Strange Attractor

((((( starshine )))))

2011-03-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

You're almost home, walking, when you decide to watch the sunset.

2011-03-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

A hole in the purple clouds allows you to see the colors underneath. Bright orange, pink, blue. Streaks of pink and orange radiating around it.

From this cherry blossom tree, you can see people in the distance. Passing against the glowing orange and pink and purple lake.

And then, through the headphones in your ears, the following song.....

The Veil Between the Real and Unreal Just Got Razorwire Thin

2011-03-10T13:58:00.000-08:00

Telarus writes:

Pretty bad ass, yeah. Most of the high-poly stuff was done with the new DirectX 11 'tessellation' feature.

Ok, for those following along. The above video shows something rendered in a GAME ENGINE. This specific piece is considered a 'cut scene' or 'cinematic', and you can really crank the graphic quality way way up for various reasons during cinematics (one of which is you don't hae to bother with payer input to the camera, etc, etc). Also rendered on some serious hardware. So you can't expect this exact quality during game-play. But it'll be close.

And pulling off something _close_ to the above in a Real Time renderer, while also allowing for player input? HUGE.

We've finally come close enough to the point which John Romero foolishly proclaimed back in 1996 or so, that we've come so far in our graphics technology that we can finally focus most of our effort (as game-makers) on the fun factor.

Though it remains to be seen whether it can truly render Avatar-style graphics in a non-Blade Runner-like setting, or provide a 3D experience akin to the film... this looks truly fucking awesome.

And I'm honestly cool with more games in Blade Runner-type settings.

Joshua responded with:

I would take the setting of the video as any trend in future product design. It was chosen to specifically show off things like the new Image Based reflections (note the super detail in the reflected neon signs), etc, etc.

Juan Carlos Ochoa responds:

See the new Deus Ex for more cpunk.

To elaborate on your definition of cut-scene, normally the cut-scenes are done in a 3d engine, much the same as something like LoTR or Avatar. You gain movie quality, but you lose the option of having interactivity.
This is a sample of in-game graphics, meaning this is the quality you see ALL through the game.

Photoreal realtime graphics are currently held back by the ability to process complex shaders like subsurface scattering in realtime and by the amount of polygons availible. This tesselation tech seems to be doing the job, thanks for the link.

Top 40 songs o' 2010

2011-02-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

There's a lot that I haven't listened to in 2010, which I'm still trying to catch up on.
But this is a snapshot of what I did hear, and loved.

You've got 40 chances... may you also fall in love with something here.

4 Crisises of the First World

2011-01-28T22:12:00.001-08:00

1. Cell Phone Envy - when your friends get higher technology than you, one by one. Assuming you have any friends, which seems less guaranteed in the First World than in the Third World.

2. Wal-Mart - is not open 24 hours. Where will the rising homeless population spend their time not working between the hours of midnight until morning?

3. Sxting - some people are not getting enough of it. By that, meaning or not meaning the author (yes it is true).

4. Prozac Nation - over 50% of the population is on anti-depressants. Yet, we still have mass shootings. Obviously, more prozac must be given to the masses.

2011-01-27T10:56:00.000-08:00

Eight Ways to Listen to Beethoven Options

2011-01-25T00:30:00.000-08:00

9 messages

Psmith
View profile
More options Jan 18, 10:32 am
I. As for music – where did we first hear it, who sang or hummed to
us, and against what part of her body were we held? - Prometheus
Rising (revised edition), pg. 48.
II. We are not talking about mere increase in linear IQ – third-
circuit semantic cleverness. We are talking of also the kinds of
right-brain intelligence that Nicholl acquired from Jungian
neurogenetic research and Gurdjieff’s meta-programming techniques. We
are talking of say, Beethoven’s intelligence, which so disturbed
Lenin, who could not bear to listen to the Appassionata (Sonata 23)
because it made him “want to weep and pat people on the head, and we
mustn’t pat them on the head, we must hit them on the head, hit them
hard, and make them obey.” More of Beethoven’s intelligence is
needed, desperately, to create a signal that the current Lenins cannot
ignore, that will make them weep, and stop hitting heads. – Ibid, pg.
277
III. The left-handed, on the contrary, specialize in right-brain
functions, which are holistic, supra-verbal, “intuitive,” musical and
“mystical.” Leonardo, Beethoven and Nietzsche, for instance, were all
left-handed. Traditionally, left-handed people have been the subject
of both dread and awe – regarded as weird, shamanic, and probably in
special communication with “God” or “the Devil.” – Ibid, pg. 98 – 99.
IV. “To me, the Hammerklavier sounds like an unsuccessful
attempt at Tantric sex. And the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies sound
like monumentally successful attempts.” - Frank Dashwood in
Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, pg. 426.
V. Beethoven, we remember, was left-handed. Since the left
hand is neurologically linked to the polymorphous right brain, one
might say he was genetically inclined to right brain activities, that
is, to sensing coherent wholes, to plunging into neurosomatic bliss
almost “at will,” and to sensory-sensual raptness and rapture.
Everybody “knows” that the Sixth Symphony is “pantheistic,” but
whether Beethoven was an ideological pantheist or not, that way of
responding to nature is normal and natural right-brain Circuit V
functioning. That is, anybody on the Fifth Circuit will “talk like a
pantheist” whether or not he has developed a “philosophy” about
pantheism. The miracle of Beethoven is not that he felt the universe
that way – a few thousand fifth-circuit types throughout history have
also felt and sensed nature that way – but that he mastered the third-
circuit art of music with such skill that he could communicate such
experiences, which is precisely what the ordinary “mystic” cannot
do. - Prometheus Rising, pg. 183.
This progression, from primate emotion to post-hominid tranquility,
from “man” to “super man,” is the Next Step that mystics forever talk
of; you can hear it in most of Beethoven’s later, major
compositions. – Ibid, pg. 188.
VI. Beethoven, to cite him one more time, said, “Anybody who
understands my music will never be unhappy again.” That is because
his music is the song of the Sixth Circuit, of Gaia, the Life Spirit,
becoming conscious of Herself, of Her powers, of Her own capacities
for infinite progress. - Ibid, pg. 204.
VII. Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife
only exists, for me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize
the converse: I only exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader
exclaim, like Byron of Wordsworth, “I wish he would explain his
explanation!”, let us try it this way: If I am so fortunate as to be
listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer, if you
ask me suddenly, “Who are you?” would be to hum the Hammerklavier,.
For, with music of that quality, one is hypnotized into rapt
attention: there is no division between “me” and “my experience.” -
Ibid, pg. 219.
VIII. Mystics stammer, gibber and rave incoherently in trying to
discuss this. Beethoven says it for them, without words, in the
fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony. The words of Schiller’s “Ode
to Joy,” which Beethoven set to this virtually superhuman music, are a
linear third-circuit map conveying only a skeleton key to the multi-
level meanings of the 8-circuit “language” of the melodic construction
itself, which spans all consciousness from primitive bio-survival to
meta-physiological cosmic fusion. – Ibid, pg. 269

RMJon23
View profile
More options Jan 18, 2:52 pm
On Jan 18, 10:32 am, Psmith wrote:

- Show quoted text -
Bra-VO!

jerf
View profile
More options Jan 21, 12:55 pm
On Jan 18, 10:32 am, Psmith wrote:

- Show quoted text -
Great compilation! Thanks.
Mind if I add another? This jumped out at me when I first read it and
has since become one of my favorite RAW moments.
From Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy: The Homing Pigeons. Two pages after IV
from the list above. pg. 428
The music hammered and surged along, carrying her through pain and
frustration and loneliness to land, again and again, at things beyond
such simple feelings, things that she sometimes felt were
extraterrestrial or non-Euclidean or somehow beyond normal human
perception. There are some kinds of knowledge, Ludwig had once
claimed, that can only be expressed in music, not in any other art,
not in science or philosophy. This was the most arcane of such
knowledge, Ludwig's most intimate secret, and maybe you weren't
entitled to understand it until you had been to the strange dark
places of the psyche out of which he had created it.

Psmith
View profile
More options Jan 22, 11:52 am
Great addition. In 2010 I began a listening project, listening to
each of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas 11 times. This led me to the
compilation I posted on Bob's birthday. I've made it up to the eighth
sonata.

Cleveland Okie
View profile
More options Jan 23, 12:51 pm
On Jan 22, 2:52 pm, Psmith wrote:
> Great addition. In 2010 I began a listening project, listening to
> each of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas 11 times. This led me to the
> compilation I posted on Bob's birthday. I've made it up to the eighth
> sonata.

OK, I'll bite! Why 11 times? Which pianist are you relying upon? Are
you listening to them in order, i.e., 1, 2, 3, etc.?
Tom

Psmith
View profile
More options Jan 23, 2:48 pm
Well, I've found myself thinking about music and media. Before
recorded music, people tended to dance to live music or listen to live
music, but with the coming of recording we tend to have music on in
the background and not give it our full attention. I know I like to
have music playing most of the time, but I rarely give it my full
attention. In 2009 we had a reading group at MLA reading Rafi Zabor's
The Bear Comes Home. We read four pages a day, and I tended to listen
to some jazz after reading my daily pages, closing my eyes and giving
it sombunall of my attention. This led me to devote a little time to
listening to music with my eyes closed, and I found the best results
with Beethoven, surprise, surprise. Well, Joyce uses 11:32 a bunch in
Finnegans Wake, and it occured to me I could listen to the 32
Beethoven piano sonatas 11 times each and observe that experience.
I own the Schnabel and Kempff complete sets of Beethoven piano
sonatas. Plus I have Rosen and Solomon playing the late sonatas and a
few other recordings. Yes, I started with #1 and I plan to end with
#32.

jerf
View profile
More options Jan 24, 9:17 am
I haven't listened to all of Beethoven's sonatas. That is something
I'll have to do.
Interesting note on background music. I've thought about this also.
You are probably familiar with Erik Satie and his concept of
"furniture music", which was background music played by live
performers. I used to DJ at clubs and bars for many years and
eventually began to lose interest and become frustrated with the
pressure to play music that people could dance to... nonstop... for
hours. I started to search out places that had no dancefloor, where
people were just there to socialize, where the DJ and music wasn't the
focal point, where people could tune in and out when they wanted, but
it was a person selecting the music in response to the atmosphere of
the place, not a jukebox. Ultimately this was my DJ "retirement". I
came across the Satie concept of furniture music and felt some kind of
connection. And it helped validate my desire to play better music the
background.
I'll digress with a somewhat unrelated Satie quote (sorry I don't have
the source at this moment):
I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead
animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit
mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white),
cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).

RMJon23
View profile
More options Jan 24, 2:48 pm
On Jan 24, 9:17 am, jerf wrote:

- Show quoted text -
Satie is one of my favorite personalities in music history. There are
very many proto-surrealistic quotes from his to choose from.
The IDEA that there are ought to be music that acts as "audible
wallpaper" was, I believe, Satie's. And it now has quite a long
pedigree, from Brian Eno and his popular accomplices, to "elevator
music" or "doctor's office music."
While I have seen very strong, almost vitriolic arguments against this
notion of the USE of music, I say: calm down. It's not like they're
subtracting from your Beethoven or Wagner.
And aye: I think there seem sub-liminal effects of certain USES of
music, but I cannot trot out a taxonomy at this point. The problems
seem inherent in the definitions of "subliminal" as it stands.
However, it seems a safe bet to assert that not all of the effects wd
be ones we wd consider "sublime."
Or, for BS: sublemonal.
I asked RAW if he ever listened to music while he wrote, and he said
he sometimes had the "light classical" station on his Sirius stations
on his TV, but Beethoven and a few others were too involving/
demanding, and he couldn't write with them on; they demanded his
attention.
There was a pretty good book on "elevator music" that came out about
10 yrs ago that I read. If anyone's interested, I cd look it up.
-rmjon23
"We have statisticians who systematize the static - how about
ecstatisticians who systematize the ecstatic?"
-Leary

RMJon23
View profile
More options Jan 24, 6:59 pm
Creating Simplicity: How Music Fools The Ear (new neuro- about music):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110120073507.htm

From alt.fan.rawilson

Playlist on the Edge of Mars

2010-12-28T15:17:00.001-08:00

Zombies of the Famous Undead

2010-12-20T18:22:00.000-08:00

...or "Mostly Zombies of the Famously Dead While They Were Living", as it were.

((Digital Paintings by Johan Lundgren))

three3eerht

2010-11-21T16:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome... to Giant Weiner dot Com!

2010-11-19T13:13:00.000-08:00

Just look at this awesome collection of feline clip-art.

2010-10-28T12:12:00.001-07:00

Just look at it.

2010-07-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

2010-06-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

2009-12-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

click below to tune in...

2009-09-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

link for Winamp/iTunes

...and then have a nice chat!

2009-09-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

2009-08-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

2009-08-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

1) Nobody should profit from land.
2) Food, water, electricity, shelter, medical care, and web access should be for everyone, without a cost attached to it.

I met a former mental patient at a potluck today.

2009-07-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

He told me about what drugs he was made to take there. One was a seratonin inhibitor that made him extremely depressed. The depression made him want to eat more, and, like most people, he'd compensate for that by eating more. He'd thus get double helpings of dinner, gaining 70 pounds this way. And, from what I understand, the nurses and doctors made fun of his extra weight. Thereby, causing more depression.

A viscious cycle, indeed.

It actually made me very fucking angry to hear what he had to go through. He told me that the drug he was on, would have killed him in 3 years. Said that the effects would have made him forget his name, or his memories. Into a vegetable, basically. For some reason, the drug was discontinued... he wasn't put on it anymore, at a certain point.

He also told me about the brain injury he had. He couldn't remember how he got it. I asked him what the last thing he remembered was. He told me that he was working at some sort of engineering place. What his last memory was, was a knock on the door to his office. It was men, dressed up as firemen. They asked him if he was the head engineer. When he responded with a "yes", they just smiled and left.

And that was the last thing he remembered.

I gave him my e-mail address. He told me he made rap songs, and said he'd send me over some.

Infected Mushroom! Future Nurses! (Seattle, all ages!)

2009-07-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

Perfecto & USC Events Presents

INFECTED MUSHROOM

COAST II COAST ENTERTAINMENT

www.infected-mushroom.com

GUNSLINGER

www.myspace.com/gunslingerla / www.myspace.com/heavyrotationus

OSIRIS INDRIYA & AMANITA

aka FUTURE NURSES

www.osirisindriya.com / www.nursethefuture.com / www.myspace.com/djamanita

JOHNNY MONSOON

www.johnnymonsoon.com

DJ PATRICK WALEN

www.myspace.com/djpatrickwalen

Friday July 3, 2009

Showbox Sodo - 1700 1st Avenue S Seattle

Doors @ 800PM – All Ages w/ 21+ Full bars

TICKETING: Limited $25 / $30 thereafter / $35 dos

Tickets available at all Ticketmaster locations as well as online @ Clubzone.com

ADDITIONAL OUTLETS

Advance tickets are available at Showbox Sodo Box Office

Monday - Friday, 11am to 6pm

$2.00 service charge per ticket, CASH ONLY

Platinum Records:

Seattle - 925 E Pike St (206)324-8032

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

www.uscevents.com || www.myspace.com/uscevents

www.facebook.com/uscevents ||www.twitter.com/uscevents

INFOLINE: 888.221.7491

PRODUCED BY USC EVENTS

Scab police government thieves phenal psychic amputees

2009-06-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Czwastika Eyez brings word of the censorship plights of the Czech Republic, which says a lot about how the people there value their freedoms of speech and what they would do to protect it.

Hit play on the MP3 player and read along...

Czwastika Eyez?
Lone Star
Posts: 7
Big new article in English on the Czech "Swastika Eyes" censorship farce
« on: March 22, 2009, 12:37:02 PM »

Hi all,

I posted about the early stages of this nonsense a couple of months ago: denunciation of the "fascist" Primal Scream by Czech state officials, public protests n much anger here in Prague...

Update March 2009: the "Swastika Eyes" debate has opened several larger cans of worms, covering ongoing arbitrary state censorship, open corruption among public officials, and various other ugly hangovers from the totalitarian era that we're still stuck with.

This story has not gone away - and by now it's about far bigger stakes than one Primal Scream song.

Linked n pasted below, an article that came out on Friday on Spin's new website...

*

http://www.spinearth.tv/articles/1095

"Hammer and Sickle Eyes: Music censorship in the Czech Republic, and the wider crisis of post-communist democracy"
by Peter G Holland
Instigator Media Group / Provokator.org, Prague

It began with a scare that felt more like the Cold War era than October 2008. The Czech Radio Council - the national body for broadcasting standards in public radio - announced their discovery of a conspiracy to "promote fascism" to the youth of the Czech Republic.

The accused: Scottish alt-rock band Primal Scream; their 1999 single Swastika Eyes; the DJ who played it on public radio; and the entire staff of Radio Wave, the country's non-profit youth culture and alternative music station. As the full background to this sweeping denunciation has emerged, it has triggered public protests in the Czech capital of Prague and widespread debate about the enduring legacy of communism.

Primal Scream, it should be noted at the outset, are a rather unlikely choice for would-be fascists, being a band well known for their left-wing anti-authoritarian stance and past involvement in anti-racist activism. Similarly, the song Swastika Eyes is unambiguous in its message: an explicit critique of "parasitic, syphilitic" politicians who pay lip service to democracy but have totalitarian intentions clearly visible in their "swastika eyes."

The basis for the accusations was a woeful mistranslation of the lyrics to Swastika Eyes, skewed either by incompetence or design to give the song a celebratory rather than condemnatory meaning. It was soon discovered that the translation in fact formed part of a larger dossier on the evils of alternative music, commissioned by the Czech Radio Council from their “expert” analyst of contemporary youth culture. This expert, it emerged, was a middle-aged Moscow-educated economist and lobbyist with no background in either culture or radio, and those parts of his report which are on public record make intriguing reading for music fans. Particular standouts are comments on how hip hop "advocates revolution", and goths promote "intolerance of Christianity"... but it was the interpretation of Swastika Eyes which received the greatest attention.

The report’s findings were announced to the press without any advance warning given to anyone at public radio. Craig Duncan, the Radio Wave DJ who had played the track as part of a retrospective of the Glasgow alternative scene, recalls, "First thing I knew, I got a phone call saying 'You should check the newspapers - the Radio Council just denounced you as a neo-fascist.' Yeah, I was kinda surprised." Duncan, an expatriate Scot and long-term Prague resident, is remarkably cheerful about the whole thing, explaining that, "everybody in radio was already fully aware of the kind of nonsense the Radio Council were up to. But when they came out with the whole 'fascism' thing, then the whole country could see what they were doing. It really helped that they picked a song that was specifically about that kind of behaviour, especially since there's such an ugly history of it under the previous regime."

Under communism, alternative music played a central role in the Czech dissident movement. Charta 77, the protest organisation formed in 1977 by playwright and future president Vaclav Havel among others, was begun in response to the regime's persecution of an alternative rock band, The Plastic People of the Universe . The Plastics, a psychedelic jazz-rock group influenced by Frank Zappa, were entirely apolitical but were nevertheless harassed and jailed as dissidents. This marked a turning point in organised opposition to communism, as the regime made explicit that it would imprison not only active dissidents, but also anyone who sought to pursue an alternative lifestyle. Like many of the country's leading writers, artists and filmmakers of the time, the Plastics were denounced as dangerous political extremists who must be suppressed for the public good. National newspapers carried official reports of their extremism, supported by wildly out-of-context quotes. Now, almost 20 years after the fall of communism, the Radio Council was employing the same techniques - and, it was alleged, exactly the same words.

The country's largest-circulation broadsheet newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes drew the broadest parallels, stating: “The whole of the Council recalls the situation of jazz at the time of the Nazi occupation, and the position of the Communist establishment against rock 'n' roll and New Wave cinema. Not only their desperate ignorance and linguistic inability, but particularly the monstrous totalitarian vocabulary of almost all participants.”

Public protests swiftly followed. First, 150 protesters gathered outside Czech national radio headquarters demanding the resignations of Council members and their associates. Two weeks later, downtown Prague club Roxy (where Primal Scream had played a sold-out show the previous month) hosted a free festival of electro, indie and hip hop groups with the same aim. Swastika Eyes was soon among the best-known songs in the country: the media analysed it in depth, generally concluding that it referred to exactly the type of faux-democrats inhabiting the Radio Council; more than one commentator quipped that Hammer and Sickle Eyes would have been a far better title. The song was also back on the radio with a vengeance, particularly since many bands on the alternative scene began releasing their own versions.

"When I heard these stupid accusations I absolutely lost my temper," fumes Martin "Destroyer" Prikryl, guitarist and bandleader of Prague post-punks The Prostitutes , who premiered their version at a concert broadcast live on Radio Wave. "Primal Scream are hugely influential on what The Prostitutes are doing musically, and we felt we should change from laid-back rockers to activists for a while. We decided to cover the song as our protest against political idiocy." As well as The Prostitutes, post-rockers Aran Epochal and electropunks Sporto released notable interpretations, the latter using samples of Council members’ most communistic outbursts.

Why did the Czech Radio Council make such a blatant return to the techniques of the past? Activist Jan Vavra of the protest group Pro Wave suggests they were instructed to do so by higher powers - namely their parent body the Radio and Television Council, which is ultimately in charge of all major broadcasting matters including the issuing of highly lucrative broadcasting licences. Vavra explains, "Wave is a station for young people, and, because all private radio stations want young people, there is tremendous commercial pressure to shut the station down. The Radio and Television Council is where the serious lobbying is done. There was a court case in 2007 between them and Wave, over whether Wave was broadcasting legally or not. Wave won the case, so after that the lower Radio Council were given the task of getting rid of them. They have taken every opportunity to try and do so - but nobody expected that they would make such a mess of it, or turn themselves into such a public spectacle."

The Radio Wave smear campaign is only one of a range of recent controversies surrounding the Radio Council, all of which are related to attempts to close or marginalise non-profit stations. The past year has seen a number of protests by listeners of public radio's flagship news station Radiozurnal, who believe that the Council has repeatedly attempted to interfere with independent news reporting. Then, from another station, the producer of a highly successful multimedia online nature programme filmed in the gorilla enclosure at Prague Zoo announced that he felt forced to discontinue his project, citing overwhelming hostility on the part of the Council. This was followed by another smear campaign in which the Council claimed that the General Director of the network had hired a former member of the communist secret police for his staff; like Wave's "fascism", this turned out to be a complete fabrication.

The scope and variety of the Council's attacks suggests nothing less than a concerted effort to marginalise and dismantle public radio in its entirety. A coalition of protest groups have submitted a petition to parliament demanding the removal of the Council, and are presently awaiting a response. However: the parliamentary committee responsible for judging the merits of the petition is the same one which personally selected and appointed the Council members in the first place. Less than 20 years ago the then-Czechoslovak Republic was regarded as a paragon of successful post-communist democracy, with a seamless transition from dictatorship to democratic rule of law. Today, at least in the public sector, democratic accountability is marginal at best. What went wrong?

"The early 1990s were a time of enormous idealism,” explains Jan Machacek, a leading political journalist and economic analyst. Outside his career in journalism Machacek plays guitar in original Czech punk band Garage , formed in 1979 and banned from performing or releasing albums in the decade that followed. He believes that the present revival of censorship is in part a result of the excessive optimism which followed the 1989 revolution:

"Compared to other European countries, very little was actually written down in law about appointing or removing public officials," says Machacek of the post-1989 reconstruction. "We assumed we would always elect politicians who were enlightened enough to appoint the right people to act in the public interest - and that, naturally, they would choose respected personalities who had been moral examples in the 70s and 80s. We were so naive and idealistic that we actually thought this would work." Bodies representing the public interest were thus given wide-ranging powers combined with very little accountability, in the expectation that they would be filled by an intellectual elite of former dissidents. In practice, the positions were soon divided up between the new political parties, handing disproportionate power to a class of third-rate functionaries Machacek describes as "very grey people whose only quality is party loyalty.” With no effective laws regulating lobbying or conflicts of interest, appointees' private business interests are routinely ignored as long as they can be trusted to represent the interests of their respective political masters as well. As Machacek observes, these issues are not by any means unique to the Czech Republic, but are universal problems facing post-communist countries: "To understand the problems of post-communism," he says, "it helps to look at Russia. Russia is a magnifying glass for the problems of all post-communist countries: theoretically it has an open democracy and the rule of law, but everything is facade with no actual content. All the other countries have these same problems but in a less extreme form."

The root problem of naïveté regarding the transition to democracy, however, goes beyond even the former Soviet bloc. Global politics in the first decade of the 21st century have been dominated by a neoconservative faith that democracy can be implanted in a country almost overnight, by force if necessary. The post-communist experience makes clear that, even following a peaceful revolution with mass support, the crucial transition period is not one of months or even years, but of generations. Primal Scream's Swastika Eyes was originally written as a critique of militaristic Western governments, but the song's relevance to the problems facing young democracies is, if anything, even stronger. It encapsulates the paradox inherent in any transition from totalitarianism to democracy: for every emerging political figure with a genuine commitment to democratic values, there are countless others who have merely changed their allegiances in order to gain power. In the Czech Republic, almost twenty years after the fall of communism the majority of politicians and state officials are still of a generation whose concept of government was formed under a totalitarian regime. Few are outright communists, but a great many are a disturbing hybrid of born-again free-market fundamentalism and quasi-communist rhetoric and tactics.

However, it does appear that the Radio Council is by now in its last throes, as its members are increasingly doing the one thing which is simply not tolerated: they are becoming a very public embarrassment to their respective political parties. Each monthly public meeting draws a larger and more diverse group of protesters than the last, with attendant media circus. The first meeting of 2009 was preceded by a "funeral service for public broadcasting standards," where a crowd of black-suited mourners covered the pavement outside the building with wreaths and candles. Some of those who could not attend in person sent flowers instead - including, notably, the Minister of Education. The meeting itself began with the Council deploying private security guards to prevent many peaceful protesters reaching the public meeting room; in a grim stroke of irony, among those physically barred from entering was musician Joe Karafiat of the once-illegal psychedelic rockers The Plastic People of the Universe. Later, it was discovered that some of the meeting's results had been published over two hours before the meeting itself began. The performance ended with the Council's official spokesperson refusing to talk to the press.

Today as under communism, an unelected apparatchik's greatest possible crime is the failure to maintain an appropriate facade of legitimacy. It is this failure, rather than any of their genuinely harmful activities, that marks the Czech Radio Council's days as numbered. Long before his theories collapsed in the bloody morass of Stalinism, Karl Marx suggested that "history repeats itself twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." One might hope that, after the tragedies of the Nazi and Soviet occupations, the Czech Republic's present cultural censors are perhaps merely the final, farcical coda of 20th century totalitarianism in Central Europe.

*

That pretty much covers most of it to date. Respect to Peter, IMG and Spin for picking up the story.

I suspect there will be more about this soon, particularly since the Radio Council have recently begun visiting public radio headquarters accompanied by a phalanx of combat-jacketed private "security" thugs whose main purpose seems to be to stand in the hallways intimidating people.

Updates to follow, I hope.

Meantime, do check out the Spin webpage, with photogallery and MP3 streaming of the best Czech protest cover versions of "Swastika Eyes", at http://www.spinearth.tv/articles/1095

Also: if you think the issues covered in this article are important, please please post the link on other sites that may be interested. This kind of shit should not be going on in 21st century Europe. Thanks loads.

fire escape talking: Bobby Gillespie is a fucking anorak

2009-06-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

A really funny read -- fire escape talking: Bobby Gillespie is a fucking anorak -- especially for this part:

About 15 years ago you went to bed with a friend’s housemate. It was a shame that your conquest had her period, but she said that you – gallantly, again, I must say – told her to flip over and then proceeded to fuck her up the arse. Unused to such anal attentions, the young lady shat on you.

She later opined about reading an interview with you in which you were asked what the most embarrassing moment of your career was:
“I’m not telling you, but it’s got something to do with excrement.”

We Are the Night

2009-06-06T13:48:00.000-07:00

We Are the Night from Purrple Heyse on Vimeo.

esoZone will be FREE this year!

2009-05-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

I mean, it's always been free, in a sense... but this time, there is no money involved (at least, in regards to paying an entry fee). A fucking great idea, and a smart one too, in this "supposedly downward economy".

I've been to the first two esoZones, and they've been a catalyst for personal growth and bondage. Yeah, bondage... er, with the other participants. I mean. Erm. Feeling a sort of "tribal bond", in a large pack of unneedy individuals.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about it as the next one approaches. For now, I'll leave you with a video, filmed at the first esoZone. See if you can spot me!

Ahhh, Emerald City, that has such people in it...

2009-05-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share with you all, the types of things that happen in the modern-day Emerald City -- the city I grew up in, and am currently living in.

SUNDAY, MAY 17
The week ends with a once-in-a-lifetime-if-there's-any-mercy-in-the-world sighting reported by Hot Tipper Cate: "Last night, amid the typical Sunday-evening Belltown douchebaggery, I observed a highly intoxicated middle-aged gentleman, presumably on heroin, loitering near Second and Bell, where he pulled down his pants not to poop, but to give himself some ass play while simultaneously smoking a cigarette and jerking off. When he was finished, he wiped his filthy hands across his face, collapsed in an exhausted heap on the ground, and waited, patiently or perhaps unconsciously, for the paramedics to show up. I love working in Belltown."

I just may have to draw a comic about this.

Hmmm.

2009-05-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, WTF indeed.

I remember the story about a woman who learned how to fly a helicopter... then used one to help her boyfriend escape from prison. I think I like that story better.

Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, Crowley, Phil Hine, Peter Carroll...

2009-05-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

Interested? Then check out the new episode of the Gspot.

The last 5+ episodes have all been of the highest quality (not including mine, even!). Here's the blurb:

Joseph Matheny talks to Nick Thacher and Linda Miller about Falcon Press and why there appears to be two Falcon’s selling virtually the same catalogs since the death of Dr. Hyatt.
Also in this episode:
A new In Your Ear with Psuke, and a special bonus track at the end: James Curcio presents the first installment of the Join My Cult audiobook, and releases Join My Cult as a Creative Commons PDF that you may download at Original Falcon. Also, as a side note, we were contacted after this show was recorded by an organization calling itself the New EII. Keep an eye open for an interview with them in the future.

2009-04-29T13:44:00.001-07:00

Check it!

2009-04-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Check it out, I made this podcast:

I had a time. A real good time. Making this.

That is high praise, indeed.

And now, for no other reason than I had no other place to put this, I present the THANKROLL:

SUPERGOD

2009-04-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

4/20 Reefer Madness

2009-04-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

In this economy, it would've made more sense to hunt them down and feed them to poor people...

2009-04-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dick Starbuck

Spokane to detonate squirrels tearing up parks
squirrel
Story Published: Apr 14, 2009 at 5:27 PM PDT

Story Updated: Apr 14, 2009 at 5:43 PM PDT
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated Press Writer
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The Finch Arboretum is being overrun by ground squirrels, and Spokane Parks and Recreation is bringing in some special artillery.

The agency is using a special machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds.

The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels - but in a humane way, the agency said.

Spokanimal, which is the local animal shelter and Humane Society chapter, was caught by surprise by Monday's announcement.

"You're kidding," Director Gail Mackie said when she learned the news. "That borders on cruelty."

Mackie said she would investigate the practice.

The parks department is warning area residents that it plans to blast squirrels all week, and to not be alarmed by noises that sound like gun shots. Parks officials said police have already been called to the arboretum by people who heard the explosions.

Timing is crucial. Parks officials said they want to detonate their prey before the animals start reproducing.

Parks officials said ground squirrels have been a minor problem for years, but their population is, well, exploding.

The squirrels dig tunnels and holes that people can trip on or fall into, the agency said. They eat new tree roots, can spread disease and are spreading to neighboring yards.

Gas bombs were tried in the past, but were not effective, the agency said.

Enter the Rodenator, a product whose workings have been captured on numerous YouTube videos. The company is based in Midvale, Idaho, and promises on its Web site that its product is effective against the "saber-toothed gopher."

markie mark

I'm all right .. nobody worry about me.... I'm all right...

this is more a burner meets Caddy Shack in Spokane thing..

instead of propane and O2. with a charge...... I suggest NO2 no
charge.. much much more humane

and if you don't mind the taste of squirrely butt.... you could wrap
your mouth over the burrow opening...

OI'm alright Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?
I'm alright Don't nobody worry 'bout me

love it..
Mark

Sammach

This is already done.

Frankly, I'm ok with this....

Think of it... if the same story said "Rat problem", not "Squirrel
Problem", would people be as upset? Probably not. I bet it's
probably more humane than unleashing a pack of coyotes in the park,
which is how nature would take care of the problem. Lets remember...
Nature ain't nice either.

The sheer number of them, and the fact that baiting them/trapping them
would probably kill other animals not targeted by the blow ups. I
guess they might take out a bunny or two since they also burrow, but
so does every burner driving on "Surprise Valley Road".

Save the rats!!! They're people too!!!!

Sam

Joner

whaddaya mean???
shock 'em, suffocate 'em, water board 'em.
they said it was apppropriate interrogation in the memo I received...

markie mark

really bad video of the Rodenator Pro with explosions set to music.

to much beer, to much propane and only one Rodenator Pro

and just one more.. jist beeecause

enjoy
Mark

Sammach

I didn't say it was pretty, or that it should be set to music, which
it shouldn't.

But if you don't have a bunch coyotes or other predator to naturaly
control population, you need to do something. [I wouldn't put a
predator hunting down prey to music either]

Sam

michael

> [I wouldn't put a predator hunting down prey to
> music either]

But I bet Fox would show it. And they'd get awesome ratings.

-mike

DjML

The BBC does in the terrific Planet Earth Series.
-ml
_______________________

DjML

_______________________

Dick Starbuck

Unleashing a pack of coyotes in the park wouldn't do much... because they can't climb trees.

You would need a member of the (more superior) feline race in order to do a decent job with squirrel removal.

And anyway, humans are above the inhumanity of nature!
Plus, squirrelburger doesn't sound half-bad! At least, it'd be better than the shit they're selling at McDonalds...

Evangel-ist

I don't care....There are way too many people too. Let's got to some alley ways and sleazy dive bars and apply the same humane process shall we? Let's be quick about it too before they make more....... I love the little fury angry squirrels! I love them so much!

Woodland park had a Bunny relocation project. I think they could have approached this with the same care.

HmmmPhhh.........! Grrrrrrrrrr

Eva Luna

Two questions...

2009-04-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

1. Have you ever been to an anime convention?
2. Have you ever stayed at an anime convention for more than 24 hours straight?

Kieron Gillen's top songs of 2008

2009-04-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

I don't agree with most of it, but... it's a rather entertaining read. Of course it would be, from the writer of Phonogram. Not one mention of Primal Scream! And although I'd put Ladytron up higher (like, at about 2nd), I do love the number 17... so kudos to that, Mr. Gillen!

That Los Campesinos song, though?

Ugh. So, so horrible.

Really, I could easily have thought up a better song for the
#1 slot...

Click on the above to download one of my favorite songs ever made. (thanks, moggieboy!)

amazing mix!

2009-04-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

on augmented reality...

2009-04-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about these exact sort of things for more than a year, now.

I envision flashmob party spaces, where each person agrees to help set up objects, lights, lasers, particles, etc. like in Second Life, but out in the physical world. All of which you could only see through special glasses.

I've also thought about what I think would be the next major step in videogaming: using physical locations as in-world levels/stages. Imagine playing Super Smash Bros. in your neighbor's lawn, with holographic characters jumping over your fence and punching each other through windows. Jumping off of houses and walking on telephone wires.

Kind of like this (start at the middle of the video):

I, too, also highly recommend Dennō Coil. All the episodes appear to be watchable in streaming video here. It's good stuff about the futures.

(orginally posted on Mr. Ellis's site)

It's just a ride...

2009-03-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

LET IT DIE

2009-03-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

Some encouraging, and frankly exciting words from one of my favorite authors.

I felt the need to write in the comments section. What I wrote:

Thank you, for putting into words the very things I’ve been thinking about lately but couldn’t properly elaborate.

Coming from Seattle, I know all about the anti-corporate reality tunnel. And I’ve found that it’s a better one to live in! There were some people who thought the W.T.O. protest was a big party — I was mainly confused, and awed at the time. But now I can consider myself one of those people :)

May the dream of Cyberia never die!

And now, here's the article:

LET IT DIE
by Douglas Rushkoff

March 15, 2009

With any luck, the economy will never recover.

In a perfect world, the stock market would decline another 70 or 80 percent along with the shuttering of about that fraction of our nation’s banks. Yes, unemployment would rise as hundreds of thousands of formerly well-paid brokers and bankers lost their jobs; but at least they would no longer be extracting wealth at our expense. They would need to be fed, but that would be a lot cheaper than keeping them in the luxurious conditions they’re enjoying now. Even Bernie Madoff costs us less in jail than he does on Park Avenue.

Alas, I’m not being sarcastic. If you had spent the last decade, as I have, reviewing the way a centralized economic plan ravaged the real world over the past 500 years, you would appreciate the current financial meltdown for what it is: a comeuppance. This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing.

I started writing a book three years ago through which I hoped to help people see the artificial and ultimately dehumanizing landscape of corporatism on which we conduct so much of our lives. It’s not just that I saw the downturn coming—it’s that I feared it wouldn’t come quickly or clearly enough to help us wake up from the self-destructive fantasy of an eternally expanding economic frontier. The planet, and its people, were being taxed beyond their capacity to produce. Try arguing that to a banker whose livelihood is based on perpetuating that illusion, or to people whose retirement incomes depend on just one more generation falling for the scam. It’s like arguing to Brooklyn’s latest crop of brownstone buyers that they’ve invested in real estate at the very moment the whole market is about to tank. (I did; it wasn’t pretty.)

Now that the scheme we have mistaken for the real economy is collapsing under its own weight, however, it’s a whole lot easier to make these arguments. And, if anything, it’s even more important for us to come to grips with the fact that the system in peril is not a natural one, or even one that we should be attempting to revive and restore. The thing that is dying—the corporatized model of commerce—has not, nor has it ever been, supportive of the real economy. It wasn’t meant to be. And before we start lamenting its demise or, worse, spending good money after bad to resuscitate it, we had better understand what it was for, how it nearly sucked us all dry, and why we should put it out of our misery.

Chartered Corporations

Back in the good ol’ days—I mean as far back as the late middle ages—people just did business with each other. As traveling got easier and people got access to new resources and markets, a middle class of merchants and small businesspeople started to get wealthy. So wealthy that they threatened the power of the aristocracy. Monarchs needed to come up with a way to stabilize their own wealth before the free market unseated them.

They invented the corporate charter. By granting an exclusive charter, a king could give one of his friends in the merchant class monopoly control over a region or sector. In exchange, he’d get shares in the company. So the businessperson no longer had to worry about competition—his position at the top of the business hierarchy was locked in place, by law. And the monarch never had to worry about losing his authority; businesses with crown-guaranteed charters tend to support the crown.

But this changed the shape of business fundamentally. Instead of thriving on innovation and progress, corporate monopolies simply sought to extract wealth from the regions they controlled. They didn’t need to compete, anymore, so they just sucked resources from places and people. Meanwhile, people living and working in the real world lost the ability to generate value by or for themselves.

For example: In the 1700s, American colonists were allowed to grow corn but they weren’t allowed to do anything with it–except sell it at fixed prices to the British East India Trading Company, the corporation sanctioned by England to do business in the colonies. Colonists weren’t allowed to sell their cotton to each other or, worse, make clothes out of it. They were mandated, by law, to ship it back to England where clothes were fabricated by another chartered monopoly, then shipped back to America where they could be purchased. The American war for independence was less a revolt against England than a revolt against her chartered corporations.

The other big innovation of the early corporate era was monopoly currency. There used to be lots of different kinds of money. Local currencies, which helped regions reinvest in their own activities, and centralized currencies, for long distance transactions. Local currencies were earned into existence. A farmer would grow a bunch of grain, bring it to the grain store, and get receipts for how much grain he had deposited. The receipts could be used as money—even by people who didn’t need grain at that particular moment. Everyone knew what it was worth.

The interesting thing about local, grain-based currencies was that they lost value over time. The people at the grain store had to be paid, and a certain amount of grain was lost to rain or rodents. So every year, the money would be worth less. This encouraged people to spend it rather than save it. And they did. Late Middle Ages workers were paid more for less work time than at any point in history. Women were taller in England in that era than they are today—an indication of their relative health. People did preventative maintenance on their equipment, and invested in innovation. There was so much extra money looking for productive investment, that people built cathedrals. The great cathedrals of Europe were not paid for with money from the Vatican; they were local investments, made by small towns looking for ways to share their prosperity with future generations by creating tourist attractions.

Local currencies favored local transactions, and worked against the interests of large corporations working from far away. In order to secure their own position as well as that of their chartered monopolies, monarchs began to make local currencies illegal, and force locals to instead use “coin of the realm.” These centralized currencies worked the opposite way. They were not earned into existence, they were lent into existence by a central bank. This meant any money issued to a person or business had to be paid back to the central bank, with interest.

What does that do to an economy? It bankrupts it. Think of it this way: A business borrows 1000 dollars from the bank to get started. In ten years, say, it is supposed to pay back 2000 to the bank. Where does the other 1000 come from? Some other business that has borrowed 1000 from the bank. For one business to pay back what it owes, another must go bankrupt. That, or borrow yet another 1000, and so on.

An economy based on an interest-bearing centralized currency must grow to survive, and this means extracting more, producing more and consuming more. Interest-bearing currency favors the redistribution of wealth from the periphery (the people) to the center (the corporations and their owners). Just sitting on money—capital—is the most assured way of increasing wealth. By the very mechanics of the system, the rich get richer on an absolute and relative basis.

The biggest wealth generator of all was banking itself. By lending money at interest to people and businesses who had no other way to conduct transactions or make investments, banks put themselves at the center of the extraction equation. The longer the economy survived, the more money would have to be borrowed, and the more interest earned by the bank.

Financial Meltdown

Which is pretty much how things have worked over the past 500 years to today. So what went wrong? Nothing. The system worked exactly as it was supposed to. The problem was that after America’s post WWII expansion, there was really no longer any real growth area in the economy from which to extract wealth. We were producing and consuming about as much as we could. Almost no commercial activity was occurring outside the corporate system. There was no room left to grow. Sure, outsourcing, lay-offs, and technology created some efficiencies, but wars, rising costs of health care, and exchange rates essentially offset any gains.

Making matters worse, all that capital that the wealthy had accumulated needed markets—even fake markets—in which to be invested. There was a ton of money out there—just nowhere to put it. Nothing on which to speculate.

The dot.com boom seemed to offer the promise of a new market, but it fizzled almost as quickly as it rose. So speculators turned instead to real assets, like corn, oil, even real estate. They started investing speculatively on the things that real people need to stay alive. What real people didn’t understand was that there is no way to compete against speculators. Speculators aren’t buying homes in which to live—they are buying houses to flip. Speculators aren’t buying corn to eat or oil to burn, but bushels to hoard and tankers to park off shore until prices rise. The fact that the speculative economy for cash and commodities accounts for over 95% of economic transactions, while people actually using money and consuming commodities constitute less than 5% tells us something important. Real supply and demand have almost nothing to do with prices. We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme.

Luckily for us, the banks, and the speculators depending on them, made a bad wager: they bet on our continuing capacity to provide a reality on which to base their highly leveraged schemes. We just couldn’t do it. They put us between a rock and a hard place. With George W’s help, they sold us on the notion of home ownership as a prerequisite to the American dream. And they created a number of loan products which made it look as if we could actually afford over-priced homes. The banking industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for laws making bankruptcy difficult or impossible for average people to accomplish—while simultaneously selling average people loans that they would never be able to pay back.

The banks didn’t really care, anyway, since they never meant to keep these loans. They simply provided the cash to mortgage companies, who then packaged the loans. In return for putting up the original cash, the banks also won the right to underwrite the sale of those mortgage packages to investors—investors like pension funds, retirement funds, or you and me. Get it? The banks get all the interest, but we put up all the money. Our retirement accounts and pension funds invest in the very mortgages that we can’t pay back. The bank collects any interest, playing both sides of the equation but responsible for neither.

And when the whole scheme begins to break down, what do we do? We try to bail out the very banks that created the mess, under the premise that we need these banks in order for business to come back, since only banks can lend the capital required for businesses to flourish.

Yes, It is Wrong

President Obama may be smarter than most of us, but he’s still attempting to rescue the very institutions that robbed us in the first place. He’s not a socialist, as conservatives may be arguing, but he is a corporatist. Using future tax dollars to fund government job programs is one thing. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor.

As painful as it might be to watch, and as irritating as it might be to those with shrinking retirement savings, the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place. And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich, and even temporarily devastating for the poor, it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.

If the corporate supermarket chain’s debt structure renders it incapable of stocking its shelves this spring, this may be the wake-up call that consumers need to finally subscribe to a Community Supported Agriculture farmer. If the former associate fund analyst at Lehman realizes that he is unable to get a job not just because his industry is contracting but because his work day creates no real value for anyone at all, he will be forced to learn how to do something that does. If an urban elite parent realizes he can longer pay private school tuition for his kids, maybe he’ll consider donating to public school the time he would have spent earning that tuition.

In short, the less we are able to depend on business-as-usual to provide for our basic needs, the more we will be forced to provide them for ourselves and one another. Sometimes we’ll do this for free, because we like each other, or live in the same community. Sometimes we’ll exchange services or favors. Sometimes we’ll use one of the alternative, local currencies coming into use across the country as Central bank-issued currencies become too hard to get without a corporate job.

Deprived of centralized banks and corporations, we’ll be forced to do things again. And in the process, we’ll find out that these institutions were not our benefactors at all. They were never meant to be. They were invented to mediate transactions between people, and extract the value that would have passed between us. Far from making commerce or industry more efficient, they served to turn the real world into a set of speculative assets, and real people into debtors.

The current financial crisis is the best opportunity we have had in a very long time for a bloodless revolution against the faceless fascism under which we have been living, unaware, for much too long. Let us seize the day.

Longtime Arthur columnist Douglas Rushkoff has just finished his life’s work, “Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back,” to be published June 2, 2009 by Random House. (Pre-order info: Amazon). His new live talk radio show, Media Squat Radio, begins tonight, 7pm Eastern time on WFMU. Streams at www.wfmu.org and iTunes.

strangeattractor17

2009-03-12T15:25:00.001-07:00

light + magic

2009-03-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

light+magic from nekospecial on Vimeo.

Archaic Vision III @ Seed Gallery (03-13-09)

2009-02-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

Archaic Vision II (02-13-09)

2009-02-08T11:09:00.000-08:00