Saturday, February 14, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
on viola peaces
There can be no holy wars'
Violence is psychically self-defeating'
Follow my logic? All violence in the
name of religion and/or the Sovereign
reeks of hypocrisy
All hateful and hurtful shit
flung in the faces of believers
still sticks. Stop that.
Holyness and Goddlyness
if you like must be with those
who wage peace and those who
show compassion
...and we all go blind
Tolerance of far right and
left ideology equally
to come back with all
the positive energy and
cheerfullness one can
muster to bolster the
rollercoaster to mindpeace.
A mighty chess game
with thousands of players
complex strategy hidden
variables to invariance
dance of faith on cracking
ice sheet oh shit forgot to
check mate chequemite
Monday, July 21, 2014
November, 2019, Los Angeles (Blade Runner)
Probably the best sci-fi movie based on
probably the best sci-fi writer of the 20th century.Spot on. x fly
probably the best sci-fi writer of the 20th century.Spot on. x fly
Mr. Applebaum, you got the floor....
Published on Oct 8, 2013 First inquiry on Electronic Mass Surveillance of European Citizens in European Parliament
Monday, June 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
M O H A W K A R T W O R K
 |
| Mohawk: Front Cover by CHU |
Mohawk Album Artwork
UK Graffiti boss and aerosol virtuoso, CHU, has been busy in 2013 working, among a myriad of other works, on the artwork for the album Mohawk.
As a very close friend of CHU, i finally got the the chance to work with him on a musical project that
will see a proper release, a very special one based around the poet and cultural revolutionary, and
good friend of mine, John Sinclair.
CHU and i have spent hundreds of hours over the last 4 years developing a unique new platform for
interacting with multimedia based upon using 360 degree panoramas.
This work was initiated with the help of Matt Black of Coldcut and the estate of Dr Robert Anton Wilson. www.raw360.net was the result, and CHU is only scratching the surface of this new medium and what can be achieved making the most of new powerful hand held devices and his skill at hand crafting worlds and spaces to make the mouth water.
From the beginning of the Mohawk album project, CHU and i had the 360 panorama in mind, i reminded CHU that the construction of a John Sinclair themed 360 degree pano' would simultaneously produce some
unique and stunning artwork for the CD, with the added bonus of having an almost infinite variety of variations, due to the power of the software and the equal depth and detail of the artwork. A rare match IMHO. And further testament to the multi disciplinary nature of CHU output.
Working backwards from the 360 panorama proved to be a great idea, and the final product is out of
this world, it sets the bar for CD album artwork and visually captures John Sinclair and the feel of the
poetry on the record, objectified
As with many of CHUs works there is often a universe of goings on backstage, sketches and notes, experiments, renders, alternative versions, in the tradition of the scientific method, CHU does a special deep research on his subject matter, and in the case of Mohawk, i was able to steer him in a few directions that i thought would light up his creative candles.
One of these useful hints came pretty early on in the project when i mentioned the legendary artwork
for the album by Thelonious Monk called Underground, which features Monk at the piano in a scene
from an underground resistance bunker from WW2.
CHU quickly sourced the back cover from the original L.P and hit upon the idea of making an extension to underground, or a retrofitted tribute to that classic album cover, but substituting Monk for John Sinclair, and flipping the scene to depict John in Detroit at the typewriter working inside an artist collective headquarters, maybe the Detroit Artists Workshop, during WW3.
And so the work began, CHU rigged up a room, mathematically figured out to mimic the dimensions of the room from underground, and began mapping, remapping and building his set.
CHU invented a location in Detroit, close to the site of the Grande ballroom, and basically built an entire city block where the Mohawk resistance barbershop would be located. As the project developed, CHU began to deconstruct the scene and apply damage and destruction to reflect the very real damage and destruction in Detroit itself, where hundreds of square miles of once swarming city lie in ruins.
His method of working on Mohawk is with the digital stylus, drawing on a tablet, which then relays the images to one computer program or other, that allows him to manipulate the images into virtual 3 dimensional objects. For example, he will hand draw a turntable in 2 dimensions then add the third, and continue to further illustrate the object on all sides so as to become a turntable with a top, bottom, sides, raised platter, tone arm, etc.
As far as i know, CHU is the pioneer of these hand crafted 360 panoramas, and to paraphrase CHU "it
presents, for the first time, the perfect picture, the perfect way to create and view a painting, in every
direction."
 |
| Mohawk - Album Poster by CHU |
Mohawk.
The challenge of creating the artwork for the CD Mohawk was reverse engineering the 360 into a
cover back and front, an inner sleeve, and a booklet. Plus the addition of the texts and usual album
details, without detracting too much from the graphical action.
I think you will agree that the results are stunning and serve as evidence to the success of the idea and the hard graft involved in making it real.
The juicy psychedelic color scheme developed by CHU is itself a tribute to the original screen printing
dons and innovators, using the full spectrum and in such a way that it catches the eyes instantly invoking rainbow fruits, reaching from ultra violet to infra-red. Even the spine displays a special effect and builds a future friendly identity when viewed from the edge, typical of the attention to detail and perfection evident on Mohawk.
The objects within the scene each have a specific meaning and story in themselves, or connect. One
principle for decoding the scene is different forms of media. Reel to reel tape, phonograph, film, photo, type, print, sound waves, all pre-digital, somewhat mechanical chemical processes. old school, authentic and meaningful.
The words by John Sinclair on Mohawk are ten poems taken from his epic work Always know: a book of monk, which features poems to accompany every tune every recorded by Thelonious Monk. A work of extreme mental patience, as john might say.
 |
| Mohawk Booklet Scene by CHU |
Monk and John Sinclair in Underground scenes
The scene combines elements from Monk and the original underground cover with elements from the life and works of John Sinclair. For example.
