Take Pictures With Radiation
I needed a respite from the RSS Feeds today which all seemed to point -- in varying ways -- towards the simple and terrifying fact that the US Government is bent on building a police state. I went to my favorite teriyaki place (Nasai Teriyaki) on the Ave (University Avenue just outside the University of Washington campus) with a book. The book: The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases. It isn't a pocket book, but rather an exceptionally delightful anthology dreamed up by Jeff Vandermeer and Mark Roberts. On his blog, Jeff points towards an article where he discusses the genesis of the book and the infectious manner in which it assaulted all those involved.
Over lunch, I read Dr. Jeffrey Thomas' entry on the strange phenomenon of "Internalized Tattooing Disease." The cause, which may explain the greater malaise which holds me today, stems from "a profound desire in the subconscious of the patient to express something through artistic means, with said impulse sublimated by the conscious mind." [p. 97] Would such markings show up on an X-ray? I wonder what I've been drawing on the inner lining of my lungs over the last few days.
Butterfly Wings
Here's a completely delightful examination of just how pervasive and exhaustive the connections are between every event, no matter how seemingly miniscule.
"The flap of a butterfly's wings in Central Park could ultimately cause an earthquake in China. So say the proponents of chaos theory, who use 'the butterfly effect' to describe how small and apparently insignificant incidents can set in motion a chain of events with far reaching consequences.
"The butterfly effect has, until now, been cited only as an illustration, but Professor Jim Spanners of the Pennsylvania Institute for Making Stuff Up takes it seriously, and believes that butterflies are directly responsible for most of the world's major problems. He is urging authorities to act swiftly in order to prevent imminent disaster."
The full twelve steps from butterfly to earthquake and back again can be found here.
[scoped from Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter]
No, Really, It Has Been Raining
It would appear that the link I used in the entry from the 16th is all washed up. It is still showing the same data as when I marked it last Thursday. And, as you might have heard, we've had some rain since then. So, okay, I've got a better link this time. The National Weather Service's report from Sea-Tac which shows that we had 5.02 inches yesterday which blew past the daily record of 1.27 inches from 1956.
Of course, it is completely clear and sunny now. But last night? Our gutters were overflowing which might have something more to do with blockage than anything else, but the amount of water coming down wasn't exactly a slight drizzle either.
It's Raining
Here's some statistics from the weather station in Puyallup, Washington:
Rainfall last hour: .05 inches
Rainfall since midnight: .63 inches
Rainfall yesterday: .32 inches
Rainfall month-to-date: 2.32 inches
Rainfall year-to-date: 3.62 inches
"And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." [Genesis 7:12]
Now it's been raining pretty steadily since yesterday morning around here and I've just got to wonder just how much of a fucking deluge that must have been. The raindrops must have been leaving divots in the lawn. If they were even separate drops. I'm inclined to imagine that just about everything was flattened to a pancake within the first ten minutes of rainfall, and washed away within the first hour.
Numbers Make the World Go...er...Spherical?
Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science is one of those books which, when it comes out, you wonder if you haven't just seen the publication of a document (or, this case, a TOME) which might not be one of the revolutionary documents which a historian of science from the 22nd century would refer to as the paradigm shift. You wonder and you heft the damn thing, and then your wee brain tilts. The book -- which I checked out of my public library when it first came out and looked at for three weeks like it was a medium-sized dog which might bite -- is written so that a lug nut like myself can understand the material. Sure...
In the meantime, I'll entertain myself with sites like What's Special About This Number?" which start off a little slower. The definitions of the various "specialness" of the numbers all point to http://mathworld.wolfram.com. It's kind of an easy way into number soup. And don't get distracted like I did on the fact that there are no magic tours available to the knight on the chessboard.
The computational puzzle -- which had been unsolved for 150 years -- postulates the possibility that a Knight (you know, the "horse" in chess) could tour the chessboard through its unique "L" shaped move in such a way that it touches each square of the 8 by 8 board only once. After 61.40 CPU days, a program written by J. C. Meyrignac has determined that such a "tour" is impossible. You can check his work if you like. The piece of software also generated output showing 140 distinct semi-magic tours.
