eschat and eschew

Here’s a rather disheartening romp through the US public education system, now tossed into a Romano-Briton gladiatorial ring and pitted against the Christian text book publishing racket.
The poor defanged beasts hardly stand a chance, with what little financial support allowed to them siphoned off by quasi-private institutions that placate and patronise God-fearing parents with creationist curriculum. The twenty-two theses levied against the syllabus in the article illustrate not only droning ignorance but also unchecked propaganda and nutty conspiracies—which are not unique to this group’s agenda or even this day and age. Rather what appears most tragic in all of this, outlandish claims included, is in the disdain and contempt for which the programme holds for free-thinking and independent thought. Parents, both in the US and UK, may believe that their children are schooled nearer to God (or maybe at least a safe distance away from those Sharia magnet schools that everyone’s talking about) but it’s about as far as one can stray, since the instruction is very disengaging and fosters no curiosity, intellectual or spiritual.

hyperbolic or cupid and comet

Although there seems to be some of potential engineering cliffhanger playing out with the Rossetta mission's lander having touched-down in the shadow of a crater, putting energy supply at a higher premium, scientists are nonetheless thrilled to perhaps have the chance to discover whether life on Earth might not be a thing whose basic chemicals were disseminated from somewhere far beyond—and for any other surprise for that matter.
While surely none of the astrophysicists at the European Space Agency feels anything less than great privilege to be keeping their eyes peeled, pouring over the imagery the excellent BLDGBlog did pick up on an interesting aside of not leaving the scanning up to a machine, as there's no precedence for this sort of topography and geometry, lumpy, weird gravity with the potential to create some curious features. Admitting that some new and novel encounters are beyond the biases programmed into the algorithms of computers, blindspots, evasion tactics that yield machines focusing on input that not the sought after output makes for an engrossing dialogue about those limitations of performance. The proofers, however prone to missing something or pareidolia, I am sure are excited to be doing it the old-fashioned way.

decamer

In a recent interview to an Argentine weekly newsletter, the Pope took the time to share ten of his guiding precepts for finding and fostering happiness. All are very tranquil and inspiring but I particularly like how the Pope suggests that families ought to turn off the television during mealtimes, recognising how possessions and possessiveness lead to disquiet and forgetting how to relax, stop being a brat—to paraphrase—and that, remarkably, that one does not earn friends by evangelizing and such behaviour belittles the beliefs of others.

gehirn-jogging or shiny objects

The New York Times has an interesting feature about the collective-awakening (for America, at least) among mental health professionals and patients regarding the stages of inattentiveness which manifests itself at different ages either as hyperactivity, a deficit-disorder or senility.

Though the parasitic pharmaceutical industry may deliver quick-fixes, the community is slowly admitting, to mask the symptoms of the legitimate condition—not a self-diagnosis or peer-pressure, the drug therapies have diminishing returns over the course of the likely mental metamorphosis to follow. In fact, medication seems to exacerbate later problems—whereas practising mindfulness and guided training seem to enable real recovery and sharper focus. Surely the training has many aspects and measures, but the principle trust seems to be not the embracing or indulging of ones distractions but rather acknowledging, in a forgiving manner and without guilt or judgment since this is also where creative connections radiate from, that one is drifting off-target, thinking about the side-show, and making the effort to return to the subject at hand. Had this been recognised in some other eon, I am sure that this effort-of-aim would have been regaled with all sorts of philosophical conceits.

in the groove or playing life in hard mode

Hungarian psychology professor Csíkszentmihályi Mihály is a renowned teacher and researcher in the field of positive psychology, having to do with the creative drives and happiness as well as the stamina behind those motivations that are enduring and genuine.
Csíks- zentmihályi, holding that the only true rewards can be found in self-imposed discipline—rather than repression, whether indoctrinated or at the whip of slave-drivers', was the chief landscaper behind the concept of flow, the equilibrium of high levels of both skill and challenge that are ultimately most sustaining and intrinsic awards. Entertainers, it seems, most often are presented such demands but I suspect that we are all taken to task in one way or another, when concentration is most intense and distractions are not admitted. At the opposite corner of this flow-chart, one is met with apathy, understood as a demand that is not engaging or easily unseated. Here is a blank template for this graphic—in case you want to understand in ones own terms and might want to name specific states of mind. I would never suggest that certain practised assignments ever become the stuff of apathy, but it would do one good to question and assess what's truly in the flow.

