Habitué à négliger les détails

Habitué à négliger les détails et à ne regarder que les cimes, il passait de l'une à l'autre avec une promptitude surprenante et les faits qu'il découvrait se groupant d'eux-mêmes autour de leur centre étaient instantanément et automatiquement classés dans sa mémoire.*

Jules Henri Poincaré (April 29, 1854 – July 17, 1912) (IPA: [pwɛ̃kaˈʀe][1]) was one of France's greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as 'The Last Universalist', since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime.

This is the first time I remember hearing of this fellow. It was from a Wikipedia piece about Marcel Duchamp who was interested in his work.

"The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality," -Poincaré

He also was essential for work on the Three Body Problem.

More at Wikipedia.

*He neglected details and jumped from idea to idea, the facts gathered from each idea would then come together and solve the problem. - Belliver, 1956

Legoland Needs Women!

Help the Chaotic Nipple in his quest to lean on the powers that be to increase the number of female characters in Legos.
I'm actually really for this. While I'm not a Legoist myself, I think it would be particularly good for child development. Legoland is a microcosm of what can be, and if boys don't see women well represented in fantastic societies and girls don't have icons and totems to play with in their toys, they'll devalue the roles of women in Gulliver's world.

• Sign the Petition

Tom Waits

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

Peace

Soundtrack for Ballard

As many of you know, my "ambient" soundtrack is usually nothing more than a good Rock n' Roll tune from the Clash, Ramones, Jerry Lee Lewis, and such.

However, if you dig disturbing (albeit a bit cliché) ambiance to contemplate the J.G. Ballard you just read, here's a pretty nifty link:

• cousin silas - ballard landscapes 2

Here's a list of the track titles which in of itself I find disturbing. I find relief in the fact that I can still be troubled - but that's the point of Ballard, isn't it?:

The Sands Of Shepperton
Crumbling Infrastructures
Cloud Sculptor
Dawn - Utah Beach
Rusting Gantry
Love And Bullets For Bobby & Jack
Motel Architecture
Concrete Islands
The Sign Of The Radar
Abandonned Motorway
Vermillion Drift
Drained Swimming Pools
Burning Wreckage
Schematics For Terminal Seventeen
The Death Of Reagan
Capsule Retrieval
Island Gardens
After The Hurricane

While searching for a disturbing, Ballardian illustration to add some eye candy to this little post, I ran across the above disturbing picture associated with this article:

Designer terror-porn now in vogue
The horrific images of abuse at Abu Ghraib have been recycled in the name of fashion. (Article)

Chompin' at the Bit

I've got to get out to the garage and start tweaking, tuning, and modding the Fairlane soon. I'm jonesin' for the grease fix.
To hold me for a while, here's a fairly well done montage of Mad Max chase scenes set to one of my favorites Ace of Spades by Motorhead.

And a link to part 1 of a 12 part dice of the whole Mad Max 2/Road Warrior flick. About 9 minutes a day before work to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...

1984

By The Surveillance Camera Players

The Surveillance Camera Players website

Tip from Penn and Teller's Bullshit! - Big Brother
Check it out if you've got a half hour to kill. Should be required viewing.

Dieselpunk

Ok...it seems that anything of a genre now has to have punk embedded in its description to maintain its edgy edge. In the literary sense, punk refers to speculative reality. On might say it is a fiction based on science and technology. A "science fiction" if you will. I guess it's required as the term Science Fiction has been so abused and broadened it means very little now. The fantasy of Star Wars, however good the story is, has very little science in it. You've got Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and now Dieselpunk also know as Atomicpunk. Fair enough. I'm glad I could find a term to group my aesthetics around. Funny thing is, the Wikipedia article actually hits on a lot of aesthetics that I appreciate under the banner of Dieselpunk. I was a punk in the third wave of it (loosely known as the "Hardcore" years, pre-Grunge).
So I'm into Dieselpunk. I favor the post-apocalyptic flavor, but I like to mix the aesthetics from Art Deco to Brutalism to Modernism.
Before anyone goes off on that "label's being confining" jag, I've been thinking about this. There is nothing completely new. Creativity is a conglomeration of prior experience. To express one's self means to attempt to communicate with others. If you speak a language only you understand, then you don't communicate. Expression is approximation.