1. The Buffalo related to white buffalo prayer by John Sinclair.
2. The smoking lady at the back of the room is made to represent pannonica, Monks friend and patron, and the subject of one of John's poems, previously recorded with steve fly, pannonica.
3. The rolling tin next to John's typewriter is an exact copy of John's celestial seasons, smoking tin.
4. The Free John Sinclair poster is a copy of the real poster alerting people to the fact that John Lennon, Stevie Wonder and Allen Ginsberg were performing at a benefit to free john Sinclair from jail.
5. The wrecking ball swinging from the lamp towards the map of Detroit on the wall, draws further attention to the destruction of Detroit and reflects what is happening outside the barber shop.
6. John Sinclair sat at the typewriter replaces Thelonious Monk at the piano. A fair juxtaposition.
7. The original Monk L.P sleeve hangs, as a developing photo, on a drying line.
8. The colors are from the original screen printing color palette used in the 1960s.
9. A Book of Monk, by John Sinclair, sits on the table next to the tape-to-tape recorder.
10. The words 'kick out the jams' are scrawled across the back wall, iconic graffiti from John's time
managing the MC5
11. The large gashes in the barber chair signify some kind of Panther is close by.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Let’s colonize the clouds of Venus
However, Venus holds a secret — it has some of the most Earth-like conditions (that we know of) in the Solar System. 50km above the rocky, smoking surface the atmospheric pressure is the same as on Earth, and average temperatures rarely exceed 50°C or drop below zero. The atmosphere — 96 percent carbon dioxide — is so dense that large metal structures filled with the nitrogen and oxygen mix we call ‘air’ would float with half as much lifting power on Venus as helium has here.--https://medium.com/weird-future/4da31237b2ac
Monday, November 11, 2013
Amiri Baraka on Charles Olson & Sun Ra in Gloucester, MA
Amiri Baraka on Charles Olson & Sun Ra in Gloucester, MA
http://urbanwritersmixtape.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/amiri-baraka-on-charles-olson-sun-ra-in-gloucester-ma/
Amiri Baraka—dramatist, novelist, poet, and activist—is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers. He was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, NJ. After leaving Howard University and the Air Force, he moved to the Lower East Side in Manhattan. There, in 1957, he co-edited the avantgarde literary magazine Yugen and founded Totem Press, which first published works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Olson.
In May of 1959 he published Projective Verse and gave Olson a standing offer to publish anything he wished. Olson went on to have pieces published in Yugen, Kulchur and Floating Bear. Later that year Michael McClure, Phillip Whalen, Donald Allen and Jones visited Olson in Gloucester. Olson's tour with his friends resulted in his writing of Maximus from Dogtown – I. In a letter to Robert Creeley he says, "In fact the past year he (Jones) has saved my life in publishing..." With the beginning of Civil Rights Movements during the sixties, Baraka explored the anger of African-Americans and used his writings as a weapon against racism. He published his first volume of poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. His Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) is still regarded as the seminal work on Afro-American music and culture. He also edited The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, published in 1963.
His reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York in 1964. The controversial play subsequently won an Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway Play and was made into a film. The play was revived by Cherry Lane Theatre in January 2007 and has been reproduced around the world. His numerous literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
http://www.capeannmuseum.org/events/amiri-baraka/
Alan Turing. Strange Oceans of Thought
Published on 21 Nov 2012
Share Festival 2012 | Open Your City
09th nov -- 6PM -- Regional Museum of Natural Science
Alan Turing. Strange Oceans of Thought
Bruce Sterling
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Lake Vostock, Tardigrades, strange fishes, Icy Moons and Cthulhu?
I have the feeling that this discovery maybe a turning point, or a tipping point for humanity coming to terms with it's fishy past.--steve, fly 2019
Antarctic Lake Vostok 'might have fish'
Researchers have to drill through thousands of metres of ice to reach the surface of Lake Vostok
There could be some complex animals living in Lake Vostok, which lies close to 4km below Antarctica's ice sheet.
The possibility is raised by scientists who have sifted genetic material in ice drilled from close to Vostok's surface.They found signatures for organisms such as bacteria that are often associated with marine molluscs, crustaceans and even fish.
But the team cautions in the PLoS One journal that this material may also represent past contamination.
Scientists now recognise that Antarctica is underlain by a complex network of rivers, and many of the identified organisms, or their traces, could perhaps have been delivered to Vostok from the ocean. The lake is 200m below sea level.
It is, nonetheless, another fascinating twist in the story of this deeply buried lake.
First identified in 1956 by the Russians and mapped in the 1990s by the British, Vostok covers an area of 15,000 square km, and in places is 800m deep.
Researchers believe it has not been open to the atmosphere for many millions of years, and a drilling effort has recently tried to sample its waters.
The new PLoS study examined genetic material - stretches of RNA - isolated from ice that froze on to the ice sheet as it moved above the lake. The supposition was that this content might hint at the type of life present in Vostok.
Thousands of unique matches were identified with sequences already listed in public databases.
The vast majority (94%) of these matches were with bacteria, while a smaller group (6%) were with more complex, multi-cellular organisms (eukaryotes). A handful of links were made also to archaea - very primitive, single-celled microbes.
A large number of bacterial sequences, reports the team, were from "animal commensals, mutualists and pathogens… including those associated with annelids, sea anemones, brachiopods, tardigrades and fish."
The team also found matches to types of bacteria that thrive in hot environments, such as around volcanic hydrothermal vents on the sea floor. If such vents existed in Vostok, they could "provide sources of energy and nutrients vital for organisms living in the lake", the team writes in PloS One.
