Burj Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world, as it nears completion
man look at all that oil.
It’s kind of like that time Alex Balk linked to my blog. SORT OF.
(Not really.)
drinking and driving
- Allan: [Clemson University] built this 1.5 million dollar welcome sign that was fancy brick work
- Allan: and some concrete with lights and they started the landscaping on it
- Jackson: jesus
- Jackson: pix?
- Allan: uh
- Allan: not any more
- Allan: a drunk driver took it out last weekend
- Jackson: i wanna see the si--
- Jackson: ...
- Jackson: really?
- Allan: yeah
- Allan: its just a big hole in a small brick wall now
We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
today, whilst altering my space
I stumbled across my gameboy color. The translucent purple one, complete with Super Smash Bros. Melee stickers courtesy of Nintendo Power . I remember throwing my gba away in a fit of idiocy (i think it had peanut butter on it or something) some years back, but i had no idea this was still around.
The best part?
I found Pokémon Red and Gold.
Palette Town here I come.
“Language is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations… Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generation.” — Edward Sapir.
“The loss of languages is tragic precisely because they are not interchangeable, precisely because they represent the distillation of the thoughts and communication of people over their entire history.” — Marianne Mithun.
“Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.” — Mark Amidon.
“A language is a dialect with an army and navy.” — Max Weinreich.
- A Somali woman has been stoned to death for committing what a judge has said was adultery.
- The 20-year-old divorcee was executed on Tuesday after confessing to having had sex with a 29-year-old unmarried man.
- Sheikh Ibrahim Abdirahman, the judge for a court created by the rebel group al-Shabab, says the woman was killed in front of a crowd of some 200 people near the town of Wajid.
- The woman, who gave birth to a stillborn child, was buried up to her waist before the stoning took place. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes for having the affair.
- The woman’s death is the second recorded stoning for adultery carried out by al-Shabab fighters, who are confronting the government and control large parts of Somalia.
(Gruesome stuff to say the least. Ugh.)
5,600 new species found in deep sea
and this one looks like a floating colostomy bag.
Cool! Can’t start killing them until we know they’re there!
[as] fanboy
- Dan: How was Metalocalypse/Venture Bros.?
- Jackson: man that is the only hour of television that i would ever mourn missing at this stage in my life
- Jackson: it's just so awesome to get two premieres of arguably my favorite shows back to back
- Jackson: and brendon small is kicking the new half hour format's ass.
- Dan: How so?
- Jackson: i had wondered, before the season began, whether metalocalypse, a show which thrives on its own punchy, fast-paced, action heavy modus operandi, would drag when the length was doubled
- Jackson: and i've just been straight up wrong
- Dan: Good.
- Jackson: the action arc is longer, but any holes that leaves are immediately filled by brendan's impeccable dialogue comedy
- Dan: Lovely. I'll have to catch it later; I haven't watched either in ages.
- Jackson: and the venture bros is my favorite show, no doubt
- Jackson: sci-fi?
- Jackson: fucking check
- Jackson: fantasy?
- Jackson: fucking check
- Jackson: razor sharp pop/camp humour?
- Jackson: check check sumbitchin' check
- Jackson: really really gay?
- Jackson: uh, yeah, the show is really really queer
- Jackson: so basically the show was written for me
This is a photo of the light echo from V838 Mon, a seriously strange star about 20,000 light years from Sol. This stellar anomaly began its life as a star very comparable to the sun. In 2002 this star emitted a bright flash, making it the brightest star in the galaxy for a brief amount of time. Typically, this only happens when a star goes supernova, but this star was too small to result in s supernova and too young to be dying. In 2003, it was decided that the star is now a supergiant star. This is the only star known to have evolved into a different class, and its existence defies our understanding of the nature of stars. Although it may appear similar to a supernova, especially in the above photo, what’s happening is that the light from the star bright transformation is illuminating massive clouds of dust surrounding it, forming what we call a “light echo”, as the light echos out much like ripples in a pond. A light echo is essentially a type of atypical reflection nebula.
Photographer Seeks Closeted Military Personnel
Photographer Jeff Sheng is seeking as many participants as possible for a new photo project:
“Jess, Bend, Oregon, 2009” is part of my newest photography project, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a series of photographs of closeted men and women in the United States military. For each image, I have asked the individual to wear their uniform, while staging the photoshoot in the bedroom or local hotel room where that person is currently stationed. The reason for this is that I am most interested in the intersections between public and private space, and the government’s policing of our private spaces – the bedroom being the most representative space of this. I have purposely shot each image in a way that obscures to some degree the identity of the individuals, and the final image that is released to the public is first approved by the subject, and is in many ways, their expression of their closeted-ness and lack of identity. The name and location is also fictional: I have asked the subject to give me a first name and a location that is significant to them, but does not actually refer to the true name and location of who is in the photograph. My aim in this project is to use photography to create a visual record of the numerous individuals currently serving our country that are unjustly forced to hide an integral part of who they are.”
You can contact Sheng via his website.
We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.
Chuck Palahniuk (via sincerelyandy; axelrod)
futurelessness
Um, this is an awesome theorySorry in advance for the long text post, but this is a really concise and brilliantly put theory of the sense of dread and anxiety that is now epidemic in our society:
“In 1947, Lewis Mumford published a remarkable essay titled simply “Social Effects.” In it, he presented four scenarios of possible social futures in the atomic age. The first three result in nuclear war; yet the fourth scenario, in which war never comes, is actually the most chilling of all, for it describes a world in which the preparation, anticipation, and adjustments necessary for atomic war have completely destroyed the civilized impulse. Cities are abandoned, and populations are dispersed first into linear cities and then underground… Enforced underground habitation inevitably results in psychological dysfunction, and people resort widely to sexual promiscuity, drugs, and senseless violence. In the end, a world that has for decades known a nuclear-enforced “peace” is destroyed by anarchy and disease.
It does not take too great an intuitive leap to recognize much of Mumford’s prediction in our own dysfunctional society today, replete as it is with epidemics of drug use, divorce, and suicide;…and the horrifying recurrence of insanely pointless mass murders in public places. While many point to a loss of religious faith and engage in political wars over “family values,” one must consider that there may be another, darker source behind at least some of these ills in the form of a decades-old nuclear threat.
While it is, of course, difficult to establish a causal relationship between the nuclear arms race and current social crises, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton has written that the sense of doom and futurelessness engendered by the arms race has brought on “cultural disarray” in our society. As well, this futurelessness threatens not only our biological continuity as individuals and as a species but has also made us only too aware that nothing we make or do may survive, thus “eliminating the substrate of what we call culture…
[This suggests] that there may be a subconscious awareness of futurelessness incorporated into much of the postwar built form itself.”
via Sprawl as Strategy: City Planners Face the Bomb by Michael Quinn Dudley
africa
- Allan: there is no simple solution to africa
- Allan: other then long term education
- Jackson: how embarrassing to know that your continent requires a solution
- Allan: education is really how you have to fix problems.
- Jackson: unfortunately education also doesn't become a viable solution until certain basic issues are rectified
- Allan: It's slow and doesn't fix anything in the short term but its how change happens
- Jackson: people have difficulty retaining information when they are hungry/thirsty
- Jackson: it is right there in maslow's hierarchy
- Allan: But if no one is educated, you can't get the growth you need to meet those goals
- Jackson: there is no simple solution to africa
