May 2013

Terraforming Earth

Comments Off on Terraforming Earth

CC_1393b

The original .png file of the above was posted on Computers Club Drawing Society.
Initially it was on a spare, light blue background but then I decided it needed something like the surface of Venus.
Seeing Rick Silva's "En Plein Air" show at Transfer Gallery and the large-format 3D landscapes on his blog inspired me to enlarge the above to 800 x 800. Am generally not a bicubic smoothing fan and am still weighing whether the scale boost adds anything.

Update: Decided to take down the 800 x 800 enlargement I originally linked to here. It's been replaced with another CCDS drawing that was made for that scale, rather than just blown up for effect.

a religious argument (Facebook again)

Comments Off on a religious argument (Facebook again)

Oh, Jebus, the Facebook argument again.
Last night at an art opening. Bear in mind there's only one person having this argument because there is only one person not on Facebook.
That person is The Atheist in an America where everyone believes in God or says they do because they might run for office someday.

Believer: By not being on Facebook you are missing out on the richness of The Social Graph [Divine Grace].
Atheist: Zuckerberg is not a benevolent God, he is a gnostic demon who has snared you in a false, simulated world of "rich social connection."
Believer: I respect that you have not Joined Us, I really do [look on face says "you are certifiably fucking insane not to be on Facebook in 2013"].
Atheist: My blog is driving traffic to my twitter and it would be no different if I were on Facebook.
Believer: You built your blog audience when that was still doable and now you're grandfathered in to traffic via RSS, past exposure and links, etc. No creative person could do that today. You HAVE to join a social media enclave or you're dead.
Atheist: Have you tried it - just posting on your own site and letting people find you through search engines, "word of mouth," etc?
Believer: No, but [look on face says "you are certifiably fucking insane not to be on Facebook in 2013"].

sharing sacrifice for the few

Comments Off on sharing sacrifice for the few

Journalists in the Service of Pete Peterson

An essential and successful element of [idiot billionaire Pete Peterson's] strategy [of cutting Social Security] is to create an environment where it is widely if not universally believed that there is no alternative to his vision. In this view, it’s "not realistic" to believe the country can afford the same programs it once did. Those who are prepared to be "adults" will look at these "hard truths" without flinching and recognize that it is time to take citizens-have-to-do-with-less medicine.

The conceit is that those with "courage" will see past narrow, partisan concerns and embrace an ideal: a bipartisan consensus that has the strength to demand "shared sacrifice" from a childish and selfish populace.

A review of the proceedings of the [Peterson-sponsored] Fiscal Summits of the last three years makes agonizingly clear that most of the journalists who conducted interviews or moderated panel discussions both reflected and amplified the Peterson worldview — entirely unselfconsciously, it would seem.

So, for example, Lesley Stahl, the CBS 60 Minutes reporter, was fully a part of the Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson deficit-cutting team during her interview with both men: "You are going to have to raise taxes and cut things, big things, put restrictions on Social Security. Everybody knows that."

Virtually none of the reporters thought to ask about or suggest an alternative path, such as preserving Social Security benefits and bolstering the system’s reserve by raising the cap of wages subject to Social Security taxes (currently annual wages above approximately $110,000 are not subject to any Social Security tax).

alternative future steampunk earths where apple never existed

Comments Off on alternative future steampunk earths where apple never existed

1368291591231-dumpfm-pretzel-webcam

Pretzel found his old Rio player digging through boxes after a move and "cammed" it. He was surprised to remember it had a parallel cable that attached to the computer, for transferring these new mp3 things to and from the player. He found a website from the late '90s showing how to keep your transfer software up to date after the whole world moved on.

SAMYPK5JAB_altSPEAKERS_PNG

Not nearly as old but just as archaic is this Samsung mp3 player that I was half-seriously thinking about using as a retail package for my entire musical production (about 200 songs in late 2006). A friend joked that it would be like the dedicated U2 iPod. Nowadays if you search for "Samsung mp3 player" they are selling something that looks like a phone, with a display screen instead of this large speaker grille (and no folding design). Presumably this is because speaker technology has improved and little phones now make big booms. Also because everything needs to look like a phone.