The history of computer graphics (1972)
Here’s a fun look at the history of computer graphics from an early ‘70s perspective. I’m sorta digging the music and the “futuristic” trippy designs. Enjoy!
(via HYST)
Here’s a fun look at the history of computer graphics from an early ‘70s perspective. I’m sorta digging the music and the “futuristic” trippy designs. Enjoy!
(via HYST)
At one point, frankly, to actually own a replica of the Batmobile would have been my #1 goal in my life. Of course I was 9-years-old then, but knowing that this is out there, gives me a reason to keep living.
Gizmodo lays out the details of the officially licensed (from DC Comics) replica Batmobiles from Fiberglass Freaks:
• Rocket exhaust flamethrower works (YES!)
• Show-car quality paint job.
• Car sports Radir wheels with accurately shaped bat spinners.
• Brand new GM 350 crate engine and brand new transmission.
• Center console aluminum trim
• Five light flasher, steering bezel, door sill chevron plates, “chrome-painted seat buckets, and even the very knobs, buttons and T handles are molded from vintage equipment.”
• Five highly-polished aluminum roll top dashboard doors that glide open.
• Red beacon light.
• Batbeam antenna grid raises between the front windshields.
• Detect-a-scope radar screen glows green.
• DVD player that plays on the LCD screen in the dash.
• Hood and trunk raise and lower with actuator switches.
• High-end stereo to play back the original Batman theme or the Prince one.
I’m sure $150,000 is a bargain when it comes to a loaded bespoke superhero car, but you would have to be Bruce Wayne to afford this sucker. Oh well, I can dream.
(On another note, this hopped-up hotrod isn’t exactly a “babe magnet”, now, is it?!?!)
Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Here’s the late, great Joey Ramone doing a smashing job of singing the beautiful early John Cage piece The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs which is itself based on text by James Joyce. This comes from an Italian Cage tribute LP
Hear Robert Wyatt and Cathy Berberian’s versions of the same song after the jump…
Dangerous Minds pal Adam Parfrey’s new publication of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, now titled Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski
The Unabomber—who argued that technology is at fault for society’s current problems and pockmarked his argument with bombings for nearly two decades—has published a book through a small Port Townsend publisher.
But his publisher is short of the accolades book publishers usually place on their authors.
“He is a murderer, and he is a sociopath,” said Adam Parfrey, who published Technological Slavery by the now-imprisoned Theodore J. Kaczynski.
But Parfrey said in an interview Monday that Kaczynski “is also provocative and intelligent.
“He is a genius and a very good writer who can add to the discussion about technology,” said Parfrey.
Kaczynski, 68, sent 16 package bombs between 1978 and 1995 which exploded, killing three people and injuring 23.
He blackmailed The New York Times and The Washington Post into publishing his manifesto in 1995, saying that he would continue his bombings unless the papers ran the document.
After publication, Kaczynski’s brother recognized the writing style and made the identification that led to an arrest in a Montana cabin in 1996.
Technological Slavery is a reworked version of the original manifesto that includes Kaczynski’s other writings that have been edited only slightly, according to Parfrey.
Prior to publication Kaczynski, Parfrey and a University of Michigan professor corresponded frequently, and the author—serving a life sentence in a federal maximum-security prison in Colorado—provided strict instructions to his publisher.
“He had some very strong ideas about how he wanted the book to look,” Parfrey said.
“He did not want to have any typos, which were present in the last edition of the book.”
Below, a segment from ABC’s Nightline, when Ted Kaczynski was taken into custody, 1996:
Read more of Unabomber’s book finds publisher in Port Townsend (Peninsula News)
Surreal self-help guru Paul Crik’s been killin’ it lately with his basically nonsensical New Agey affirmations taking the online world by storm. This weekend, “Killin’ It with Paul Crik” was Johnny Dee’s top Internet pick of the week at the Guardian:
Killin’ It, in the words of internet philosopher Paul Crik, is “the soughtafter peaceful union of the free individual with functioning society” or perhaps “spiritual fullness unfettered by the reigns of institutionalism”. It is also Roger Federer’s audacious between-his-legs shot at the US Open or the woman who grew her fingertip back. Delivered in a series of blog entries and short YouTube clips, Crik may be taking a comedic swipe at America’s self-help industry, but he’s still full of life-enhancing brainhacks. Any situation, he says, can be faced by remembering three key phrases: “this is it”, “fuck it” and “it is what it is”; oh, and it’s important that you have all three phrases “in your heart”. Elsewhere he’s a bit more blatant, encouraging swearing at babies and comparing Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones to Yosemite Sam. Just by visiting this website you will, in fact, be killin’ it.
