The knowledgium: it resists the darkness
Adam Greenfield checks his pockets for analog tools
At Balladrian, Pippa Tandy investigates the DNA of the present
Banubula sees Shakespeare in the Stars
Barista hugs the curves with “twisty, twisty crime”
Maps of War visually traces the history of imperialism in the Middle East (and a bit beyond)
DataisNature points us towards Micheal Wolf’s photos of Hong Kong
Giornale Nuovo ponders Castiglione
K-Punk takes us by the hand and guides us through the hauntological now
Laputan Logic returns from the phantom zone and posts about the saga of Susanowo
The Knowledgium: its triumphant return
Cosmic Variance looks deeply at the reality of dark matter
Dataisnature picks a few Flickr Fruits
El Machete 2006 points us to an interview with Lopez Obrador in Le Monde
Use Babelfish for translation from Spanish to the language of your choice (results may be intriguingly quizzical)
Engadget looks to a very near future filled with ads…on clothes…electronically
Future Feeder tags interactive graffiti
And also from the ageless, timeless Future Feeder…will your home be beachfront property in a century? Find out at Flood Maps
Giornale Nuovo finds Faust in Prague
Improv Everywhere goes real slow at Home Depot
Jean Snow takes us by the hand to Yuki’s photos of Tokyo
K-Punk stares intently at the rotting corpse of stardom
You really just need to go to Ring My Bell…now
Ron Sims enjoys his continuing illification of China
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/8WpEPfkxsQU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"/]
Scott McLemee uncovers the truth of the Archies’ nihilistic anarchism
Yet another grand tour
3Quarks Daily considers the once and future Dr. Who
Ballardian presents, “My dream of Flying to Tinian”
Explore the “Gag Reflex” at Bitch|Lab
blac(k)ademic on “The Funny Things White People Say To Me”
BLDGBLOG goes to Eclipse Camp
Cosmic Variance says “Welcome to the Blogosphere”
It’s truly difficult to describe the Supershapes dataisnature presents
Engadget recoils in delighted horror from the Robot Strider
Fetch Me My Axe’s belledame enjoys a nice glass of cognac with her machine generated poetry
The Knowledgium: so much to absorb, so little time
Perhaps our sun is not alone after all
Radical Society asks, What Went Wrong?
[...]
After 9/11, irony was out, and so was the compulsive criticism and debilitating self-scrutiny so beloved by liberals everywhere. Everything was to have changed. Solidarity, patriotism, and action were in.
Although some rag-tag remnants suffered severe hangovers from imbibing too much Chomsky, or displayed milder but still worrying forms of sub-Sontagian skepticism, many newly pious liberal intellectuals felt chastened and slightly ashamed of their previous carping. In the face of mass terror it felt hollow indeed. Of course, “everything” did not change after the attacks; most things, in fact, did not. We were told to keep on spending, and we did; we were told to stop consuming the decadent culture served up by the liberal elite and found that we could not. But American intellectual life did change. Two things, primarily, brought this about: the nationalism unleashed by 9/11, and the messianic promise of “bringing freedom” to persons sitting in darkness across the globe, starting with the grand strategy of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The intellectual and affective lives of nations, the ways in which they understand and emotionally respond to themselves and the world around them, do not change overnight. Instead, hinge-events of historical importance activate conceptions and attitudes that are implicit in the national psyche. Of course, this does not happen mechanically but through interested groups of people (usually “elites” of some kind). Generally, these groups do not put forth arguments; rather, by tapping into assumed verities, they offer pieces of common sense. Politicians and partisans, unlike philosophers, know that reason, at least in the short term, is no match for things that are simply taken to be true.
As Anatol Lieven points out in his study America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, the dominant factor that was reactivated by the attacks of 9/11 was American nationalism:
Traumatized by the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, Americans very naturally reacted by falling back on old patterns of belief and behavior. Among those patterns has been American nationalism.
