Featuring Bootsy Collins, the accompanying music video for the Big Beats artist Fatboy Slim’s 2000 “Weapon of Choice,” reprised on the occasion as a stand-alone single, directed by Spike Jonze, was first aired on this day in 2001. Depicting Christopher Walken dancing around an empty lobby, the choral refrain of “You could blow with this or you could blow with that” references the Native Tongues’ “The Choice is Yours”—the titular album an homage to Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (“some of us are looking at the stars”) and the lyric advising to “walk without rhythm and it won’t attract the worm” quotes Frank Herbert’s establishing novel.
Friday 23 April 2021
Friday 4 December 2020
8x8
three blind mice: researchers restore sight by reversing the epigenetic clock in laboratory animals, re-endowing youthful characteristics—via Marginal Revolution
big drunk girl energy: the dumbest coup is still playing out in the courts
a touch of cabin fever: this is what stir-crazy looks like—the Year on TikTok—via the morning newsmanifest destiny: a scrollytelling art histories (previously) that recounts the mythology of North America—via Maps Mania
alpenhorn: disappearing, defaced and duelling phallic totems in the mountains of Germany and Austria
for the longest time: dispel the zoom and gloom with this quarantine rendition from the Phoenix Chamber Choir
home box office: Warner Brothers is simultaneously releasing its cinematic productions on subscription television for 2021—via Kottke
oceanus procellarum: Chang’e probe (previously) has lifted off of the lunar surface and will return with the first samples of moon rocks since 1976—via Slashdot
Tuesday 29 September 2020
unprocessed cartoons
PRINT magazine contributor Steven Heller has a nice retrospective appearance and remembrance for an underground political cartoonist often overshadowed by his contemporary R. Crumb in R. Cobb. While many might more readily recognise the Cheap Thrills that duly excoriated our modesties of the former, we might not be as familiar with the latter, who recently departed (*1937) after a long bout of dealing with dementia, whose extensively syndicated illustrations laid bare how the governments—most pointedly the US establishment—was eroding civil rights, liberties and the environment.
Cobb turned his talents to raising awareness and championing social justice causes after being dismissed as redundant by Disney studios in 1957 once the animation of Sleeping Beauty was complete—notably the last film to use hand-inked cels. There are an embarrassment of panels from the late-1960s that are very resounding and correspond, appearing in the Freep plus more mainstream outlets, with what we face at present (see a whole gallery at the source up top), but we are choosing to highlight the ecology symbol Cobb created—combining e (environment) and o (organism) into a ฮธ-like glyph that gifted into the public domain and was adopted by the conservation movement. After his career as a cartoonist, Ron Cobb designed conceptual art for science-fiction films such as Star Wars, Alien, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unfinished Dune, The Abyss and Total Recall.Wednesday 16 September 2020
wormsign
From the extensive archives of JWZ, we are reminded what a golden age the 1980s were for up-and-comer sandworms. Shai-Hulud (1985) as they are called by the Fremen of Arrakis (not to scale) grow to gigantic proportions, hundreds of metres in length and forty metres in diameter and ply the desert sands as whales do in Earth oceans, and extending the comparison, as with flensing and whale oil, were the source of the spice melange—the most valuable commodity in the Cosmos. The sarlacc that inhabits the Great Pit of Carkoon (1983) is classified as non-sessile arthropod though shares a similar physiology to its companions.
Thursday 14 May 2020
a book by its cover
Appreciating the inherent, joyful weirdness that can adorn paperback novels—especially the of the science fiction and fantasy genre—the Seattle Public Library system has challenged readers to stage recreations of their favourites (see also) using items that they can find around the house. Check out the full thread and get inspired to stage your own.
catagories: ๐, Dune, libraries and museums
Monday 24 February 2020
circus maximus
Two podcasters of note, John Hodgman and Elliot Kalan, are hosting an absolutely delightful mini-series revisiting the 1976 prestige television adaptation of the Robert Graves work of historical fiction I, Claudius.
