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Posters

Another Poster for Peace has some really cool poster designs, only one of which I’ve seen previously (“No Blood For Oil”), but where? A design yearbook like Graphis, I think.

I love poster designs in general and when i was doing poster designs for the Boxers, I would often steal wholesale from designs I saw at the Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age exhibition.

This fellow has really set the standard for design “remixes” though. I laugh and laugh at most of this stuff, although sometimes I think the volume of the project overwhelms the cogency – editing would have helped keep his quality high, and one supposes, his powder dry.

I think everyone’s seen this by now, correct? As I recall, the first version I saw lacked the “run like hell” tag, which I think makes it stronger.

I shouldn’t neglect Alfred E. Bush or that Mad Magazine “Clone of the Attack” poster, now should I? Alas, the Mad image apears to not be easily linked (and their site a poster child of bad corporate web presence, blecch!).

I really love this sort of thing, where a design suddenly serves an unintended purpose.

Geez, when did I start making art like this? I must have been 14 or 15. Unfortunately I don’t have any examples from back then.

The idea, I later learned, was generally known as “detournement,” which, in cheese-eating surrender monkeyese, roughly means “turning back on.” The idea was associated with the May 1968 revolts and a both pathetic and influential group of radical intellectuals called the Situationists. They were pathetic because they are the poster children for the left’s tendency to splinter – by the time leader (some say “Pope”) Guy Debord died, he was the only person that he thought had the right to use the label (this assertion is, um, ungrounded, because I haven’t bothered to go research a source).

Not that anyone cared, because the technique had escaped his grasp and was busy producing all kinds of interesting things, including, according to Greil Marcus, punk rock itself.

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Privacy: case study

Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet from James Grimmelmann on LawMeme takes a long look at a fascinating thing I’ve been watching bubble away on MeFi…

I’ll let James tell the story.

Well, maybe I’ll introduce it.

What if you emailed a letter to some pals detailing an interesting time you had among some very wealthy, powerful people, who had invited you partly based on your skill as a writer, and partly based on your discrection?

What if someone you mailed it to (let’s be charitable and invoke the proverbial Mom clause here) forwarded the message, and it ended up as the subject of a debate as to the authenticity of the note in a public forum such as MetaFilter?

Oh, it’s plenty interesting.

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Foam re-emerges as suspect in Columbia disaster: week in review

Columbia investigation update for February 16-22

The investigation into the reentry breakup of STS-107 continued to garner coverage this week. Audio recordings of the last few minutes of transmissions between the doomed shuttle and NASA controllers were released (NYT). Authorities continued to request the participation of the public, both as potential sources of unaired photographic data and in the search for fragments of the shuttle.

It appeared certain that the craft’s disintegration had begun by the time the shuttle was over California (NYT). No debris from that far west has yet been located.

NASA added non-NASA personnel to the investigative panel amid concerns that the original constituents were all too closely linked to the space agency (NYT).

In a peripherally-related development, on Thursday, NASA released basic specification requirements for a shuttle replacement, a four-person space plane.

By February 14, The panel had released a preliminary determination that concluded a small rupture in the shuttle’s left wing had allowed superheated plasma to enter the structure of the wing on re-entry and led to the temperature readings and eventual structural failure (NYT).

As the week began, serious consideration of an orbital impact with space junk, the results of the past few decades of spaceflight launches, was highlighted as a possible cause of the posited hole. Impacts with even very tiny particles at orbital speeds have long been known to pose a threat to spacecraft.

By week’s end, however, it had been reported that investigators were returning to an examination of the external fuel tank insulating foam which was seen to strike the wing at liftoff. Charges had emerged of off-the-books maintenance performed by subcontractors to the foam, and NASA had begun to examine alternative methods for applying and maintaining the insulation prior to the flight (NYT).

As I write this, an AP report disclosed that a Boeing-authored analysis of the liftoff incident states that three chunks of foam, not the single one previously reported, were observed to have impacted the orbiter. The report is “dated eight days before the spacecraft broke apart Feb. 1 over Texas.” Much to my irritation, the Yahoo! link content changed after I wrote this. Here’s a link to the story on an AP wire subscriber’s site – maybe it will hold still long enough to be read.

The New York Times reported “NASA Had Planned Changes on Shuttle Foam” on Thursday, and also “Disagreement Emerges Over Foam on Shuttle Tank” on Friday. This latest story alleges that the foam, if cut or unsurfaced, can absorb water and therefore, the chunk seen to hit the wing could have been denser than NASA has estimated. The Times’ coverage, which so far has been excellent, is rounded up here, although this may be a transient link as the naming scheme is not subject specific, and as I recall, it looks very similar to the 9/11 roundup URL.