Some Dieselpunk thematic inspiration:

• Mad Max
• Sin City
• Batman Begins
• V for Vendetta
• 1984
• Metropolis
• Brazil

Wikipedia link to Piecraft/Dieselpunk. While I was expecting a list of Electronica as being the musical representation of the genre, I was pleased to see that the "Music would mostly be defined by the fusion of the popular genres of the time, anthems, jazz and blues, classical and chamber music as well as early rock and experimental or musique concrete."

With that, I've been loosely kicking around ideas for the ride lately. My car is one of my "art" pieces. It's an ongoing creation process to appeal to my aesthetic yet have function at the same time. In it, I'm trying to incorporate a retro muscle rat-rod meets post-apocalyptic/mad max meets WWII armor.
As it is the car was a 1963 Fairlane 500, until I installed a built automatic transmission, disc brake conversion, and a 335hp 351w that came from a wrecked Highway Patrol car. I spent a winter modifying and rebuilding the engine. It moves. I'm also looking to maybe drop a Diesel motor in and see if I can't hot rod a grease car. If you don't know, grease cars are able to burn used cooking oil once they're brought up to temperature.
Lastly, I have to take up welding. It's a vital skill that I haven't managed to acquire yet. I'll be posting more technical discussions regarding the machine as I go.

Some inspirational pics for the ride:

Low Flying Aircraft

“I gotta visit this place, the Salton Sea. Absolutely Ballardian. I'm picturing Low Flying Aircraft.

Coming in May is what looks to be a neat documentary, Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, narrated by John Waters.

Salton Sea
Accidentally” created by an engineering error in 1905, reworked in the 50’s as a world class vacation destination for the rich and famous, suddenly abandoned after a series of hurricanes, floods, and fish die-offs, and finally almost saved by Congressman Sonny Bono, the Salton Sea has a bittersweet past.

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea trailer

Lorentz Gun

I'm still working on that wall.

Here' something that I find amusing. Not practical, but it looks like a lot of fun.
The Lorentz Gun (formerly the Taser Cannon until Taser forced them to change the name) from a member of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL).

Figures...

As busker noted in The Death Of America, Captain America's been assassinated.

Captain America shot dead at 66
NEW YORK: He fought the Nazis. He is revered by other crime-fighters worldwide. But the beloved, shield-carrying superhero, Captain America, has finally met his end...(More)

What happened?

...the government ordered them to reveal their true identities and register with authorities.

This caused a major rift and resulted in two super-powered factions, one led by Captain America, who went underground and formed a resistance movement, the other by Iron Man.

And from CNN

NEW YORK (CNN) -- He fought and triumphed over Hitler, Tojo, international Communism and a host of supervillains, but he could not dodge a sniper's bullet.

Comic book hero Captain America is dead. (Full story)

I spent the day working with some of my newer, younger colleagues. They are completely bereft of anything resembling honor, community, sacrifice, idealism. They just don't get it, the little narcissistic, self-absorbed little shits.

I swear I'm gonna get "REALITY" tattooed on my fist.

Revisiting Dr. Steel

Imagine the sort of influence a celebrity could have if they weren’t simply overcompensating and looking for the world’s attention as a result of some deeply rooted feeling of insecurity. - Dr. Steel

Interview with Doctor Steel

The Four Guys interview Dr. Steel
The Four Guys set off a few days ago on a dangerous mission to find the hidden fortress of Dr. Steel, a self made master of music mystical mastery. We searched the heights of the Himalayas and the dirty streets of South Boston in search of the ultimate truth that Dr. Steel held hidden away in his dark dungeon. (More...)

Dr. Steel's website and world domination toys
Dr. Steel at Myspace

I signed up and got my card and some stickers free! Balls! A person could spend a lot of time at the website. Lots of tunes, animations, etc.

