Timing Error

CITY GODS: LIFE ON THE SUBPRIME

City Gods
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Just kicking around some ideas.

TIME TO UPGRADE

9-26-2008_Picture1
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Wow: almost maxing out my free flickr. I guess I'll have to go pro.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: CONSENT

By clicking the link below, you consent to be monitored.

DODGY INTERNET

biker
Originally uploaded by s.phred

I make these post often, but my internet connection will be dodgy as I go through some transitions on the home front. The turmoil will be well worth the hassle.

I will always say: pavement and broadband is all that separates us from barbarism.

ON THE OTHER HAND: HAPPY PRE-APPROVAL DAY

My wife and I were pre-approved for our home loan. Happy day. Of course we could always spend the money on this and park a couple of Maybachs out front.

Kidding: we promise not to screw it up and tank the economy.

(Home (l)ownership means one important thing to me: we can finally install a $%#% doggy door.)

GAME PLAY

consent
Originally uploaded by s.phred

TRANSNISTRIA JAPR: JUST ANOTHER POCKET 'REPUBLIC'

Strange Maps takes a look at the breakaway/breakaway thingamajing of Transnistria:

The self-declared republic’s regime is styled as ’super-presidentialism’ under the leadership of one Oleg Smirnov (4), who managed to obtain 103.6% of the votes in a particular district during the 2001 election.

Life is composed of rules and rubes. But the best line in the post, by far:

Lenin statues still adorn the Transnistrian town centres, and the main ideology seems to be nostalgia.  

That's a line you could apply to pretty much all the (neology alert) Dash-Isms (-ism) that pop up and plague us with depressing frequency. 

Additional thought: I think one likely outcome from our current macrodecision is to see states weakening in the center of the international structure, with a concomitant strengthening of subnational and supranational entities. Man, that's where the fun the fun kicks in.

ZOHO

A new (to me) cloud desktop. Seems fully functional and easy to use: I just need to check out its EULA and validate that it works at the old job site and I am in business.

Via Valleywag (see, there is a good reason to read Valleywag)

AN A-FRAME ON STILTS

I could build this:

If you like small (and who doesn't) get on over to a Tiny House Blog and take the survey on what more you'd like to see.

I LOVE THE NARRATIVE

Jawa Report authors an instant classic on viral videos and the ethics of information:

Let's hammer these bastards any way we can. We have to influence the media narrative ourselves.

All the sturm und drang: that's what it's really about, after all.

METER? I HARDLY KNEW HER: THE URGE TO KNOW

Tom James over at Futurismic provides some great links, both to Kevin Kelly and an older Charlie Stross article on, well, for lack of a better phrase, dense computing.

Hopefully the transition to a world where everything is recorded all the time will be well-handled, and won’t be used for authoritarian or nefarious purposes.

A neat idea I like to kick around: the Singularity is redundant.

A TATTOO TOY

Yeah, this <strike>future</strike> thing freaks me out. A toy with human like skin:

 

Hope the fine folks at Real Doll (google it) don't find out.

*I couldn't remember where I saw the post; I tried googling "toy, real, skin". Man, that was an education.

Retro Future

Retro Future
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Watchers

Look, Watch
Originally uploaded by s.phred

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: SANCTUARY MONS

Another flash fiction friday story. Got tied up at work (no joke here) so I missed knocking out a graphic.

You can read the rest of my flash fiction here.

Sanctuary Mons

K-Bar moved among the rough brush of the Martian outland. He’d made his way out of the city, by hook, crook, and some light murder, and found himself winding his way past the venter--biological slave-- villages surrounding the Imperial Hold. He’d almost been caught out by three venter farmers, but a squirt of micro payments from his handset bought their silence. At least, temporarily. The Imperial Police would trace the transaction back to the venters and they would either beat or recycle the truth out of them. Imperial venters weren’t bright, generally low on the Maslow2 Hierarchy of Wants and as such were entities to be pitied, so sad, but right now that was not K-Bar’s problem.

He needed to put about as much distance as he could between himself and the Imperial Hold. He’d never make it to Sanctuary Mons, but time was on his side. Yes, the Emperor had effectively declared a death sentence on K-Bar. 

But the Emperor had only a day to live.

WHAT A DAY, WHAT A DAY...

There are reasons, learned from life experience, that I will always prefer the clean, open honesty of a junkyard dog over a warm smile and friendly handshake. Any. Day. Of. The. Week.

People will never cease to amaze, amuse, delight or, sometimes, disappoint me.

PLAY-DOH: NOW WITH BIOHACKING

Via Boing Boing:

The Boston Globe has a feature on DIY biohacking, including folks like Mackenzie Cowell and his friends are doing DNA analysis and the like at home using scavenged gear. 

When I grew up, it was pretty much legos and play-doh. Robotics came later; and now we use PSP/" generic game controller" controlled robots on the battlefield. So I guess genetics comes next?

Huizinga would find no surprises in that.

A GAME CHANGER

Running Mac OSX on one of those "A Really Tiny P.C." They are cheap enough for me to really want to try; I saw a coworker with one of those HP Notes and with Apple slacking on my desired tablet, well...why not?

Those tiny computers will help fill in the critical geek gap between my macbook air and my iphone.

via IP.

CITYSCAPE

9-16-2008-Picture1
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Life on the "Many Moons".

FEY V. PALIN

Well, the long anticipated matchup between SNL's Tina Fey and Governor Palin is on the streets: 

Here. I can not figure out that whole embed thing.

It's pretty good, although based on your preferences you'll be alternately nodding or shaking your head.

I initially went to nbc to view the clip; it didn't play so I finally located it on youtube. I don't know why networks (I'm thinking of you Comedy Central) keep pushing these crap viewers. This is the internet baby, and my bandwidth is precious: serve me crap and I will end run you.

A picture of Tina Fey; because the world needs more pictures of Tina Fey.

UPDATE: Dang, I am old. "These days, Saturday Night Live is a total grab bag.  Chances are, most of what you’ll see will be too long and not really funny, but every once in a while, they figure out how to make a sketch reminiscent of SNL in it’s early 90’s heyday. " 

I remember the early eighties heydays.

EBOOK READERS

I do enjoy my Sony ebook reader, but I know I'm going to shop it as soon as something better comes along. Like this:

Of course, Amazon is preparing a Kindle refresh soon...

BODY-PAINTING BY NUMBERS

My link to Just Whatever below got me looking more into this body-painting thing. There is some very good work out there. Below is a partial roundup (mildly NSFW--painted boobies) from flickr. I keep writing about characters with multipile faces, eyes and whatnot; in fact, asymmetry is a theme of mine. These pics actually help me put images to words.

Great stuff:

Tributo a H.R. Giger by Pablo Fermin

Superheroes by Lallisig

 

Body Painting Festival at Anderl's Art

Body Art Festival by Intermayer

Robert Eric's Gemaldelady and check out his Liechtenstein:

Damn Dirty's set, with the awesome monkey man:

Stinkie Pinkie Worlds Body Painting Festival Asia 2008

Tine Stone's look a Seeboden:

Finally, Wildcatfin's awesome captures at Seeboden.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

9-13-2008-Picture2
Originally uploaded by s.phred

I decided to redo some of my old characters, to see how they would turn out when rendered in powerpoint. It is fun to slip the surly bounds of paper and pen (and crayons).

Mobility

2008-9-12-Picture1
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Maintain it.

BUSH DOCTRINE AND THE EMERGING KANTIAN ETHIC

The Bush Doctrine started of as one declaring preventive (not preemptive--lordy, there's a big difference) war as falling within jus ad bellum.

Via LGF, we get Charles Krauthammer's take. I find this part interesting:

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

President Bush is a Liberal/Utopian, and it makes sense he would trend in this direction. But the Bush Doctrine, in reality, is a modern reformulation of Kant's Perpetual Peace. Granted, I know Kant is old, dead and white and his critics are legion; but his logic still holds up (as seen in Democratic Peace Theory which is Kantian vice communitarian/cooperative). If you wish to know how our foreign policy, in part, evolves over the next few years, I recommend Kant's Philosophical Sketch:

SECOND DEFINITIVE ARTICLE FOR A PERPETUAL PEACE

 "The Law of Nations Shall be Founded on a Federation of Free States"

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: THE CUBE

FFF The Cube
Originally uploaded by s.phred

This weeks Flash Fiction Friday entry: The Cube

                               ***

The fugitive took the elevator to his stop on the thirtieth floor of the Oakland Municipal Homeless Shelter. He’d never been in a Homeless Shelter before; he’d never had that kind of money. The Shelter was a forty story lattice work, with cubes sticking out at odd angles, established on the shores of the San Francisco Bay, overlooking the localized singularity formerly known as the City of San Francisco which now referred to itself as The Esther.