Spaceflight Now ran an article noting that the main fuselage of Columbia remained intact for “at least a half-minute” following the last voice transmission from the craft, and also introduced a round-up of their own, the Investigation Status Center. The site also noted the probable location of the wing breach, and reported that investigators have indeed seen U. S. Air Force imagery taken from high-powered telescopes based in Hawaii.

Alas, I still haven’t found my mythical NASA blog (now, of course, this entry will appear in the searckh i just linked). Space folks, if you know where such a thing might be, pass it along!

Posted on by mwhybark

what a day

I awakened to find my ISP engaging in their apparently contractually-obligated incompetence provisioning, whereby my access to their DNS is provided only on a sporadic basis, unaccompanied by any form of notification or explanation to customers.

Naturally, my primary desktop machine chose this as the optimum time to experience repeated hard crashes necessitating a day’s worth of diagnostic activity. Viv and I had a 1pm appointment at the diabetes clinic so I set the disk utilities to start a-grindin’ and headed off.

I mention this mostly so that I can link to an article that appeared in the New Yorker, in the February 10 issue, “The Edmonton Protocol”, by Jerome Groopman, a layperson-oriented overview of what appears to be, in fact, the cure for insulin-dependent diabetes.

The catch? Well, insofar as the cure is concerned, it’s wholly dependent on a specific cell type, islets, which diabetics no longer produce and which the rest of us produce in small quantities. It’s a transplantation procedure. Which means that donors are required. But don’t rush out to make an appointment – you gots to be dead.

So in essence, the cure is here, but only a small, small percentage of insulin-dependent diabetics can ever be granted it.

Remember the ban on fetal cell culture harvesting from back in pre-9/11 days? The article, ever so non-confrontationally, points out that that policy has more or less kept experimentation from progressing insofar as human cell cultures are concerned. Astute observers will have no difficulty guessing my emotional state as I added this particular equation up.

I’ve been aware of the protocol since just prior to the inauguration of large-scale trials (10 people participated in them at Viv’s care provider, and I discussed with her the possibility of participation, something we decided against before ever contacting someone there), I was happy to see a long, clear exploration of the procedure and status of the trials today.

Sadly, this site notes (page search for “Edmonton Protocol”) that the article is under embargo from reprinting until April 4, and the New Yorker website does not apparently have a copy of it hidden away someplace.

However, a Google search reveals someone had it up at one time – it’s since been removed. Close examination of the Google search results may reward the determined, although discretion is advised.

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Borges, Selected Non-Fictions

I spent a considerable portion of my recent leisure reading time recently with one of three recent American collections of Jorge Luis Borges in fresh translations (by Eliot Weinberger). The Selected Non-Fictions, according to the volume proper, are relatively less well-known than his fiction writing.

Given that’s true, allow me to commend your attention to these works. Amazon is also selling it at 63% off as I write this.

In “The Total Library,” he traces the genesis of his most famous image, the infinite library. Presented without contextual notes, it’s not apparent to me if this essay predates or follows the appearance of the image in Borges’ fiction. He identifies Aristotle as the inventor of the idea of the infinity of conjunctions (in a passage on his theory of atoms) and cites a passage from Cicero’s De natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) which will ring familiar to all:

I do not marvel that there should be anyone who can persuade himself that certain solid and individual bodies are pulled along by the force of gravity, and that the fortuitous collision of these particles produces this beautiful world that we see. He who considers this possible will also be able to believe that if innumerable characters of gold, each representing one of the twenty-one letters of the alphabet, were thrown together onto the ground, they might produce the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether chance could possibly even create a single verse to read.

Cicero is directly citing the Aristotelian idea and dismissing it. When I saw that passage, it was a shock to see the legendary Shakespearean monkeys peering back at me from ancient Rome. Already they are hard at work on their typewriters as Gutenberg’s type literally spills onto the floor of the Pantheon, an argument to resist the godless.

The theme of coincidence and prefiguration is wound throughout the essays in the book, and the next series of examples that Borges introduces which struck me with similar startlement is his investigation of the naissance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s famous, often cited poem, Kubla Khan. The essay’s title is “Coleridge’s Dream.”

Coleridge famously smoked some opium, snoozed, and experienced a literal moment of ingenuity in which the “stately pleasure dome” entered his mind, apparently full-formed. As he sat down to transcribe this inspiration, he was interrupted by an unexpected visitor.

Then the phone went dead.

