randomWalks

When I first saw it in the field: ‘Shiiiit, that’s a really well preserved dinosaur.’ Wired Science: Rare Mummified Dinosaur Unearthed: Contains Skin, and Maybe Organs, Muscle

I think sometimes when you see the writers marching up and down and laughing-–because that’s what we do, those of us who write comedy tend to laugh about horrendous situations-–I think sometimes that can look bad because it may look like people are taking it lightly. But no, it’s a horrible situation. Gothamist: John Oliver, Writer

In the art industry, it’s extremely difficult to be successful without turning yourself into a cartoon. Even Hunter S. Thompson knew this. God knows Duchamp and Warhol knew it. Some artists are turned into cartoons and others do it themselves. I prefer to do it myself. At least then I can control how my cock is photographed. stereogum: Of Montreal Talk T-Mobile: "Selling Out Isn’t Possible" by Kevin Barnes (or, as my kids would say, “Bar-NEZ”).

What I think is that the universe is pure geometry – basically, a beautiful shape twisting around – and this shape is described by mathematics. This is a slightly different view than believing the universe IS mathematics, but it’s close. Since E8 is perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics, is very satisfying that nature appears to have chosen this geometry. FQXi Forum: An Exceptionally Simple FAQ See also: Backreaction: A Theoretically Simple Exception of Everything

He’s wearing Gucci shoes and carrying The Wall Street Journal. She’s a looker. Neiman Marcus clothes. Vanity Fair under her arm. So I told them, ‘Tomorrow is Labor Day: the holiday to ‘honour the unions.’ The guy gives me the kind of look Noel Coward might have given a bug on his sleeve. ‘We despise unions.’ I fix him with my glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and I ask, ‘How many hours do you work a day?’ He tells me eight. ‘How come you don’t work 18 hours a day, like your great-grandparents?’ He can’t answer that. ‘Because four men got hanged for you.’ I explain that I’m referring to the Haymarket Affair, the union dispute here in Chicago in May 1886. The bus is late. I have him pinned against the mailbox. Then I say, ‘How many days a week do you work?’ He says five."

Terkel laughs, and takes a sip of water. “I say: ‘Five €– oh, really? How come you don’t work six and a half?’ He isn’t sure. ‘Because of the Memorial Day Massacre. These battles were fought, all for you.’ I tell him about that massacre of workers, in Chicago, in 1937. He’s never heard of these things before. She drops her Vanity Fair. I pick it up, being gallant. I am giving it to them now: the past. Studs Terkel: The world’s greatest interviewer - Independent Online Edition > Profiles

Took me a long time to find it out, but those words are lethal, man, and you shouldn’t just go slinging them around for effect. If you’re black or Jewish or Latin or gay those little vernacular epithets are bullets that riddle your guts and then fester and burn there, like torture-flak hailing on you wherever you go. A classic piece of rock criticism, Lester Bangs' 1979 “White Noise Supremacists” takes punk to task for “acting like racism is real hip and cool.” To read the essay, download the PDF from Lester’s Legacy under “Lester reprints online.”

People don’t understand that we’ve invented a new class of interface. As Apple Gains PC Market Share, Jobs Talks of a Decade of Upgrades - New York Times

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us - New York Times:

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. Fort Hunt’s Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII - Washington Post: “During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone,” said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. “We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

BLDGBLOG: Greater Los Angeles

No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use. You can have fake breasts and drive a Ford Mustang – or you can grow a beard, weigh 300 pounds, and read Christian science fiction novels. Either way, you’re fine: that’s just how it works. You can watch Cops all day or you can be a porn star or you can be a Caltech physicist. You can listen to Carcass – or you can listen to Pat Robertson. Or both.

That’s how we dooz it.

Flickr: The In Rainbows Album Art Competition Pool

This is a spiritual story, written by an American Catholic who loved the disillusioned sadness of life just as much as youthful exuberance.

What makes this book an American masterpiece is how beautifully Kerouac blends the two. To claim otherwise just perpetuates the 50-year misinterpretation of this American confession. New York Times' letters to the editor regarding an October 4 David Brooks column.

I love that Kerouac and company picked up the notion of Beat from Herbert Huncke, a Times Square hustler and writer who had picked up the phrase from carnies, small-time crooks, and jazz musicians in Chicago and who used the word to describe the “beaten” condition of worn-out travelers for whom home was the road. Paperback Writer: October in the Railroad Earth

randomWalks: Justin Quinnell’s bath, as seen by his tongue This picture is making the rounds again, and prints are for sale on Quinnell’s site as well. I might pick one up.