If you're curious what this guys sounds like, here's a couple of pretty neat clips.
Fibonacci Sequence

Back and Forth

Printable Cold Sores

A tip from Boing Boing

Take action!

Printable Cold Sores - Geek Grafitti
Nowhere in advertising is the gap between natural beauty and manufactured perfection more apparent than on subway posters. As we wait for transportation, we are unwillingly assaulted by larger-than-life representations of supposedly beautiful salespeople. The large scale of these ads and their extremely close proximity to the viewer offer up more than perceived intimacy, however... they give us the chance to see the mechanical flaws designed to correct their physical flaws.

2039

Visionary writer/artist Paul Pope presents a futuristic mystery of epic proportions set in a dark, dystopian world devoid of privacy and filled with government conspiracies, psychic police, holographic caller ID and absolutely no room for "secret identities."

Batman: Year One Hundred (warning: will link to Amazon for the product)


It seems that Batman isn't a big fan of Big Brother in this story.

Here's a piece on Paul Pope at Wired.

And the artist's website.






Hattip to Boing Boing

"Look at 'em, ordinary fucking people, I hate 'em." - Bud

If you haven't seen the movie...
Repo Man.

Some of the best lines in any movie I've ever seen.

Screw kids

There's no ironic twist coming. I mean I don't like them. Not that much anyway. We worship the little buggers like some sort of sick cult of the child. We've fucking morphed kids into little, Disneyfied, creepy Margaret Keane figures. I think they're unpredictable (like bugs are), they smell funny, and you can't have a decent conversation with them. At least not a conversation that last any more than a few minutes.
And then there's all the patronizing you have to do for their parents and the rest of society. "Oh look at him/her. Isn't he/she so cute."
"No, your kid isn't that cute or interesting. Get over it."
Parents shouldn't expect any particular consideration or quarter from the rest of us because they wanted to boink. It's their choice/their responsibility, they should know what the extra burden entails. I'll treat them with the same civility I would anyone else. If I go out of my way to help, it's because I see you have your hands full and need help, not because the diminutive human you have in your company is somehow imbuing you with special status.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate kids, I just don't worship the immature little buggers. Sure they're innocent and all (much less than I think many would believe though) but they all grow up to be ordinary fucking adults, quite capable of shitting on his fellow man.
One bit of irony is that a lot of people think I'd be a great dad.
Just keep them minimum 10 or 15 feet away from me and we'll do just fine. More if they're making noise.

Creepy Cult of the Child
Now a substitute teacher in Connecticut is facing 40 years because she walked into a classroom, operated the crappy computer provided, and got a lot of porn pop-ups to which the little shits came gawking at. The jury couldn't imagine getting a flood of pop-ups. They convicted her of running to get help with a machine she was told not to turn off when she came to fill in that day an she didn't turn it off. And it was twelve year olds. I can't even begin to tell you what I was up to at twelve. I wasn't that fucking innocent.
I started smoking at twelve. Fuck the porn, I want fucking 40 years from the executive who fucking got rich off of getting kids hooked.
If kids are so weak and addle minded as to be corrupted by a little bit of porn, God help us all. I'm a little more concerned with the 10000 plus fucking ads they're hit with every year. I guess anything we can do to maintain their innocence, right? Or is it THEY want a breed of fucking ignorant and naive fucking consumption cattle that'll buy any fucking lie the over-fucking-lords jam down our fucking throats?

Protect the Children From Porn
By all means, let's Protect The Children. Because that's what it's all about, right? It doesn't matter whose life gets mowed down in the process, as long as we are clear that it's all in the name of keeping kids innocent. (Wired opinion)

However, I do like Edward Gorey's kids.

Extracts from the Gashlycrumb Tinies

Edward Gorey at Wikipedia

Links

From their about:
HazardFactory is an industrial Arts studio that serves as a collaborative platform for high risk, interdisciplinary, and emerging artforms.

