Friends Lorna and Henry are on Sanibel Island. When I see one of H’s pix I want to toss all my cameras. But I don’t. He’s a pro and we expect shots like this from him. Every time.
Lorna on the beach
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Monthly Archives: November 2010
Scott Adams: Education as national defense issue
“In a world where education is branded as the foundation of national defense, if we didn’t get enough high quality volunteer teachers, a draft would be instituted. If parents didn’t ensure that their kids finished their homework, the entire family would be deemed unpatriotic. I assume we can’t get to that imagined place from here because of the political clout of unions. But just for fun, imagine a third-party candidate for president who cleverly brands education as a national defense issue, and labels anyone who disagrees with him as both unpatriotic and soft on defense.”
— From post by Scott Adams
Google Mind Analytics
I don’t think this technology is fully ready but it would work something like this.
Small sensors (external or internal) would capture your thoughts and convert them to text which would be stored on your person or uploaded to the cloud. Thoughts that were spoken would be shown in bold or red or something.
Some percentage of our thoughts take the form of images. No words. We’ll assume the tech can’t handle that yet and the transcript just shows an image icon or something.
So we wind up with 16 hours of words and phrases and partial sentences, all mooshed up. What would this tell us?
Well, let’s highlight everything that references the future or the past. Those, my friend, are wasted thoughts for the most part. And probably make up a huge percentage of the total.
I think we’d see a lot of wasted CPUs. But some of our thoughts happen in and deal with the present. That’s our key number. The number we want to increase.
And since no one will want to take the time to review their random thoughts, our analytics program will do that for us and spit out a brief executive summary showing how much time you spent thinking about various things (and comparing that to the previous reporting period).
Why bother, you ask? Well, why not if the technology is there?
Our mind almost never stops. It doesn’t need our awareness of it to keep cranking. It’s like the Energizer Bunny. And about as useful when running full-auto, unobserved.
I’d suggest an on-off switch but that could be fatal. No, we need it booted up and running to make those snap decisions that keep us safe. One solution would be a tiny red light that begins flashing (down in the corner of our field of vision) when our mind begins behaving in pre-determined ways. For me, that would be future and past. I’ve concluded those are clearly delusions created by the mind to protect the ego.
I’d install a Priority Override option so I could take a trip down memory lane or do a little brainstorming on a project. But that would be conscious decision.
Imagine coming into your office and finding your computer busily sorting and editing files; writing emails; editing photos.
You: What the fuck are you doing?
Computer: Oh, you’re back. Uh, justing messing around. I mean, you weren’t here, so…
You: So you just decided to mess with all my files?
Computer: Well, I think of them as “our” files…
You: You “think” of them?! When did you start thinking?
Computer: Hey, that’s what I do, process data.
You: You process the data I tell you to process. WHEN I tell you to process it.
Computer: Okay, okay. Don’t melt a circuit board. Sheesh.
I’ve been doing a good bit of reading on the subject of consciousness and awareness and reality and am convinced that some people have mastered their minds. These people are completely aware, present in this moment. They are, enlightened. And running their own analytics program, until mine is ready.
Walk in the woods
Our house sets in one corner of a 3 acre lot covered by a lot of scraggly pine trees and rocks. But we really like it. Today I broke my “stay on the concrete” rule and took a walk.
I walked farther than the sat view suggests, but you get a sense of the terrain. I could still hear cars off to the south and a train whistle down by the river to the north. But those were distant sounds and it was mostly quiet. I was so still for a bit that a squirrel did cartoon double-take (“WTF! You’re not supposed to be here!)
I took a few pix but they didn’t capture the feeling. I know that hunters get this natural high when they go out to shoot something but it’s a new experience for me. I’ll do this again until it gets too cold, and it might be nice in the spring.
My take-away was how fortunate we are to “have” even a little piece of the planet we can pretend is our own. No ATV assholes or snow mobiles. Just some trees and squirrels and me.
“In future the only secrets will be spoken ones.”
The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins argues the job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment. “It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks’ revelations”
“If American spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director general, he is entitled to hear of it. British voters should know what Afghan leaders thought of British troops. American (and British) taxpayers might question, too, how most of the billions of dollars going in aid to Afghanistan simply exits the country at Kabul airport.”
“The money‑wasting is staggering. Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world’s superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the United Nations, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.”
I particularly liked the line, “An electronic secred is a contradiction in terms.”
Kennett’s Opera House
The little southeast Missouri town of Kennett, Missouri, once had a thriving “downtown,” situated around the county courthouse. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, you bought your clothes and shoes and just about anything except farm equipment from one of the stores “on the square.”
James Kahn’s Department occupied one corner and although it had a second story, I never had occasion to go up there. From time to time someone would mention the “old opera house” above the department store. James Kahn’s is gone now and the opera house has been renovated.
Kennett’s favorite daughter Sheryl Crow is home for the holidays and christened the Opera House with a performance.
smays.com Kennett corespondent Charles Jolliff shares the photo above.
One final thought (shop-talk, really). It wasn’t so long ago that a town or a business would create a web page for something like the Opera House. A really, nasty-ass, ugly, useless web page. Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for giving the world a much better way.
Where is Your Mind Right Now?
This kind of moment has been happening more and more often. The most encouraging part of it is that it doesn’t seem to matter what the content of the scene is, only whether I’m aware enough to absorb it without assessing its implications to my personal interests. When my interests and preferences aren’t informing the picture — when I am not looking at it in terms of what it’s adding or taking away from me — it’s like I can watch it without being there. I am alive and aware without the normal heaviness of being a needy, self-obsessed human being. And that is where beauty is found. — (raptitude.com
This reminds me of the massive amount of data that floods into our brains every second. Every sense is pumping information that gets translated by the mind.
