Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Civilization : You're doing it wrong !

article on why shoes are the 'wrong thing'

Teaser :
Walking is easy. It’s so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It’s so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities—talking, chewing gum—and suggest that if you can’t do both simultaneously, you’re some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you’ve got this walking thing pretty much nailed. As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month’s rent, you might assume that the one thing you don’t need to worry about is the way in which you’re strolling around the city.

Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong.

Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet.

cake time

Too much choice is bad for the brain . They say ...
Fighting through ads all day is tiring.

A quote from Chuck Pahlaniuk seems apt :
"Big brother isn't watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always
distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.” ....

and one more :

"Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love.
Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest."

What if technology got so good(?) that 'they' could run a test on you and figure out your psychological profile - whether you're the type to serve without complaint or if you'd figure out what's best for you and what is DUE you, and filter you out then and there itself, deny you employment based on testing results .... ?

What if you you couldn't lie ? how would that be ?
It's not impossible -there are already people who have the skill to catch people lying based on body language, tone, micro-expressions ... (Ekman/Tomkins) ... it's just a matter of time before the technique's externalized, put into a tome, and becomes part of collective social consciousness ( yes, this includes your house broker and the dipshit who ogles at your girl and the ridiculous office caterer who serves you crap on a daily basis ANS steven seagal to boot... ) and becomes standard procedure. Some of us will be lucky enough to be able to go through life and among the rest of us being what they are. The rest will quickly develop multiple personalities I think.

Overproduction and struggle for existence will ensure that each surmounted challenge will be
replaced by another one.
Organizations' need for dedicated, sacrificing members who put the organization before themselves will only go up. Inevitably, psychological profiling ( and policing ) must follow

empires of the mind cannot function without cages for the mind

I'll finish Spook Country someday soon.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

money

doesn't grow on trees, say those who pluck it off from the trees , and hoard them in their cellars. We are very angry at them

Thursday, April 10, 2008

my idea of what's right in the world

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

now I'm convinced

the future's here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdeZ-4rqyU

Clean locomotive power.
The same technology can be used to desalinate sea water. Huge amounts of water created like this can be used in engines wherever.
Patents have been taken already.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4292136.html

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Mr. Glass

It's a mediocre time Mrs.
Dunne. People are starting
to lose hope. It's hard for
many to believe that
extraordinary things live
inside themselves as well as
others... I hope you can
keep an open mind?

Issues of temperament. Too highly strung, some of us are, like a violin wire.
Sometimes the tension is in the wire, but not always.

Samuel L Jackson plays Elijah Price in 'Unbreakable' to Bruce Willis' David Dunne.
Superb performances both. The story is woven with care, each thread lovingly laid and twined with the rest.

David wakes up every morning with a great sadness in his heart. His wife is unable to figure out what's wrong and is going to pieces with worry.

Elijah tells him : "You could have done one of a ten thousand things. In the end, you chose to protect people. And I find that very interesting"

Elijah is convinced that David is a real-life instance of the exaggeration that comic books draw for us. He sees comic books as an unrecognized form of cultural transmission - not unlike the songs of the loremasters of yore. And remember, visual communication works best for men.

David is a security guard at a University. Elijah runs a comic book museum.

Elijah has an affliction. He suffers from weak bones which crack and shatter every time he falls. He drives a car with padded interiors and carries a glass cane for irony.
A lifetime of suffering has made his faith in super-heroes an absolute.
For him, it's only a matter of when he finds one. He thinks David is one such who is unaware of his super-hero powers.

It's easy to be smooth if you're a villain. The moral programming that stops a normal individual from seeing humor in pain/suffering is conveniently absent.

Curious, David experiments. He can lift all the weights in the gym. He was not injured in a car accident, and is the only survivor in a train accident. A bit of confusion arises when he remembers that he almost drowned as a kid. But Elijah clears this up and David realizes that he is unbreakable.

He now heads out at night, seeks crime, and does his bit. And when he hangs up his rain-cape, with SECURITY stencilled on it, he knows there'll be no more sadness in his heart when he wakes up.

Shot in Philadelphia , a city I have only seen from afar, it sets the bleak grey tone of the movie very well. And the ocassional gloomy rain frames the state of the characters' minds very well.
The background score depends heavily on silence.

Real crime, however, is very hard to take, and we silently hope it remains within the movie forever, and is forever unable to escape without.

However, 'Signs' by M.Night Shyamalan is just plain spooky and freaks me out and makes me jump at shadows and the refrigerator noises in the night.

Friday, April 04, 2008

the Fresnel furnace is coming to stay

unless it is not.
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/solar_furnace/plans.html\

btw, there's a name for this sort of blog which isn't really a blog.
It's called a Tumblelog

the fresnel furnace is unavoidable

unless it is .
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/solar_furnace/plans.html