Agreed! Here’s his latest, a meditation on passive-aggressive behavior wherein Paul takes a deeper look at himself:
This is infuriating, I warn you: Watch in horror as Anderson Cooper takes this Islamaphobic hillbilly—her name is Renee Ellmers and she is running for Congress on the Republican ticket in North Carolina—to task over her incendiary political ad. At about 4:45 seconds in he just can’t take it anymore. It gets more painful from there.
Ellmers claims that the people in her district are “very concerned” about the “Muslim victory mosque” being built on “hallowed ground” and all that Republican talking points bullshit. I’d imagine that many, if not MOST of the people living in her district, care much more about unemployment, the economy, taxes, keeping a roof over their heads, insurance premiums, underwater mortgages, elder care costs, roads, and many other matters, than they do about an Islamic cultural center being built in a former Burlington Coat Factory store that is two *New York City* blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center (and down the street from popular topless bar, New York Dolls). Even Fox News has gone cold on the “Ground Zero Mosque” bullshit, but this dumbass thinks beating this dead horse is going to get her elected?
Clearly, Renee Ellmers doesn’t know anything about.. anything as she cheerfully admits over and over and over again. Like Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Ted Miller and Sharron Angle, this woman takes SMUG PRIDE IN HER OWN IGNORANCE. The Republicans in NC’s District 2 could not find anyone—not one single person with an IQ higher than a bag of wet hair—to run instead of this ignoramus? Obviously not!
THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS BECOMING. BE AFRAID. BE VERY, VERY AFRAID.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Republican extremist Rand Paul—who, natch, has had Sarah Palin fundraising for him—is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the same group who are supporting Nevada’s batshit crazy GOP Senate nominee, Sharron Angle, who seems to believe that abortion causes breast cancer and that Medicare is “immoral” and “evil” (but letting elderly people is what Christ would have wanted???)
Excerpted from “Rand Paul part of AAPS doctors’ group airing unusual views”:
Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, based in Tucson, Ariz., advocates conservative and free-market solutions on health care and a variety of other political issues.
But it also uses its medical journal and Website as forums for unorthodox medical views.
Maybe their blog is where Sharron Angle got her information for her comments about “autism” (I added the quotation marks, watch the video and see why. What galls me about this woman is how proud of herself she seems! She is PROUD of being ignorant. You can’t top that, she’s on a suicide mission!):
Group promoting Angle event: Medicare “evil” and “immoral,” Obama is a “covert hypnotist” and HIV may not cause AIDS (Las Vegas Sun)
Via Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, who is doing some very important work
My favorite listening of late has been the brilliant Christian Renou who has released a library of recordings under the name Brume.
Renou is a sound sculptor, which may sound a tad pretentious, but is an appellation that makes perfect sense when you listen to his breath-taking, disturbing, suspenseful and incredible music.
Here are two genius tracks to give you just a small flavour of his work.
More Brume after the jump…
Smarter than your average bear, the multi-talented writer David Quantick recently popped up on BBC’s Newsnight Review to rattle cutlass with the Music Industry.
Quantick is best known as the co-writer of the award-winning The Day Today, with Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, worked on Chris Morris’ Brass Eye, wrote and created the world’s first internet sitcom Junkies and most recently penned the rather excellent Miliband of Brothers for Channel 4.
In this short clip, pirate Quantick states:
The Music Industry is like the Mafia, but less efficient. And record industry executives are loud, nasty and bad for you like cocaine in human form. Remember the slogan ‘Home taping is killing music’? Well piracy isn’t the problem. What’s killing music is the Music Industry.
As Quantick points out, it’s about time these odious wastes of talent and their money grasping, hypocritical, fuckwit pop stars learned to live off a proper working wage. Just like most people do. It maybe a simplistic argument, but it cuts through the bull usually given out in defense of sheer naked greed. And if the Muisc Biz and its popsters can’t live off what it makes, well, as Mr Q. says:
Let bands earn what they deserve to earn. Take pop music away from Simon Cowell and the 79p download sites, because if the Music Industry dies, then like child labor, corporal punishment, and James Blunt’s career, maybe it deserves to die.