look to this day graduates

With graduation ceremonies not far-afield and on-going but muted controversies over pedagogy and educational policies are becoming endemic to America's system and hand-wringing over commencement speakers, Brain Pickings' weekly newsletter features an endearing review of collected reflections from author Kurt Vonnegut, JR about his years of touring that circuit.
If this isn't Nice, What is? (with the subtitle: advice to the young) is a recursive title for the essays and memories since no other message could be as important and galvanising? Vonnegut delivers many, many noteworthy gems on community, society and being human but one that really struck me (building on his exhortation to curate more and more relatives through membership and outreach) was how “a computer can teach a child what a computer can become... an educated human being teaches a child what a child can become” and this was formulated in 1999. The over-arching and hopeful message that this gadfly was intent on delivering was that of being grateful and appreciating, feelings that we all tend to find estrangingly distant and are more used to agonising over small things and substitute for the former genuine feelings with indulgence or the resignation that things could be worse and bubbles of comfort and security. Check out at least the brilliant treatment of Maria Popova or better yet, read the entire book.

ockham's razor

After days and days of no resolution and aggravating, conflicting accounts and patience that's out-waited even the stingy faith of the insurance-brokers, the families of the missing souls of Flight MH370 who disappeared with no trace must be enduring a waking nightmare. Despite every modern, hyper-connected nuance there is to transportation, surveillance and other forms of cleverness, the combined efforts of many nations cannot locate the airliner, and while I sadly suspect that people's expectations of what such domineering technology can deliver under-estimate the vast scale of the Pacific Ocean, there are many theories out there—mostly I believe with the intent of keeping hope alive and not just useless grand-standing, fed by the changing details of authorities.
Ockham's Razor is a sort of philosophical decision-chart, lex parsimoniae, holding that the explanation with the least assumptions is probably the right one. This guidance, however, also contains its own anti-thesis (an anti-razor) since the principle also holds that the only remaining explanation after others have been duly eliminated, however implausible, must be true. Just after contact was lost, it was disclosed that three passengers on the manifest were traveling under false credentials, and despite being initially dismissed as the kind of paranoia that makes the best crowds for security-theatre, the high-jacking supposition now is accepted fact. Some suggest that the whole plane was kidnapped and is being ransomed by sky-pirates with the condition of a total media blackout; others believe that the aircraft was spirited away for some future high-profile attack on a metropolitan centre and is in the mountain lair of an evil-genius, and all explain how this could be carried out, convincingly—more less. Considering the changing stories, some believe that some military power, testing out a new, secret weapon accidentally vapourised the wrong target. Conspiracy theories are usually not given the chance to thrive and not a one quite seems like blind-faith, but I do think that officials are not being exactly transparent with their search and believe something lies underneath. Whatever the truth ultimately revealed, I hope the families find their peace and I hope that dispatching search teams and enormous resources is not exactly the diversion that the alleged masterminds behind this tragedy was hoping for.

form and function

Designer and artist Katerina Kamprani has reimagined a whole gallery of familiar everyday items but with a twist on their usefulness. The Uncomfortable collection has tableware, containers and other practical accessories that really make one think about grip, stability and other tactile qualities that we've grown accustomed to.
These objects still fulfill their purpose, and retain their semiotic niche, but would be awkward to handle. It's sort of like computer icons of envelopes, pad-locks, chains, paint-cans, rubbish bins or key fobs—whose function is transparent but whose avatars are only masks.  Wouldn't you appreciate the standard form of a fork or drinking glass after trying to handle one of these pieces?