This nationalism embodies beliefs and principles of great and permanent value for America and the world, but it contains very great dangers…. One might say that while America keeps a splendid and welcoming house, it also keeps a family of demons in the cellar. Usually kept under certain restraints, these demons were released by 9/11.
According to Lieven, American nationalism has two sides, a positive “thesis” and a darker “antithesis.” The thesis is a commitment to the American Creed, those timeless truths that make up American civic nationalism: a belief in the universal value of freedom, democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, and the dignity of the individual. These beliefs are tied to nationalism because in the U.S. collective life is maintained primarily through representations of ourselves as Americans. As Richard Hofstadter once wrote, America does not have an ideology, but is one.
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BLDGBLOG comtemplates the built environment’s impact on evolution
Attention, attention. There is another system… The Fast Artificial Neural Net Library
Fast Artificial Neural Network Library is a free open source neural network library, which implements multilayer artificial neural networks in C with support for both fully connected and sparsely connected networks. Cross-platform execution in both fixed and floating point are supported. It includes a framework for easy handling of training data sets. It is easy to use, versatile, well documented, and fast.
PHP, C++, .NET, Python, Delphi, Octave, Ruby, Pure Data and Mathematica bindings are available. A reference manual accompanies the library with examples and recommendations on how to use the library. A graphical user interface is also available for the library.
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Soon it will be possible to see more, the insect way…
We Make Money Not Art goes shopping for the latest in professional footwear…
Safety is one of the main concerns of urban sex workers. The Aphrodite platform shoes will have an alarm system, which emits a piercing noise to scare off attackers.
[...]
The shoes will transmit their location via APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System) developed in the late 1970s. APRS uses amateur radio to transmit position reports, weather reports, and messages between users.
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An incomplete tour of the knowledgium
The Huge Entity Unleashes a podcast
http://www.huge-entity.com/podcast/playlist-2.m3u
An Eternal Thought in The Mind of Godzilla contemplates the conceptual job prospects…
[...]
Why do I always come here?
Weird women parked at blue little tables, staring blankly out the window-wall and scribbling in almost invisible schedule books. In the northeast quadrant lingers neurotic traumatized Chiaki Kuriyama lookalike. Thin box tryin’ of ladies’ cigarettes hover in her orbit, drawn in by a military issue black peacoat draped over slumped shoulders. She could be an ageless 18, 23, 36. The pencil does the evil work of whatever spirit that possesses her: composing double suicide love letters to Kojiro Abe. I can’t imagine what her face would look like with a smile affixed to it, if someone came at her with a hand puppet and a high pitched voice.
[...]
completion here
We Make Money Not Art introduces us to Arctic Robots
US scientists have tested in Greenland a solar-powered robot capable of driving hundreds of kilometres and doing scientific experiments alone. Subject to funding, they envisage building and deploying a fleet of five robots by the end of next year.
[...]
more-ness here
3 Quarks Daily looks at the observo-scope and spys a black hole collision
The Chandra X-Ray observatory has detected a proto supermassive binary black hole. And the two black holes will apparently one day collide.
coordinates on screen here
Giornale Nuovo gazes upon the work of Matthaeus Merian
The engraver Matthæus Merian was born in Basel in 1590: his forebears had worked as sawyers and timber-merchants in that city. Merian was first trained as a glass-engraver, but went on (in 1609-10) to study etching and copperplate-engraving in Zürich. From there he travelled to Strasbourg, and then to Nancy, where he worked on some of the elaborate plates printed in commemoration of the death of Charles III., duke of Lorraine. Merian spent the next few years (from 1612) in Paris, working for the engravers and print-sellers Claude de la Ruelle and Nicolas de Mathonière, among others. In 1615, he returned to his native city, and in that year published a major plan of Basel, a series of copies of the work of Jaques Bellange, and hunting scenes after designs by Antonio Tempesta.
[...]
the circle completes here
