species of meat-eating dinosaur, discovered in northwest China by Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago. The specimen is a young adult, but it wouldn't have grown to more than 3 metres in length. It stood about as tall as a human, and wouldn't have weighed much more. And yet Raptorex looked very much like a scaled-down version of its giant future relatives. All the features that made tyrannosaurs so recognisable and such efficient killers (except their enormous size) were present in this animal."

I'll also note that this find raises important concerns regarding the rampant theft of fossils from China and elsewhere and their subsequent sale on the black market. In response to a similar situation earlier this year, museum curator Chris Norris argues that any scientific knowledge gained by such means is tantamount to the fruit of the poison tree. He writes:

"If you work in a museum, or if you are a professional paleontologist, these fossils are toxic. They are the sort of things that can bring a mountain of bad press down on your institution, blight your career, put you in court, and even land you in jail. Quite simply, there’s a more than fair chance that these fossils are stolen. Countries like China and Mongolia have tough laws in place to stop their national heritage from leaving the country.

[...]

Lost in all of the noise and scuffle is the most important point of all. Even if you could pinpoint the locality of this specimen to within an inch, and fix its age to the hour, this specimen should not have been bought, should not have been named, and should not have been published, because the lack of provenance strongly suggests that it has been illegally acquired."

that distant and future self

2009-09-24T20:35:00.004-04:00

In a truly fascinating article from a 1954 issue of Harpers, psychoanalyst Robert Lindner profiles a government physicist, identified here as Kirk Allen, who retreats into a dreamworld after happening across a similarly-named character in a series of fantasy novels. Here's a taste:

"It was not long after these two experiences that Kirk once again came across his own name applied to another character of fiction. This time, however, the experience caused no shock. Kirk says, 'I think I expected it somehow, and when it happened it was as if I had known it all the time and was finding something that had been lost.' On this occasion the character who bore his name was the protagonist in a long series of fantasies by an American author. Through volume after volume of strange and adventurous tales this figure wove a perilous way as all-conquering hero–a prototype for the modern Superman. Fascinated, Kirk followed. And soon there came about in him an uncanny transformation which can only be described in his own words:

'As I read about the adventures of Kirk Allen in these books the conviction began to grow on me that the stories were not only true to the very last detail but that they were about me. In some weird and inexplicable way I knew that what I was reading was my biography. Nothing in these books was unfamiliar to me: I recognized everything–the scenes, the people, the furnishings of rooms, the events, even the words that were spoken. My everyday life began to recede at this point. In fact, it became fiction–and, as it did, the books became my reality.'

Kirk read the numerous volumes of his 'biography' over and over again. Soon he no longer needed the books 'to refresh my memory,' but was able to recapitulate them entirely in his mind. While his corporeal body was living the life of a mundane boy, the vital part of him was far off on another planet, courting beautiful princesses, governing provinces, warring with strange enemies. Now, using his 'biographer’s' material as a base, he took off on his own. Assisted by the maps, charts, diagrams, architectural layouts, genealogical schemes, and timetables he had painstakingly worked out while using the books for his guide, he filled in spaces between the volumes with fantasy 'recollections' of his own; and when this was done, he began the task of his life: that of picking up where his 'biographer' had left off and recording the subsequent history of the heroic Kirk Allen."

Lindner later published the account in a book of unusual case histories, and there's mounting evidence to suggest that Allen may have actually been a composite based largely on sf author Cordwainer Smith (itself a pseudonym for Paul Linebarger).

Harpers has graciously posted the full-text of the article online: Part I and Part II.

(via bb)

my heart is king, the king of hearts

2009-09-20T13:42:00.001-04:00

Sunset Rubdown - Black Swan.

(via stereogum)

sunday cephalopods

2009-09-20T12:53:00.001-04:00

Polbo / Octopus Originally uploaded by regueifeiro

all girls should have a poem

2009-09-14T22:35:00.000-04:00

All Girls Should Have a Poem, by Richard Brautigan.

For Valerie

All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.

New Mexico
Marck 16, 1969

(via meaghano)

sunday cephalopods

2009-09-13T21:51:00.000-04:00

"A Very Fancy Hat" by Kozyndan.

(via katie west)

the animals

2009-09-13T21:41:00.000-04:00

The Animals, by Nacho Gil. Awesome.

we are stardust, we are golden

2009-09-13T21:38:00.000-04:00

By Jaime Martinez.

hear the footsteps of the night walking?

2009-09-11T21:17:00.002-04:00

Originally uploaded by ashley & traci

chih-han hsu

2009-09-06T20:59:00.002-04:00

Selections from a wonderful series of photographs by Chih-Han Hsu.

(via today and tomorrow)

tokyo, japan

2009-09-06T20:05:00.002-04:00

urban fishing Originally uploaded by Draycat

sunday cephalopods

2009-09-06T18:38:00.000-04:00

BBC News:

"Palaeontologists have drawn with ink extracted from a preserved fossilised squid uncovered during a dig in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.

The fossil, thought to be 150 million years old, was found when a rock was cracked open, revealing the one-inch-long black ink sac.

A picture of the creature and its Latin name was drawn using its ink."

(via bioephemera)

cumbria, uk

2009-09-06T18:24:00.001-04:00

Ascending Skiddaw Originally uploaded by Primed Minister

many are called, but few are chosen

2009-09-04T21:13:00.000-04:00

Nice work by Daniel Everett.

(via today and tomorrow)

the broken brickwork of authoritative knowledge

2009-09-03T19:03:00.000-04:00

Tom Scocca in the Boston Globe, on the rise of "useless" fact books and other miscellanea:

"Information has proliferated like Weimar bank notes, with everyone shoveling it into wheelbarrows, till the old economic arrangements have collapsed...The Google toolbar hovers a few inches up and to the right from everyone’s center of vision, ready to drop a cascade of optimized search results. The text of books can be delivered to a touchscreen mobile phone. And even so, people are going out and buying paper volumes of facts, printed in unchanging ink, to keep on a shelf. What’s behind this seemingly backward turn?

[...]

In a world where useful and important answers come looking for you, it is the idea of unimportance that is the primary selling point of the miscellanies. The books promise to guide the reader somewhere older and slower, to create a little world in which information can serve as amusement rather than currency. A carefully done miscellany appears random, but it achieves a sort of quiet intellectual bustle, set apart from the roar of the daily info-chaos. The miscellanies are information as art, and art for art’s sake...There is a connection, or the sense of one. The facts nod at one another, and the reader gives them a nod in return."

invaded by glowing rectangles

2009-09-03T18:58:00.000-04:00

Charlie Brooker for the Guardian:

"The underground also has video adverts lining the escalators. Where once stood rows of little posters with the occasional blob of dried chewing gum stuck to the nose of a beaming model, now stand rows of plasma screens displaying animated versions of movie posters and slogans for chain stores, and no one knows where to stick their gum any more because the images slide around...

The screens seem to belong there more than the real people trundling past them. Ad-world looks so vivid and clean, we humans are grotty streaks in a toilet pan by comparison. They should ban us flesh-scum from using the escalators, and lovingly place glossy examples of technology on there instead: Macbooks, iPods, shiny white smoothie makers, Xbox 360s and so on; one brilliant white machine quietly perched atop each step, screens advertising Ice Age 3D mirrored in their gleaming minimalist surfaces as they scroll steadily upwards, ascending into the light. Hey, it's their destiny. We can use the stairs."

we debouch upon a newer mightier world

2009-08-28T23:08:00.001-04:00

Surprisingly evocative Levi's commercial. Narration is Walt Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers!