Metacognitive Defibrillator & Nutwerx Squirrelizer; Surrealist Review of the World Nest (v2.3); Unofficial recycler of the disposable society; anti-judeo-christo-islamo-fascist-zombie-brigade resistance cell; Twenty Three Thousand Armed Buddhas; Nanobeachhead of Optimysticism; & future home of the manned mission to dwarf planet Eris. Nothing to see here, people; move along. Do not attempt to adjust your monitor. We control the html; we control the css. Submitted for your perusal. WTFWIT?
Cabaret Voltaire released "The Voice of America" in 1980. That was about half of the worthwhile music they did, as they were assimilated into new wave disco within a few years. I like the idea of them being beaten up by rock music fans at their live shows in Sheffield for producing industrial glitch soundscapes instead of the expected rock'n'roll. As part of our continuing series of nostalgic summer reruns, here is "Obsession" "Diskono" and "Badge of Evil". band site: http://www.brainwashed.com/cv/index.php wikipedia :
The assassination of John Lennon, election of Ronald Reagan, my moving to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the release of "The Voice of America" are a few of the events that seemed to initiate the decade of the 1980s and its incessant nuclear warfare. It all looks so … cute (???) now. Back in the good old days, nurturing a paranoid and anti-social outlook was a goddess-given right, something our modern chemicals have taken away.
The Eels "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" kept running through my brain yesterday. I don't even like that song. I decided I needed to displace that song with a dose of some other Eels music. I went to YouTube to see if I could find something fresh. I came across some interesting live content which can be waded into at the Eels official YouTube channel.
But better yet, I stumbled upon a BBC documentary about Hugh Everett, the multiverse theorist, featuring his son, E (Mark Oliver Everett). It doesn't get much better. Here is the first part of the six part YouTube version of the BBC documentary --NOT available on DVD in this universe--while it lasts.
In 1957, this young and brilliant physicist published a paper which used some heavy duty mathematics to predict the existence of parallel universes.
Although the concept of parallel universes seeped into popular culture, it was considered too way-out for mainstream physicists; and for many years, it remained in the scientific wilderness.
Now, 50 years on, Hugh Everett's son has travelled across America for a BBC Four documentary to find out more about his father's theory, and why it has now been accepted by many physicists as the work of a scientific genius.
I haven't even had time to watch all of it yet myself, though. Planning to go to Kagurazaka Matsuri tonight despite possible thunderstorms and watch this later during the weekend.
Update: OK, where are the "Related" links? OK, here is the whole program.
It's not my background picture; I found it on the internet.
Surely if I retrieve for them, these godlike yet doglike superior beings will recognize my usefulness and not toss me in their stir-fry. If only I could decode their signal system and uncover the meaning of the plastic discs they keep throwing over me.
From The Raw Story :a report of electoral fraud that may be behind the defeat of Georgia Senator Max Cleland and Governor Roy Barnes. Whether true or not, we may never know due to the lack of a paper trail.
7/18/2008 @ 12:10 pm Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections.
Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election.
In 1995, Spoonamore received a civilian citation for his work with the Department of Defense. He was again recognized for his contributions in 2004 by the Department of Homeland Security. Spoonamore is also a registered Republican and until recently was advising the McCain campaign.
Spoonamore received the Diebold patch from a whistleblower close to the office of Cathy Cox, Georgia’s then-Secretary of State. In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds. The source states that Cox was not privy to these changes until after the election and that she became particularly concerned over the patch being installed in just those two counties.
The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
Some critics of electronic voting raised questions about the 2002 Georgia race even at the time. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, who was five percentage points ahead of Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss in polls taken a week before the vote, lost 53% to 46%. Incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who led challenger Sonny Perdue in the polls by eleven points, lost 51% to 46%. However, because the Diebold machines used throughout the state provided no paper trail, it was impossible to ask for a recount in either case.
Concerned by the electoral outcome, the whistleblower approached Spoonamore because of his qualifications and asked him to examine the Diebold patch.
That's such an interesting paragraph. If aides on both sides say it was a shouting match, maybe it was a shooting match. Maybe there was some wrestling going on. It sounds a lot like an episode of Dick Cheney: CONFIDENTIAL.
Recent polls show Barack Obama leading in Nevada. With this, the best guess as to the electoral vote is now 325 to 199 in favor of Obama. Perceptive observers will also note that the red states have contracted considerably and have now taken the form of a 3-headed snake, with the rattle, or tail being Arizona, and the three heads formed by Louisiana, Alabama, and Kentucky. Students of mythology may note the resemblance to Cerberus, the three-headed dog (with the tail of a snake) that guards the gates of hell in Greek mythology, and a private New York based equity firm which recently bought Chrysler back from Daimler. Interestingly, McCain promised to take America "to the gates of hell" if necessary, to pursue Osama Bin Laden during breaks between naps, golf, and campaign fundraisers.
McCain's price on Intrade has fallen to 29 or 30 cents. It may be worthwhile to invest in McCain as a hedge. In the increasingly unlikely event that he wins, you will be able to use the money you receive to leave the country.
Some crazy names are being thrown around for VP, even on Intrade and Rasmussen. I think Obama will choose Dodd, but Richardson or Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer might be a possibility. Only Richardson is registering on Rasmussen. Dodd had a 1-2.5% chance on intrade. McCain could generate some excitement and interest with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Vice Presidential Markets To Win Democratic Vice-Presidential Nomination Hillary Clinton 14.7 Kathleen Sebelius 18.5 Evan Bayh 12.0 Joe Biden 11.0 Tim Kaine 11.0 Claire McCaskill 8.6 Bill Richardson 9.3 Ed Rendell 5.2
To Win Republican Vice-Presidential Nomination Mitt Romney 32.0 Tim Pawlenty 16.0 Charlie Crist 7.5 Sarah Palin 13.9 Mike Huckabee 12.1 John Thune 15.0 Mark Sanford 6.0 Carly Fiorina 10.0 Bobby Jindal 7.5
Savage Republic is a Los Angeles band that I became familiar with during the 1982 - 1986 time frame of my life in Los Angeles. Legend has it they developed their sound in the steam tunnels and parking garages of UCLA. They have been playing together again since a 2002 reunion and even have a CD and EP out, 1938 and Siam. Since the band seems to operate somewhat outside of space, time, and culture, their 1982-1986 releases could have just as easily been 2002-2006. (Actually, it would be much more believable if they were.)
The crisis of our country is not caused by external forces. The danger lies within. And the forces are real. And the danger is ever growing. It lies within. The forces of oppression are a danger we all feel when you remove the ignorance. And you find the crisis is real. And the danger is ever growing. It lies within.
This post is content from a month ago, but it is relevant until the Bush-Cheney regime installed by judicial coup in 2000 and maintained in power by Diebold has been removed from power, its officials punished for their crimes, and its laws and appointees stricken down. I agree with Dennis that the Vice President and President should be impeached as soon as possible.
The Supreme Court has ruled that our ancient rights of habeus corpus are now extinct; that the president has the right to arbitrarily pick any person and detain them indefinitely for no reason. This and their many other official and underground powers make the two traitors in the White House not only (nuc-u-lar) armed but also extremely dangerous. Will they voluntarily surrender these powers on inauguration day to a president who may very well have them detained, if he has a brain? Or is it more likely that mister Cheney will ask some of his Saudi friends to fly a 747 into the Capital so he can declare a national emergency and suspend the inauguration indefinitely? It's not over 'til it's over. We will fight them in the snow, we will fight them in the rain, we will fight them in the sleet, keeping to our appointed rounds, in the meadows. Political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Thus spake Winston Churchill, Mao Zedong, and a delirious postal worker as transcribed by an astral traveler and Dennis Kucinich fellow traveler. My point is, why not fight them in the legislative chambers, too? We got to fight 'em over there in the legislative chambers so we don't have to fight 'em here in our living rooms. Impeachment should have never been taken off Nancy Pelosi's table. It should have been the mission #1 on day one. The fact that it was not tells us that the Democratic Republican Party is a single monolithic ruling party with probably less internal dissent than any of the world's ruling parties in one-party states.
For the record, I also favored the impeachment of Bill Clinton for his perjury involving minor improprieties with imperial consort Monica L-. These things would get you fired from night manager at McDonald's but somehow are to be overlooked in his majesty. Fair enough, but the right way to handle that was the way David Paterson did.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. Well, Ohio Congress member and former Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich is vowing to continue his impeachment efforts against President Bush despite attempts to bury it in committee. On Wednesday, Congress voted 251-166 to send Kucinich’s bill to the House Judiciary Committee, where it’s unlikely to be considered before Bush leaves office. A similar resolution against Vice President Dick Cheney that was introduced last year was also sent to the House Judiciary Committee, where it still remains. Kucinich spent four hours on the House floor Monday reading out thirty-five articles of impeachment against the President. • REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now from Washington, D.C. by the Ohio Congress member, Dennis Kucinich. Welcome to Democracy Now! REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning. AMY GOODMAN: Why have you chosen to do this now? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: We have 4,000 of our brave men and women who have died in Iraq. Over a million innocent Iraqis have been killed. We’ve had torture policies, rendition, illegal detention, wiretapping, spying, subversion of global climate change science. I mean, I went on and on and on with these articles the other night, but what it adds up to is that there has to be accountability. And for the leadership of the Democratic Party to say that impeachment is off the table is to essentially put on hold the United States code, international law and the Constitution of the United States. There is no rational, logical reason why the Judiciary Committee should not hear—have hearings on these articles. JUAN GONZALEZ: Congressman, some of your colleagues in Congress have said that they would be willing to consider impeachment should President Bush move to begin a war with Iran without consulting Congress. Senator Joe Biden has said so, and the House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has said so. Do you think that this is in essence a reaction to your continued pressure over the issue of impeachment? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, this isn’t golf. You don’t get a do-over. We can’t let this president wage war and kill more people in violation of international law, in violation of the Geneva Convention. His conduct has been totally in alignment with violating the Nuremberg Principles. We need to hold him to account. And if we do that, there won’t be an attack on Iran. We must not wait for more carnage and for more jeopardy to the peace of the world. We have enough information right now to offer incontrovertible proof that this president lied to take us into a war, worked with others to manufacture a false case for war, falsely stated to the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and told the Congress that there was an imminent threat, thereby subverting Congress’s power under Article I, Section 8, with respect to a declaration of war. So what are we waiting for? AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Kucinich, the head of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, said voters did not hand Democrats control of Congress two years ago in order to impeach President Bush. REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Is that what he said? Well, you know what? Howard Dean ought to check with the people where he lives with in Vermont, because the people in Vermont understand this. And people all over this country understand it. This isn’t a political question, by the way. The appropriate response for Howard Dean would be that this is a matter that’s beyond politics. This is a matter that relates to a democratic system of government and whether or not our Constitution is just a piece of paper. So this has to go beyond politics. It’s not for the Democratic Party to decide to overlook violations of US law and international law. We cannot let our political system trump the requirements of the law. AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to Nancy Pelosi. This is the House Speaker in late 2006, shortly after the Democrats took over Congress. • REP. NANCY PELOSI: No, impeachment is off the table. • LESLEY STAHL: Off the table. And that’s a pledge? • REP. NANCY PELOSI: Well, it’s a pledge in the—yes, in that it’s a pledge—of course it is. And it is a waste of time. • Democrats are not about getting even. Democrats are about helping the American people get ahead. And that’s what our agenda is about. So while some people are excited about prospects that they have, in terms of their priorities, they are not our priorities. I have said, and I say again, that impeachment is off the table.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Nancy Pelosi. Well, last December, I asked House Judiciary Chair John Conyers about impeachment. • REP. JOHN CONYERS: Unless we’re going to impeach the Vice President and the President within this space of time, I think we could be very seriously compromising the greatest important—most important thing, in addition to documenting any misdeeds that may have happened, whether we continue to have Bush enablers continue to shatter and tear the Constitution to shreds. And so, all of this, academically, is great. I’ve got a number of books from my friends about which articles would be best and which ones we should go after more. But it seems to me that the time element and also the feasibility of whether or not there is any possible chance of success—there is a very stark reality that with the corporatization of the media, we could end up with turning people who should be documented in history as making many profound errors and violating the Constitution from villains into victims.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the House Judiciary Chair John Conyers. Dennis Kucinich, your response? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: There is arguable evidence that President Bush has committed war crimes. We have a moral obligation to have hearings in Judiciary to make a determination whether or not this is so. This goes beyond politics. I have a great respect for John Conyers, I have a great respect for Nancy Pelosi, but this goes beyond politics. This is not—you know, our whole government rests on moral principles, not just on political principles. And so, we need to evaluate what Congress’s rightful role is here. You know, one of the founders of our nation made it very clear that Congress had a role that was not simply to pass laws, but to ask questions of the executive. This is what helped to create a powerful three-branches-of-government concept that was imbued in the Constitution, co-equality, so that we wouldn’t have a monarch. George Bush has acted in a way that has separated him from the rule of law. Congress must hold him accountable. And to say, “Well, we have more important things to do”—what could be more important than finding out whether or not the President of the United States has committed war crimes, whether or not he’s violated United States law and repeatedly violated the Constitution? You know, you look at the price of gasoline today. Does anyone have any idea that the United States invaded Iraq for oil, that there were meetings with the oil companies laying out maps of oil fields in Iraq, that Congress has not been able to get full documentation from the Vice President as to what was said in those meetings? What about the pressures that are being put on the Iraq government right now to try to get it to turn over its sovereignty so that the United States can facilitate the control of Iraq oil for the international corporations? We have to stand up for this country and for its people, and that’s what I’m doing. And I am going to be challenging my colleagues to look at the evidence. And if they look at the evidence, I think that they’ll want to do what’s right. JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Congressman, you vow to continue reintroducing your proposal now if it’s—every thirty days unless action is taken. Your response to those who say that there’s no—there isn’t enough time in the calendar, given everything else that is going to be occurring, the presidential election, over the next few months, to even be able to deal with this issue? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: George Bush has enough time to bomb Iran on another pretext. He has enough time to continue policies of torture. He has enough time to continue policies of eavesdropping and wiretapping. He has enough time to continue to ignore critical science with respect to global climate change. He has enough time to help facilitate more violations of election law for the 2008 election. We don’t have enough time. We can’t spend any more time temporizing, while the Constitution, the United States laws, international laws, are being shredded. AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Kucinich, you said President Bush is guilty perhaps of war crimes, and that’s what you want to get to the bottom of. What war crimes? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it’s waging illegal war, attacking a civilian population, knocking out the access to electricity and water. The Geneva Conventions and protocols to the Geneva Conventions make it very clear that there are questions that need to be answered by the Judiciary Committee. That’s Article VIII of the impeachment resolution, points out that the first protocol to the Geneva Convention says that someone who is in civilian command is within the reach of war crimes prosecution if he or she had a direct responsibility for ordering troops—or ordering an attack on another nation. If you read the Nuremberg Principles, you know, our president has brought himself within the reach of prosecution for war crimes. And the Congress of the United States should take this responsibility to—not just to look into it, but to take action, because if we don’t take action, what would it say to American history if later on, after this president left office, he was brought up by either an international tribunal or by the laws of another country? It’s not as though he’s going to be able to escape justice. AMY GOODMAN: And the argument that John Conyers made, if you’re not impeaching Cheney at the same time, that he could be president? REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, who says that Dick Cheney should be beyond the reach of impeachment? I mean, I’ve already introduced that resolution. You know, we know that there was a rapid change of the guard that occurred during the time that Spiro Agnew left office in disgrace, that President Richard Nixon resigned before articles were presented to the House and the door was open for Gerald Ford to become president. The personality shouldn’t matter here. What should matter is whether or not crimes have been committed. And to turn a blind eye to that, to say, “Well, you know, it’s off the table. We’ve got other things to do,” is to unwittingly be an accomplice in this. We have to realize our responsibility here to protect this country from corruption. And it’s being—the Constitution and the nation, the national governance, is being corrupted by Congress’s unwillingness to look into this. Why are—what are we afraid of, that we’re afraid to look into violations of law by this president?
and in Pasadena last month around the solstice playing Hold My Hips (incomplete…)
and some of the same Pasadena moments from a different angle with some zooming, editing, few mini-interview questions:
That's very L.A. It's nice to see them playing out in the sunlight and see how they (look when they) play together.
an interview at Sasquatch Music Festival, late May 2008:
and another backstage sasquatch moment/interview:
Tiger Phone Card from something called Fuel(ish)TV:
Seeing Hands via Brightcove via The Daily Habit (Fuel TV?):
There is pretty bad audio (PBA?) throughout all of these (even the ones off tv), but I was looking more for the pretty bad video (PBV) which is better than no video at all (NVAA). To my surprise, these videos have small numbers of Views, like 78 and 111. I guess Dengue Fever has not yet become totally mainstream. Or should I say that the mainstream has not yet become Dengue Fever? FWIW.
Afterdenken: Gotta include a live version of Sober Driver, too, one of my favorite songs on Venus On Earth.
Alternatively, see this bluradelic version from at the Independent in San Francisco on April 18, 2008, substituting "San Francisco" for "Echo Park" in the lyrics.
On May 28, 2008, Nepal officially abolished the monarchy, declaring itself a republic. As the world's newest secular republic, no longer will currency be imprinted with "In Shiva We Trust," nor will schoolchildren be forced to pledge allegiance to "one kingdom, under the divine protection of the deity Shiva, and his representative, our holy king." But, of course, I am joking. They never had those things. I just made that up. Even an officially Hindu kingdom didn't force you to swear an oath of loyalty to Shiva in order for you to attend public schools there. You would have to go to the United States to find "In God We Trust" printed on the currency and children (of all and none faiths, even non-citizens) obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to the "Republik Forwitchitstans, One-Nation Undergod".
Hindu children moving from the newly secular republic of Nepal to the United States would find themselves in public school classrooms where their polytheistic beliefs are, like the beliefs of atheists, pantheists, agnostics, secular humanists, mystics, and others, ritualistically disrespected daily by the imposition of the judeo-christo-islamic unigod Pledge "Oval Lesions".
To be fair, I think you could argue that it is more offensive to have the images of national heroes, the local Attila the Hun, on your national currency, than it is to have dedications to the more universal and abstract deities. On the other hand, monarchs and the like have their function in places like Thailand, where they represent and draw power from the people and are a powerful force to check the power-hungry generals from myanmarizing the kingdom.
Interestingly, Novus Ordo Seclorum and Annuit Cœptis both come from poems to the Roman god Jupiter. Via Wikipedia:
"Annuit Cœptis" and the other motto on the reverse of the Great Seal, "Novus Ordo Seclorum," can both be traced to lines by the Roman poet Virgil. "Annuit Cœptis" comes from the Aeneid, book IX, line 625, which reads, "Iuppiter omnipotens, audacibus adnue cœptis." It is a prayer by Ascanius, the son of the hero of the story, Aeneas, which translates to, "Jupiter Almighty, favour [my] daring undertakings." According to the ancient state religion of Rome, properly called the Cultus Deorum Romanum, Jupiter was head of the pantheon of Gods.
"E Pluribus Unum" is Latin for "Out of Many, One." Never codified by law, it was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting In God We Trust as the official motto.
At currently projected rates of spiritual degradation, in one scenario, Jesusland will declare "Jeezus Iz my Master" as its official motto in the year 2025.
In the matter of making a"motto" for the government, if one were needed, I would recommend referring somehow to the positive contributions desired from government: Peace, Justice, Security, Democracy, Liberty, Tolerance, Knowledge, Science, Self-realization and the like. Depending on your government, matter-of-fact affirmations of Genocide, Conquest, and Enslavement may be powerful national anthems, too. Any references to gods or goddesses are probably best read as a giveaway sign that the people are living under an oppressive, parasitic, exploitative, superfluous, redundant ruling class that's pulling the wool over the sheeple's eyes. Governments can and do exploit their subjects while paying lip service to democracy and so on, but it's a little bit harder and keeps the ideals alive.
Lo-budge ways to mark Int'l Zombie History Week w/o leaving your secure undisclosed zombie-resistant location except perhaps to open the door to pick up the groceries you ordered on the internet --particularly well-suited for the rainy season--
I recently got the dvd for I Am Legend. No choice really. I like zombie films, science-fiction, apocalyptic scenarios, and Will Smith (though I am not sure he is really an actor, he is at least a person who people readily identify with, an everyman wise-guy).
I killed some time watching the animation on the disk while waiting for my son. Then I couldn't navigate back to where I thought the feature was. Ejected, re-inserted. It's back to a menu for the animation. Wrong disk? I popped in the other disk of the 2-disk set.
I hadn't really noticed the large lettering in Japanese that said this 2-disk set had the alternate ending. I just thought it was another bloated 2-disk set to try to justify the price. The second disk had no English subtitles, just subtitles for Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and a long list of Asian languages. I thought that was odd since Japan shares a dvd region code with the UK, not Asia. Whatever, though. Turn on Japanese subtitles. Play. At the end, my significant other, who wasn't really watching, having seen it on a plane, was shocked and said it was nothing like the ending she had seen on the plane. I eventually realized I had watched the alternate, (=original) ending, so we watched the theatrical (movie-house) ending after that. I appreciate having them both. My head was already confused by the fact that the scripts I read online had nothing in common with the newest movie. It's just a big branching tree of alternate versions in my head now. I think I prefer the alternate ending (on dvd to the theatrical version on dvd).
Like every known human, I agree that the CG hemacytes (or mutants or infecteds or vampires or zombies or whatever) were pretty badly done. Use human actors! Do the CG special effects in post-production later the way, for example, Haley Joel Osment's blinks were entirely removed for A.I. (Hey, HJO is 20!). I don't like the way I Am Legend has been reduced to a twitchy gotcha kind of horror thriller.
Unfortunately, I haven't read the original book by Richard Matheson, (82 and living in NJ), preferring to feed on the brains of the free online media over the costly cellulosic carbon versions (no known free e-text version of it yet), so I can't evaluate it in terms of being true to the original form. Obviously these versions have not been.
Prior to seeing the film, I had googled for the scripts one day and read quickly through them (though I haven't read The Omega Man version yet).
I was surprised and pleased to find the first movie version of I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth, is in the public domain.
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Based on the chilling Richard Matheson science fiction Classic "I am Legend" and later remade as "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston. This classic features Vincent Price as scientist Robert Morgan in a post apocalyptic nightmare world. The world has been consumed by a ravenous plague that has transformed humanity into a race of bloodthirsty vampires. Only Morgan proves immune, and becomes the solitary vampire slayer.
According to IMDB and most reviewers, The Last Man on Earth was better than The Omega Man. However, I have to agree that (what one reviewer called) the "fruity, overwrought" Vincent Price was horribly miscast for the role (although his voice in particular is uniquely suited for other roles), and Charlton Heston or Will Smith are both better choices for Robert Neville aka Robert Morgan.
I found what seems to be an illegal upload of the movie on a site with lots of small discretely annoying ads at http://media.putfile.com/The-Omega-Man-1971-Part-1 --findable via google-video. Having just watched some of that, I think it may be the best of the three film adaptations. I've mentioned Vincent Price and should also say the S-L-O-W "vampire" aspects seem a throwback to the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. The Omega Man downplays vampirism, blaming the outbreak on germ warfare between Russia and China. Charlton Heston is given an automatic weapon (of course), rather than making wooden stakes on his home workshop lathe. The colors and 1970s look are somehow light years ahead of The Last Man on Earth. Charlton Heston picks through trash and finds lots of dessicated bodies as he searches for the infected. It wouldn't have to be that way. I mean, Night of the Living Dead from 1968 and Dawn of the Dead, from 1978 were both well-done for their times despite the changes in film production values and budgets.
Classic Cinema Online and Flick By Flick have nice collections of copyright-free movies. Laurel and Hardy, Felix the Cat, Popeye, and various other sci-fi, horror, cartoon, drama, and films of assorted genres are there. Some of these are simply streamed off of Google video, but they are more organized and easier to find than the anarchic free-for-all at Google-video/YouTube.
This is by Herk Harvey, the Centron Productions actor, director, and producer from Lawrence, Kansas. Many of his educational and industrial films are in the Prelinger Archive. BTW I've noticed that Rick Prelinger has a blog: BLACKOYSTERCATCHER. Might be worth checking out.
In response to a question pos(t)ed by Mac at PostHuman Blues, I offered a solution to the misbehaving banner on the Tic-Tac template. My solution didn't work on that template, however. To figure out the answer, I made a test blog called Blueberry Taster, (or tester, or taste-tester? I forgot already) and got into the css just enough to find a fix, or maybe two. I have noticed that there was still a visible glitch in my solution -- look at the right column top! I think I should have displaced the header banner down from the top a bit more. Anyway, I think Mac has the situation well in hand, and I have deleted the blog I made. I am experimenting with another template, "Stretch-Denim", which has variable rather than fixed column widths, and I may investigate migrating to another blogging platform for several reasons.
Even when I tried to google for a solution, my entry never appeared among the search results, so I don't think it will actually be of any use to anybody else. Personally, I'm not so interested in that template, either. Before I deleted it I took 2 screen shots to preserve it just in case, and I guess that can live on here until I run out of Google/Blogger/Picasa space and delete it. I doubt that anybody will ever read it, but …
…for what it's worth.
By the way, the leaf-with-rainfall in that picture is from a biwa (fruit) tree in my adjacent park. The fruits are in season now, and I sometimes taste a tiny bite just to see how it is. This is the rainy season, and the hydrangea and bamboo are obligingly omnipresent as expected.
Once in a while you need a break. How many years has it been since you tried generating some anagrams? It's good for at least 10, 15, maybe even 20 minutes of amusement. Internet Anagram Server = I, Rearrangement Servant Beijing Olympics = Bicep Smiling Joy
George W Bush = Whose Bugger? Barack Obama = Boa Cab Karma
John McCain = Chin Jam Con
Dick Cheney = Chicken Dye = Check ID Yen
Richard Bruce Cheney = Debauchery Cinch Err
The President of the United States = Hotheaded Serpentine Testis Tuft = A Detested Pretentious Tenth Fish
La Ciudad de los Angeles = Undisclosed Algae Deal = Casual GeodeLandslide = Ogle Caused a Landslide
Michael Crichton = Chromatic Lichen = Chimerical Notch
Internet Movie DataBase = Vomit a Seabed, Entertain = Debase a Vomit, Entertain
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? = Impersonators Reached Coded Field
Wind and water continue to assault Iowa, the Hawkeye state, the land between the rivers, the lakeland in the river. Reviewing video of the May 25 tornado in Parkersburg, I think the best records were those made by closed circuit television. There was this one, which shows the wind tearing apart a house in a manner reminiscent of a nuclear test blast:
There was another set of videos from inside the bank (First State Bank), which show what it is like to share a room with an EF5 tornado. And you thought your roommate (or work-mate) was messy, wasteful, and temperamental.
I am also monitoring the newest floods on the Cedar River, Iowa River, Shell Rock River, and other rivers from afar. I have been getting some firsthand accounts and pictures, which are very relevant but limited. For its broadly collected content, YouTube is a little better than the news sites in some ways. I can see videos minutes after they are uploaded and be among the first 5 or 10 people to see them. The Des Moines Register, gazetteonline.com, wcfcourier.com, Chicago Tribune, Iowa City Press-Citizen, Daily Iowan, and Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune have done some good reporting on it, but from what little I can tell, it doesn't seem to be getting as much national or international attention as one might expect. Perhaps there is only so much interest and empathy until something breaks through to a Katrina level of apocalypse. Perhaps it is only incredible to me because I know the area I am looking at. Or maybe I am just one of a small minority of people who seek to get a better grasp of reality by seeing its extremes, what happens when it is stretched and twisted. It could be that reporters just naturally cannot get in to the areas they need to to report as well as YouTube users can. However, at the moment, the story has risen to the top of Google News.
I shouldn't make promises, but I will have a little more to say about this at a future time.
Science Friday last week was a great one, with Ray Kurzweil and Richard Preston (Panic in Level 4) appearing. Kurzweil is low-key but persuasive. Preston had some amazing stories told with humanity. The fuel-cell piece and the piece about the climate change bill were good, too. It looks like today, June 13, they will have a segment about Mars.
Richard Preston 'Journeys to the Edge of Science' Best-selling author Richard Preston, known for his New Yorker profiles of science and scientists, talks about his latest project, Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science. Preston talks with host Ira Flatow about his craft, and about the stories and people he has covered over the years.
Will We Recognize the Future? Futurist Ray Kurzweil explains the idea of the "singularity" — what happens when technology advances so much that it's impossible to predict what happens next. Will artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology be able to completely reshape what it means to be human?
Greener Cars Change U.S. Auto Landscape Honda plans to lease at least 200 fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. over the next three years. And automaker General Motors announced it will shift production away from large SUVs toward smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles — and close four factories in the process.
Climate Change Legislation Fails in Senate The U.S. Senate debated proposed climate change legislation on Tuesday — but the bill failed to win the needed number of votes to avoid a filibuster and was pulled from the floor. The bill would have cut greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by the year 2050.
Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com Wed Jun 11, 11:49 AM ET, Updated 11:36 a.m. ET
The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term "plutoid" as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto.
Sidestepping concerns of many astronomers worldwide, the IAU's decision, at a meeting of its Executive Committee in Oslo, comes almost two years after it stripped Pluto of its planethood and introduced the term "dwarf planets" for Pluto and other small round objects that often travel highly elliptical paths around the sun in the far reaches of the solar system.
The name plutoid was proposed by the members of the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN), accepted by the Board of Division III and by the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), and approved by the IAU Executive Committee at its recent meeting in Oslo, according to a statement released today.
Here's the official new definition:
"Plutoids are celestial bodies in orbit around the sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune that have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared the neighborhood around their orbit."
In short: small round things beyond Neptune that orbit the sun and have lots of rocky neighbors.
The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris, the IAU stated. The organization expects more plutoids will be found.
Controversy continues
Already the IAU recognizes it is adding to an ongoing controversy.
The IAU has been responsible for naming planetary bodies and their satellites since the early 1900s. Its decision in 2006 to demote Pluto was highly controversial, with some astronomers saying simply that they would not heed it and questioning the IAU's validity as a governing body.
"The IAU is a democratic organization, thus open to comments and criticism of any kind," IAU General Secretary Karel A. van der Hucht told SPACE.com by email today. "Given the history of the issue, we will probably never reach a complete consensus."
It remains to be seen whether astronomers will use the new term.
"My guess is that no one is going to much use this term, though perhaps I'm wrong," said Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, who has led the discovery of several objects in the outer solar system, including Eris. "But I don't think that this will be because it is controversial, just not particularly necessary."
Brown was unaware of the new definition until the IAU announced it today.
"Back when the term 'pluton' was nixed they said they would come up with another one," Brown said. "So I guess they finally did."
More debate coming
The dwarf planet Ceres is not a plutoid as it is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to the IAU. Current scientific knowledge lends credence to the belief that Ceres is the only object of its kind, the IAU stated. Therefore, a separate category of Ceres-like dwarf planets will not be proposed at this time, the reasoning goes.
A meeting, planned earlier this year for Aug. 14-16 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, aims to bring astronomers of varying viewpoints together to discuss the controversy. "No votes will be taken at this conference to put specific objects in or out of the family of planets," APL's Dr. Hal Weaver, a conference organizer, said in a statement in May. "But we will have advocates of the IAU definition and proponents of alternative definitions presenting their cases."
The term plutoid joins a host of other odd words -- plutinos, centaurs, cubewanos and EKOs -- that astronomers use to define objects in the outer solar system.
What's the solar system coming to? If a geeky-looking fellow in my vicinity were to begin talking in a whiny voice about the Plutinos and Plutoids, I would immediately tag him as an astronomer-impersonator and orally eject sputum into his ocular orbits. Billions and Billions of times. Even if he looked exactly like Stephen Hawking. I might push his wheelchair down the stairs, even if that meant we never found the wormhole to an alternate dimension that would save our species from extinction. Yes, this evokes strong emotions. Better that our world fall into the sun than we should move into the cosmos having permanently adopted the use of "plutoid." Think about it. What if "America" had been called, say "Spainoid" instead? South America, "Portugon"? How would you feel? Words matter.
What is this, really, some kind of attempt to pacify the angry supporters of Pluto-planethood? Pluto is not Hillary Clinton. The people who came up with this idea (or those who support Pluto as a planet?) could be called Plutons or Plutoids, but the long-established term Dwarf Planet is a more dignified and appropriate term. 1. It's not a made-up word that sounds like it was made by a third-grader, and 2. It contains the word "planet" and is therefore more acceptable to the planet-arians, people who do not want to see these bodies downgraded to non-planets. A dwarf planet is still a planet. Sort of. Also, imagine the confusion of translating the new made up (and fugly) word into Chinese and hundreds of other languages. Just use words that already exist, like "dwarf" and "planet." Gnome Planet would work, too, but do not consider Fairy Planet, please. Outer Dwarf Planets and Inner Dwarf Planets are possible, to accommodate the problem of Ceres.
I urge others who aspire to one day visit the (outer) dwarf planet Eris to resist! Resist this outrage. Call your local planetarium or university astronomy department to demand that their staff denounce(!) and reject(!) this mercurial decision by the IAU's CSBN and WGPSN. Better yet, go to John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory August 14-16 to lobby the superdelegates. It'll be like Woodstock without the music, the hippies, and the muddy fields, and with astronomers, I promise. Throw pluton into the dustbin of discarded nomenclature. Throw plutoid into the void. This decision will not stand!
Like the Scandinavian countries and China, Japan has a high suicide rate. Suicide has a long and distinguished tradition in Japan. Samurai committed suicide as a way to die with honor. Many writers and others have ended their lives with suicide. Last year at least one member of the government (Minister of Agriculture Toshikatsu Matsuoka) committed suicide over a scandal. I was jealous. One wishes Ronald Dummsfeld, mistercheney, or Karl Rove had as much honor and the foresight to know what was best for the country and their legacies. If this idea were developed a little further for the criminal justice system, forcibly applying lethal injection or the electric chair would not be necessary. The killer would come out into the execution chamber and inject / electrocute / hang / immolate / seppuku (exenterate) themselves without prompting under the silent stares of the bereaved victims. If they didn't feel quite ready to atone in that way, they could go back to their cells until they felt more prepared. No pressure.
I think in modern suicide cultures there is a desire to take control of one's own life, including the conditions of one's own death. Many people mistakenly think death to be the opposite of life, but death is the opposite of birth. Both are stages of life. Death is a part of life. The opposite of life is not death, but unliving, inanimate matter.
Popular suicide technologies have ranged from the burning of charcoal to poison oneself with carbon monoxide (East Asian equivalent of car + hose/garage), to jumping in front of a train, inconveniencing millions of commuters for one's 15 minutes (to one hour) of fame it takes for a station employee to collect the severed limbs, torso, head, get the police on-site, take the photos, collect eyewitness accounts, and move the people along again. A new trend that is sweeping the nation in this year's suicide boom is the home hydrogen-sulfide-generating method which uses a few common household chemicals to generate a small room or bathroom full of toxic gas. Users search the internet to find instructions. A few years ago, it was more common for people to search the internet to find a group of like-minded suiciders to commit suicide together using charcoal.
Yesterday's killing spree in Akihabara is the latest in a continuing series of more homicidal tendencies. People are throwing other people off bridges, pushing them in front of trains, driving into crowds of people with their vehicles, trying to stab as many people as possible, coming forward en mass claiming, "I wanted to (see what it felt like to) kill someone" and statements of that sort. It may be a kind of creeping Americanization, the rise of homicidal tendencies over the traditional suicidal tendencies. Many of these people, while spouting suicidal wishes, don't even manage to successfully kill themselves as they kill others.
The local expression for this running amok that has become more common is Kireta! which means tearing apart one's bag of patience, i.e. blowing one's top, finally cracking.
It's not yet an epidemic. The murder rate is so low that you can basically read about each one. I remember one time in Los Angeles when the L. A. Times tried to print every murder that occured in the city over a two-day weekend. There were the usual 50+ homicides, each of which got a paragraph, spread over a two-page spread of the paper.
I, for one, would like to see the older, more suicidally-inclined culture preserved and protected. However, as the population nosedives increasingly quickly due to the birthrate decline, the government is likely to put even more barriers in the way of suicide, causing frustrated suicidal people to try homicide instead. Attempts to stop the suicide will lead to more homicides and paradoxically lead to further depopulation. Just as HIV predictably led to government efforts to teach self-gratification and abstinence to the youth, efforts to instruct the youth in traditional and modern Kevorkian methods may reduce the risk of collateral damage.
I think we need to build more suicide counseling centers, and provide more suitable work, such as mine clearance in Cambodia, to the tired-of-life, ready-to-die set. I also think that Dr Kevorkian should take the franchise of clinics that he dreams of to the international community, operating offshore or in international airspace, to provide self-termination services in a warm, supportive atmosphere similar to that proposed in Kurt Vonnegut's 2BR02B, among other imaginary accounts. This is the ultimate way to reduce one's carbon Gore-print.
Perhaps in the future the ubiquitous closed-circuit TVs will also do a rudimentary brain-scan to detect the tell-tale sign of an imminent suicide so that public transit employees and trained counselors can intervene to prevent the person from also injuring others. …or deliver a brief dose of electroshock therapy to re-orient the person's mind-set.
I don't advocate suicide. If you are ready to die, you are ready for anything, so why not dedicate yourself to the service of mankind (or other sentient species of your choice), in a way which is likely to result in your own death? Hence the mine clearance work. Become a cop. Infiltrate the mafia. Smuggle people out of North Korea. Circumnavigate the globe on a rubber duck (…for… a cause?). Being ready to die is a prerequisite for a lot of different work, actually. Life IS slow suicide, after all, isn't it? And what would be a worse torture than being unable to die, living forever?
Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world. The homicide rate was just 1.1 per 100,000 people in 2005, according to figures from Japan's Ministry of Justice. In comparison, the U.K. had a homicide rate of 3.2, Germany 2.9 and the U.S. 5.6, the ministry said.
But more and more these days there are signs that the social fabric that has held Japan together for so long is slowly coming apart at the seams. Where once people had jobs for life and everyone looked out for their neighbors, now many Japanese take temporary jobs to makes ends meet, live in anonymous one-room apartments in vast cities and rarely speak to those around them.
Estimates say up to 1 million out of Japan's population of 128 million simply shut themselves off from the world in their bedrooms. These people, often children, spend their days online, playing computer games and watching television. If they do venture out, it's usually in the middle of the night to a nearby convenience store.
Japan also faces a serious suicide problem. It has the highest suicide rate of any developed nation but the government appears unable or unwilling to do much about it.
In 2006, just over 32,000 people killed themselves -- approximately 87 people per day. While many commit suicide alone, in the last few years group suicides have become more common. The disillusioned often meet up online, make a plan to meet somewhere, and then kill themselves together.
As on Sunday, some choose to take the lives of others rather than their own and these indiscriminate crimes have Japanese thinking their society is less safe than before.
Most people will tell you the 1995 poison gas attack on Tokyo's subway by a religious cult was the start of it all. Twelve people were killed in the attack -- the most deadly Japan has seen since the end of World War II -- and thousands were hospitalized.
Two years later, the nation was shocked by the brutal murder of a school girl in Kobe. She had been killed and her head left on a stake outside the school. But if the murder was to shock, Japan a bigger surprise came when the killer was revealed: a 14-year-old school boy.
The list of gruesome murders has grown longer with time. In 2001, seven years to the day of Sunday's attack, a man entered an elementary school in Osaka in western Japan and killed eight children with a knife. In the same year, a teen hijacked a highway bus in western Japan killing one person.
More recently, a man wanted by police on suspicion of murder stabbed and killed a woman and injured seven others in a shopping mall in Ibaraki, north of Tokyo in March of this year. And in January, a high school student injured two with a knife on a shopping street in Tokyo.
The low-intensity search for the building in Japan which most closely resembles a QR code goes on. The Matsuzakaya store in Ueno is the best candidate so far. I couldn't be bothered to walk far from my stroll down Ameyoko, but I found another picture of it on the internet courtesy of kawate.tv (whatever that is). Applying ample skew to both my and the found image samples, you can see how it would appear to a observer or bar-code reader in a non-Euclidean geometry. I put the original in the corner and distorted the found image to try to get to a grid.
I'm not sure if they were actually going for a QR-code look, but I think they were just looking for a digital, pixelated appearance. Come to think of it, depending on what year the building was designed, the dot-matrix-printer could have been the inspiration.
I could tell she was sweet on me…
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Normally I keep my eyes peeled but this is ridiculous… Photo courtesy of
Leah Zoller. Tea packet found in Japan.
The post I could tell she was sweet on ...
Mix: The Best of Shibuya-kei, Volume One
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The time has been right for a new mix that showcases, celebrates, and
reintroduces the best tracks from Shibuya-kei’s peak years: dj david, mon
amour - “Th...
Five years, that's all I've got
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*NEW BLOG HERE*
Loyal readers of this blog, if there are any left, may have noticed that I
have departed from my original purpose in 2011 of writing about ...