Though harshly panned by critics on its first airing, it enjoyed cult-status and a dedicated viewership both in the UK and in America where it was syndicated by the Public Broadcasting System in 1978 and features an extraordinary cast of actors including Sir Derek Jacobi, Dame Siรขn Phillips (the Bene Gesserit reverend mother of Dune and voice actor for all the Disney princesses for their UK releases) as Livia, John Hurt, Sir Patrick Stewart, John Rhys-Davies, Brian Blessed, Patsy Byrne (Nursie in Blackadder) and Patricia Quinn, the Lady Stephens (Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show)—just to name a few. Watch along as they recap each chapter with special guests, beginning with the pilot A Touch of Murder/Family Affairs—an extended episode counted as one.
Tuesday 11 June 2019
7x7
burr and bramble: hitchhiking African seed pods put under a photographer’s lens
shibuya crossing: Greg Girard’s Tokyo of the late 1970s
bene gesserit sisterhood: ahead of Denis Villeneuve’s remake, there will be a screaming-television prequel
the mouse-earred one that flees from the light: Washington DC adopts the Little Brown Bat as its official state mammal
we will control the horizontal: an omnibus post on vintage tv test patterns—see also
itunes: an 1876 suggestion to use Alexander Graham Bell’s recently patented telephone machine to listen to music remotely
elephant & castle: a finely curated collection of maps and posters for the London Underground
Saturday 26 May 2018
combine honnete ober advancer mercantiles
Rummaging through the extensive archives of Open Culture, we discovered these wonderful, curious artefacts from 1984 and the release of David Lynch’s cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic saga Dune. In an attempt to build off the merchandizing success that followed the Star Wars franchise, publishers rushed to market a children’s colouring book and activity book, which included projects like a recipe for No-Bake Spice Cookies—cinnamon offered as a substitute for the mind expanding spice melange. Learn more at the link above.
catagories: Dune
Thursday 17 August 2017
jai guru deva om
Against the advice of his gurus and meditative-betters, philosopher and author Robert Wright not only took notes to be later adapted into a book during his silent retreats, he also shared his feelings of inadequacies and failing when it comes to practicing mindfulness.
Why Buddhism is True does not privilege it above other religious traditions and articles of faith are not addressed but is rather true in the sense that its core teachings and methods of coping—suffering comes from misunderstanding and meditation leads to liberation—work on a physical and psychological level because they allow us to transcend the inscrutables of billions of generations of evolution. The great chain of being that has led to you and your condition is miraculous but also has brought the hitchhikers of history which may have conferred advantage (Fear is the mind-killer.) at one point when our lives were more precarious but are now nuisances and sources of unbidden bias and anxiety. Perhaps not to be edited away could we identify the offending gene, the willingness to be still and confront and embrace the distressing renders it less powerful. The take-away is—by the way—that there is no wrong way of being attentive (Do or do not. There is no try.) and that daily practice yields daily reward.
Monday 24 April 2017
westermarck effect
Something that I can’t quite identify really resonated with me about this clever bit of re-imagining how author Frank Herbert might ghost-write the autobiography of Chelsea Clinton.
I suppose it struck me as something that ought to be more fully developed and I wanted more than just a page, which was enough to limn the exchange between Lady Jessica Atreides and Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood is re-scripted for Hilary Clinton, whose match-making decisions may have compromised both blood lines in the shadowy organisations goal to breed a superhuman ruling class. The Westermarck Effect is the opposite of the sexual imprinting that the Bene Gesserit excel at, referring to the desensitisation, friend-zoning that comes from familiarity. In any case, I hope the Clintons’ daughter continues the dynasty.
Friday 24 February 2017
everybody has their little… the denizens of the deep and all that
At PfRC we have perhaps an unfair aversion to listicles that purport to educate but are really just vehicles for multiply advertising opportunities, but we’ll make exceptions for anything that claim to have affinity with film-maker David Lynch. We did not regret the decision and we’ll owe that we knew very little about the enigmatic and profound strange director and it was no catchpenny slideshow.
Tuesday 22 November 2016
butlerian jihad
Though there’s no definitive word yet on what form the property may take,
it’s pretty exciting to learn that the creative team behind the likes
of Pacific Rim (that Kaiju movie with the Voltron battle bots that I could watch over and over again and can’t quite point to what it’s got) has acquired the rights to Frank Herbert’s science-fiction classic Dune. While I think the entertainment world is drowning in remakes and nostalgia (though it’s obviously appreciated and deserved over originality) and the David Lynch version is simply timeless, I’d be hard pressed to find another work deserving of a revival.