Lake Vostok is the largest of about 375 sub-glacial bodies of water now mapped under Antarctica's ice sheet.
These "ghost" lakes are kept in a liquid state by heat rising from the rockbed below and from the pressure of all the ice pushing down from above.
Astrobiologists have a particular interest in the lakes.
Conditions in them may not be that different from those in the liquid water bodies thought to exist under the surfaces of icy moons in the outer Solar System.
Places like Europa, which orbits Jupiter, and Enceladus, which circles Saturn, may be among the best places beyond Earth to go to look for alien organisms.
Concerted efforts have been made recently to drill into lakes Vostok, Whillans and Ellsworth
Friday, January 4, 2013
Monday, December 17, 2012
Q. What are your visions of alternative scenarios that are upcoming, either in December 2012 or before?
As i head of to the Yucatan, and Chitchen Itza to play drums at the synthesis2012 festival i wanted to reflect on the visions of Terence Mckenna. And to remind people that it was 'coincidence' or 'meaningful synchronicity' that the Mayan long count cycle happened to correspond with his own historical graphing, and futurist ideas about exponential information explosion, I-Ching and the Genetic Code, wrapped up in his fantastical 'psychoactive' prose.
I think that Terence Mckenna had a good 'partnership' model for a co-operative, optimistic future, and his thoughts on 2012 still resonate with me and with www.raw360.net
--Steven 'fly agaric 23' Pratt
From Further Weirdness with Terence Mckenna" Paul Krassner, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs - From Toad Slime to Ecstacy. Ten Speed Press. 2004
Q. What are your visions of alternative scenarios that are upcoming, either in December 2012 or before?
A. Well, i've spent a long time thinking about this, although i realized about a year ago that, in a sense, it's not really my issue. The funny thing is, here i have this wave, it predicts every second between here and December 12, 2012, i show it to people and their first question is, 'So what happens afterwards?" It dosen't address that. It addresses all moments before that. nevertheless, i feel the force question, and i've created a series of scenarios in ascending weirdness which answer the question.
A low weirdness answer would be, suddenly everyone begins to behave appropriately. This is kind of Buddhist, Taosit approach. Now, the interesting thing about that scenario is, the first thirty seconds of that we can predict - appropriate behavior would probably be to take your foot off your neighbor's neck. Step back from what you're doing.
And then i always imagine - for some reason, i don't know why - that everybody would take off their cloths and go outside. But after that i can't figure - thats only the first thirty seconds of appropriate behavior. Since we never had that, we can't imagine what it would be like.
Then there's the transformation-of-physics scenario, which basically says, "All boundaries dissolve." What that would probably be like, the first hour of it would be like a thousand micrograms of LSD. After that we can't imagine or predict, because again it would have so totally changed the context that you could no longer predict it.
Then there are the catastrophic scenarios that revolve around the question, "Death, where is thy sting?" And probably the most efficient of those is the planetesimal-impact scenario. A very large object strikes the earth and kills everybody, and that's it.
Q. A blunt object
A. It's a blunt solution. Sort of in that same category is the blue star in Sagittarius. And then a kind of intermediate between those two the sun will explode. That would certainly clear the disc and fulfill the whole thing. The planet vaporizes, and collectively we and all life on earth move into the shimmering capsules of the post-mortem realm, whatever that is. Novel, novel.
When i worked with the timewave, i argued strenuously that it reflects the ebb and flow of novelty, but somebody will come up with something like the release of the Sergeant Pepper album or the O.J Simpson trial, and then we see that it's lost in the noise. What the wave seems most pristinely to predict, or what parallels the wave most closely, is the evolution of technology, and i think technology is something that we haven't really understood. In a sense, technology is the alchemical journey for the condensation of the soul and the union of the spirit and matter in some kind of hyperobject.
The rise of the web has been a great boost to my fantasies along these lines, because now i can see with the Web from here to the eschaton. Apparently, it's a technology for dissolving space, time, personally and just releasing everybody into a data stream, something like the imagination. Then that's why the ultimate technological fantasy along this line of thought is what is conventionally called a time machine.
There's an interesting aspect to the time machine. The wave describes the ebb and flow of novelty in time, but then you reach a point where it's so novel that it fails beyond that point. Well, a time-traveling technology would cause such a system to fail, because it's a description of the unfolding seriality of linear events, which a time machine would disrupt.
So it may be that it isn't explosion of the sun, or the coming of the aliens, or the descent of the second person of the Trinity, it's simply that a technology is put into place that destroys linear time and, from thence forward, when you give your address you have to say not only where but when. There are some problems with this.
And then here is a slightly more interesting and woo-woo scenario. The thing that's called the grandfather paradox - somebody pointed out it's not called the father paradox because apparently you want to avoid an Oedipal situation - and it's simply the following objection: if you could travel into the past, you could kill your grandfather. If you killed your grandfather, you wouldn't exist. Therefore, you couldn't travel into the past. Therefore, time travel is impossible.
One idea i have for an end of history scenario: Time travel becomes more and more discussible, finally there are laboratories working on it, finally there is a prototype machine, finally it's possible to conceive of a test; and so on the morning of December 12, 2012, at the world Temporal Institute headquarters in the Amazon Basin, by a worldwide, high definition, three-dimensional hook up, the entire world tunes in to see the first flight into time. And the lady temponaut comes to the microphone and makes a few brief statements, hands are shaken, the champagne bottle is smashed, she climbs into her time-machine, pushes the button and disappears into the far flung reaches of the future. Now, the interesting question is, what happens next? And i have already established for myself that you can travel backwards into the past, but you can't travel further into the past than the invention of the first time machine, for the simple reason that there are no time machines before that, and if you were to take one where there are none, you get another paradox.