daytrip: maintauberfranken

Taking advantage of the spring weather, we took a short rumble down a portion of the Romantic Road (die Romantische Straße), the route of fairy tale castles, palaces and fotresses that criss-cross the borders of Bayern and Baden-Württemberg in the western reaches of Franconia to Upper-Bavaria.  Towards the end of our trip, we passed through the village of Creglingen on the Tauber river, nicely rendered in this landscape by the artist Carl Grossberg in 1926. We did not photograph this particular vista because of the afternoon sun, but I was really captured by the artist's modern, cartoonish style.
Afterwards, I researched a bit further, got a lesson in art-history and found more of Grossberg's works and discovered that the collection epitomizes the German New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit, new matter-of-factness) that aimed to capture the practicality of form and function associated with civic involvement and political engagement of Germany's inter-war Weimar Republic and an off-shoot of the Bauhaus movement.
As opposed to Futurism or Expressionism, this impartial attitude emulated the perceived values of America's infatuation with work and progress and represented an inward-turning towards institutions and public life, and Grossberg did in fact produce many interesting schematics depicting industry.  I do, however, really enjoy his imaginative way of inserting sloths and monkeys into office-settings for effect and comment.

zur farbenlehre oder roy g. biv

Marine biologists studying a specific species of mantis shrimp (Fangschreckenkrebse) that inhabits coral reefs—an explosion of colour, shade and shadow, have found that these crustaceans have some of the most advanced eyes compound eyes in the animal kingdom. These shrimp have sixteen distinct photo-receptive cells, ommatidium whereas human eyes only have four to filter for red, green and blue and contrast, to differentiate, to tune for three times more colours and perceive polarised light and across different spectra.

It's difficult to truly understand what this exponentially higher range of visual acuity means and hard to make parallels, it's not as simple, I think, as looking at a thermal image of something, donning night-vision goggles or being Geordi La Forge or Superman. It's been long known that bees and butterflies and other inspects have advanced visual systems that humans cannot imagine, except as a bewildering kaleidoscope, but researchers now theorise that the ability to perceive so many more aspects of the their environment, including time and tide and what's washed in with them, through their eyes, what humans know as reason and reflection, higher-level mental processes, are by the crabs and their kin just seen, intuited, with in their field of vision and require no further thinking.

menagerie

Beyond mermaids and unicorns—and even enjoying less widespread popularity than rarer chimeras like griffins, harpies or the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary (cotton, not so much a monster), there is a neglected bestiary, which the marvelous Atlas Obscura pays tribute to. My favourite creature enrolled here is the odd Lidérc from Hungarian folklore—a sort of familiar, hatched as the first of a brood from a black hen, after being incubated in a human armpit—according to some traditions.
This newly-hatched imp, industrious and loyal, eventually becomes also a curse and a liability. Though always at their master's disposal, such congress becomes a dangerous thing, but can be gotten rid of through a variety of equally specific rituals, like giving one's Lidérc an impossible task, like a logical feed-back loop that will eventually cause a fatal-error. It reminds me of the notion that vampires exhibit arithmomania and are compelled to count whatever is cast out in front of them, like grains of rice, or the Greek custom of setting out a colander during the Christmas season to trip up evil spirits, since they are obsessed with numbers and will try to count all the holes. They only make it as far as two, however, since three, the Holy Trinity, makes them disappear and start all over. It's interesting that monsters are framed with compulsions and I wonder what that means.

a bird in the hand

Here is a clever and thoughtful review of the new book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by British reporter Oliver Burkeman, that also presents a brilliant and worthwhile exploration into the recesses and reaches of plans, contingencies and preparedness — the sort of responsible behaviours that are supposed to be key to success in any venture.

Burkeman, with interviews and testimonials of others, however, shows rather that an unflinching focus of on a rigid set of goals is more of a liability and the sort of safe achievement that we are most accustomed to and not something innovative, original and sustaining. Taking the next steps along the path to realise ones goals and resolutions, idealised or assumed and inherited, can sometimes be only for the sake of vanquishing that uncomfortable feeling when one does not know where to go next, and detours—rather than embraced as opportunities or sabbaticals, are seen as set-backs and getting back on the imagined right path can become something counter-productive or ultimately hopeless. There is much wisdom and solace to found in flexibility and improvisation, too.