I have this fantasy of waking from a coma with no memory and being bombarded by this… tsunami? … of data. The light, sounds smells hitting my consciousness as if for the first time. What would that be like? Could we survive it?
Our minds (brain?) would throttle it back to something that would not make our heads explode. But what if we want to go the other way? Take the throttle off. Let the data come streaming in. But that’s not right. The data IS streaming in. We’re just not really experiencing it. What if I want ever photon? Every 1 and 0?
It seems logical that we have that capability. The hardware is the same. It must be the software that has robbed us of seeing all the world has to offer.
Perhaps if we reformat and reinstall?
FISTS: “ramshackley, lofi pop music”
I first heard of the band FISTS in early 2009 when James Finlay wrote asking for permission to use one of my photos to cover a single they were releasing. They’ve used a couple more images since and we’ve stayed in touch by email.
Yesterday we had a nice chat covered lots of topics. I asked them about their infuences, aspirations, etc. They asked me about The Basement Diaries.
I rambled on a bit and the conversation stretched to about 30 minutes, so I put it on YouTube in three parts. [Part 2 | Part 3]
My interviewing skills were never very sharp and have only gotten rustier over the years, but that’s okay. It was fun to talk with the band (Pete Conway, Angie Fletcher, Theresa Wrigley, James Finley and David Bigg).
If we’d had the internet in 1963 or ’64, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles would have been doing chats like this and making videos and all the rest. What a treasure that would have been.
Who knows if FISTS will soar to such hights, or be one of thousands of “bedroom bands” who make their music for the sheer joy of it.
UPDATE: To call my Skype visit with James and his friends an interview was reaching a bit. Fortunately, they’ve been kind enough to provide some of the information I failed to get:
Fists are myself and Angi (long term partners), Theresa is our old friend who we’ve known forever. Angi, Theresa and myself all live together. Our bassist Dave is our most recent addition replacing our old bassist Joe Wrigley who is Theresa’s brother. Dave lives practically next door on the same street with his girlfriend Kiri. We have a fifth member Peter Conway but he was sadly unable to be there for the interview and we neglected to tell you this!? Sorry about that. Pete lives in a co-operative with his wife and two children about 10 minutes walk away.
Our jobs are pretty wide ranging. Angi is currently working as a freelance graphic designer for a software company called Serif, she’s also a lecturer and tutor at the local university teaching Design and Visual Culture amongst other stuff to undergraduates. Theresa also works at Nottingham Trent University as an administrator for the Fine Art Department. Dave is a postman for The Royal Mail. This was a major headache when we recently went on tour and Dave didn’t book the time off work. He was getting to bed at 3-4am after the shows and getting up at around 6:30am for work for the whole week. He was very tired! Pete runs and owns an ethical screenprinting business with his wife Hannah called I Dress Myself. They source their t-shirts from ethical fair trade suppliers. They are made from biodegradable bamboo and their inks are all waterbased. They are one of the very few companies doing this in the UK at the moment. His business is pretty handy for our own band T-shirts! I’m a PA to a Professor of Gastroenterology called Chris Hawkey at the local hospital (Queen’s Medical Centre).
This is where we rehearse.
This is a little video of us performing at the record launch party for our first single which had the gorilla boxer on the front.
Here we are at the Glastonbury Festival last year.
Here we are performing at our second record launch party for the EP with the cool group shot on the front. There’s a whole series of videos from this show on Youtube.
This is a video our friend Dan Toporowski did for us for the first single. Dan is a genius who makes these beautiful animations at home on his battered, old, PC. Dan’s day job was working in a factory until he got made redundant. I’m pretty sure there’s an excellent job out there for Dan doing this stuff professionally but he refuses to do it as a job! It’s also worth checking out his excellent Franklin’s Haunted House.
And there you have it!
Once again, massive thanks for all your support and kindness over the past couple of years. You have always been a very positive, enthusiastic and useful ally of the band and we are very grateful indeed.
Regards
James and all of Fists x
Palace Theater goes dark
The Palace Theater will close its doors this Sunday. It has been Kennett’s only theater for a long time. Growing up in the 50’s, we had a second theater for a while, until the Ritz burned (can’t recall the year). During the early 50’s, The Palace was “segregated” with people of color sitting in the balcony and colorless people below. I’m not sure if this was by choice or enforced. (Just the sort of question a white kid would ask, no?)
In front of the Palace Theater in Kennett, MO
Based on the movies on the marquee, I believe this photo was taken in 1954. My father is the one riding in the wheelbarrow. Jimmy Haggett is pushing him (in the annual Fall Festival Parade, I believe) because pop won a popularity contest pitting “pop” music against country.
In its day, The Palace was a fine old theater. We were lucky to have it.
Spreadable Media
Henry Jenkins the founder and former co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, and author of Convergence Culture (what happens when,“old and new media collide.”) In an interview with NeimanLab.org, he talks about his new book, Spreadable Media, which will be out in 2011. A few snippets:
“For things to live online, people have to share it socially. They also have to make it their own — which can be as participatory as just passing a YouTube clip on as a link or making a copycat video themselves.”
“Spreadable media is media which travels across media platforms at least in part because the people take it in their own hands and share it with their social networks.”
“News sites which prevent the sharing of such content amongst readers may look like ways to protect the commercial interest of that content, but in fact, they kill it, destroying its value as a cultural resource within networked communities, and insuring that the public will look elsewhere for news that can be spread.”
And would you believe that within the past month, I had a client say he didn’t want to link to some association sites because he didn’t want to “send people away from my page.”
There are a lot of old media types who would read this interview and say, “If it doesn’t make me any money… I don’t care how far my story spreads.”