So what happens when the lady temponaut slips into the future? Well, i think what would happen a millisecond later is tens of thousands of time machines would arrive from all points in the future, having come back through time, of course, to witness the first flight into time. Exactly as if you could fly your beachcraft back to Kitty hawk, North Carolina, to that windy morning when the Wright brothers rolled their flyer out and fueled 'er up. And that's as far as the road goes. That's the end of the time road.
But the grandfather paradox persists. One of those time travelers from 5,000 years in the future, on their way back to the first time-travel incident, could stop and kill his grandfather, and then we have this whole problem again. So i thought about this for a long time, and i think i've found my way around it. But, as usual, at the cost of further weirdness.
Here's what would really happen if we invented a time machine of that sort. The lady temponaut pushes the button, and instead of all time machines appearing instantly in the next moment, in order to preserve the system from that paradox, what will happen is, the rest of history of the universe will occur instantly. And so that's it. I call it the God whistle.
This is because you thought you were building a time machine, and in a sense you were, but the time machine isn't what you thought it was. It caused the rest of time to happen instantaneously, and so the furthest out developments of life, matter, and technology in the universe can right up against you a millisecond after you break that barrier, and in fact you discover that traveling time is not traveling time, it's a doorway into eternity, which is all of time, and that's why it becomes more like a hyperspatial deal than a simple linear time-travel thing.
There's been a parallel development which has caused me to be more confident. We're now beginning to build this parallel world called the Wolrd Wide Web. And you can bet that long before we reach 2012, the major religions of the world will build virtual realities of their eschatological scenarios. There will be the Islamic paradise, the Christian millenium, the Buddhist shunyata - these will be channels that you tune into to see if you like it and want to join, so in a sense guaranteeing we will have a virtual singularity.
It's all very well to try to understand the end point, but recall that where we are relative to the end point is in resonance with the year 950 AD. We're like the people in 950 AD trying to understand the web, the hydrogen bomb and the catscanner. How can we? My God, we don't even have calculus yet. Newton hasn't been born yet, let alone Einstein. I mean we're running around - essentially we're primitives, is what i'm saying. We don't have tools yet to conceive of the object of 2012. We must build those tools between now and then. And good places to start are with the web, psychedelic drugs, whatever is the most cutting edge and most far out.
Q. So that saying, "May you live in interesting times," is supposed to have been a chinese curse, but if the ruling class had control of language, it would curse them, but it was a blessing to the people who made it interesting times.
A. I think it's saying the same thing as the Irish toast [heavy brogue], "May you be alive at the end of the world."
Q. Meanwhile, my Chinese fortune cookie predicted that you and i would cross paths again and also that i will enjoy another repast soon.
A. We must meet in a Chinese restaurant and save the oracle unnecessary embarrassment.
- from Further Weirdness with Terence Mckenna" Paul Krassner, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs - From Toad Slime to Ecstacy. Ten Speed Press. 2004
Paul Krassner is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist;
he publishes The Disneyland Memorial Orgy at www.paulkrassner.com.
http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/06/0604FurtherWeirdness.htm
I think that Terence Mckenna had a good 'partnership' model for a co-operative, optimistic future, and his thoughts on 2012 still resonate with me and with www.raw360.net
--Steven 'fly agaric 23' Pratt
From Further Weirdness with Terence Mckenna" Paul Krassner, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs - From Toad Slime to Ecstacy. Ten Speed Press. 2004
Q. What are your visions of alternative scenarios that are upcoming, either in December 2012 or before?
A. Well, i've spent a long time thinking about this, although i realized about a year ago that, in a sense, it's not really my issue. The funny thing is, here i have this wave, it predicts every second between here and December 12, 2012, i show it to people and their first question is, 'So what happens afterwards?" It dosen't address that. It addresses all moments before that. nevertheless, i feel the force question, and i've created a series of scenarios in ascending weirdness which answer the question.
A low weirdness answer would be, suddenly everyone begins to behave appropriately. This is kind of Buddhist, Taosit approach. Now, the interesting thing about that scenario is, the first thirty seconds of that we can predict - appropriate behavior would probably be to take your foot off your neighbor's neck. Step back from what you're doing.
And then i always imagine - for some reason, i don't know why - that everybody would take off their cloths and go outside. But after that i can't figure - thats only the first thirty seconds of appropriate behavior. Since we never had that, we can't imagine what it would be like.
Then there's the transformation-of-physics scenario, which basically says, "All boundaries dissolve." What that would probably be like, the first hour of it would be like a thousand micrograms of LSD. After that we can't imagine or predict, because again it would have so totally changed the context that you could no longer predict it.
Then there are the catastrophic scenarios that revolve around the question, "Death, where is thy sting?" And probably the most efficient of those is the planetesimal-impact scenario. A very large object strikes the earth and kills everybody, and that's it.
Q. A blunt object
A. It's a blunt solution. Sort of in that same category is the blue star in Sagittarius. And then a kind of intermediate between those two the sun will explode. That would certainly clear the disc and fulfill the whole thing. The planet vaporizes, and collectively we and all life on earth move into the shimmering capsules of the post-mortem realm, whatever that is. Novel, novel.
When i worked with the timewave, i argued strenuously that it reflects the ebb and flow of novelty, but somebody will come up with something like the release of the Sergeant Pepper album or the O.J Simpson trial, and then we see that it's lost in the noise. What the wave seems most pristinely to predict, or what parallels the wave most closely, is the evolution of technology, and i think technology is something that we haven't really understood. In a sense, technology is the alchemical journey for the condensation of the soul and the union of the spirit and matter in some kind of hyperobject.