English 115F: Worlds of Wordcraft Fall 2007

Are online games generating new interactive modes of narrative? How do multimedia environments transform the age-old patterns of quest romances that structure much game play? Is the line between virtual and real experience erased by the fusion of online communities, role playing, and escapist fictions? Can computer games be pedagogical tools, as some academics maintain, or are they only addictive, sedentary, and antisocial activities? These questions will animate our consideration of digital narrative forms. You can audit this AWESOME course as a podcast through iTunesU.

I would not have expected such an institutionalized and conservative offering from the editor/owner of Arthur Magazine. I love reading an interesting blog entry only to find it upstaged by an outstanding comment. Ah, civil discourse. The ARTHUR Blog > Nothing Left to Lose: What Happens When Music Becomes Worthless?

White privilege plays no small role in a laptop that kept shutting itself down, as though he didn’t get it. Obviously a great post and any kind of useless. The family won’t tell great-grandma that we’re married with a graffiti “problem”. We only get wordy from here) what I said in my previous post. A random yet readable recombinatory sample of my comment history on MetaFilter, via MarkovFilter. Awesome.

“I have negotiated several business deals recently without even using a telephone.” The Executive Computer; A Web of Networks, an Abundance of Services - New York Times, February 1993 (via kottke)

I read it in the decade of Dylan and the Beatles, and in its boozy, self-conscious, priapic posturing it seemed a boy’s book, as it does to this day. Its central conceit, Sal’s adoration of Dean, means that if you don’t dig Dean, the book is lost on you, and, frankly, Dean is very hard to dig if you’re a woman. – Marianne Wiggins Some people remember being blown away by “On the Road” when they were young but then find that it doesn’t stand up to mature scrutiny. My experience has been completely different. It gets better and better–the heartbreak more pronounced–with every rereading. – Geoff Dyer The LA Times asked thirty writers about the significance of On the Road: The ‘Road’ much traveled.

The parting of the Gray Lady’s payveils reveals a bunch of articles about Jack Kerouac. Here are some of my favorites. A recent essay on a 1964 “great American pilgrimage on Kerouac’s ‘holy road’."

What I quickly learned was that buses were the way poor people traveled long distance, people who couldn’t afford planes, trains or cars. Many of my fellow passengers, and more and more the farther south I went, were African-American. Unpacking the single sentence in chapter two of On the Road recounting Kerouac’s first faltering steps, this is probably my favorite thing written about the book in the last ten years. In all probability, his journey began at the elevated train station at Liberty Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard in Ozone Park. There, according to Joe Cunningham, a subway historian, he would have boarded a train consisting of six old wooden cars and taken it to Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn. Ozone Park has largely forgotten Kerouac. “I never heard of him, but I went to school in Ecuador,” said Adriana Loga, 24, who then dialed her boss and handed over the phone. “You’re wasting your time,” the boss said. “No one there even understands what you’re talking about.” On Kerouac’s dénouement in Northport, Long Island, from 1958—1964: We used to wonder how he’d get so drunk on just a couple of bar drinks, until we found out he was taking swigs of his own bottle in the bathroom. Well, we ended that.

… no friend will wander down no one arriving brown from Mexico from the sunfields of California, bearing pot they are scattered now, dead or silent or blasted to madness by the howling brightness of our once common vision … Inscrutable Muses: The Women of the Beat Generation. Miss-Vintage.com

As I get older, there are fewer and fewer situations where I need to suck it up to do anything or accomplish anything. I’ve sort of created my life this way and overall I’m pleased with that. jessamyn.com: Vermont’s oldest lifeguard

Elephants might graze upon the Great Plains, stalked again by lions. Camels might wander parts of the American Southwest. And cheetahs might once again chase after pronghorn antelope. While I realize that monkeys might also fly out of my butt, I do so love the notion that we might one day be able to trade our global fear of imminent ecological collapse for the much more personal, rational, and managable fear of being eaten. Recall of the wild, San Diego Union-Tribune

Informed by the mathematical random walk and the Situationist dérive, or “drift,” these fantastic roller shoes harvest energy from your motion and direct you via toe-mounted LCD on a random walk.

Instructions for Disassembly