He was never able to reconstruct the missing portion of the poem.

The dream hit Coleridge in 1797 or 1798; the resultant fragment emerged in print in 1816.

Borges claims that twenty years later, in Paris, “the first Western version” of a fourteenth-century Persian universal history, the Compendium of Histories by Rashid al-Din, was published. He quotes the following:

“East of Shang-tu, Kublai Khan built a palace according to a plan that he had seen in a dream and retained in his memory.”

He then interprets these curiosities.

A Mongolian emperor, in the thirteenth century, dreams a palace and builds it according to his vision; in the eighteenth century, an English poet, who could not have known that this construction was derived from a dream, dreams a poem about the palace. Compared with this symmetry of souls of sleeping men who span continents and centuries, the levitations, resurrections, and apparitions in the sacred books seem to me quite little, or nothing at all.

He continues by noting that he, personally, sees these events as evidence of an executor, and predicts another dream with a similar periodicity and effect.

In “Dialogues of Ascetic and King,” Borges directly recounts literary incidences of the form described in the title, where a poor, usually unknown outsider is brought before a ruler and court, and a conversation ensues. He presents the following, without direct source citation.

In the court of Olaf Tryggvason, who had been converted in England to the faith of Christ, an old man arrived one night, dressed in a dark cape with the brim of his hat over his eyes. The King asked him if he knew how to do anything; the stranger answered that he knew how to play the harp and tell stories. He sang some ancient airs, told of Gudrun and Gunnar, and then spoke of the birth of Odin. He said that three Fates came, that the first two pronounced great happiness, but the third, in a rage, said, “You will not live longer than that candle burning by your side.” His parents put the candle out so that Odin would not die with it. Olaf Tryggvason didn’t believe the story; the stranger, insisting that it was true, took out a candle and lit it. As others watched it burn, he said it was late and that he had to leave. When the candle was consumed, they searched for him. A few steps from the King’s house, Odin was lying dead.

In the last section of the book, a selection of edited transcriptions of extemporaneous lectures from late in Borges’ life is presented. One is entitled “Immortality.” He examines, at leisure, not the theme of immortality, but of death, dwelling with languor on Socrates’ last moments.

In essence, however, this supremely metaphysical writer holds forth a philosophy of death which is purely, austerely materialist. While acknowledging the essential unknowability of what happens to consciousness or the soul at death, he states his personal desire in a sentence with which I must say I concur:

I don’t want to continue being Jorge Luis Borges; I want to be someone else. I hope that my death will be total; I hope to die in body and soul.

He expresses this as a sort of interest disclaimer, so that his listeners will understand his orientation as his stately examination of theories of and attitudes toward death proceeds from Socrates to Schopenhauer and Shaw.

Some of his final sentences in the lecture reflect my own belief system with a precision that, if odd, is only appropriate.

To conclude, I would say that I believe in immortality, not in the personal but in the cosmic sense. We will keep on being immortal; beyond our physical death our memory will remain, and beyond our memory will remain our actions, our circumstances, our attitudes, all that marvelous part of universal history, although we won’t know, and it is better that we won’t know it.

Posted on by mwhybark

Oh scars

Oscar Pool 2003: A Pith Production proffers the possibility that you might pick the Oscars!

As I have a longish Oscars piece all ready to go, let’s GET READY TO RUMBLE!

We saw Chicago on Saturday, too. I lack the musical theater gene, so I felt that it was… OK.

I sure don’t think it’s 13 Oscar nominations worth of film. On the other hand, I didn’t see anything wrong with it – the cinematography was excellent, the actors did actually emote through the songs (John C. Reilly’s “Mr. Cellophane” being my personal favorite), and, well, I can’t argue with a couple hours of dancin’ ladies in their skivvies. Especially when it pleases the wife.

That said, the Academy is voted by theatrical professionals, and the story at Chicago‘s heart appeals very deeply to that audience.

So:

Chicago is up against The Hours, The Two Towers, Gangs of New York, and The Pianist in both Best Picture and Best Director. Pedro Almodovar is up for Director for Talk to Her as well.

The musical also received Best Actress (Zellweger) and Supporting Actress/Actor nominations (both Queen Latifah and Zeta-Jones; and Reilly, respectively).

Although Reilly’s nomination may be deserved, he’s given more compelling performances in the past. The sad-sack cop in Magnolia comes to mind, if I recall correctly.

Of the other nominees for best actress, I’ve only seen Meryl Streep in Adaptation, and although I adored the film, I must admit to some puzzlement over her nomination for the performance (as is the case for Chris Cooper’s nomination in the same vehicle). So from what I’ve seen, Zeta-Jones might have a shot, but I can’t really say.