The rise of the web has been a great boost to my fantasies along these lines, because now i can see with the Web from here to the eschaton. Apparently, it's a technology for dissolving space, time, personally and just releasing everybody into a data stream, something like the imagination. Then that's why the ultimate technological fantasy along this line of thought is what is conventionally called a time machine.
There's an interesting aspect to the time machine. The wave describes the ebb and flow of novelty in time, but then you reach a point where it's so novel that it fails beyond that point. Well, a time-traveling technology would cause such a system to fail, because it's a description of the unfolding seriality of linear events, which a time machine would disrupt.
So it may be that it isn't explosion of the sun, or the coming of the aliens, or the descent of the second person of the Trinity, it's simply that a technology is put into place that destroys linear time and, from thence forward, when you give your address you have to say not only where but when. There are some problems with this.
And then here is a slightly more interesting and woo-woo scenario. The thing that's called the grandfather paradox - somebody pointed out it's not called the father paradox because apparently you want to avoid an Oedipal situation - and it's simply the following objection: if you could travel into the past, you could kill your grandfather. If you killed your grandfather, you wouldn't exist. Therefore, you couldn't travel into the past. Therefore, time travel is impossible.
One idea i have for an end of history scenario: Time travel becomes more and more discussible, finally there are laboratories working on it, finally there is a prototype machine, finally it's possible to conceive of a test; and so on the morning of December 12, 2012, at the world Temporal Institute headquarters in the Amazon Basin, by a worldwide, high definition, three-dimensional hook up, the entire world tunes in to see the first flight into time. And the lady temponaut comes to the microphone and makes a few brief statements, hands are shaken, the champagne bottle is smashed, she climbs into her time-machine, pushes the button and disappears into the far flung reaches of the future. Now, the interesting question is, what happens next? And i have already established for myself that you can travel backwards into the past, but you can't travel further into the past than the invention of the first time machine, for the simple reason that there are no time machines before that, and if you were to take one where there are none, you get another paradox.
So what happens when the lady temponaut slips into the future? Well, i think what would happen a millisecond later is tens of thousands of time machines would arrive from all points in the future, having come back through time, of course, to witness the first flight into time. Exactly as if you could fly your beachcraft back to Kitty hawk, North Carolina, to that windy morning when the Wright brothers rolled their flyer out and fueled 'er up. And that's as far as the road goes. That's the end of the time road.
But the grandfather paradox persists. One of those time travelers from 5,000 years in the future, on their way back to the first time-travel incident, could stop and kill his grandfather, and then we have this whole problem again. So i thought about this for a long time, and i think i've found my way around it. But, as usual, at the cost of further weirdness.
Here's what would really happen if we invented a time machine of that sort. The lady temponaut pushes the button, and instead of all time machines appearing instantly in the next moment, in order to preserve the system from that paradox, what will happen is, the rest of history of the universe will occur instantly. And so that's it. I call it the God whistle.
This is because you thought you were building a time machine, and in a sense you were, but the time machine isn't what you thought it was. It caused the rest of time to happen instantaneously, and so the furthest out developments of life, matter, and technology in the universe can right up against you a millisecond after you break that barrier, and in fact you discover that traveling time is not traveling time, it's a doorway into eternity, which is all of time, and that's why it becomes more like a hyperspatial deal than a simple linear time-travel thing.
There's been a parallel development which has caused me to be more confident. We're now beginning to build this parallel world called the Wolrd Wide Web. And you can bet that long before we reach 2012, the major religions of the world will build virtual realities of their eschatological scenarios. There will be the Islamic paradise, the Christian millenium, the Buddhist shunyata - these will be channels that you tune into to see if you like it and want to join, so in a sense guaranteeing we will have a virtual singularity.
It's all very well to try to understand the end point, but recall that where we are relative to the end point is in resonance with the year 950 AD. We're like the people in 950 AD trying to understand the web, the hydrogen bomb and the catscanner. How can we? My God, we don't even have calculus yet. Newton hasn't been born yet, let alone Einstein. I mean we're running around - essentially we're primitives, is what i'm saying. We don't have tools yet to conceive of the object of 2012. We must build those tools between now and then. And good places to start are with the web, psychedelic drugs, whatever is the most cutting edge and most far out.
Q. So that saying, "May you live in interesting times," is supposed to have been a chinese curse, but if the ruling class had control of language, it would curse them, but it was a blessing to the people who made it interesting times.
A. I think it's saying the same thing as the Irish toast [heavy brogue], "May you be alive at the end of the world."
Q. Meanwhile, my Chinese fortune cookie predicted that you and i would cross paths again and also that i will enjoy another repast soon.
A. We must meet in a Chinese restaurant and save the oracle unnecessary embarrassment.
- from Further Weirdness with Terence Mckenna" Paul Krassner, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs - From Toad Slime to Ecstacy. Ten Speed Press. 2004
Paul Krassner is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist;
he publishes The Disneyland Memorial Orgy at www.paulkrassner.com.
http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/06/0604FurtherWeirdness.htm
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
GENERATION P: An Interview with Director Victor Ginzburg
Courtesy Photo
Generation P
Generation P
An Interview with Director Victor Ginzburg
Friday, January 27, 2012
his year’s most stoner-friendly film during SBIFF is surely Generation P, which involves trips on both fly agaric mushrooms and LSD for our protagonist as he navigates the early days of post-Soviet Russia working in advertising man and caught up in a Babylonian cult that runs the world through media manipulation. It’s got lots of hilarity and trippy visuals wrapped up in symbolism and social commentary, plenty to chew on for even the most sober of us.
Director Victor Ginzburg recently answered a few of my questions via email.
