Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Art Alert: Dag Nab Grab Bag 3D Festival 5.0   News, technique, and eye candy.... (slashdot) Deco Orient: Chinese posters from the 1920s and 1930s Meet the pixel people!                         Illegal Art Exhibit Raster   -   Redefining   Art    in    the    Digital    Culture Tomorrow's Cuisinarts. futuristic kitchen gadgets. NYT:  via Gizmodo 10:07:48 PM    comment [] A Review of Contemporary Science Fiction In the fine tradition of E2's Books that will induce a mindfuck, I present a list of authors and books that I think are more than worth the time required to read them. My main criteria here are that the books be interesting, gripping, etc. -- not necessarily of great "literary" value.   [kuro5hin] 10:06:37 PM    comment [] The New Media Reader   The new media field has been developing for more than 50 years. This reader collects the texts, videos, and computer programs—many of them now almost impossible to find—that chronicle the history and form the foundation of this still-emerging field. General introductions by Janet H. Murray (author of Hamlet on the Holodeck) and Lev Manovich (author of The Language of New Media), along with short introductions to each of the selections, place the works in their historical context and explain their significance.    The texts are from computer scientists, artists, architects, literary writers, interface designers, cultural critics, and individuals working across disciplines. They were originally published between World War II (when digital computing, cybernetic feedback, and early notions of hypertext and the Internet first appeared) and the emergence of the World Wide Web (when these concepts entered the mainstream of public life).    The CD accompanying the book contains examples of early games, digital art, independent literary efforts, software created at universities, and home-computer commercial software. Also on the CD is digitized video, documenting new media programs and artwork for which no operational version exists. 10:05:11 PM    comment [] Top 100 Network Security Tools   In May of 2003, I conducted a survey of Nmap users from the nmap-hackers mailing list to determine their favorite security tools. Each respondent could list up to 8. This was a followup to the highly successful June 2000 Top 50 list. An astounding 1854 people responded in '03, and their recommendations were so impressive that I have expanded the list to 75 tools! Anyone in the security field would be well advised to go over the list and investigate tools they are unfamiliar with. I discovered several powerful new tools this way. I also plan to point newbies to this page whenever they write me saying "I do not know where to start".   [Privacy Digest] 10:00:59 PM    comment []

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Absolut Godhead   (Tom Robbins) "In the West we have a desperate need for the certain, the explicable, and the absolute. In fact, one of our euphemisms for our lonely mongod is 'the Absolute.' Ironically, perhaps, that happens to be an appropriate tittle.God is absolute. Absolute mystery. Absolute ambiguity. Absolute Uncertainty. Ha-ha!" 11:37:06 PM    comment []

Monday, May 12, 2003

Knock! Knock!   (Tom Robbins) "Who's there?" "The All-Controlling Agent of Destiny and Change." "Are you really the All-Controlling Agent of Destiny and Change?" "Of course not, you ninny. There's no such thing. I'm the Mindless Tosspot of Random Chance. If you detect patterns in my swath, that's your prerogative, I guess, but should you base important decisions on those "patterns," you could be in for a surprise." 12:01:49 AM    comment []

