Jack Vaughan: Culture

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:45:48 GMT

Hey the radio thing is over and out. Have moved blog to http://www.moontravellerherald.blogspot.com.

Cant say will be there that long. It has flaws of the technical order too. But it does not have the same flaws that tire me here. Hard to upload and synch. A site where question marks have replaced apostrophes going back three years. I voiced my complaints [on synch arch] to Radio HQ. But interaction is not human. Its mechanical mouse machine missives.

Looking back on Radio Weblog: Some decent stuff. But scattered. Scattered notes in desk drawers was what I hoped to better. This is only slightly more neat. Got complaints from my readers about too much computer stuff. But what the hell else can I write about? So may fork into two sites in future. Good news is RSS and XML are here and the Web is ready to explode again. Short Google! Remember the words of Manny Ramierez: "I dont believe in no curses. You make your own destination."

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 01:38:35 GMT

Atlantic slinks out of town
The Atlantic Magazine announced it is moving to Washington. D.C., and this has sent a fiery javelin into the mufti camps of Boston arts and letters. Alex Beam, the best writer in town, lampooned the move by creating a few working analogies and stretching them. His ludicrous vignettes include Harvard moving to Nebraska. He's right. If the New York Times were to move to New Jersey, nay, [as the Gints did that], to Indiana, the effect could not be more telling. This is sure the end of the road of something just like the closing of Chess records - or the move of Motown [or the Dodgers] to L.A. The Atlantic would be better off throwing in the towel, one feels.

This place could be a center, certainly for politics, science, technology, and art. Beats anyplace I've been from these points of view.

But Massachusetts has taken a lot as Texas has ascended. Boston was once the Hub of the Universe. No less, in its mind at least. It was the brains and [mostly Puritan] moral compass for America, as New York was really about commerce [well the kind of commerce where the money would break a sweat]. You probably heard the joke describing U.S. newspapers: The Washington Post is read by the people that run the country, the New York Times is read by the people who think they run the country. The Boston Globe is run by the people who used to run the country. Guess ustabe is better than never was. Boston defined American culture .. but now, maybe, it is most defined as a sports town. And save haven for Senators red-nosed Kennedy and pouty Kerry.

Anyway, today was Patriot's Day, a true state holiday. Unlike Evacuation Day, which is only Boston only. Eat your heart out world, these are our days. On both, the boys of Mission Hill start early.

I always like Harpers better than the Atlantic. But I got a feeling that its offices were there on the edge of the Public Garden. Still, those offices moved a while ago. Never got accepted by Atlantic. But once Jeff Hull asked for some of my poetry [Phantom jets flew constantly over the city], which he cut up and applied to his wilderbeast grey-black-and-white oil paintings, and those were hung in the Atlantic antechamber. Hail, Atlantic!

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:56:48 GMT

Apologies to friends and colleagues .. I took some excerpts from recent personal emails to populate this page. Strategies for blogging are still experimental.

I've been searching
Seems like there has been a tremendous amount of activity in the 'search' world all of a sudden. I have had an interesting time working with Amazon's A9 site and MyJeeves. Also, the commentaries about these efforts have been of interest. "Searchblog" [http://battellemedia.com/] is especially deep with info. It was new to me .. but there is a lot there about publishers' uses of search. Not all is new, of course; some of this reminds one of Northern Light circa 1998.

Related
Searchblog
A9
myjeeves
vivisimo
clusty
LookSmart buys Furl -ZDNet, Sept 24, 2004

Waterman
Recently shook hands with Dick Waterman who managed Muddy, Bonnie Raitt, Skip James, Son House, many others… Carrie Bell was playing good stuff … It was the Boston Blues Fest …. So, Dick Waterman’s got cool book out based on his experiences [see link below]. We linked to Smithsonian stuff before from this site. From Herald piece, Waterman talking on Son House performing: "He hypnotized himself to another time and place. When the song was over, he'd bow his head, nod, bring his eyes up, refocus. It was mesmerizing. I knew I had a majestic responsibility to make sure this man's greatness was seen and heard."

Am listening today to John Hurt, Son House, Skip James… reading same [via Erick Sacheim], and Corso and Su Shih … also discovered Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant.

Related
Waterman photos put legends in focus -- Boston Herald, Sept 23, 2004
Dick Waterman site
Google search on Ray Charles

http://www.bobdylan.com/index.html

Chronicles
You! Can you believe Dylan actually wrote a book about his life? And cryptic curtains will part? It's daunting so far to read [Newsweek excerpt] as he points to how fans messed up his attempts at happy home.. and I know we as young youths panthered after him, and were not adverse to entering his alley, just like the dweebs of Aquarius he describes. Sorry! I was so much younger then!

Related
Bobdylan.com
Excerpt - Newsweek, Sept 29, 2004

Quoted:
"A record seemed like a magical artifact -- somehng that came fom America." -Sting, Lennon's Jukebox, PBS

Noted
Toutatis asteroid gets real close - BBC, Sept 29, 2004
IBM supercomputer sets world speed record - NYT Sept 28, 2004
Spector of Phil - NME, Sept 28, 2004
Lowell celebrates Kerouac 2004
Tommorowland DVD is coming NPR

Sun, 19 Sep 2004 18:54:11 GMT

HOUND DOG’S HOWLIN AMPS HUMMIN’

The handful of Hound Dog Taylor records have seemed so far to suffice to paint a picture of the Chicago Blues guitarist. He spun a very concise and intense sound, like his lineal antecedents Elmore James and JB Hutto. We only had a few records, but they were pure, and might be enough. If you’d seen him play, you could flesh it out. Yet, it turns out, a bunch of live stuff was in the can – festering, because the production quality of the sound seemed deficient. And this stuff comes out now and IT MUST BE HEARD. The recording is called: “Release the Hound” and it derives mostly from performances in 1974 and 1975 in Cleveland, Evanston, Cambridge and Sydney.