There seems to be a wave of films coming out of Russia about the transition from the Soviet era. Does that mean that enough time has passed for filmmakers to reflect with some meaning on that time period?
There’s definitely a civil reawakening going on in Russian society today, and a certain re-evaluation of the past, but I don’t think the same thing is happening in Russian film (excluding documentary). Russian cinema hasn’t really dealt with the revolutionary period of the ‘90s, and the Putin era in any meaningful way. It doesn’t deal with political issues. The Russian film industry hasn’t produced any real sharp anti-government satire or political films since the ‘90s.
Filmmaking in Russia today is split between thre genres: Festival genre, the brooding, dark, and slow pseudo-Tarkovsky product for Euro festival elite, that don’t get released in Russia, because Russian viewers don’t want to see these films; imitation Hollywood B-movies; and “patriotic films” which are either period war epics or Special Ops films. All of the above are financed by the government and TV networks. There’s no foul language or politics, due to “self-censorship”, born out of fear of not getting the next project financed. It’s all toothless.
Generation P was a huge game changer in that sense. There was real fear on the part of my distributor and investors that Gen P will not be granted the “distribution license” due to foul language and politics, including a scene with “banned” oligarch Berezovsky, and the scene of the creation of Putin-like virtual president, and his virtual inauguration in Kremlin, where I used real footage of Putin’s inauguration.
But after four years in stop-and-go independent production, and lots of press, the buzz was so strong, and Facebook and Yandex (Russia biggest search engine) becoming our partners in the Russian release, nobody could stop us. So I believe Gen P is the only contemporary Russian film to meaningfully reflect on the ‘90s, and I’m happy to have helped to fill that vacuum.
Was the process of converting this book into a film difficult?
This is a story without a classic plot structure, there’s no conflict or a love interest or a bag full of money that we’re chasing. But that’s exactly what I liked about this story. It’s driven first and foremost by ideas and energy, and the suspense comes from punchy dialog and amazing characters. There was a lot of interior monologue and thought process in the novel, that had to be radically re-conceptualized, as well as the entire Babylonian storyline and the hallucination sequences.
Also, a lot of Pelevin’s dialog was so great, that I couldn’t get the script below 220 pages, as opposed to standard 120. My co-writer Djina helped my tremendously as we were rewriting it constantly on the set, looking for the balance in the story. I shot a lot of extra footage, as opposed to cutting out the pages. It was a calculated expense. You could say that the final draft was “written” in the editing room, where the film found its current pace, and I finally have a 120 page script.
I imagine that advertising was a pretty wide open business with the fall of communism. Is this based on personal experience, or on the experience of others who were in advertising?
Russian advertising was wild and crazy in the ‘90s, free of any rules of aesthetics, history, or regulations. It ranged from terrible to brilliant. Advertising serves a symbolic role in the film. It’s like an interface through which Babylen starts to see the new world. This matrix evolves right in front of our eyes and becomes the virtual world that we live in today.
Drugs are obviously a big part of the film. Was there a boom in psychedelics and cocaine with the fall of communism? How about fly agarics? Are those consumed by in contemporary Russian culture?
Historically, Russians prefer to hallucinate on vodka. LSD and hallucinogenic culture, such as Castaneda literature, arrived in Russia with the end of the Soviet Union, along with the branding and consumerism. For Babylen Tatarsky, it’s gateway to Ishtar, the goddess of these new values. It is also a way to enhance his creativity, but once there, he discovers new revelations about himself and the world.
So in way, LSD serves a spiritual purpose to Babylen’s search for meaning and self understanding, just like it would be for any young person in today’s complex world.
On а more strategic level, for the purpose of telling this story, drug-induced hallucinations serve to introduce the viewer to the concept of the alternative reality that we arrive at towards the end of the film, the virtual world of politics and branding, where you’re led to believe that a politician is more than a TV show or that a given product can bring you happiness.
What’s your fascination with Babylonian mythology?
We worship the same gods of glamour, money, and blood.
The idea of supercontrol of politics doesn’t seem too far from the truth, whether in Putin’s Russia or the corporate world’s America. Do you see films like yours calling attention to that, or is this just an absurd exercise in a fun movie?
I really hope that the film works on a few levels: as a fun ride with a real belly laugh, as biting political satire, and a philosophical tale about the contemporary world. There’s a wide audience out there of smart and interested people that can really dig this.
Generation P screens on Friday, January 27, 7:20 p.m., at the Metro 4 and again on Wednesday, February 1, 10:20 p.m., at the Metro 4, and Saturday, February 4, 1:20 p.m. at the Metro 4.
http://www.independent.com/news/2012/jan/27/generation-p/
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Bioluminescence and Sensibility (Glowing Flying Agaricus Jellyfish)
HI, I would like to jump off here, and launch into a new hypothesis based upon my own research into bioluminescense, mycology and species symbiosis. The question is somewhat posed, and an answer already hinted at: that the glowing shrooms do so to possibly attract critters that like to eat insects, insects that would otherwise eat them; such as flies, beetles, ants etc. Here's the full quote:
The reason why mushrooms glow? well to communicate seems one sensible and very general reason. But, communicate what, and why. (the same chemical phenomena, Yes, I say Yes, the same, with a common, extra-terrestrial origin, maybe, who knows?)
Here I am, if you have eyes to see, generally sums up the glowing activity, for humans however, in 2012 ,the message from glowing mushrooms maybe interpreted to be more profound, more meaningful than simply saying 'Here I am', I think.
Maybe the mushrooms helps us remember the saying from Scotus Eriugena 'All things that are, are lights', also the title of a book by Robert Shea, co-author of Illuminatus Trilogy with Robert Anton Wilson.