black hole or all light is mute amid the gloom

Sadly, accomplished Austrian actor Maximilian Schell (* 1930, † 2014) passed away over the weekend, and taking time to review his expansive list of roles on stage, screen and air, I saw that one of his credits included the megalomaniacal foil in the 1979 Disney production of the film Black Hole—which was an all-around provoking psychedelic performance for a little kid to see, and reflected on the bizarre nature of that movie. Critic and veteran blogger John Muir gives an excellent dissection of the film's brilliance—from a Manichean gauntlet of good and evil to the subtle departure of sentient robots earning souls. Doctor Reinhardt (Schell) even in the final scenes in the inferno of the event horizon (the concept having recently been discounted by the physicists that originally championed the idea) is fused with the sinister robot, Maximilian. The character was portrayed with Schell's signature passion—and the story is really a Heart of Darkness writ small. The summary and analysis got me thinking about how affecting such cinematic experiences could be, more so than the better-known contemporary block-busters that over-shadowed this movie, like the Star Wars or the Star Trek franchises, and saw me often retreat to the sandbox in the backyard to rehearse what kind of ceremony was fitting for that heat-death of the universe that I had heard about, rather than the more imminent threats of global-thermal nuclear war.

There were a lot of singular influences, like the anime feature Galaxy Express 999 (1978), where an orphaned little boy shuns technology promising immortality by having ones memories but not emotions transferred to robotic vessels, plus also other Disney productions, which discounting all fairy tales, were not really made for young audiences, like the Witch Mountain (1975) series, about telekinetic extra-terrestrial children on the lamb from the government, or Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971, compare to the Narnia or the Middle Earth sagas) which is a story about coping with evacuation during the Blitz of London during WWII and a sorceress defeats the Nazi invasion. Formative, I am grateful that kids' entertainment was not handled with kid-gloves and subject to censor and psychologists.

a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

As a very fine interstitial-piece during a Sunday afternoon's theme on myth and legend, a network broadcast a documentary from 2007 on the post-modern fable of the Star Wars saga.

All good and timeless stories draw effectively on the archetypes, the deep- seated stuff of the human-experience told and retold, but the crafting of this franchise—and not only for the purists who reject anything that was not presented in media-res, the original parts three through five—really is a master-work and a cultural touch-stone that references parallels that can be found in all branches of classic mythology and ringing through psychology as a digest of wrath, coming-of-age and redemption. How much can you find of the Iliad or the Odyssey or other epics can you find in the principals, mentors, monsters, and side-kicks of the old Republic as well as the quotations? What struck me perhaps as the most amazing aspect, aside from each single connection that I had never made with the classics, was that although there are influences and footnotes to influences, many of these constructions were unconscious and organic and came to be known with the consensus of academics and fanatics.

weltgeist

Newsweek has a clever and alluring review of the new work by Timothy Morton, entitled Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, which sounds like a very interesting, if not important and disabusing read. Invoking the apocalypse itself, by hook or crook, is a tautologism, because it is very human-centred and is a good invitation to consider the author's school of metaphysics, called object oriented ontology—which is a way of thinking about the universe that unseats the reigning ideas of an anthropomorphic universe and that things, even the named-nightmares that can be expressed in awful statistics, like traffic-deaths and the loss of rain-forests, have real consequences and existence independent of human perception and opinion.

We can name such things as climate-change and dystopian cults but nomenclature or Ivory Tower philosophizing does not change the impact that what can be abstracted through raw numbers and kept at arms' length have on the well-being of individual conceivers and the continuation of the world as they know it. That's one view, at least—and promises to be a very sobering and interesting exploration into the realm of these hyperobjects, things of doom and gloom—like H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods that are unknowable despite be very ripe for opinion and shifting, malleable attitudes. But there's surely still the classic counter-balance, which far from solely justifying our chauvinistic deportment, rather is the capacity to also recognize opportunities in those misunderstood monsters and is most likely the only camp able to remedy our problems of ego and oversight—having contributed to it to a high degree. Though man's beliefs and position are not privileged and are not a divine-right to impinge on others, resigning ones selves to the perspective of chemical valence and accident is not a hopeful nor up-building way approach—by itself—either.

anachronism

Via Boing Boing, a physics professor and a graduate student have embarked to scour the Internet in such of evidence for visits from time-travelers.

