Sacred & Profane
An exploration of the sacred, embodied in shared symbols, practices, and fetishes, and the profane; embodied in that which is individual, mundane, or irreverent.
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Shannon Finley
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Pilots by James Day
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Sci-Fi Shooting LocationsPhotography site Photojoto put together a Sci-Fi Shooting Location Google Map with a list of several dozen locations...
“High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right? That’s what the economists Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan and Paul Edelstein of the consulting firm IHS Global Insight wondered. They looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that “somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation,” which was one place they expected to find frugality. More specifically, rising gas prices had “no significant effect on the consumption of movies, bowling and billiard[s], casino gambling and only insignificant declines for recreational camps, sightseeing, spectator sports and spectator amusements.” Some people bought fewer lottery tickets, they told me.
In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.
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“Agnosticism is the notion that one can not know for certain the existence of God. No one can say with certainty whether or not God exists. Because the existence of God is imaginable the only position one can rationally take is the middle ground. He may exist. This, however, is an invalid position. If their is no evidence to support the existence of God, then it is irrational to say he may exist. Just because someone makes a claim does not mean that claim has merit. You are not compelled to prove a negative. The burden of proof lies on those making the claim. If an arbitrary claim is made, the only response necessary is “wheres the evidence?”. Furthermore, it is impossible that God could exist. God supposedly existed before existence. See the contradiction there? If God existed, then there was already existence I.E., existence came first. Existence is primary, consciousness is secondary. For their to be consciousness their must be existence. Simply saying “I don’t know” to the question of God’s existence is not necessarily irrational. Perhaps, you just haven’t thought of it. However, to actively deny man can know is ridiculous. This quote pretty much sums it up: “The primary problem for the agnostic is that he allows arbitrary claims to enter his cognitive context. The fully rational man, on the other hand, does not seek evidence to prove or disprove arbitrary claims, for he has no reason to believe that such claims are true in the first place.”
D. Moskovitz via Something To Blog!
Obscurity of Data
“Perceptually, beyond some low threshold, data becomes boundless to us. Cloud storage compounds this: we don’t even worry about HDs filling up anymore! Even when digital streams have clear beginnings and ends, I think we — humans — do a bad job at keeping those edges in view. In trying to reflect upon vast experiences or datasets captured entirely in bits with most standard interfaces, we run into the same wall as in trying to imagine infinity: we can’t.”
The Digital Physical
Craig Mod
VC Paucity
“And there’s no doubt that venture capital is in crisis today. The total amount invested in the first half of 2010 was just north of $11 billion, compared with $18 billion for all of 2009. This uptick reflects the slightly improved economy - or at least the reduced sense of panic among VCs […] but it’s still way below the $51 billion invested in 1999, let alone the $100 billion invested in 2000.
The shrinkage is certainly in part a rational retrenchment from the “irrational exuberance” of the dot-com boom days, but it is also suggestive of an industry unsure of itself and uncertain how to move forward. Overall, there are fewer funds today, fewer first time funds, less capital in the biggest funds, and fewer people working in the venture business.”
Henry R. Nothhaft
Great Again
This reminds me of the abandoned, flooded Manhattan slums of Ian Douglas’ Star Carrier series. Life imitating art.
Why Apple’s New Campus Is Bad for Urban America
If you care about cities, about walkable communities, about healing the crappy environment thrust upon us for the last four decades in the form of suburban sprawl, then get a refund on that new iPad 3. Take your iPhone back, too. Because its manufacturer is betting that the company is cool enough to get away with violating even the most basic tenets of smart growth and walkability in the sprawling, car-dependent design of its new headquarters.
Don’t let them collect on that bet.
While communities all up and down the Silicon Valley are trying to repair sprawl by replacing it with smart growth, Apple is actually taking a site that is now parking lots and low-rise boxes and making it worse for the community. Yes, it will be iconic, assuming you think a building shaped like a whitewall motorcycle tire is iconic, but it will reduce current street connectivity, seal off potential walking routes and essentially turn its back on its community. With a parking garage designed to hold over ten thousand cars, by the way.
“Mandating participation in an insurance risk pool that covers birth control redistributes resources based partly on lifestyle choices, values, and conceptions of what is fulfilling. For example, gays and lesbians have no use for birth control, but are being made to participate in risk pools that cover it, effectively leaving them with fewer resources as a result of their status as a cultural minority group, rather than a part of the majority that desires birth control.”
artist George Boorujy - Blood Memory
- Babble 2011, ink on paper, 38 x 50 inches
- Initiate 2011, ink on paper, 48 x 53 inches
( March 15 – April 14, 2012 ) P.P.O.W is proud to present “Blood Memory,” George Boorujy’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. In his expansive and finely observed drawings, Boorujy uses a trained naturalist’s eye to depict iconic North American animals and landscapes, presenting an intriguing vision of life on the continent that is at once foreign and familiar.
Attack Widely Condemned by Afghans as U.S. Investigates
Credit: New York Times
I am sickened by this. It does an awesome damage to U.S. efforts there, and will undoubtedly lead to further violence, decay, etc.
I hope, however, that it serves to awaken U.S. residents. In all nations of all color and creed there are citizens who, by circumstance and mental disorder, become completely rabid.
War costs.
When a sniper’s bullet struck Pfc. Colton Rusk, the first to reach his body was his best friend Eli – a bomb-sniffing, black Labrador so loyal he snapped at other Marines who rushed to his fallen handler.
The two were inseparable. Military dogs are supposed to sleep in kennels when deployed, but Rusk broke the rules and let Eli curl up with him on his cot. Other times, the dog took up the entire sleeping bag. Rusk ate ready-to-eat meals, so that’s what Eli ate instead of dog food, Darrell Rusk said.
“Whatever is mine is his,” Colton Rusk wrote on his Facebook page.
After Rusk died Dec. 6, his parents decided they wanted to adopt his dog. They picked Eli up Thursday at Lackland Air Force to take him back to their home in rural South Texas. It was only the second time that a U.S. military dog has been adopted by the family of a handler killed in combat.
(via menandtheirdogs)
Radical on The Run
“Who knows what Werfer thought? Poet, partisan, journalist, Jew — each an indictment, any two worthy of death — he must have known where things stood.”
Mark Slouka
The Hare’s Mask
Isn’t that so true? In so many countries, at so many times, to be different, in a singular, distinguishable way was to be an affront to society. And society reacted to these differences by negating, suppressing, and maligning.
But to be different in two ways, be a conscientious objector and Mormon, to queer and black. These trigger society’s immune system, and the reaction is reflexive and ruthless.
