October 2010
The chupatty movement →
A curious meme that spread throughout India in early 1857, just before (but probably unrelated to) the rebellion of that year:The “movement” that Dr Hadow was describing was a remarkable example of rumour gone wild. It consisted of the distribution of many thousands of chapatis – unleavened Indian breads – which were passed from hand to hand and from village to village throughout the mofussil...
“It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then, like most cliches, that...”
– Stephen Fry.
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The Wizard Inside The Machine (1984) →
Longform links to this “early attempt to explain the world-changing power of computer software … to a mass audience.” I’m a sucker for retrofuturism, and especially the present as seen from the past, while it was still the future. It’s hard not to smirk at the wide-eyed optimism, the fear of threats that never materialized and the glowing anticipation of innovations...
Sweet Pain (in which I try my hand at science...
Stupid question of the day: why do carbonated beverages taste so good? What is it about CO2 dissolved in water that so delights our taste buds?
At least I thought it was a stupid question, or perhaps it’s more correct to say that I feared it, that I was afraid there was a very obvious answer that I couldn’t see. Thankfully for my ego, it turns out that there’s nothing easy or...
The Universe
The Universe is feeling a little down. Things haven’t been going its way lately. Vague pain in the Virgo supercluster. General malaise. Lack of motivation. Most of all, a horrifying feeling of cosmic dread. The Universe contemplates its vastness and despairs at its own inability to think of anything beyond itself. The Universe wonders if this egoism makes it a bad person. Other things on the...
Procrastination →
The now you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the video game.
The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and...
Lost in Space →
There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the...
“A friend of mine was amazed after watching Avatar. He couldn’t stop talking...”
– Ibrahim César, via.
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The Fauna of Mirrors, by Borges
In one of the volumes of the Lettres edifiantes et curieuses that appeared in Paris during the first half of the eighteenth century, Father Fontecchio of the Society of Jesus planned a study of the superstitions and misinformation of the common people of Canton; in the preliminary outline he noted that the Fish was a shifting and shining creature that nobody had ever caught but that many said they...
“About 3.57 million digits into pi my phone number appears. I assume it was put...”
– Ricochet biscuit, metafilter, re: this.
“Yeah, Hello? Uh, if you’re there pick up, okay listen it’s Alan calling, Alan...”
– Alan Moore’s message to space. (via)
Fact: one hundred percent of all days is the official world day of something. (Tomorrow: nachos.)
Anger
This is kind of shameful and painful, which might be why I’ve taken so long to write about it.
It disturbs me that some people think I’m angry when I’m standing up straight, calmly laying out my problems. These people don’t know anger. It disturbs me that some adults get scared when someone angrily raises their voice. These people don’t know anger.
I used to be...
Monsters with tentacles, I thought. This is supposed to be interesting? Button-mashing posing as “ancient language”? Meh. I’d never read Lovecraft, even though it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d be interested in, because I’d seen the pop-culture version of the mythos, and it was ridiculous. “Fthagn”? Seriously? Then I somewhat randomly landed at the...
I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time, but I’m not used to living anywhere that has anything that could be described as a “busy street corner”, and I’m rushing past this busy street corner where lots of people are milling about, walking to and from stores, waiting for the bus, and so on, and I see this bizarre scene: the entrance to a supermarket is right...
Autism
Identity politics is always controversial. Politics has a tendency to generate controversy by itself, but it’s surely aided by the fact that this time it’s personal, by definition. At the same time, it’s so immensely important that I think it’s important to be controversial at times. To take a stand you know will alienate and anger some portion of society, a stand that you...
“How can I draw a line around one part of my brain and say that this is the...”
– Ari Ne’eman, member of Obama’s National Council on Disability, on whether he’d take a cure for autism.
Here’s something to chew on: we identify with our minds. You could change every part of your body, but if your mind was still intact, you’d still be you. If you...
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“It is hard not to just add “content” for the sake of having...”
– John Campbell interviewed on an interview site.
How about earlier/later, past/future?
I don’t give a shit about the difference between the capital R in Helvetica and Arial. There are many interface details I don’t give a shit about that people who obsess over interface details go crazy over. I don’t obsess over details. But there’s this one detail that keeps bugging me so much that I believe I’ve complained about it several times on this blog already,...
Alter Ego →
Alter Ego, originally released in 1986, is a life sim. This is a browser version of the game, apparently unupdated (as indicated by, say, the lack of social networking, the total absence of gay people throughout an entire life). You start as an infant, make a bunch of choices, and see how those choices affect your alter ego. The game contradicts itself at times and occasionally preaches, but...
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Sometimes I try to imagine what it’s like to have an absolutely calm mind: a conscious like the sea, washing over an object of concentration, not preoccupied with itself or anything else. Of course, there have been moments like this. After all, I do have the ability to concentrate. But the nature of the beast is that you never notice. Once you take note that you’re concentrating fully...
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Apropos of feelings that English needs a word for: the feeling of that awkward moment when you meet a stranger going in the opposite direction in a small space and you have to decide which way you’re going to go while silently coordinating with the other person so they go to the opposite side. And then you choose wrong, which is to say the same direction as the other person, and you meet in...
Portrait of a Small Town (2010) →
I put off making new pictures by editing old ones, in the hopes that that will somehow inspire me to action. This is a series of pictures from this summer, documenting my home town before I moved away. I guess you can call it “unsentimental social commentary”, if you want. Or simply “pictures”.
Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy →
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is basically the greatest thing on the internet (if, like me, you’re interested in that stuff). It’s extensive, it’s very, very thorough, it’s written by experts and peer-reviewed, and it’s frequently updated. Also, it’s totally free. What more could you ask for?
This article explains what the Buddhist “no...
Vladimir Sorokin’s The Queue is a weird book. Written in 1983, it takes place in a Soviet queue. And entirely in dialogue. None of the dialogue is attributed; at times, you can go on for several pages before you find your bearings and understand who’s talking. At one point, there’s twenty pages of roll calls, just an endless list of Russian names followed by “yes” or...
What's For Dinner Gerty? →
Moon (2009), like one of my other favorites of recent SF films, The Man From Earth (2007), was made on a small budget. But where the latter solves the problem by essentially taking place entirely on one small set, with few props and special effects, Moon takes place on a high-tech moon base and features lots of fancy gadgetry and driving around on the lunar surface. All the more interesting, then,...
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Things that must surely be metaphors for...
I don’t believe in dream interpretation. I do believe that dreams have meaning, in the sense that they somehow reflect on the subconscious that created them. I just think that there’s no reliable method for teasing out just what a dream might reflect. None of the systems for dream interpretation that exist are in any way scientific: not only are they not scientifically verified, they...