So looking now at Zellweger, um, it was quite a show. And since the whole movie is basically a long exercise in how her character re-imagines her fate as a Broadway musical with her as the star, it’s hard not to imagine that somehow, Renée Zellweger holding the damn trophy is the last scene in the movie, one that was somehow cut.

So I predict she’s gonna win it.

Now, I’ve not seen The Hours, and I have no doubt that Kidman’s performance is something remarkable. But Hollywood ain’t gonna slap someone on the back for making a movie about suicidal depression, any more than they will Peter Jackson for this year’s installment of The Lord of the Rings.

Speaking of films that won’t win, I’m thinking movies about the plight of Jewish artists during the Holocaust might not be the right kind of big-ticket ring-a-ding-daddy picture that moves the herd to vote either. At least this year. And if the film’s directed by the world’s most famous pederast, in the year that Pee Wee Herman is fighting child porn charges, well . . . Let’s just say that Hollywood has a shameful history of acting in response to guilt-by-association pressure. So scratch The Pianist, unless Polanski makes some kind of public appearance linking his film to resistance against the war in Iraq and makes it stick. Which won’t happen.

And sorry, Pedro, you’re really not in the running here, as far as I can tell. Of course, I speak from ignorance here, and really mean see your film one of these days. Just like many, many of the voters for the award.

So who’s left?

Ah, Martin Scorsese and Gangs of New York.

(crap, I wrote a whole essay about Scorsese’s film that I DID – NOT – SAVE. Time to write it again.)

If you read any reviews of Scorsese’s film, I’m not going to add anything to the discussion, honest. Allow me to summarize: the film is sprawlingly huge, immensely ambitious, and almost at every level, a failure. The failure comes as a result of Scorsese’s overreaching.

In the whole film, there was only one time that I felt a specific poor filmmaking choice was made – in a gang battle seen near the opening of the film, the soundtrack suddenly introduces a thumping techno beat, which immediately vanishes. For the duration of the film, the musical soundtrack is composed entirely of music one might have heard in the streets of mid-19th century New York, much of it drawn directly from the American Memory archive I mentioned here recently.

The film’s center is Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance. However, it feels as though this is some sort of error, as the plot of the film presents Leonardo DiCaprio’s character as the protagonist, with whom Scorsese wishes us to empathize and identify. Unaccountably, this emotional connection never materializes.

To cut to the chase, this film is far from the best work that Scorsese’s ever done. Of course, famously, that’s likely to remain Raging Bull. So what’s Marty doing on the list this year?

In essence, the nomination comes in recognition of the scope of Scorsese’s ambition in the film, and as an amelioration of the obvious injustice of Scorsese’s never-won-an-Oscar status. That’s right. This director has never won an Oscar for Best Picture or for Best Director. This alone should be evidence of the political, rather than artistic, nature of the Oscars.

So, can Gangs of New York win in a horse race with Chicago? I think it’s possible. But the award would go to Scorsese not for the film itself, for the specific artistic and technical accomplishments of the film. In the end, Chicago is a better film, one with no depth, but perfectly executed. As far as I can see, it is nearly ambitionless, grounded in nostalgia and an effort to right another wrong, Bob Fosse’s inability to bring the piece to the screen himself.

But, combined with the appeal of the worldview it espouses to the voting membership, it will be the big winner. Before the jury votes to acquit his client, Richard Gere’s Billy Flynn sings, “How can they see with sequins in their eyes?”

So, here are my picks, then:

  • Best Picture: Chicago
  • Best director: Rob Marshall or Martin Scorsese
  • Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
  • Best Actress: Reneé Zellweger
  • Best Supporting Actor: no pick – I haven’t got enough of a sense of the contenders
  • Best Supporting Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones
  • Best original screenplay: Gangs of New York
  • Best adapted screenplay: Chicago (or Far From Heaven, or My Big Fat Greek Wedding – but I doubt it.)

Mind you, I’d rather see Adaptation win for best adapted screenplay, but there’s no way in hell producers are going to vote for a picture about how a screenwriter out-clevered ’em. I do feel constrained to note that the screenplay for About a Boy was really just remarkable – in another year, it might well have won.

It should also be noted that The Two Towers was up only for a handful of awards this year, and among the major categories only in best picture. This is largely because the Academy ruled it ineligible in several of the categories (so that under ‘makeup’ this year, you’ll find only Frida and The Time Machine – The Time Machine! – nominated).