Bruce Schneier on Woodland Ants
Shamelessly lifted from Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram mailing list. I think this is from the March 2003 mailout.
"The woodland ant (Pheidole dentata) survives in areas dominated by fire ant colonies, even though the fire ant colonies both tend to be up to one hundred times larger and make lousy neighbors. The woodland ant's trick is counterattack: it has a permanent population -- about 10 percent -- of warrior caste ants who do nothing but patrol with the worker ants. Whenever any of these ants sees a fire ant, they rush it, get some of its smell on themselves, and then run home, laying a scent trail. They immediately alert the hive, and any other workers and warriors they encounter along the way. A huge force of these woodland ants arrives shortly, kills the offending fire ant, and then spreads out to search for survivors. The warriors will keep circling the area for hours, looking for and killing any other fire ants they find. By throwing the maximum possible effort into this counterattack, the woodland ants ensure that no fire ants get back to their hive with accurate information about the woodland ants' whereabouts."
Security through extermination of the curious. Kind of a useful thing to know.
Emusic vs Rhapsody
Emusic, which I've happily been a subscriber to since its inception, just announced its purchase by Dimensional Associates LLC. The public relations speak of the merger: "First, we are pleased to inform you that EMusic.com Inc. is being acquired by Dimensional Associates LLC ("Dimensional"), a private equity group focused on providing innovative online music distribution services. Dimensional shares EMusic's consumer focused philosophy of providing low cost, convenient access to great music. Dimensional plans to continue enhancing the EMusic service with new features and content and you can look forward to hearing more once the acquisition has been completed."
What having a "focused philosophy of providing low cost, convenient access to great music" means: "As of November 8, EMusic will be discontinuing the unlimited service offering and replacing it with a new service offering that places a reasonable limit on the number of downloads available to each subscriber in a billing month. At that time, EMusic will offer two service plans: EMusic Basic: $9.99 per month/maximum 40 downloads or EMusic Plus: $14.99 per month/maximum 65 downloads."
Now, I've been paying $9.99 a month for "unlimited" downloads and yes, I understand that there is a limit to "un"-limited, but I'm not sure how going from being able to sample FULL songs off any record in their database to being able to barely download THREE albums a month qualifies as being "low cost" or "convenient" or the result of a "focused philosophy."
Goodbye Emusic. It was fun. I'll be in the first lifeboat with all the FAX records that I could find. Thanks.
I signed up for a free trial over at Rhapsody this evening. I'm listening to Enigma's new record, Voyageur, right now. I can listen to it as often as I like over the next week, as well as anything else Rhapsody has in their system, before my free trial turns into something that'll cost me. I have six days to decide how I feel about paying for streaming on-demand access to music versus actually having a CD copy of it. Part of me says that I already too many CDs and not enough storage space and whether I'm streaming it or playing it in the CD player in my computer, it's coming out the same speakers.
Part of me is sad about the lack of ownership. But that part has been losing the bigger battle of "so much shit, so little time" for awhile now. Eh, we'll see. I have six days.
Listening to dZihan & Kamien's Gran Riserva right now. Got some catching up to do. Sure wish Rhapsody had a search by label function. And a less cluttered interface.
Fly Guy
While weeding out my email inbox, I found an old link to the Fly Guy, a delightfully interactive flash animation where you get to fly. And, like all good Walter Mitty-esque fantasies, you get to interact with things that you find in the sky.
I think you can fly too high, but I don't remember. I'll have to try it again.
Earpollution Update
We update Earpollution on Monday and yesterday's update was a large influx of new material: the always entertaining Central Scrutinizer column where we look back at the last thirty days of music news, an interview with The Long Winters, an interview with Aaron Turner of ISIS, and my interview with Jarboe -- once upon a time frontwoman for the Swans and now doing her powerful and emotionally raw work on her own. And, of course, the usual assortment of fun reviews.
Click on the cover art below to partake in the fun.
![[ click to forward go ]](http://www.earpollution.com/v2/art/images/10062003-lg.jpg)
Manhole Covers
Martine Cotton has a delightful collection of pictures of Japanese manhole covers at frangipani.info. She posits they may be inspired by the brass sword shield covers which is certainly more artistic of an inspiration than the simple utility of the drab ones we have here in the US.