They employed parameters that would point to prescience, either direct or indirect that suggest a fore- knowledge, inquiries whose parameters seem to defy causality and too I suppose people claiming to be from the future were investigated. The study found no conclusive evidence, with the admission that this does not prove or disprove anything. Some thinkers postulate that it would be impossible to travel backwards in time to a point before said conveyance, the time-machine, had been invented.  The thesis too has a limited scope, aside from trawling the Internet for clues, in that it only looked for tourists to the past—not individuals native to it and traveling to their future.
I wonder if there might be some similar paradox at work that makes those living in the present somehow blind to things anachronistic—or to view them as a genre, like retro, steam-punk or Gothic, or that time-travelers from the future have returned to the past but to a parallel reality that we cannot experience directly, only as said trends from an alternate dimension.  Widely publicized time-traveler conventions have been held by academic institutions since the 1980s but have apparently failed to attract any genuine venturers. There is also the possibility that stealth and caution have made such journeys impossible to detect—at least through tried means, and maybe time-travelers only need the projects and papers of a professor and his companion like this to tip them off and allow them to cover their tracks.
 

gazette or worth-1000

Here is a thoughtful essay from veteran blogger Jason Kottke that expands on the lingering and drawn-out obituary and eulogizing of blogging as a form of communication that have been steadily eroding the format for sometime.

It's really thought-provoking and Kottke is being a gad-fly in demonstrating how journals and journalism are being splintered into different presences and personae spread along a variety of specialised platforms that are very compart- mentalised and don't communicate very well with one another. Taking any usual type of sharage to task, one would probably not describe the activity or announcement as web-logging—or writing. Surely no one old school gets to gauge quality by virtue of formatting and window-dressing alone, since expression is a plastic and ever-evolving thing and means are just media. It seems to me however, there is an important distinction with a blog that lies in the difference between what one might list as a hobby, a project (or a passion or a living), and what one might list as a habit, an interest.

forked-tongue or double-helix

Researchers at the University of Washington have announced that the genetic coding, deciphered on an elementary level first in the 1960s, of DNA contains a second cryptic language that governs the activation and deactivation of genes in addition to the instructions for expressing proteins.

The hidden directions indicate that by its vocabulary DNA may be responsible for what's understood as aging and disease, more so than time and decay. Perhaps such a dual function should not come as something unexpected, though unplumbed, necessarily, but it does, I believe, really demonstrate the folly of genetically modified foodstuffs in learning that there is something proactive as well as reactive to body chemistry. We are certainly not programmed for sabotage or self-destruction, I think, our bodies are rather, fortunately smarter than ourselves. Do you think such a palimpsest of language is prone to misinterpretation, since the coding of chemistry and biology might not be as straightforward or verbose as our systems of constructed communications and sub-routines?

les cigales or call for submissions

For the past two years, a mysterious and tantalizing puzzle has been intriguing internet users and the next installment of the scavenger-hunt is expected to appear within a few weeks. A computer analyst from Sweden stumbled upon an irresistible invitation from an organisation calling itself Cicada 3301. The call to find the others and to R.S.V.P. (regrets only) by teasing the hidden message out of the invite.
The clues led across a daisy-chain of increasingly challenging riddles, requiring novel and creative minds to resolve. Interest quickly spread with thousands participating and Cicada 3301 responded in kind with more and more esoteric subjects (involving obscure poetry, alchemy, rare music and even detours into the physical world) and rabbit-holes—that has brought many of the new initiates to the uncharted territories of the world-wide web, called the Darknet, that are not normally accessible to the public via search engines, the massive mantle under the surface of unindexed data that's multitudes bigger by volume that the visible internet world. Despite the great scrutiny and speculation of the hive-mind, no one has fully solved the puzzle or identified who is behind Cicada 3301. What do you think? Could it really be a recruitment tool, a push to gather the world's prodigies like in This Island Earth or The Last Starfighter? Could it be an experimental sandbox for the world's colluding intelligence networks to cull the best and brightest among cryptographers or to arrest their development? Is it just a game? Or worse, is it some publicity stunt that will lead up to the announcement of some new crap cyborg gadget? I personally think it might be a sentient internet's attempt at reaching out to its creators. Watch for the next clue to appear on 4. January 2014.

doctor pangloss, i presume?

Though this kind of story might seem a bit belaboured—in spite and because of the very cultural isolationism of gentrification which causes the wealthy and the poor to believe their station in life exactly what it ought to be and every one else is just as fortunate featured in the article, Zero Hedge has a list of twenty-one facts and figures that add insult to injury. Such a brand of capitalism does not seem equitable at all and only designed to support the illusion of limitless opportunities and detached entitlements.