 

The homeless shelter was owned by Temporary Housing Solutions, which was in turn owned by the Oakland Municipal Machine, which in turn was owned by…hell, the fugitive didn’t know. The interlocking cooperatives and directorships baffled him. He’d come to the homeless shelter for one reason and one reason only: to see a man about some business.

 

The fugitive stopped in front of his destination, checked his phone to confirm this was really Cube 30C and knocked on the door.

9/11

hmmph
Originally uploaded by s.phred

IDIC: EARTH VERSION

Darkroasted Blend rounds up some flora from one of the strangest looking places on earth:

GIDDY'UP

Picture1
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Working my way up to scenery; but here's a good cross between my characters and my DeWalt tools obsession.

DJINN IN A BOTTLE

3wishes
Originally uploaded by s.phred

Over on Flickr.

"VANITY; IT'S MY FAVORITE SIN"

Neat round up of pinups at Vanity Fair:

I think I cribbed the link from Boing Boing

TRYING OUT FLICKR

Muse Melpomene2
Originally uploaded by s.phred

I figured I'd just go ahead and load my cartoons onto flickr; they're easier to track and it's actually fun for me to watch my style improve as I gain control over powerpoint.

2X4: THERE'S NOTHING THEY CAN'T DO

My rapidly advancing obsession with small is fed once again by the Tiny House Blog:

1. Perfect little backyard Artist Retreats

2. A Floating Home

My first thought was 'wow, where can I buy that'. My second thought: 'wow, when can I build that'.

R.S. VITAE

Just Whatever rounds up some awesome, odd, examples of bodypainting. 

The future is plastics.

INFORMATION ETHICS AND SARAH PALIN

If you want to get a good visual of the rise and fall of memes surrounding Governor Palin, then the place to go is the flickr stream. Fascinating; even more so than the blogs, the messaging for and against her is rapid and an awesome case studies in information flows. Campaign photos, photoshops (good and crude) and some guy who takes pictures of television screen. It's all there. 

Fascinating.

LET US HAVE A KING!

A handy top ten list, form the Times online:

. Nicolae Ceausescu, President of Romania, 1967 - 1989. The "Geniul din Carpati", or Genius of the Carpathians, was congratulated (by telegram) by Salvador Dali on his excesses, which included his use of a kingly sceptre. Despite an official salary of just $3,000, he found the cash for 15 palaces, a superb car collection, yachts, fine art and bespoke suits. Tens of thousands of homes were demolished to make space for his 1,100-room, 480-chandelier Palace of the Parliament in the capital, Bucharest.

via Belmont Club

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY: VANDIVER

A quick Flash Fiction Friday story. Very much a fragment of my fascination with 'black' markets.

VANDIVER 

They met in a back alley. There were still a few spaces available; Vandiver wasn't, couldn't be, everywhere. Yet. In another time the space would have been called a back alley: think badly lit, overwhelmed with the smell of urine, vomit and all other manners and methods of human effluence. Those days were gone now; a back alley today was a space where Vandiver was not, and they existed in meatspace and agreedspace in equal parts. 

DRAWINGS: RANDOM

LET US HAVE A KING!

It always works out: 

Indeed, as the big day neared, other protests drew thousands more into the streets of the country's two biggest cities. "The king spends our money and is not answerable to anyone!" complained Mario Masuku, the head of an outlawed political party and a familiar figure of Swazi discontent.

QUBE

I'll have to look into this further: "Quantum Effects in Biological Environments":

"Now, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm is starting to look at how quantum mechanics might impact biology, as well."

I'll always maintain that computer science is the poor man's biology. Life is where the fun is.

DRAWINGS: VARIOUS

DRAWINGS: DETAILS