I love these guys:

Survival Research Labs
Producing the most dangerous shows on earth


I've only listened to episode #1, but there's some interesting work at Cyberpunk Radio with discussions of the anxiety future. 72 episodes are available.
Cyberpunk Radio

Poetry

A tip from Boing Boing, gadgeteer and editor Joel Johnson discusses his take on over-the-counter electronics consumption.
A sample:

And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose. (more at Gizmodo...)

It goes to my argument that even though everyone owns gizmos today, only a handful know about the technology that actually drives it, thus are incapable of doing much creative with it. Kids in my office are amazed that I not only know what their crappy little devices do, I can fix them and/or bend the technology.
Man, they are the Death-of-Innovation Generation!

23

I've been reluctant to discuss 23 recently as it seems there's a big production movie coming out called The Number 23 about the "enigma" and I was hoping the band wagon would pass by without enticing me. It was not to be. Below, there is a link discussing the flick at Disinformation.
For those unfamiliar with the Discordian "23 enigma" or Robert Anton Wilson's Reality Tunnel 23 it's like this...Once you are aware of the 23 enigma then you will start noticing 23 in more an more places. Very unlikely places. It's presence will surprise you. You'll see it in historic context or marketing or political, etc.
What's the mechanics behind this? Magical? Supernatural? Some mathematical truth like Pi or Phi? The Law of Fives?
All I can say personally is Maybe.
The point is once you open up to it you see it. This is an important lesson about life. If you open up to anything, use any totem or focus device, you are more receptive to its existence. As Wilson says "Reality is what you can get away with." Man, that's fucking profound.
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." - Miller (Repo Man)
Here's my favorite example of the effect. Think of your car (this works well in the US because it's been decreed by sacred/secret law that every man, woman, and child have a car). Think of the color and make of your car. Now when you first got the, did you notice how many other people had the same car? What about before you owned the car, did you notice that make and model in particular?
Ok...now can this effect be applied to something that hasn't yet been realized? Can you image a thing to where once the thing is present, you notice it. Wilson has a little trick with quarters. You wanna see quarters, spend a some time thinking about quarters. The shape, the sound hitting the floor, the weight, and so on. Man, before you know it...fucking quarters everywhere. This effect lasts as long as you apply regular energy to thinking about quarters. But of course the bills are due, your late for work, that mother fucker just stepped on your toe...Who's got time to shape their own reality, the world's too busy shaping it for us.

Miller: A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?
Miller: I'll give you another instance: you know how everybody's into weirdness right now?...
-Repo Man

Here's a list of links for further (required?) reading (maybe save fUSION Anomoly for last...you can get lost in there)

• 23 - fUSION Anomoly
• 23 (numerology) - Wikipedia
• The 23 Enigma Goes Mainstream - Disinformation

and lastly...Maybe. A good introduction to Wilson's work on keeping your eyes open.

Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow!

It all makes sense now...

Thomas credits Ghoulardi for influencing the "otherness" of the Cleveland/Akron bands of the mid-1970s and early 1980s, including the Electric Eels, and The Mirrors, the Cramps, and Thomas's own groups, Pere Ubu and Rocket From The Tombs, declaring: "We were the Ghoulardi kids." (Akron's Devo aren't included on Thomas' list, but they were formed in the same era as the other groups and shared a similar esthetic.)

Who was this Ghoulardi?

This irreverent and influential movie host was a hipster, unlike the horror character prototype. Ghoulardi’s costume was a long lab coat covered with “slogan” buttons, horn-rimmed sunglasses with a missing lens, fake Van Dyke beard and moustache, and various messy, awkwardly-perched wigs. Ghoulardi's stage name was devised by Cleveland restaurateur Ralph Gulko, who was making a pun of the word "ghoul," and his own similar last name, tagged with a generic "ethnic"ending. (Wikipedia...)

Personally, I grew up with Ghoulardi's descendants, Hoolihan and Big Chuck and then Big Chuck and Little John, Super Host, the Ghoul, and the Son of Ghoul.
Interesting place, the Cleveland-Akron-Canton strip.

"Stay Sick!"