Maybe the discovery of 'Luciferin' in Fungi from around the world, joining fungus with other glow in the dark' earth based life-forms like 'fireflies' 'jellyfish' 'anglerfish' 'Arctic Krill' 'squid' and many species of plankton and...here's the list from wiki:
Above: FOXFIRE (FIREFOX?)
So, to be bold, maybe the mushrooms glow and the fish and insects glow as a way to show how a special chain of evolution can teach us a lot about species symbiosis.
Micro-organisms, land fungus, insects, fish, must have some evolutionary chronology, how did bioluminesence pass from species to species and in what order? I wonder. Maybe in the planets long past, bioluminescense was more wide spread, and stronger in its effect?
Maybe 'Luciferin' the active ingrediant in Bioluminescense that makes stuff 'glow' will be found to have extra-terrestrial origins, and add moe evidence to the theories of 'panspermia' and the idea that life on earth was seeded from somewhere else outside the current biosphere, and futhermore that most probably this seeding was done by way of 'spores' travelling on meteorites? who knows, what are some of the other alternatives? Adam and Eve? Darwin's natural selection and evolution based upon the survival of the fittest? there are many more, I just wish to suggest that the recurring, unanswered question of the origins of DNA based life on this planet have a pretty good answer, to my mind, in the 'panspermia' model created by Sir Francis Crick and modified by the likes of Terence Mckenna, Paul Stamets and others.
The glowing mushrooms and the other bioluminescent species want to tell us that 'light' is very important, maybe we can somehow learn how to change from A FOSSIL FUEL AND CARBON BASED WORLD ILLUMINATION SYSTEM TO A BIO-CHEMICAL SYSTEM BY UTILIZING THE POWER OF BIOLUMINESCENCE CUTTING THE GLOBAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION MASSIVELY.
Why, this stuff even looks like Krytonite to major energy companies or lighting businesses. Natural organic light, free and glowing all day and all night if you want it!
HERE'S THE FULL ARTICLE:
Love and peas, fly agaric 23
A forgotten fungus found in 1840 has been reclassified and its
glowing properties studied to understand how and why it shines brightly
enough to read a book by.
In 1840, renowned English botanist George Gardner discovered the fungus over 170 years ago when he saw children playing with the glowing object, which they called “flor-de-coco.” Gardner sent a sample to England’s Kew Herbarium and it was classified as Agaricus gardneri.
The mushroom is bioluminescent, ie it produces a glowing light, like fireflies and some jellyfish. This phenomenon is also known as “foxfire” and is seen in some other fungi like jack o’lantern mushrooms.
However, what makes these fungi glow, and why, are questions that present-day researchers want to answer.
To find new specimens of the fungus, Dennis Desjardin at San Francisco State University and Cassius Stevani at the University of Sao Paulo went hunting in Brazilian forests. They had to "go out on new moon nights and stumble around in the forest, running into trees," said Desjardin in a press release.
Using digital cameras, the scientists took photos of potentially biolumiscent fungi to check the images for any glow invisible to the naked eye, and located new specimens of the forgotten mushroom.
After examining samples to determine the mushroom’s anatomy, physiology and genetics, they reclassified it as Neonothopanus gardneri.
The scientists have theorized that the mushroom bioluminesces like a firefly, using a mixture of luciferin and the enzyme luciferase to emit light via a reaction with oxygen and water. However, they have been unable to locate these compounds in the fungus.
"They glow 24 hours a day, as long as water and oxygen are available," said Desjardin. "But animals only produce this light in spurts. This tells us that the chemical that is acted upon by the enzyme in mushrooms has to be readily available and abundant."
Yet the reason why mushrooms glow has not come to light. One hypothesis is this attracts insects and aids spore dispersal. However, in jack o’lanterns, the foxfire comes from the mycelium or root-like network that gathers food for the fungus.
"We have no idea yet why this happens," said Desjardin. "Maybe the mycelium is glowing to attract the enemy of these insects, and will eat them before they can eat the mycelium. But we don’t have any data to support this."
Desjardin has studied bioluminescent fungi from all over the world to determine why and how this happens, and whether it is the same chemical phenomenon occurring in each species.
"Yet the reason why mushrooms glow has not come to light. One hypothesis is this attracts insects and aids spore dispersal. However, in jack o’lanterns, the foxfire comes from the mycelium or root-like network that gathers food for the fungus.
"We have no idea yet why this happens," said Desjardin. "Maybe the mycelium is glowing to attract the enemy of these insects, and will eat them before they can eat the mycelium. But we don’t have any data to support this."
Desjardin has studied bioluminescent fungi from all over the world to determine why and how this happens, and whether it is the same chemical phenomenon occurring in each species."
The reason why mushrooms glow? well to communicate seems one sensible and very general reason. But, communicate what, and why. (the same chemical phenomena, Yes, I say Yes, the same, with a common, extra-terrestrial origin, maybe, who knows?)
Here I am, if you have eyes to see, generally sums up the glowing activity, for humans however, in 2012 ,the message from glowing mushrooms maybe interpreted to be more profound, more meaningful than simply saying 'Here I am', I think.
Maybe the mushrooms helps us remember the saying from Scotus Eriugena 'All things that are, are lights', also the title of a book by Robert Shea, co-author of Illuminatus Trilogy with Robert Anton Wilson.