[I arrived there via Jean Snow's manhole cover shot from Kashiwa.]
Sigil
Wednesday at the Comic Book Shop
Wednesday is new comic day and the hump day is never quiet at your LCS (local comic shop). Mine closes at 6.00pm and so I never get to partake in the insanity of new comic day which is both fine and disappointing. Fine in the sense I don't have to fight the geek crowd to get my funny books, disappointing because I don't get to chat with the geek crowd. It is, occassionally, nice to hang with those who actually know what you're talking about when you extole the virtue of Mike Mignolia's Amazing Screw-On Head.
My LCS is now open until 7.00pm on Wednesday, and I wandered in on the way home. While in a conversation about the differences between the new special edition releases of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the regular edition DVDs (because, you know, marketing folk specifically target suckers like us who bought the no-frills editions because we enjoy the films and who know we'll have conversations just like this before we fold and rebuy for the special bits), I happened to notice that Bill Sienkiewicz's Stray Toasters has been finally released in a trade edition.
Bill's work, in general, is incomprehensible if you aren't ready for it or if he's got a colorist who doesn't understand his style. But, if you've got the head for it, it is truly amazing. Stray Toasters is the pinnacle of his heyday in the market, coming after his revolutionary work on Daredevil: Love and War graphic novel and the Elektra:Assassin mini-series (both written by Frank Miller) which, to this day, still define the limitlessness of the art form. Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith wouldn't have careers with their current styles if Bill hadn't blazed the trail a decade ago. Bill did a couple of short comics for the online Matrix collection and his "Broadcast Depth" is a stunning example of the textured nuances and expressive qualities of his work. Neil Gaiman tapped Bill to illustrate the fractured and hypnotic tale of Delerium in the recently released Endless Nights collection which is flying off the shelves in your local book store. And, if his website is still running, you should look at his storyboards for The Green Mile, look and marvel that those stunning illustrations were storyboards, illustrations done to map out the shooting sequence of the film and never really meant for wide consumption which is a staggering waste.
Okay, but Stray Toasters. I had the singles -- the individual "books" of this four issue series. Bought them fervently when they were released and read them enough times that I can quote more sections that I will admit to. In my eagerness to share the marvel of Bill's work, I lent them to a buddy. Along with my copy of the Elektra:Assassin trade (you know, the first edition with the picture of her with the bow and Garret on the super tricycle on the cover). My pal, in turn, lent them to the gal who lived across the hall from him.
She moved, putting everything in boxes and disappearing.
I howled like a wounded dog for weeks. The hole in my side never quite healed.
Last year, a hardcover collection of Stray Toasters was announced. I couldn't believe it until it actually was in my hands. I read it again and, yes, it is just as groundbreaking now as it was then. The feverish narrative is illustrated in pen and ink, childish drawings, watercolor, saturated oils, and mixed media. It is a story of love and loss, toast and jam, and toasters who have gone astray. It is a story of cats and monsters. (yes THAT page is my favorite and I should have bought the original when I had the chance, damn it!) It is an old friend and I was happy to have it back on my shelf.
One problem: there was no way I was going to lose it again. The hardback was mine and there was no way I was going to share. Which is so counter to the whole urge to bring others into the sticky mess of Bill's dream psyche. The solution to this problem is in my hands now. I have a reading copy of the book. If you know where I am during the day, you can come visit and I'll show you my favorite picture and, if you're up for it, I might even let you borrow my copy.
I will hunt you down if you lose track of it. Fair warning.
Walt Parrish, the Cliff Guy, has collected an amazing array of sketches from comic book artists and writers. Most often the request an artist or writer gets at a convention is to draw one of the landmark figures of the industry. Walt's only request is that the picture contains a cliff and the responses he's gotten over the years are wonderful and delightful. And extensive. So many of the people he has approached have delivered cliff sketches which delightfully encapsulate their character and style. Walt's even got a sketch from Bill Sienckiewicz. Did Bill draw him something from Elektra's early career when she trained with Stick and the others? Nope. Bill drew a very funny picture -- funny if you know Stray Toasters.
As it turns out, Walt and I shop at the same comic book store.