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Kompressor Rules! You Cower From Kompressor Might Why yes, indeed... I might just... Don't mind if I.... SHE JUST DOES NOT SEEEEEEEE!!!!!!    rd& fgji        metafiltration... 11:23:35 PM    comment [] Now Playing: Brian Eno & J. Peter Schwalm: Drawn From Life (2001, Astralwerks Records) I ran out of road on the Prince. But not out of blog. We continue. 11:02:44 PM    comment [] ART ALERT: Roadside Peek Roadside Americana - neon, drive-ins, signs, etc. This is art, isn't it? Signs of a bygone time. Cool. via metafilter 10:56:39 PM    comment [] Death to the Extremist! Yeah, these are funny. I am beside myself with mirth. Post, don't think. Thanks boingboing Death to the Extremist is an hilarious, geeky, minimalist/situationist comic strip in which two vague blobs (labelled "1" and "2") exchange quips for nine panels/strip. The jokes revolve around Photoshop defaults, fonts, porn, and the Internet, and there's even Death to the Extremist fan art in which DttE fans draw their own blobs, labelled "1" and "2," and generate their own nerd humor. (via The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century) 10:51:57 PM    comment [] Dance of the Spin Doctors "If you cannot convince them, confuse them."   Harry S Truman. 10:38:36 PM    comment [] Flames of Nazi Oblivion Seventy years ago today, a series of conflagrations lit up the night in a number of German cities. By the standard of the Reichstag fire earlier that year or the firestorms to come in the years ahead, these fires were unimpressive. But each was surrounded by a sizable crowd — many people there students and most of them giddy with ideological fervor — that fed the flames with piles of books. The aim was to cleanse Germany of un-German literature, "Jewish intellectualism" and works by Nazi enemies. Students had cleared their own shelves and the shelves of libraries of books by a list of authors that would make a respectable library in itself. The events of that day and the American response to it are the subject of a new exhibition called "Fighting the Fires of Hate" at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The fires of May 10, 1933, were a cultural atrocity that presaged the human atrocities that soon followed. The voice of Joseph Goebbels, speaking at the Berlin book-burning, rattles through the exhibition space. The voice, the fires, the sight of books being flung through the night, their pages torn away as they streak toward the flames — all of this catches our eye and our imagination, and strikes our conscience, too, since we pride ourselves on our response to the Nazis. To get to the last, most violent stage of censorship, when works of Heinrich Heine, Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud and Erich Maria Remarque go up in flames alongside those of Marc Chagall, H. G. Wells and Ernest Hemingway, you have to begin with the simple listing of tainted books. Like other parts of the Holocaust museum — now marking its 10th anniversary — "Fighting the Fires of Hate" puts a face on those lists of victims by introducing viewers to the authors, one by one, whose books were burned. It is a grim tally. For some writers, especially the English and Americans, the fires made little practical difference. But for others it meant the beginning of an exile that too often ended in suicide or murder. The first enemies of a totalitarian regime are always its most articulate enemies. The sight of those fires of 70 years ago and those faces livid with conviction should remind us that censorship, even when no books are being torched, is in its very nature a violence against the essential freedoms of thought and expression. (SOURCE: New York Times)  (free registration required) 10:33:19 PM    comment [] CSS Zen Garden I am mainly posting for myself right now, going through my backlog of links. This site is both beautiful and a beautiful example of what you can do through skillful use of a given technolgy. Thanks again metafilter. CSS Zen Garden. CSS Zen and the art of motorcycle website maintainance; a stunning demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS?based design. 10:21:17 PM    comment [] Bill Gates, Philanthropist The Jesus Nerd?. Earth to Bill Gates: Thank you This little editorial that appeared recently is (obviously) dancing on the fringe of cheesiness, but it begs an interesting question about philanthropy and the world's richest man. Gates appeared on Bill Moyers' NOW last night, and was reasonably candid (he used the phrase "failure of capitalism"), mentioning more than once that he intended to give away ~95% of his wealth, mostly to aid public health. Our perceptions of his politics aside, it would seem as if Gates intends to go out with a humanist bang. [metafilter] This is interesting. Posting it here so I can read it tomorrow at work. If I can find the time: we are busy. But I don't get the feeling this is mere posturing or spin doctoring on Gate's part. If this is the case, and whatever his reasons, thank you Mr. Gates. 10:12:24 PM    comment [] Now Playing: Prince: Emancipation disc 2 (1996 NPG Records) For while I'm getting jiggy with my blog.... 10:04:09 PM    comment []

Friday, May 09, 2003

"Hey, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"  --  Dr. Strangelove 10:42:25 PM    comment []

Thursday, May 08, 2003

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." Jerome K. Jerome 11:56:43 PM    comment [] George W. Bush Axis of Evil World Tour T-Shirt (via the shifted librarian) 11:46:43 PM    comment [] George Bush and Tony Blair Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize No, really, they were. Like Metafilter says: "And they say irony is dead..." 11:44:17 PM    comment []

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

Dance of the Spin Doctors   (Thomas Pynchon)  "Every day public opinion is the target of rewritten history, official amnesia and outright lying, all of which is benevolently termed "spin," as if it were no more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and doubt at the same time - it seems a condition of political thought in a modern superstate to be permanently of at least two minds on most issues. Needless to say, this is of inestimable use to those in power who wish to remain there, preferably forever." (SOURCE: The road to 1984, Guardian Unlimited) via abuddhas memes 10:32:15 PM    comment []

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