Maybe the discovery of 'Luciferin' in Fungi from around the world, joining fungus with other glow in the dark' earth based life-forms like 'fireflies' 'jellyfish' 'anglerfish' 'Arctic Krill' 'squid' and many species of plankton and...here's the list from wiki:
Terrestrial organisms
Animals:- certain arthropods
- fireflies
- click beetles
- glow worms
- certain mycetophilid flies
- certain centipedes such as Geophilus carpophagus [9]
- certain millipedes such as Motyxia [10]
- a terrestrial mollusc (a tropical land snail)
- annelids
- Mushrooms (see Foxfire)
- Jack O'Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus olearius)
- ghost fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis)
- Honey mushroom
- Panellus stipticus
- several species of Mycena
[edit] Fish
- Anglerfish
- Cookie-cutter shark
- Flashlight fish
- Gulper eel
- Lanternfish
- Marine hatchetfish
- Midshipman fish
- Pineconefish
- Viperfish
[edit] Marine invertebrates
- many cnidarians
- certain Ctenophores or "comb jellies"
- certain echinoderms (e.g. Ophiurida)
- certain crustaceans
- certain chaetognaths
- certain molluscs
- certain clams, bivalves
- certain nudibranchs, sea slugs
- Octopus
- the order Teuthida
[edit] Microorganisms
- Dinoflagellates (e.g. Noctiluca scintillans, Pyrodimium bahamense)[11]
- Vibrionaceae (e.g. Vibrio fischeri, Vibrio harveyi, Vibrio phosphoreum)
- Members of the marine bacterial family Shewanellaceae, Shewanella hanedai and Shewanella woodyi have also been shown to be bioluminescent
- Fungi – A total of 71 species are bioluminescent[12] including species of Armillaria, Omphalotus, Mycena, Gerronema, Pleurotus.
Above: FOXFIRE (FIREFOX?)
So, to be bold, maybe the mushrooms glow and the fish and insects glow as a way to show how a special chain of evolution can teach us a lot about species symbiosis.
Micro-organisms, land fungus, insects, fish, must have some evolutionary chronology, how did bioluminesence pass from species to species and in what order? I wonder. Maybe in the planets long past, bioluminescense was more wide spread, and stronger in its effect?
Maybe 'Luciferin' the active ingrediant in Bioluminescense that makes stuff 'glow' will be found to have extra-terrestrial origins, and add moe evidence to the theories of 'panspermia' and the idea that life on earth was seeded from somewhere else outside the current biosphere, and futhermore that most probably this seeding was done by way of 'spores' travelling on meteorites? who knows, what are some of the other alternatives? Adam and Eve? Darwin's natural selection and evolution based upon the survival of the fittest? there are many more, I just wish to suggest that the recurring, unanswered question of the origins of DNA based life on this planet have a pretty good answer, to my mind, in the 'panspermia' model created by Sir Francis Crick and modified by the likes of Terence Mckenna, Paul Stamets and others.
The glowing mushrooms and the other bioluminescent species want to tell us that 'light' is very important, maybe we can somehow learn how to change from A FOSSIL FUEL AND CARBON BASED WORLD ILLUMINATION SYSTEM TO A BIO-CHEMICAL SYSTEM BY UTILIZING THE POWER OF BIOLUMINESCENCE CUTTING THE GLOBAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION MASSIVELY.
Why, this stuff even looks like Krytonite to major energy companies or lighting businesses. Natural organic light, free and glowing all day and all night if you want it!
HERE'S THE FULL ARTICLE:
Love and peas, fly agaric 23
Bioluminescent Brazilian Mushroom Shines Like a Night Light
Created: July 6, 2011
Last Updated: July 6, 2011
Related articles: Science » Inspiring Discoveries
Neonothopanus gardneri shines brightly enough to read a book by. (Cassius V. Stevani/IQ-USP, Brazil)
In 1840, renowned English botanist George Gardner discovered the fungus over 170 years ago when he saw children playing with the glowing object, which they called “flor-de-coco.” Gardner sent a sample to England’s Kew Herbarium and it was classified as Agaricus gardneri.
The mushroom is bioluminescent, ie it produces a glowing light, like fireflies and some jellyfish. This phenomenon is also known as “foxfire” and is seen in some other fungi like jack o’lantern mushrooms.
However, what makes these fungi glow, and why, are questions that present-day researchers want to answer.
To find new specimens of the fungus, Dennis Desjardin at San Francisco State University and Cassius Stevani at the University of Sao Paulo went hunting in Brazilian forests. They had to "go out on new moon nights and stumble around in the forest, running into trees," said Desjardin in a press release.
Using digital cameras, the scientists took photos of potentially biolumiscent fungi to check the images for any glow invisible to the naked eye, and located new specimens of the forgotten mushroom.
After examining samples to determine the mushroom’s anatomy, physiology and genetics, they reclassified it as Neonothopanus gardneri.
The green glow of Neonothopanus gardneri
found by researchers on new moon nights, stumbling around in the forest,
running into trees in Brazil. (Cassius V. Stevani/IQ-USP, Brazil)
The scientists have theorized that the mushroom bioluminesces like a firefly, using a mixture of luciferin and the enzyme luciferase to emit light via a reaction with oxygen and water. However, they have been unable to locate these compounds in the fungus.
"They glow 24 hours a day, as long as water and oxygen are available," said Desjardin. "But animals only produce this light in spurts. This tells us that the chemical that is acted upon by the enzyme in mushrooms has to be readily available and abundant."
Yet the reason why mushrooms glow has not come to light. One hypothesis is this attracts insects and aids spore dispersal. However, in jack o’lanterns, the foxfire comes from the mycelium or root-like network that gathers food for the fungus.
"We have no idea yet why this happens," said Desjardin. "Maybe the mycelium is glowing to attract the enemy of these insects, and will eat them before they can eat the mycelium. But we don’t have any data to support this."
Desjardin has studied bioluminescent fungi from all over the world to determine why and how this happens, and whether it is the same chemical phenomenon occurring in each species.
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