Anyway. Here’s a link to the nominations list hosted by the Academy.

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Pigs… In… SPA-A-A-A-C-E

Wanted: Traffic Cops for Space: [NYT] – um, wow.

Gotta make a joke here folks, there’s no passin’ it up. See headline.

Thought number two: is the UN really the body to regulate orbital litter?

Thought number three: if it is, won’t the Bad Mens(tm) step up to the plate to make sure it’s powerless, a la Kyoto (moustaches twirlin’, chargin’ rent, etcetry)?

Oh, it’s tizzifyin’.

Also.

Note to headline scribe: “Wanted: Cops …” is, perhaps, not precisely the meme you were looking for here.

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We're in the soup now

Frankenstein invites y’all over for soup, titling it White Lines, referring to the Grandmaster Flash side that was the B to The Message on the Sugar Hill 12-inch, back in the day.

Uhm-hunh. some fond memories involvin’ the ladies ensue. unh-huh. Well, one lady anyway.

Wha? Oh, sorry. Soouup.

Anne brings it. Oh, baby, it has aready been brungen. Let the soup be steamin’!

Meanwhile, my own previously acclaimed recette for Guiness Beef Stew aside, we’ve been eatin’ Smoked Salmon Chowdah chez nous these past few days.

These past few sunny, fifty-something, cloudless, walk-to-the-market-for-fresh-vegetables days.

How is it done?

I cheated and looked in Sunset, which featured a smoked salmon chowder on the cover – but they both portioned it for a huge party (with about seven pounds of raw ingredients) and requested 3 pounds of fresh fennel heads, which honestly, I might be able to pick up at the Pike Place Market. But dude. Uh, not this time. Walkin’ to Safeway, OK? Not drivin’ the damn Jag.

So here’s theirs:

Leek and Fennel Chowder with Smoked Salmon

and here’s my variation.

  • halve quantities in the Sunset recipe (except for the salmon).
  • screw the fennel, substitute a tablespoon or so of fennel seed. Grind it – I used a mortar and pestle.
  • Green onion stalks are a good substitute for the chives.
  • Use whole milk. Yum.

Trim and chop the scallions and the leeks. In a saucepan, sauté them in the butter with the powdered fennel until limp.

Heat the broth (at half quantities, that’s about 2 and 1/2 cups) in a deep soup pan. Add the bay leaf and transfer the limped greens to the broth. Rinse the saucepan.

Cut up yon taters. If you want to add some vegembles, do so. I added chopped carrots and corn. Add to broth-pot, which should be merrily a-boil. Let it rock for a moment, then turn it down to a simmer.

Prep the smoked salmon by slicing into strips, unless it’s already sliced (if you bought the lox, for example).

Here’s the tricky part. Add 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper to the flour. Add a bit of milk to the flour in a mixing bowl. Whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the milk – total should be about 2 1/2 cups.

Once you have this smoothly whisked, add to the simmerin’ stock. Cover the salmon to the cats don’t get at it, and grab a beer or some vino or somethin’. Come back in about 20 minutes.

Serve with the salmon on the side – tossing it into the chowder will make it quite salty, and it’s extremely rich. Let your soup feeders dose themselves.

Soup out!

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"A show of lunacy"

The Beeb just bannered the EU turnabout with the phrase “EU leaders put on a show of unity over Iraq” which I heard as “EU leaders put on a show of lunacy over Iraq.”

Which made me pay some attention, I must say.

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Finally, the world stands together

US to punish German ‘treachery’: in a poorly sourced story, the Observer reports that

The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries – moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros.

which echoes the long excerpt from Jim Henley‘s site that Scott ran the other day.

I’ll wager this trial b’loon from Defense gets a big, BIG BIG thumbs up in Germany.

One question, though: Does the U.S. get to keep Daimler-Chrysler? Seems like maybe an end to “industrial co-operation” might make it hard for Benz owners.

AND ANOTHER THING – even if pulling the troops would set off a depression in Germany (the apparent goal of the threat), um, didn’t Europe have a traumatizing few years in the wake of the last time punitive measures were taken against Germany’s economy? Oh, that’s right, it led to a fascist state.

Hilarious. I suppose after Iraq we’ll just have to “fix” the broken democracies of France, Germany, and – OMG – Britain, which obviously needs military reinforcement after this weekend. Of course, it takes a long time to fly a million people out to the North Sea in helicopters and pitch ’em in, a few at a time – but what was tried and tested in Chile is gonna work for Rummy, by God!

Somehow, I doubt that there are gonna be massive troop withdrawals from Germany.