We could have a new film franchise, a Home Box Office-style television series with source material that could run for decades (sometimes I think that binge-watching might be trending in that direction—to occupy whole segments of one’s life) or something else entirely. Reminiscencing and wonder have sparked a lot of speculation what this announcement might mean, but largely absent is the underlining theme of the Dune Universe: the dangers of a cybernetic revolt and the commandment, “thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
Monday 17 October 2016
sietch
Working in conjunction with UC Berkeley and the Peace Corps, a San Francisco-based laboratory has produced a prototype atmospheric well that, powered by wind alone, can harvest litres of clean water. The Water Seer’s turbine push air into a buried condensation chamber (cache) to be collected as needed and is a completely closed system, requiring no extra plumbing or purification-process—very similar to the techniques that Frank Herbert described for the Fremen of the desert world of Arrakis.
catagories: ⚕️, Dune, environment, technology and innovation
Thursday 11 August 2016
yestersol, solmorrow
Tuesday 7 July 2015
5x5
gom jabbar: The Guardian features a tribute to the Aquarian coming of Age science fiction masterpiece Dune, fifty years on and examines its legacy, via Super Punch
our castle and our keep: exquisite off-the-grid motor home converts to an enchanted castle at rest, via the enchanting Nag on the Lake
all work and no play: free to download 1998 board game based on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
o double-good: a look into the recent incorporation of milk as a staple food, via Neatorama
mathmagic land: dividing one by nine-hundred-ninety-nine quattuodecillion—nearly infinity—spits out the Fibonacci sequence
catagories: ⚕️, ๐, ๐ฌ, ๐️, ๐, ๐งฎ, Dune, environment, food and drink, lifestyle
Friday 20 February 2015
among others
I don’t know why exactly I forsook reading science-fiction—although admittedly I did not have much of a literary foundation to spring from. I did read the Dune saga and A Canticle for Lebowitz and enjoyed them immensely—especially as the later was partially set in a post-apocalyptic Texarkana, where I was living at the time, per-apocalypse.
Tuesday 12 August 2014
slack and dune or totem and taboo
Most know the Dune franchise of Frank Herbert and son popularly from the 1984 cinematic adaptation (by David Lynch no less) and its political struggle to control the production of the spice melange by a cast of esoteric and archetypal characters. As memorable and hopefully piquing as this portrayal is, the battle for control of Arrakis—complete with intrigues that hint at the importance of the commodity and the safe-keeping of the controlling-cartel—the spectacle, I think, pushed the back-story further into the background and left the author's vision and prescience just out of reach. With fears of a robot-holocaust ravaging humanity popping up in the news lately—and from all different directions, it might be worth taking a look back at the saga that was penned in 1965 but tossed into the a far distant dystopia ten-thousand years from now.
Thinking-machines eventually came to see no value in human life, as if our creations once achieving genuine independence and sentience would revere us as gods—humans do not even do a good job at that, despite superstition and other frailties that cannot be programmed—and proceed to exterminate those that they cannot enslave, humans not built of valuable rare-earth metals. The revolt ended with the enduring dictum “Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind,” with many fascinating institutions developed over the eons to compensate for the loss of convenience that the prohibition and taboo brought about. Even if not so heavy-handed as the active destruction of humanity and more the sorrowful decline of creativity, faith and manners, I expect matters to acceleration much more quickly than anyone is prepared for—and certainly before mankind is about to explore the stars. What do you think? I am not sure why there is this sudden, apparent resurgence over the dangers of a robot take-over. Maybe it is due to insecurity over jobs or the imitation of thought that data-mining can execute. No matter how near or far Singularity is, such warnings go unheeded at our peril.
catagories: ๐, Dune, philosophy, religion, revolution, technology and innovation
Friday 28 October 2011
primogenitor
Tuesday 23 August 2011
kwisatz haderach or struldbrugg
Science maven Maggie Koerth-Baker, a few weeks ago, filed some very clever observations on longevity and the need for people to riddle out a formula or pattern for long, healthy lives--prefacing the dispatch with something to the effect, if a supercentenarian, whilst chain-smoking, eating chocolate, not exercizing, drinking red wine and turnip juice, jumped off a bridge from Okinawa to Andorra--would you do it too... No habit or diet is shared for those who reach extreme old age, though science is trying to fit it to a certain paradigm, but neither is it purely locked up in genetic predisposition.