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Aug. 12th, 2008 @ 03:57 pm
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Sometimes listening to Sister Ray all the way through is the answer: obnoxiously long, but full of enough good moments to justify it. Rock n' Roll n' Transvestites. 18 minutes is an awfully long time, so perhaps only once a year is in order, in the background, possibly during a bowl movement, depending on the speakers' range.
Possibly a several-hour mix of obnoxiously long songs, starting with the Velvet Underground's Sister Ray, then Two Lone Swordsmen's remix of Spiritualized's Come Together, the Orb's Spanish Castles In Space, Van Morrison's Madame George, Miles Davis' Yesternow, the Beta Band's She's The One, Primal Scream's Come Together, etc.... |
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Aug. 2nd, 2008 @ 12:56 pm
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There are now computer programs that can evaluate a cell and track every single protein that a cell has floating through its cytosol, and map out projected interactions of each and every one of those proteins. Soon these projected interactions will be predicted to within an accuracy of .00000000001%, and we will have a rock-solid understanding of the behavior of a cell.
Next we will take an organism and determine every single protein interaction in every one of its trillions of cells, and determine within an accuracy of .00000000001% the future behavior of every cell. At this point we will have an understanding of the interactions between proteins, cells, and systems, and will be able to determine the viability of said organism.
When we are able to determine the viability of one organism, we are a stone's throw from determining the viability of every organism... Will we be able to judge others then? Is this when old axioms about not judging others will finally be put to death? If airtight predictions can be made about an organism, and they predict garbage, calamitous loss, and conspicuous consumption, will it be unethical to terminate said organism with impunity? |
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Aug. 1st, 2008 @ 11:42 am
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MIT scientist lauds major solar power discovery.
This is a technology that has been widely discussed for years. Using solar power, it is possible to generate a current that separates water into Oxygen and Hydrogen gas (this is a process called electrolysis, and is used to separate many molecular compounds into their constituent elements), which can be stored and used to power anything that runs on electricity. It certainly looks as though the MIT people have perfected this.
Great news; perhaps we will all be living off the grid soon, and good riddance to centralized power.
The first track off of Autechre's 1999 Peel Session album is a skin-crawler called Drain, a song that will submerge itself into your brain and make you rethink your aim in life... The schumann resonances turn your brainwaves to static and melt your frontal lobes, and you suddenly remember that you're a goddamn machine with no goddamn hope... This is bliss, the time of your life when you are relieved of all obligations and given a check for putting your fingers in the right place at the right time. Let no one tell you otherwise.
Autechre are divine; the further they go along into their spatial explorations (always inward, never outward), the more melody they leave behind in their search for limitless pattern, the better off we all are. Listen to their abandonment of the familiar in an attempt to get us closer to the vast potential of complex, mathematical forms... Weep as space and time themselves are distorted in LP5's Fold 4, Wrap 5... Enough beauty to make you off yourself, if beauty weren't already abandoned and patterns left unrecognizable... There is nothing more enchanting than a vast, limitless abyss of sharp edges and terrifying empty spaces. |
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Jul. 20th, 2008 @ 09:37 am
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Peter Weir's The Truman Show is a movie that came and went with very little fanfare back in 1997, which is a shame, because it's one of the more creative big-budget movies Hollywood has produced in the last few decades... The execution is a little clumsy, to be sure, but the heart was there, and the idea was fascinating.
Watching the documentary Powaqqatsi a few years later (a film made ten years before Truman), it may seem a bit strange that large parts of the Truman Show's soundtrack (as well as several shot compositions) were copped from this visual essay about how the spoils of industry are affecting life in third world countries... What exactly do the toils of poor laborers slaving away in mines have to do with Truman Burbank, a manically-depressed insurance salesman who hates his life?
Perhaps it all has to do with that horrible feeling that grows in the back of your head about the work you do benefiting others, about living your life so that fat people can grow fatter, about the loss and inexplicable anguish that tears at your soul when you live a life that isn't yours for someone that is so far removed from you that you don't even understand... People in third world countries live in hovels and pull copper out of massive mines for pennies, with a life span that is 60% of ours; their torturous work benefits a few billionaires in the usual countries, and provides materials used to build batteries and radios for fat people in the richer parts of the world... Truman works in a hellhole office and fools himself into believing he is happy, the entire time his soul eating away at him, until he realizes that he is a thirty-year-old nobody who hates his job, life, and everything he stands for.
We all have our crosses to bear... |
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Jul. 18th, 2008 @ 04:05 pm
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It seems as though the Mexican drug cartel is becoming increasingly high-tech...
WTF?! A submarine?! What ever happened to swallowing fifty balloons and walking across the Juarez/El Paso bridge?
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