The stuff was sitting around because it sounded rough – but the world – witness the obits last week for Johnny Ramone has become a place more use to the rough sound. With Hound Dog and his House Rockers, the amps were on 11 and the buzz was palpable. But, like Elmore James before him, amplification I was not there just to amplify, it was a means to discover new harmonics.

Hot tracks: What I say? Wild about you, baby, She’s gone, It hurts me too, Things don’t work out right. It hurts me too, if you compare it to Tampa Red’s, then Elmore’s, then Hound Dog’ version, provides an instant lesson in the evolution of abstraction in this blues form. And the direction was always toward higher abstract representation of a feeling.

The House Rockers were a stripped down ensemble on the order of today’s White Stripes. Hound Dog on guitar, Brewer Phillips on guitar, Ted Harvey on drums.You’re your missing a classic piece or two. Don’t worry about the line up they say…go for the sound. Brewer Phillips played a second guitar, but mostly used it for bass parts. But often Brewer used it, something like Jimmie Rogers did in the original Muddy Waters ensemble - for something else altogether. The fourth member of the band at times was those amps, violently humming. But this guitar and blues vocal approach of Hound Dog is what makes it vastly compelling.

Related
Hound Dog - on amazon
Johnny Ramone, 55 - NYT [reg req], Sept 17, 2004

Noted
Back in Korea - NYT, Sept 18, 2004
Sky Capt Reviewed - NYT, Sept 17, 2004
Cacophony of India - NYT, Sept 17, 2004

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Listening to Hound Dog today conjured up a blues:

Maudie

Calling, calling

In the night

Calling, calling

In the night

Let’s go riding

Where the moon

is shining bright

Come with me

Leave the child at home

Come with me

Leave the child at home

I want to ride with you

On the 41 road

Off the highway

We turn the bright lights off

Off the highway

Turn the bright lights off

Turn on the radio

Hear the music from the north.

All night

Counting nothing but the stars

Counting

Counting nothing but the stars

Following amber old chief Pontiac

Ornamenting this old car.

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:52:22 GMT

Making copies
Copying is the engine of civilization excerpt. When C was 10 his favorite posession was a toy typewriter. Later he worked in a pirnt shop and publised Amateur Chemists' Press - he was impressed by the amount of labor involved in getting something into print. - Smithsonian. Aug 2004

Unrelated
The myth of unskilled labor - SF Chronicle, August 29, 2004
Poet Czeslaw Milosz, passes -IHT, Aug 27, 2004
Army chiefs of staff readings lists, or wherefor art thou, seven pillars of wisdom?

Persepolis II
Graphic novel followup a letter to a friend of correct proportion

Hubble we hear you!

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 01:50:50 GMT

A round town

Every town should have a columnist with a voice. When I first got to Boston that columnist was George Frazier. These days, I would submit, that columnist is the Boston Globe’s Alex Beam. People ask me how things are in Boston what with the Democratic Convention and such, and I cant say much – all I have seen as evidence of convention is a gigantic armored truck parked behind police headquarters, which is near my home. But Alex’s “Welcome to Planet Boston,” done as part of a Boston Globe Convention special tells what this event means to this town, this Hub of the Universe, and how we feel toward our visitors. -thebostonglobe.com, July 26, 2004

The Bomb and the moon landings

They were triumphs of physical science, all-out assaults on the frontier of what was possible, waged with military-style organization and huge amounts of government money. They were here, and then were gone. - NYT, July 27, 2004

Sun, 27 Jun 2004 04:15:32 GMT

Eno is Eno

We face a future where almost anything could happen. Will we be crippled by global warming, weapons prolifersation and species depletion, or libribreated by space travel, world government and molecule-sized computers?

As the bloggist might say: I’ have a lot of interesting projects going’ on and I haven’t been able to update my blog lately. On automatic pilot. So writing about Eno.

Didn’t think too much of Eno really – British rock stars with one name are not top of my list. Just picked up on Roxy [circa 1975] after he left, and got the sense that he was the John Cale of the group. Arty. Discordant. Okay that is important to the ultimate course of the group’s sound but good that he went off thought I. Off with Fripp to make music that only competes well with my refrigerator’s sounds.

Came across the first Roxy Music album [‘It’s Roxy music’] a bit of a while ago. Jake bought it. This first album is really unique .. came out in 1972 when still very much was happening. It is rocking. Includes the key Roxy stuff: 2HB, Bitters End, Virginia Plain, If There Is Something. Old Brian Ferry kept trying to recut them but the first cut was the deepest. Connections flying all over the place here. Basically discovering something buried to me.

Anyway one of the most telling comments of all time is: “Be here now.” I think Ram Das Albert came up with that. I remember it best as said when I reunited once with Mike DeMark in NYC. Twas said on Bret Harte’s Brooklyn Bridge and brilliant blue sky then. I think he was telling a funny story. Anyhow, a variation on Be Here Now comes via Brian Eno, who has on the Web considered “The Long Now.” Get into now but realize it lasts. He was struck visiting an artist friend who had an insular existence in a modern studio above a dilapidated swath of borough.

Read it and you may be struck that here is a British rock star with thoughts. And Jake tells me Eno in fact calls himself Brian Eno, uses two names, thank you. [Real name is Edward Fincke.] So I vote for B.E. We are all forgiven. The long good-Bye for now. Jack

Mon, 31 May 2004 18:39:32 GMT

Dash gone, remembered
Watergate Committee Chief Counsel Sam Dash died last week, same day as Archibald Cox. Bloggers might agree: This seems to mark the beginning of the end of another era - that is: the time the Nation will share with individuals with original and personal memory of Watergate. The event was perhaps as close as America ever came to falling to a midnight coup. Cox and Dash are chief among the lawyers who stood for good in the days when the bitter and conniving bunch of so-called California Mafia of Halderman, Erlichman and Nixon took over the White House. Once I met Dash.

Sun, 16 May 2004 03:29:33 GMT

Wiener The saga continues
The efforts of Norbert Wiener’s biographers always will be shadowed by I Am a Mathematician. This, his own biography, is likely to overwhelm other attempts to write his story - He was able as a writer, engaging personally, and he ably perceived threads of significance as he viewed his own life.

A fair helping of subdued vanity aside, the threading never seems overstressed. This is important because, on the face of it, Wiener’s work, which ranged from estimations of Brownian motion to artillery shell trajectories and beyond may appear disparate, even topsy-turvy, in the light of history.

Unrelated
»US spyworks as dysmunctional system NYT, May 14,2004
»A vast machine: Weatherstation earth-Sci, May 14, 2004
» More Science essays in full text
»Voting machine maker Diebold's CEO endorsed Bush - NYT, May 12, 2004
»Frank Gehry Goes to M.I.T - NYT May 13, 2004
»I.B.M. Joins Stanford to Find Uses for Electron Spin -NYT, Apr 26, 2004
»Travel & Adventures of Serendipity by Merton on amazon
»On the Shoulders of Giants by Merton on amazon

Deaths
Hubert Selby Jr. Dies at 75 -NYT, Apr 27, 2004

One year ago on this Radio weblog
Derby Day
Gould threads
Decoration Day

Also
Abstract Strange flavored blast news
Late Edition - ABSTRACT - North Korea's state media reports that women in Ryongchon, site of deadly railroad explosion, ran into blazing buildings to save treasured portraits of Kim Jong Il before searching for their children; such tales of sacrifice are staple of country's propaganda mythology; speculation about explosion is swirling; Kim Jong Il has not been seen or heard from since accident; Chinese state television reports that he left Beijing mission for home on Apr 21, and South Korean reports say his train passed through Ryongchon about 'eight hours before blast;' North Korea refuses to allow foreign journalists to visit site, and has even ignored Chinese offers of treatment for victims at hospitals in Dandong; South Korea is sending aid by ship after North Korea refuses to allow relief goods to arrive by truck; Why were so many children injured, why were so many blinded? Were they lined up facing the tracks when the deadly railroad explosion occured? If they werent lined up for Baby Kim, were they lined up for Daddy Kim? -NYT, April 29, 2004

My Cyberarchive
The Apollo Guidance Computer site At MIT
NASA Office of Logic Desgn - A scientific study of the problems of digital engineering for space flight systems,
with a view to their practical solution. 25-years ago
Between Human and Machine - Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology) by David A. Mindell
Andre Marie Ampere - The Free Dictionary.com
Cybernetics timeline - The Americn Society of Cybernetcs
The Cybernetics Society - Call for authors
Society for the History of Technology -Say no more
History of Recent Science & Technology site At MIT
Spymasher described -Images Journal

Let the Gehry MIT slide show begin

Thu, 06 May 2004 01:33:51 GMT

War turns pornographic, but punishment due
President George W. Bush said U.S. soldiers who humiliated, abused or killed prisoners of war will be punished. Bush gave interviews to two Arabic-language television stations. He stopped short of apologizing for the conduct of U.S. soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, where naked, hooded Iraqis, confined in geometric constructions and rendered in base colors, were pornographically humiliated. Bush told Al-Hurra, a U.S.-sponsored station, the photos were "abhorrent," which means " offensive to the mind" or "disgusting especially to the senses."
At right a portion of a tryptich by Francis Bacon

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 19:24:56 GMT

Baking cakes and making modeling software
While listening to the radio show "All Things Considered" in traffic recently, I was becharmed by, of all things, a story about 1950's-era U.S. homemakers. More specifically, about the processed food industry's attempts to displace homemade dinners and desserts.

While the easy-bake cake mixes were one of the many industrial advances enabled by World War II, the cake mixes were slow to be accepted by women consumers of that day. General Mills (not a real general) hired Austrian psychologist Ernest Dichter to study consumer sentiment; Dichter concluded that a cake mix with dried eggs did not leave the home baker with enough to do. The solution was to call for fresh eggs in the recipe.

I knew this story well, but not its ultimate source. It was a very favorite story of Ray Weiss, a longtime reporter and editor on ICs and embedded systems. -on adtmag, Apr 21, 2004

RELATED
Ray Weiss: In Memoriam - ED Online, Feb 4, 2002
Something from the Oven - NPR, April 19, 2004
When flower invaded the Kitchen - NYT, April 14, 2004

UNRELATED
Up to 10 Killed By Riyadh Car Bomb - VOA News, Apr 21, 2004
Jordo king snubs Bush - Reuters, Apr 20, 2004

YOU GOT TO BREAK
SOME EGGS

Fri, 16 Apr 2004 01:44:05 GMT

Monolith Bahar-al-Assad; Jibla, Syria, 2004

The 'term' Iraq in medieval times denoted a geographic area – a special one between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where irrigation culture made the Persian monarchy wealthy. To the south and west was desert, and Arab tribes.

Until 602, this area had been guarded by the Lakhmid kings of Al-SYra, who were themselves Arabs but who ruled a settled buffer state. After their era ended, nomad incursions became the rule.

In the north was the Byzantine empire edge, following roughly the modern Syria-Iraq border and continuing northward into modern Turkey. The inhabitants, as today, were quite mixed. [Source: Britannica]

When buffers overflow their psychic boundaries, rage is feared by peace lovers. In Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, the simmer and pop of ethnic churn cycles always held the threat of breakout. Jerusalem has had these qualities. In fact, Iraq post Saddham is supposed to be a model. News goes bang in the middle but it happens at the edges too.

The Turkish Foreign minister Abdullah Gul said " we follow with great concern the situation ( in Iraq). It is a very grave escalation of the situation." Gul criticized Washington without naming it. He said " when one gets into the complete structure of the region, events might flare up and sudden escalation takes place.

News with the strongest impact right now is centered in Falujjah. It is almost universally seen as a major shift in the the Iraq War-Police Action. Something expected a year ago is happening now, after the more formal war. Americans and Arabs [and Persians, and Europeans, and Asians] have much currency invested in the situation. It could spill.

So what’s happening on the edge of the bulging buffer? In Jordan, authorities nabbed several suspected terrorists and seized two cars filled with explosives, the state television reported Saturday — the latest arrests involving an al-Qaida-linked cell that targeted public institutions and the U.S. Embassy. Meanwhile, there is friction on the Syrian border, with the US repeatedly accusing the Syrian authorities of not doing enough to prevent fighters from crossing into Iraq. Last month, Kurds in Syria rioted after several were shot by police during a football match. Saudi security forces, battling a wave of al Qaeda violence, killed a suspected Islamic militant and wounded another in a shootout Monday in the capital Riyadh, Saudi state media reported. Last month security forces shot dead Khaled Ali Ali Haj, a Yemeni man believed to be a top al Qaeda operative in the kingdom, as well as another militant in a shootout in Riyadh. [Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's birthplace, is battling a wave of militant violence blamed on the network. ]

[Includes material from wires]

SUBSEQUENT
Jordan snubs Bush - Reuters, Apr 20, 2004

Up to 10 Killed By Riyadh Car Bomb -
VOA News, Apr 21, 2004

Sun, 07 Mar 2004 02:42:24 GMT

Move over Rover .. don't touch that grocery bag .. hotter?
Japanese fascinated by robots. Goes back to the days when we in the U.S. were afraid they were taking over. Since then, the 80s, adrift in deflation, that culture's interest in robots and gadgets has become a source of amusement. [Check out the outtakes of Lost in Translation - the Nippo-Americo encounter flick - the robot part was too funny to stay in the movie.] Yet today, Japan makes progress with pretty useful people-washer robots [though Filipinos are ready to come in on visas and take the part], while #1-We-Try-Harder-U.S. focuses on robots of the kind that remove bombs in our Iraqi Police Action. Not forgetting our robot on Mars, who has provided hours of amusement, and scientific insight, but no bath.

Related
Robots for Japans Aged -NYT [reg req], Mar 5, 2004
Robots for Amerca's Iraq police action -NYT [reg req], Mar 5, 2004
Mars today -Wash Post [UPI] Mar 5, 2004

CLICK TO ENLARGE
IMAGE ABOVE

Saw transcendent music on the Tube this week
First, Allison Krause waltzed into the Oscars..

.. As if from a dream like Beatrice into the Wilderness. She sang with Sting [on hurdy-gurdy it appeared to me] and Elvis "We hardly miked ye" Costello. Music was from Cold Mountain soundtrack, one of our fave raves of late 03. Hadn't realized Costello was the author of Civil War paean- 'The Scarlet Tide.'

Second, discovered Joe Brown.

We are watching "Concert for George [Harrison]" on PBS. And couldn't pick out this person in the line of geriatric rock stars on stage. But film maker knows this, and explains that Joe Brown was a first-generation British rocknroller, that the Beatles opened for him and backed him on Northern tours back in the day, and now he seems on the order of an Irish pub rocker.

So, with a slew of stars available, who do they pick to close out the show but Joe? - who does "I'll See You in My Dreams" on ukulele with flower petals falling from the ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall and Ravi Shankhar's orchestra doo-wopping in orange saffron behind. Bliss in the deep.

Martha Stewart heading to stir
She strayed perhaps from the narrow and she'll be doing time, and her Omnimedia empire is headed to Goodwill but Martha is still my domestic mentor. To invent a company on par with Walt Disney from homemaking .. that takes more than melon balls.

Watching Martha cook, and sometimes watching her with the most absurd projects -making a pet rug, making a tire swing - was TV like I liked. Old TV, good tips, talking to you like they were humans, sharing information. Gretchen Colnick in a wide hat and lipstick smile and polka dot dress used to do it in Milwaukee when I was a boy. And it was the same kick. Martha just took it further, as you can do in this era. Of course you can take it up to a half-a billion and then bomb on your way to billionaireville.

Related
WTMJ TV schedule circa 1957

Also
Glenn bashes Bush space 'plan' -NYT, Mar 6, 2004
Gene meister Venter all at sea - Mar 5, 2004
How Catapults married sciene with politics -NYT Feb, 24, 2004

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:12:37 GMT

Pound and Adams
Among the nation's Founding Fathers, John Adams is one of those least likely to be called an icon. No 50-dollar bill or 10-dollar bill, no quarter or nickel now bears his visage. Despite the popular work of historian David McCullough, ensuing national attention, and an increase in visitors to the Adams' Quincy homestead, Adams still lags in an icon sweepstakes dominated by Franklin, Washington and Jefferson.

Related
Pound makes the Library of America - Boston Phoenix, Jan 2, 2004
Poems and Translations -Amazon

Unrelated
The annotated St Stephen -UCSC

McCullough's
Adams on
Amazon

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:51:03 GMT

Tom the Revelator
I guess I have a shoolboy's affection for St John. Our deepest ties were forged in school. He is my patron saint. John was a writer. So am I.

John and I are tied by duress. On Halloween, at St John Nepomuk's [a Bohemian John] in Racine, the First Graders had to dress as their saints, a project my mother womanfully threw herself into. She made a robe out of a bed sheet, and I was St John, with trepidation, sent off to the school bus stop.

There, and worse later on the bus, I endured the taunts of the kids - even the bus driver made fun of me. My classmates on the main more wisely waited until they got to school to don their saint-man garb. Oh how I suffered.

Anyway John the Revelator is hip just now. Thanks to Jack White of the White Stripes. He has revived in his road show the spiritual "Who's that writing? John the Revelator" Taken probably from Son House [the Rube Wadell's revived the number as well a couple of years ago] it tells an episodic bible story in which the act of writing is enthroned spiritually, and John is the writer hero.

Unfortunately the John the revelator revival is nuanced by a bestselling tome known as Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. Pagels' book concentrates in a way on the Gospel of Thomas, which has been lumped in the Gnostic Gospel Dead See Scroll bin, which, long ago, was refused entry to the formal gospel pantheon of Matthew, Mark, Luke and old John. [As always with these things there is some dispute: to wit: that John the Evangelist the late gospel writer was the same person as John the Revelator the even later Revelations writer.]

John's Gospel was written much later than those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke [the Synoptics] , and it has always seemed more wedded to theory and less to story. Pagel extends the argument by citing specific differences between John and Thomas, suggesting that John's was more of a work of theory intended to counter theory implied by Thomas.

There is a beauty in Thomas, for Church Fathers some of it was thought a dangerous beauty. Like John of the Cross he enjoyed a popularity in the '50s and '60s [an interview with Dennis Hopper was where I first heard about this stuff, it hadn't come up at St John Nepomuk's.] The most moving passage Pagel cites is:

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Rimbaud, even, might say 'amen'. This inward-looking 'within' stuff didn't sit to well with the Pops, who didn't want the religion to emanate from too many distinct selves. I think most of us however could see some truth in this passage, something we've seen in ourselves, historical personages, street people. Thomas had a thing going on .. and I am a little sad that John's work is seen in apposition to this.

[I picked up Beyond Belief at the Massachusetts Bible Society bookstore on Bromfield street. This place is a real treasure. Bromfield street buildings still evoke the old Republic Boston of Poe, Holmes, James [excuse the waxing]. It's near Old City Hall, Pi Alley. The store itself is totally dedicated to the Word with a capital "W". Pretty somber. One time, all book stores had more of this flavor.]

Related
Pagel's "Beyond Belief" at amazon

Unrelated
Have you had your monads today? -catholpedia
Jay McShann approached his piano -NYT, reg req, Jan 3, 2004
New Year's Patti Smith-NYT, reg req, Jan 3, 2004

Also
Scientists coin New Year's theories -WSJ.com, fee req, Jan 2, 2004
So, John Brockman, a New York literary agent, writer and impresario of the online salon Edge.com [at least falutin if not high falutin], figures it is time for more scientists to get in on the whole naming thing. As a New Year's exercise, he asked scores of leading thinkers in the natural and social sciences for "some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you." Harvard University psychologist Steven Kosslyn is known for his work at the border of mind and brain, including placebo effects. Hence, Kosslyn's First Law: "Body and mind are not as separate as they appear to be; not only does the state of the body affect the mind, but vice-versa." We see this as a theory with legs.

Sciam
Spirit lands on Mars Jan 5, 2003, NYT reg req -Jan 5, 2004
Scoop: Comet Dust -NYT reg req Jan 3, 2004
Earth Attacks! Day 1

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 04:42:56 GMT

The Blob
Took a walk to church on a Sept Sunday in L.A., and found by chance the new L.A. Philharmonic building of Frank Gehry (which opened formally a month or so later). Had my new handy digital camera - photo at right can be enlarged by clicking on it.

Of course I'd read of Gehry, and this building. So it wasn't totally strange. But the sheets and hunks of apparent metal in the Sunday Sun were really dazzling. Gehry is out there! No small surprise the LA Philharmonic building is dedicated to Walt Disney.

Had a chance to dig into the topic of what this hunk and dazzle is about in a book by ADT contributing editor John K. Waters.

This copiously illustrated survey posits architect Frank Gehry in an unfolding evolution of a phenomenon described as "Blob." The book, 'Blobitecture', shows the antecedents to Gehry, and parallel movements that have spawned such notable industrial designs as the Eames chairs and the Apple iMac.

Form-follows-function was a stringent dictate on designers for many recent years. Advances in computers and computation [not to mention composite materials] have allowed Gehry to visualize designs that would not, on the face of it, seem to hold up, and come to up with the means to make these buildings - drooping, swooping, and so on - stand.

Waters notes that this style arose as something of an anti-machine impulse, yet it could not have occurred without machine technology, specifically the computer technology that could provide underpinnings for 'improbably fluid forms.'

The author uncovers some things that surprise. A Disneyland Monsanto house of the future [which could be a happy home for Zippy the Pinhead], could not be readily demolished after its stay as a futurist grotto was at an end, Waters notes. The wrecking ball bounced off the [perhaps fiberglass] Monsanto house, and good old sledge hammers had to do the dirty deed!

There have been a lot of movements, some that vaporize in the blink of an eye. Does Blob as a serious movement hold up to scrutiny? Here, Waters takes a journalist's tack, and leaves the final judgment largely to the reader and future historians.

A different approach than the movie The Blob [from whence the movement gains its name it seems], where, as the movie trailer had it, "there's no stopping the blob [a "blood-curdling threat"] as it goes from town to town."

Missing perhaps is a look at Gaudi, and Dali [especially the latter's work at the 1939 World's Fair] - two individuals that melted a building or two in their day. I guess I say this because I can recall when I first saw Gehry's now famous Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain [depicted gloriously in Blobitecture], that's what I thought of. Waters does point to Eero Saarinen and his TWA Terminal as a potent precursor of Gehry, but photos he includes are of the Saarinen's St. Louis arch, to my mind less of a pointer to Frank. But the book on the main is quite generous in its illustration of things blob like.

Saarinen and TWA resonate [bing!] especially for me. Once upon a dreary red-eye flight from L.A. to Boston by way of New York, I ended up with a three-hour stay-over at Saarinen's Idlewild [now Kennedy] TWA terminal. I knew him by name somehow because his wife was the art critic on Today when I was a tike, and I feel I even recall the day that he passed. The Today crew had condolences for Mrs. S. As it's been said everything is integrated about the design of the terminal, what swoop, and it was fun to woozily view the marvel. I ike to find some redemption in the useless trip, and sometimes that means encountering striking architecture. The TWA terminal at Kennedy, the Union Station in Nashville, Wright's V. C. Morris Gift Shop in S.F.

Related
Blobitecture -Amazon
Frank Lloyd Wright - V. C.Morris Gift Shop
The Blob site

Unrelated
Collector, Clodhoppers, Little Harvey Hull
Record collector Joe Bussard has recordings that date to the 19th century. He keeps most of his treasure in a basement near Frederick, Md. It is a variation of story we've heard before but which is unique ... he heard Jimmie Rogers. "That was like a bomb --boom." - said. The walls are lined with records, all in identical, unlabeled cardboard sleeves. He doesn't have a filing system; he has them all memorized. Page links to "I Got A Woman On Sourwood Mountain" by Earl Johnson and his Dixie Clodhoppers (1927), "Original Stack O'Lee Blues" by Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull on the Black Patti label. NPR.org, Dec 24, 2003
Bussard site where you can create your own tapes custom there for reasonable price.

Song sheets ..
.. Are an early example of a mass medium and today they offer a unique perspective on the political, social, and economic life of the time, especially during the Civil War. LOC.gov

BEWARE OF THE BLOB

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 18:15:44 GMT

From Bob Dylan's Statement on Johnny Cash 9/26/03
Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me. In '55 or '56, "I Walk the Line" played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the earth. It was so powerful and moving. It was profound, and so was the tone of it, every line; deep and rich, awesome and mysterious all at once. "I Walk the Line" had a monumental presence and a certain type of majesty that was humbling. Even a simple line like "I find it very, very easy to be true" can take your measure. We can remember that and see how far we fall short of it. ...he is what the land and country is all about, the heart and soul of it personified and what it means to be here; and he said it all in plain English. I think we can have recollections of him, but we can't define him any more than we can define a fountain of truth, light and beauty. Read more

RFID on the march - ADTmag.com
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will rip through retail and merchandising IT operations like an invading army. Or, RFID will simmer on the back burner - and flame out after some modest improvements in bar-code scanning appear. Take your pick. Like any new technology, RFID is a gamble.

Unreleated
Power probe looks to Jovian moons -BBC, Dec 9, 2003
'A drafty old house' - The magnetosphere is disparaged, ABC, Dec 4, 2003
Piecing together Joseph Cornell - NPR.org, Nov 26, 2003

From Phil's old time radio site.
Lots of useful radio stuff.

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 17:04:35 GMT

His kick was legendary - Warren Spahn, 92 -MJS Nov 24, 2003
I saw Warren Spahn win his 300th game. Gino Cimoli caught the ball for the last out. If I had met Warren - and I just missed him at a card show by a half an hour a few years ago - I would have asked him if he remembered that last out. He was the winningest left-hander in major-league history ... 20-game winner 13 times ... two no-hitters, including one at age 40 ... Cy Young Award winner in 1957 ... 14-time All Star ... Earned Purple Heart and Bronze Star in World War II. Spahn completed 382 of his 665 career starts (57.4%), including at least 20 in 13 different seasons ... he became the oldest 20-game winniner in major league history at age 42. Casey Stengel called farming Spahn out [he would not brush back Pee Wee Reese] the worst mistake he ever made. Spahn fought at the Battle of the Bulge and in the battle for the bridge at Remagen, Germany. In Boston in the lte '40s the mantra was "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain."

Unrelated
MIT engineers mine for new materials with a computer -MIT.edu, Nov 18, 2003
Solar outbursts provide “perfect storms” -MIT.edu Nov 18, 2003
First Bose-Einstein condensate made of fermions this way comes -NewSci, Nov 13, 2003
Persistence of memory in drop breakup -SciDaily, Nov 13, 2003
Jack White on Cold Mountain soundtrack with Allison Krause, others, NME.com, Oct, 2003
White Stripes review on Radio Weblog -Apr 13, 2003
NOVA's "Magnetic Storm" program

Warren Spahn

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 23:01:38 GMT

Dillinger days in Racine
When I was a lad working a night shift in the Wax plant, I started to converse with a fellow worker lad about John Dillinger. I don't remember how or why, or the exact conversation, but I more or less called Dillinger 'a true revolutionary'. The myth building was in force, Bonnie & Clyde had been described as folk heroes - I was toeing the line of the party of nostalgia I guess.

Anyway, Eddie G., the other guy says something like "Well I don't think he's so great, he shot my uncle." Which sort of shut me up cause here was a different and genuine perspective on this.

When Dillinger came to Racine he robbed the American Trust on Main St. And Ed's uncle was a teller. Dillinger and gang got involved in shoot out, absconded and as I here tell it..put a couple of customers and bank officers on his running board as a shield when he left town.

A fan of the Untouchables I think I also had a romantic view of Frank Nitti. Of course, my Italian American friends cued me in: He was a bad guy, his like might take over an Italian family's Wisconsin farm for days on time when hiding out.

In Racine now there is a historical display on 'celebrating Dillinger'. The fellow is becoming ever more myth. Fewer Eddies to say "hey I dont think he was so great."

I remember: Waiting in line with a nation of kids for streamed down 4th st by Main and staring at the American Trust clock, and the alarm, and imagining Dillinger days. Celebrate Dillinger -RJTimes, Nov 10, 2003

Unrelated
Kasparov versus Deep Fritz -New Sci, Nov 19, 2003, 2003, New Sci
Long-time EET Editor, George Rostky -Nov 13, 2003
Two words: "Plastic Memory" - New Sci, Nov 13, 2003
On bias as a phase of civilization -NYTimes, Nov 9, 2003 [reg req/fee for arc]

Cant you see that I am trying to tell
you I love you?
Studying bout the blues -PBS.org [pdf]
Studying on the blues -PBS.org [html]

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:44:44 GMT

Warming oceans melt polar caps - SBS, Australia Nov 1, 2003
Two new reports appear to confirm that warming oceans are hastening the disappearance of ice on the polar caps.
Ice shelf site

Lasers uncover Stonehenge markings - BBC, Nov 1, 2003
High-tech lasers have been used to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge.

It's out: Hedgehog, Fox and the Magister's Pox ..
.. or Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities by Stephen Jay Gould. The titular hedgehog and fox refer to the classic dichotomy of persistence opposed to agility of thought, which Gould uses as a backbone in comparing, contrasting, and balancing science and the humanities. On Amazon
Gould Threads - Moon Traveller

Eyeless in Iraq Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in NYRB, Oct 28, 2003
Rumsfeld Doesn't Know: Has He Lost His Mojo? -IOL, South Africa, Oct 31, 2003
America, A History in Verse by Ed Sanders, an excerpt

Guston retrospective on view at Met - Oct 31, 2003
Our recent brief on Phil Guston and Dick Nixon

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:04:11 GMT

Breeders Cup Turf: It was a dead heat, Ma
HIGH CHAPARRAL (IRE) stalked between horses then along the inside, split rivals into the second turn, came out into the stretch and rallied gamely while between foes late under urging to share the win. JOHAR unhurried and angled in a bit off the rail early, moved up outside on the second turn, came five wide into the stretch and closed willingly three deep on the line.
FALBRAV (IRE) held on gamely inside the top pair but was edged late.[Meanwhile, my horse, BRIGHT SKY (IRE), pulled along the inside early, was in tight between horses into the first turn, chased between foes, split rivals into the second turn, continued toward the inside and weakened.] Farewell punting until 2004!
The Daily Telegraph report -Oct 27, 2003
Complete Breeders Cup charts -Oct 27, 2003

You Are There
In the 1950s, the CBS-TV program You Are There dramatized historic events as if they were happening live. This was very jarring for me as a seven-year-old. Joe Stalin was dead, but Walter Cronkite could interview him. He could really get in the Kremlin to get that story. But how? Time travel and TV were a mix, and a muddle on my mind. Cronkite now an NPR commentator, reflects in an Oct 27, 2003 audio clip on NPR.org, on a surprising dual mission for the early You Are There. This and other essays by Cronkite.

Billy Buckner Ball
Saw a good quote in sports section from Old Cubs star Bill Buckner: "Sports are for teaching young people to deal with success and failure." [That was my impression when I was a Little League coach but several parents felt quite differently.] Buckner in article by Stan Grossfeld says he knows his Red Sox error "is part of my obituary," but the rest is up to the media.What does he want on his gravestone? "Just a bunch of dirt. Make sure you got me covered up."
on Boston Globe site -Oct 25, 2003 [link may expire]

Unrelated
Wolfowitz, in Iraq, sees mixed picture -CSM, Oct 27, 2003 From our archive: Wolf at Door
Bill Shoemaker, 72 NYT, Oct 12, 2003
Ex-F.B.I. Agent Charged in '81 Telex Exec Killing -NYT Oct 10, 2003
Does an Editors Pencil Ruin a Web Log? [sic] -NYT [fee-based archive], Sept 29, 2003
I0 - the Internet for devices -OReilly.net

JOHAR [FOREGROUND] DOES
NOT BEAT HIGH
CHAPPARAL BY A NOSE
THE TELEGRAPH

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 16:40:57 GMT

House of Hafidh - To file in L.A., to die in Iraq
Got out to Los Angeles to Gartner Conf on Application Development and covered with Rich Seeley in a series of news briefs, with other stuff to follow. California was on one level chugging along with people driving on the freeways and boulevards to jobs - me, in an SUV of all things, one of them - though, while the S.Cal. Economy is edging up faster than S.F. in north, the chugging included less aeronautics jobs than in past.

Talked about the old aeronautics days with Sam E., who recalled the time when most of the neighbors on Summit, like Sam E. Sr., worked for Lockheed. Mexican Reilly, and Chester Reilly and his buddy coming home with lunch boxes together, and then working on the yard. These days are gone. The long flat Boeing-style plants are for rent with parking lots tumbleweeded.

On another level it's all about the Recall. News stories before and after the Appeals Court decision to stage the election. News stories before and after the candidates' debate. Can't wrap my head about it, as they say these days. Jay Leno had 90 candidates in his audience on Tuesday evening.

On L.A. trip was touched by much. One thing that touched me was the death of L.A. Times reporter Mark Fineman on Tuesday Sept 23, 2003. Covering the military police action in Iraq, he felt a chest pain, and then died of a heart attack, apparently engaging sources in conversation til about the end. With Rose of Sharon upon us, let us picture that he moved on up a little higher in the cosmic order. Read more

Going on also was a minibrouhaha concerning a Sacramento Bee writer whose weblog on the recall was called in for an edit by editors. Apparently web denizens feel an edited blog is no blog at all. Kind of recalls Tom Leher's satyr's take on folk music: "It sounds more ethnic if it aint good English." Trust me: This weblog would be like better spelled if I could affourd and editor.

A high point of the trip was excursion to Clifton's Cafeteria on Broadway [or Olive?]. Every trip needs a port in a storm. After flying cross country (via Milwaukee) with only planefare snack and getting to L.A. Biltmore, and then wondering on to strange Exile on Main St St scene [knockoffs on parade, Guadalupe Madonna and Merc t-shirts, 'wanta buy a cane?' ], to find this lovely western style place with inexpensive ($10 for five courses) but beautiful cafeteria meal [many-colored cold bean [red, with corn and scallions] salad, pears trapped in green jello, tamale, coca-cola, house salad] was great!

At Clifton's they buy the finest quality ingredients, and use time tested recipes. "Ala carte pricing allows you to customize your meal to satisfy you own personal taste." Eight different vegetables everyday may include, Spinach, peas, carrots, corn, zucchini, candied yams, baked squash, black eyed peas, sauteéd mushrooms, fried eggplant and of course, whipped potatoes, and famous macaroni and cheese.

Clifton's includes great dioramas and panoramas of the West. The Golden Gate and the rest. A 25-cent bucking horse ride with Chicano kiddies holding on in glee took me back to my youte.

* * *

Tonight begins a PBS series on Blues.* It certainly has brought renewed attention to the form. I look especially forward to Clint Eastwood's take on piano blues, my original area of research, and Wim Wendors because 1-he's been into this forever, 2-Buena Vista Social Club was terrific, and 3-he's featuring J.B. Lenoir who is too unknown as of this morning.

*Actually, last night - my posting delayed again by some hacker's mucking worm.

Clifton's Cafeteria Salad Bar
Price Range: .87¢-$1.40
Engineer's Effort to Assess Shuttle Damage - NYT, Sept 26, 2003
Arctic ice shelf splits - BBC Sept 23, 2003
Open Investment in Iraq - LATimes, Sept 23, 2003 [reg req]
Mark Fineman, 51 - LATimes, Sept 24, 2003
Bee blog buzz - LATimes, Sept 24, 2003

also:
NYTimes 'The Blues' Forum
PBS The Blues

History of Cliftons

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 03:21:17 GMT

Bulger be gone
He is the last Irish Catholic Dem in Boston that had any power or something like that. He resigned as president of UMass because he was protecting his brother. Not good for presidents or chancellors of colleges. We visualized his dark night in an earlier Traveller Commentary.

Related
Last hurrah for Boston Irish pol -NYT, Aug 10, 2003
Tale of Two brothers -NYT, Aug 9, 2003

Sun, 04 May 2003 04:34:29 GMT

Rose Pink Cadillac Day - Andrew Beyer studies the problem of who will win the Derby and comes to the conclusion that there are only two truly genuine contenders. Ten Most Wanted and Empire Maker have the breeding and performance characteristics most suited, he opines. The horses are entering the gate. Empire Maker is slightly fractious. They are ready. They're off.

Funny Cide bests Empire Maker in Kentucky Derby

Harvard test period radio music 'orgies' all of May. [audio]
Including Live at Village Gate; Henri Dutilleux, Earl Hines; more. [Sometimes interrupted for Harvard baseball]. Get schedule: [pdf]

Related/Unrelated

Phil Chess set to run horse in Derby - NYT [reg req], April 29, 2003
Together again: Iggy and Stooges -NYT, April 29, 2003
Cosmologists Debate — Well, Everything -NYT, April 29, 2003
Back to Space Station - NYT, April 29, 2003

Quote of the day: "Half of the time we're gone and we don't know where." -Paul Simon, The Only Living Boy in New York

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 02:51:38 GMT

Middle Ages after Dark - Feb 14 - Spanish mystic poet St John of the Cross captured a deep emotion, and deep sense of the Middle Ages, when he described the 'dark night of the soul.' The notion was mined by many a diarist and poet over the years that followed.

In Night in the Middle Ages, night takes center stage, and while the souls that make their transits there show their personalities at times, its night's dominion over them that is the story. Read complete Moon Traveller Comment.

Unrelated
Ariane 4 farewell flight postponed -BBC, Feb 12, 2003
The Infant Universe, in Detail -Scientific American, Feb 12, 2003
ESA makes breakthrough in terahertz imaging technology - EE Times Online, Feb 11, 2003
Man vs machine chess match ends in stalemate -New Scientist, Feb 11, 2003