On "God Soul Mind Brain"

2023.04.24
Bob Doyle suggested Michael Graziano's "God Soul Mind Brain" might be a good book for the kind of stuff my Science and Spirituality group is approaching. Here's some of what I wrote back to him on finishing the book:

So "God Soul Mind Brain" was a pretty easy read.

It didn't present me with too many new-to-me ideas. I think the most interesting one reframing God as Qualia - like since we can't know "Ding an sich" and sensory perceptions are "our" reality, then "God is Real" in that sense, when combined with human's sensory apparatus that is highly biased towards looking for intentionality and purpose behind every damn thing:
Indeed, calling God a belief is a misnomer. It is more than a belief; it is more than a theory; it is more than imagination; it is a perception. That is precisely why it feels real to people. It is one of the reasons why atheists and religious people talk at cross purposes. To the religious, God is not really about theories and deductions, reasons for and reasons against. It is not really a cognitive proposition. To those who have the perception, the pervasive universal consciousness feels like external reality. One experiences the love and the anger and the awareness of God. Is God real? In the view described here, God is as real as the color red, also a perceptual construct of the brain.
But in that way the book doesn't engage with the main thrust of many (probably most) believers, which is that God and religion represent a shared, objective, supernatural reality. Unlike my mushy view of "divinity" possibly emerging from mundane stuff, the traditional religious view is fundamentally topdown. In this view God's purpose and intent comes from outside and precedes our system of mundane matter and energy.

Graziano writes about the brain basis of morality:
At its core is the realization that when we plumb inwardly for moral truth, we follow a specific process of firing up thought X and assessing its emotional tinge. We may say to ourselves, "On deep reflection, I realize that X is wrong," or, "X is right." But the inner reflection does not reveal anything about a moral framework of the universe. Instead, the inner reflection is a way of assessing our own quirky, culturally and personally learned emotional associations.
I'd argue this view is wrongfooted because it's implicitly referring to a single brain; but if morality is a property that emerges from connected group of lots of brains and subjective feelings/thoughts/observations, that might offer a way that transcends this description of a more purely subjective process.

Finally I'll wrap up with him pointing out
To be honest, I am not sure that religiosity is statistically correlated with brutality or decency. I tend to think that people are brutal and decent, selfish and incredibly generous, whatever level of religiosity they may practice. Yes, wars have been fought in the name of religion, but the Soviet Union also did a good job of violent mayhem with an atheistic premise.
I'd say what unites religious and atheistic bellicosity is authoritarian self-assuredness. I recently finished Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" and this observation of the narrator comes to mind:
The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.
I feel like the view I've developed - that there IS absolute moral truth (and thus any purely subjective/"it's existentially up to you!" view should be rejected) but we can not be sure about what that truth is (and thus authoritarian certainty must also be vigorously fought, especially when it makes commands that would go against our subjective sense of humanistic sympathy and empathy) gets around this kind of atrocity-provoking dogma. But I worry that it might not get as much good stuff done in the world - maybe certainty (however unjustifiable) and faith might be prerequisites for action, and also for girding ourselves for "good" action against people with greedier intents. (as Bertrand Russell put it, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts.")

(Of course thinking of the counterfactual world populated with go-with-the-flow folks like me quickly brings one to, well, what is a good direction to try and get humanity aiming for anyway.)

April 24, 2022

2022.04.24

Open Photo Gallery


















April 24, 2021

2021.04.24
made a clumsy video about my atari 2600 homebrew tool project...

April 24, 2020

2020.04.24
Parallels with COVID-America and 80s Eastern Bloc - does raise the spectre of what would follow. it's a ramp that quickly leads to thinking, can we formulate shared goals for our society, which quickly launches to the existential questions of what do we find to be the point of life as individuals.

Poor Dr. Birx, you can almost see her trying to calm and re-center herself with the President's level of medical advice, on par with the My Big Fat Greek father gargling with Windex and using it for every treatment. And just the dummassery arrogance "oh yeah, good thinking sir, we never thought of that! we'll test that out" - followed by the brilliant closer, "hey, I'm the president, and you're fake news"
I am proud to consider myself a "hack," bearing in mind that a "hack" by definition is "A sound, reliable horse that can get you where you want to go with ease and pleasure in a reasonable length of time." Yeah, I'm good with that.
(i.e. they "fly (or write) by the seat of their pants")
Sheila G's Meyere Lemon Brownie Brittle taste EXACTLY like the old animal-cracker like cookies you used to get in Happy Meals... weird when you stumble on a flavor nostalgia you didn't realize was there.

April 24, 2019

2019.04.24
been trying some recipes recently and every one of them seems simple until they bury all the complication in one step that throws me

1. add paprika
2. heat for 5 mins
3. form the butter into the memory of a beach holiday until it crumbles through your hand like the sand on that long forgotten day crumbled through your father's fingers as he lovingly carved parapets into your sandcastle
4. cover and simmer

April 24, 2018

2018.04.24
WTH is this "PragerU" right wing horseshit youtube preroll?
Been dabbling with podcasts, including some from outside my echo chamber. Joe Rogan had some NRA youtuber dude Colion Noir, a bit more interesting than some demographically, since he's African American. Didn't listen to all of it (I think I prefer retrogaming podcasts' backlog, tbh) but I guess their take on the old "guns don't kill people" trope is the "there's all this fuss about INANIMATE OBJECTS".

The counter is obvious; like Ani Difranco says "every tool is a weapon if you hold it right", and while, say, my tuba case is a chair if I sit on it, it's not a very good chair! The intention of a designed object is built into it and has enormous ramifications in its final capabilities.

Yes, a slew of pedestrians got killed by a rental van in Toronto, but the other purposes for a van justify their continued presence in society. The intent of a gun is to intimidate or put metal into people or things, and any rational conversation about its regulation and the rights to own one (the NRA's startling successful long burn campaign to put aside the 2nd Amendment's previous interpretation as a collective right notwithstanding) has to take that into account.

April 24, 2017

2017.04.24
This person bowls better than you do.
via
It's ever so slightly plausible, in that, yeah, the robot is named EVE and Wall-E does give her a plant. On the other hand... it presumes that the future where humans are all lazy blobs in a spaceship where robots tend to their every need is paradise, which... huh.

April 24, 2016

2016.04.24
"From 1982, Mattel ran this advertisement in movie theaters for the Intellivision gaming console. It features a futuristic newscast that reports on news events that are actually demonstrating several Intellivision games. These games include: Space Battle, Night Stalker, Utopia, TRON Deadly Discs, Boxing, Tennis, Skiing, and Star Strike."

Love the pixel work!

April 24, 2015

2015.04.24
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/floats.htm - this is a game from a long while back, but it's so good and the sound and art hold up well.
http://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-man-campus Oh, guess Tufts replaced the Jumbo statue-- the old one was a bit crap, without any detail (compared to the cool School of the MFA rhino, it really suffered in comparison)

Who remembers someone painting #292 on the side, and why?

dali drawing a penis on a woman's forehead and signing it as picasso

2014.04.24

load and lock

(1 comment)
2013.04.24
My bike lock succumbed to salt and I replaced it with a Wordlock brand steel cable lock, where you can choose your own 4-letter word, with each letter drawn from a pool of 10 possibilities.

Here was each set of letters:
[sphmtwdlfb][hnruoailey][enmlrtaosk][dsnmpylkte]

I ran that against a list of the 5,000 most frequent words in English, and in order the 360-odd make-able words were:

that, they, from, that, what, make, will, time, when, them, some, take, than, like, then, more, want, look, more, find, here, many, well, tell, work, last, feel, when, most, mean, same, seem, help, talk, turn, hand, part, most, week, work, play, like, hold, must, home, book, word, head, line, lose, meet, team, best, lead, sure, walk, food, foot, send, home, fall, plan, late, hard, pass, sell, mind, pull, free, less, full, form, site, base, land, wall, test, film, tree, look, soon, less, term, well, fire, bank, west, seek, deal, past, fill, drop, plan, fine, than, dead, fund, list, hard, loss, deal, bill, miss, sort, dark, help, form, seat, that, firm, ball, talk, head, base, play, best, deep, past, heat, fall, whom, test, beat, tend, task, shot, born, wind, fast, like, bird, hurt, turn, date, hole, park, boat, wood, farm, band, tool, wild, tiny, feed, shop, folk, warm, past, deny, burn, shoe, bone, wine, mean, hell, fire, hire, will, lean, tall, hate, male, lots, fuel, pool, lead, salt, poll, desk, like, last, mark, loan, deep, male, meal, link, file, duty, wake, warn, meat, late, part, host, hall, tank, bond, file, mean, seed, busy, mass, tone, hill, hand, land, milk, mind, weak, list, wrap, mark, diet, post, dark, bike, link, mass, lake, bend, walk, sand, pose, sale, mine, tale, pass, dust, sure, boss, mood, boot, bean, peak, wire, holy, toss, bury, pray, pure, belt, moon, soon, line, date, pink, poem, bind, mine, drop, fast, flat, snap, teen, bell, beat, wind, lost, like, pant, port, dirt, pole, bake, sink, tire, free, hold, mask, load, fate, poet, mere, pale, load, flee, plot, palm, pile, fund, mall, heel, tent, bite, pine, boom, host, wise, firm, sake, dare, mess, hunt, pill, bare, shop, pump, slam, melt, park, fold, dose, trap, lens, lend, warm, last, leap, past, pond, dump, tune, harm, horn, beam, fork, disk, hook, mild, doll, hers, bite, fist, bold, tune, hint, peel, bias, feel, lamp, pump, silk, wake, hook, seal, sink, trap, fool, mate, slap, heat, barn, post, lane, seal, bull, loop, pork, seat, lion, harm, sort, soap, shed, heal, damn, mill, hike, tray, sole, weed, deem, pile, fame, toll, butt, bulk, part, poke, fare, soak, slot, tile, till, bolt, till. Oddly the word I chose was a real world that wasn't on the list, so maybe my method wasn't so good.

I know this lock isn't too secure, but A. I want more flexibility than with a U-shaped lock, B. my old steel cable lock probably was only a minor inconvenience for a thief and C. it's a cheap bike.
He would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes
Varys on Littlefinger in Game of Thrones

The old scholar was watching the noisy young people around him and it suddenly occurred to him that he was the only one in the whole audience who had the privilege of freedom, for he was old. Only when a person reaches old age can he stop caring about the opinions of his fellows, or of the public, or of the future. He is alone with approaching death and death has no ears and does not need to be pleased. In the face of death a man an do and say what pleases his own self.
Milan Kundera, from "Life is Elsewhere"

This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as barrels...


via-- man that's a tall bike!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/photos-you-really-need-to-look-at-to-understand Lauren Garside's new favorite thing.

the motion of the ocean

(1 comment)
2012.04.24
At a recent UU thing, someone mentioned this story that I didn't recall reading in Tuesday's with Morrie
"I heard a nice little story the other day," Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.

"Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air--until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.

"My God, this is terrible," the wave says. 'Look what's going to happen to me!'

"Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, 'Why do you look so sad?'

"The first wave says, 'You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?'

"The second wave says, 'No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.'"
It's really difficult to put aside our own egos enough to embrace our part-of-ocean-ness!

And I would say that's also part of my problem with Abrahamic religion as it's usually played in the West. With Original Sin thinking humanity is depraved and apart from God. We're all our own little puddle apart from The Ocean, with the promise that if we're good we'll get to all hang out forever 'cause God will stop evaporation.
The wind that pushes against you is the thing that lifts you up! That's science!
Red Cross Street Walker on a windy day at Copley Square

That's the weirdest proclivity that you have. That I know about.
Amber on how I like to peer into her mouth when it's open for a big yawn

and they say there's no such thing as progress

2011.04.24
-Nice information to know -- but I realy wish it was median income and life expectancy, and not the average. If everyone in your country is dirt poor except for a few small pile septuagenarian bajillionaires, you've failed as a nation.
"Man, if I were president I would totally push to make Kindereggs legal in this country."
"That's... only one reason you're not president."
Me and Amber just now

"Could you clear the table?"
"Sure! [takes plates to kitchen] [bam] [rattle]"
"No... the dishwasher is clean."
"[elttar][mab]"
"..."
ATTN: FOG IS JUST REALLY BIG GHOSTS

a banner year

(2 comments)
2010.04.24
Man, remember banner ads? These were 2-10 of banneradmuseum.com's 2000 best of. (#1 was an HP printer butterfly java applet that I can't find a working copy of.)

Whoever I got this link from on twitter pointed out the guy in the final one is kind of nightmarish...




















http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/apocamon/ - fundraiser to kick off a reloaded version, 88% of the way there... http://tinyurl.com/yb7aa3t

Would you have liked any help?
Man to disgruntled looking woman finishing up folding laundry in basement, New Yorker cartoon (April 26 2010 issue)
Brilliantly concise!
Guys with wood chipper working in back lot all day, still not done. Plus it makes me think of Fargo...

"somewhere, andover the rainbow"

2009.04.24

--It was a great time for rainbows in New England last evening.


A buddy of mine (I'm applying at his company actually) kayaked into work today. That is just plain cool.
The trouble with being neurotic/paranoid "maybe they're talking about me" is that every once in a while you're right... intermittent reinforcement FAIL
"So you want to save the Earth,for YOUR KIDS"
"Isn't that what's really important?"
"Not to the Earth."

creamygoodness

(7 comments)
2008.04.24
What is it about me and chocolate?

It ain't just like, the cocoa, 'cause I've been digging on Lindt's White Chocolate for a while now, and to the purist, that ain't even chocolate.

It's not just sweetness, 'cause hard candy doesn't come close to scratching that itch.

Texture? I dunno. For a while I thought it was, like, chewiness, but fruit gummies ain't it either.

My current favorite theory is that it's the creaminess, the texture and fatty-sweet mouth feel. Which would explain why I've been able to drop the sugar from my iced coffee as of late, but need the milk. Also, "creaminess" is what I really dig in a white wine -- some chardonnays have that. (It doesn't quite explain why creamy hard candies like Werthers don't hit it either, but maybe it's a combination of creamy but yielding.)


Reading of the Moment
So I finished Moraini's "Meeting with Japan" -- turns out I misspoke earlier, he was an Italian, not an American, visiting Japan 15 years after being held as a prisoner there along with his family during WW2. Very good read, though, a very thoughtful gift from EB.

Interesting quote from it, on Japan's response to Christianity:
If the Christian doctrine is so important, so runs the Asian argument, how did it come about that our ancestors were deprived of it? On the other hand, if our ancestors saw things rightly, can this new teaching really be so important?
(This came up in a discussion I'm involved in on a small political-ish website.) It's a good question, and one that needs to be answered by anyone who holds a specific Deist belief that claims it has the unique claim on truth. (People who will at least give lip service to a "many paths" interpretation are excused.)

Another thing I was tempted to quote here was his quoting the nine types of Chinese Dragon, and their use, but you can see it here in this Google Book excerpt


Random Photos of the Moment

sprung!

(2 comments)
2007.04.24
Summer was so here yesterday, and today as well.

Besides the joy of wearing sandals, I think what I was most missing was seeing shoulders. They're a terribly underrated part of the body, sensual and expressive without being blatant about it. Some people look for the first bluebird of spring, me, I'm on the hunt for the first shoulders.

Yesterday was kind of amazing though... not just the multitudes casually taking in the sun or going for a jog, but it seems like many sports teams picked the day to start their practices as well. As if some giant switch had been flipped...

I wonder. Does the grueling winter add that much to the appreciation of the warmer weather, or should I just move some place that's closer to this all year round? My friend Andy moved to Atlanta, he claims the people are just friendlier outside of New England, as if the layers we put on during the harsher seasons carry a metaphysical weight that lasts the whole year long.


Blog of the Moment
--A blog inviting you to Judge a Book by its cover, general publishing industry snarkery from a public library librarian. Great stuff.



International Politics of the Moment
Slate on the rise and fall of Boris Yeltsin... or at least his reputation.

I heard someone thinking that Putin was trying for a clearly illegal fourth term (he's finishing up his sketchy third claiming that the two-term limit didn't apply since the Constitution hadn't been set up at the outset) but now I hear he'll pick an heir apparent and back him.

Reminds me of how some folks wanted to remove the two-term limit for Reagan. Not sure if the same thought occurred to Clinton fans (though in 2003 he said that he'd like it to be a limit on consecutive terms)

monkey boogie

(3 comments)
2006.04.24
Video and Quote of the Moment
"Monkeys whose brains have evolved to such an umanageable size that it's now pretty much impossible for them to stay happy for any length of time. In fact, they're the only animals that think they're supposed to be happy. All the other animals can just be. But it's not that simple, for the monkeys..."
I liked the (literally) old school slide format, with the little "beep" for each slide. (I also liked how it pointed out in terms of nuclear war, "so the monkeys wage war... the monkeys make hydrogen bombs... the monkeys have got their entire planet wired up to explode... the monkeys just can't help it.") (Thanks FoSO!)


Quote of the Moment
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is traveling in the right direction."
Dean William R. Inge
... a similar if slightly more optimistic sentiment than the above video's

age of anxieties

(9 comments)
2005.04.24
Ramble of the Moment
I made the mistake of bringing What the #$*! Do We Know!? for psychotronic movie night the other week. It turns out it's a big infomercial for "Ramtha" and related thinking...Salon magazine really rips it a new one, and although it was a bad movie, it was great movie night fodder. Though too many of the laughs might've been cheap shots about the Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress for the main character. (I was amused to see Ramtha has his own IMDB entry..."Primary Photo Not Submitted" indeed.)

Anyway, the film really took too many liberties with "quantum physics", but one idea I've been thinking about is being addicted to certain behaviors. They gave a neurochemical explanation that I don't know enough about to really judge, but sometimes I think I'm addicted to anxiety, in a real and physical way.

It's not fun. It's not like I'm happy to be anxious, except maybe on some weird meta-meta-level I can't even feel. But it feels like I have this free floating need to be worried and some vague concern--generally something real, but distant or unlikely, or something small but likely that I'm blowing out of proportion--

I wonder when this started? Because around 1997 or so, I remember people commenting how "up" I always seemed, just whistling and bopping along. I still bop along, but I think there's a lack-o-lacksadasicalness I no longer pull off very well.

My personal crackpot theory? Y2K's too blame. Not since my parent's not letting me watch the post-nuclear-war miniseries "The Day After" was I that fearful. I read too many of the wrong websites and had too much faith in the reliability of systems in use (i.e. so reliable that backup plans and workarounds weren't available) that I thought some serious chaos was likely. (Here's my September 1998 Loveblender Ramble trying to spread the bad word.)

Around that time, roughly at least, my blood pressure went up--from something surprisingly good to pretty mediocre. For a long time, I sardonically noted that this also corresponded with me going to the gym regularly for the first time ever, but now I wonder if it's just plain old anxiety.

After Y2K, it was mortality in general...barring some surprising advances in technology, I will be shuffling off this mortal coil someday. Now I'm proud of my response to this anxiety, I reconsidered my philosophical outlooks and really worked to get a sense of perspective and came up with The Skeptic's Guide to Mortality. Then of course WTC gave everyone a case of the willies, as much for what could happen next than what had already happened.

Since then...eh, it's been a few things. Every once in a while I'm grabbed by something really "menacing", an EMP strike that melts all the electronics in the hemisphere, the asteroid strike, the supervolcano, etc etc. But more often it's just the fear of job loss, or...hmm, come to think of it it's that job loss thing that really gets to me, even though I know I do have potential Plans B through G or H or so that should do ok at keeping me from utter destitution. (Sometimes just the specter of a forced lifestyle change seems absolutely haunting!)

Logo for the "Nuclear War Fun Club"--detail from a notebook back cover I decorated in high school... using hypothetical branding to cope with big dreads! (Linked image is a little large, but potentially interesting)
Though I can think back to some elements of this that precede my awareness of Y2K...dread about nuclear war (oh man...I forgot that for years any loud airplane sound scared the bejeebers out of me...maybe that was the missiles coming in? Later, after I had matured past the concern, my buddy Mike pointed out that the missiles I should worry about travel much faster than the speed of sound. Though the Emergency Broadcast Signal can still make my heart leap into my throat.) And in college I remember wanting to find out, is there anything about the make up of AIDS-like viruses...deadly, but with hugely long dormant periods...that makes them less likely to be spread like the flu? So it's always been an element to one degree or another.

Sometimes I wonder if anti-anxiety medications would be a reasonable "life style" option, something that would actually improve my general sense of well-being (or maybe just my blood pressure!) without bringing on a whole host of problems on its own. (The latter being Evil B's take on it.)

it was a great day

(4 comments)
2004.04.24
Funny Video and Quote of the Moment
"You know, I just didn't feel like it. I mean, it was, it was a great day, it was beautiful out, the sun was shining, and...you know...I don't even play baseball...much less wanna kill someone with a baseball bat."
"MTtLC" is a bit of GTA3 Machinima LAN3 pointed out to me, a video about exploring Grand Theft Auto 3's less violent side as a Canadian Tourist.

(Machinima is (most often) the art of using the characters within a video game as puppets to do little dramas, frequently with a humorous or satirical bent--I think the article Spielbergs with a joystick has been making the rounds lately.) Peterman thought it was a one-note joke, but I thought it really said something about the beautiful worlds these games are making...one of the things that I think really makes GTA3 great (besides the chaotic antisocial violent mayhem) is it taking place in a city that feels like it has its own agenda, it doesn't feel like a place that was created just to have the game in...plus the video has some laugh out loud funny moments.

Of course, when I see a vending machine with empty slots, I'm always tempted to put in money and hit the empty slot just to see the mechanism work, repurposing the act of purchasing from the mere crass acquisition of snackfoods to a piece of performance art. So the idea of finding art accidentally makes sense to me.


Toys of the Moment
The BBC's Science and Nature: Human Body & Mind page has some very cool quizes. (I thought the What Kind of Thinker Are You? Quiz was a lot matter than the usual net quiz...(it said I was an "Interpersonal" thinker, which makes some level of sense.) But overall, the whole site has a ton of cool stuff, like a really good day at the science museum. (I found this via a boingboing link to its Disgust survey, and was impressed by the depth of the explanation of the hypothesis at the end.)

Speaking of those quizes, SpinnWebe's What Kind Of Quiz-Taker Are You? and associated quizes are pretty good as well.


Games of the Moment
Floats is another excellent and pretty orisinal game (there's like 50 of 'em now!) though it reminded me a bit much of Ranjit's game Loop. On the other hand, the experienced gamer knows there is almost nothing new under the sun. (UPDATE: Floats ends after 4 levels, it turns out. So in a way it's kind of nice that it has a (not easy to meet!) ending rather than just going on forever.)

physics and biology

(2 comments)
2003.04.24

Family Anecdote of the Moment
One winter day my mom was driving by then invalid and half blind dad, when they hit a slippery patch and the car wheeled around, eventually almost ramming a wall into the passenger seat...as they where outof control, my mom heard by dad go "oshitoshitoshitoshit" and afterward she was curious:
"Did you just feel the car going out of control, or where you able to see it?"
"Betty, I'm blind, not stupid..."
Just wanted to get that written down, but didn't feel like retroactively editing yesterday's entry. Thanks for all the warm feedback on that.


Funny of the Moment
Hey, it's your old friend Darkness. Dude, give me a call

Article of the Moment
I linked to a higher level Salon piece a week ago, but The Chronicle of Higher Education had a much more detailed and interesting piece about The Mathematics of Marriage. (Enjoyably titled "Every Unhappy Family Has Its Own Bilinear Influence Function") You have to throw in a constant for how happy or unhappy a person is on his or her own (the "uninfluenced steady state"), and then study how they interact with each other in a conversation. Amazing stuff!

my god, it's full of stars... ...or not

2002.04.24
Windows Toy of the Moment
I've already posted some of the work (great virtual art toys) of an instructor of mine from Tufts, Jeffrey Ventrella. Somehow I missed this little Windows app: Fluid Dynamics, "A 2D Fluid Dynamics Model for Animation Based on Intuitive Physics". The Windows simulation only 167K, though it seems to be a bit of a resource hog when it's running. Still, it's a really great visual effect. Something about the choice of visual representation reminds me of stirring stars around in a 3D Galaxy, I'm not sure if the depth effect is on purpose or not.


Movie Quote of the Moment
We pass the time of day to forget how time passes.
Mo and I walked down to the Waltham cinema to see it again last Sunday. Great flick, too bad it didn't get any Oscars.

this land

2001.04.24
Quote of the Moment
"Well, in conclusion I would just like to say that I don't think you guys oughta take comic books so seriously. I mean, dig on 'em, look at 'em, swap 'em, trade 'em, collect 'em, but don't take them so goddamn seriously. Comic and science-fiction fans of the world, get laid!!"
R. Crumb, interviewed by Peter Kuper
Not that I'm really into comics anyway, I think it's good advice in general.


History of the Moment
Last night Mo and I went to see O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brother's (who made Fargo) retelling of the Odyssey, with a really enjoyable streak of bluegrass. It got me thinking about Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land. There are two versions of it. Most of us know it as a kind of hooray-for-the-USA song from elementary school, but originally it was more of a Socialist Response to "God Bless America". You can see a little more information here.

This verse sticks in my head:

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted, said 'Private property.'
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
This land was made for you and me
Good song.

"Evaporation is God's paper towel"
-Dylan Murray
---
Book of fun poems: "Polkabats + Octopus Slacks" (from NPR)
99-4-24
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