Category: ?

Free of labels, which is also a good attitude.

Howling at Faire

YESTERDAY, I POSTED A COMMENT to BoingBoing asking people to “Google ‘deconstructionist face-bullhorn’ (for) … where I stand on the whole horned-rim/hornrimmed/modern-equivalent-of-John-Lennon’s frames issue.” So far, 22 people have. Whee! (This post’s title is taken from a phenomenon well-known to after-hours Renaissance Pleasure Faire folk, whereby those standing at the bottom of the little valley need only howl once to provoke a full-throated choral reply from a horde of unseen collegial up-valleyites. And it never failed.)

High Weirdness By Mail: A Hobby In Four Acts

YOU WILL FIRST NEED A healthy interest in the way people interpret the inexplicable — their beliefs, theories, conspiracies, religions, philosophies, ideologies and desperate explanations of What’s Behind It All. (N.B. This works better if you’re a non-dogmatic critical thinker who’s more interested in what others have to say than in proving them “right” or “wrong.”)

1. Buy the book (High Weirdness By Mail). (Wait, it’s out of print — better go to the website instead.)

2. Peruse the offerings and wonder whether they’re serious. Continue reading “High Weirdness By Mail: A Hobby In Four Acts”

Ol’ Thinkypants: Reality Is What You Get When You’re Not Looking For Reality

“IN THE GOD V. CHANCE debate, some of us are having a long-view chuckle over consciousness’ inability to recognize and appreciate its own inevitability within the Universe it’s trying to understand. Sure, it’s not as dramatic or satisfying as shouting at each other, but it pays the bills.”

Scrapheap Waters

THAT’S AN ANAGRAM FOR “EARTH Warps Space,” the latest news out of NASA. Put simply: In our 4th-dimensional universe, gravity runs downhill. Put less simply, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/. Quoted lede: “Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.”

My Favorite Osama Bin Laden Rumor

…IS THAT HIS COMPOUND WAS built in the shape of what some would call “Greater Palestine,” with his house corresponding to the location of Jerusalem. (This comes to me from to the French website JSSNews, by way of YNet, by way of The Tablet, which latter is recommended daily fare.)

Fig. 1.
I stress that this is a rumor only (like the time in high school that I convinced someone that Ronald McDonald was portrayed by an African-American actor — which was repeated to me later in the day), and doesn’t really seem to fit with what we seem to know thus far about Mr. Bin Laden’s motivations. But as rumors go, it’s worth passing along. (AS A RUMOR.)

Yuri’s Night Out

A REMEMBRANCE OF FEATS PAST is a great excuse for a party — that’s the idea behind “Yuri’s Night,” which celebrates the cracking of the final frontier.

“Human Spaceflight became a reality 50 years ago with the launch of a bell-shaped capsule called “Vostok 1” on April 12th, 1961,” reads http://yurisnight.net, which is coordinating the “World Space Party” next Tuesday. “The capsule was carrying Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took his place in history as the first human to leave the bounds of Earth and enter outer space.”

“Yuri’s Night” (the website) features contests, party and event locations, space history and more. (The partners page alone makes fascinating reading: I consider myself a space geek but had never heard of most of these: “Orphans of Apollo?” “We Want Our Future?” “Vostok Space Beer?” Goshwowboyoboy!)

Some say (me among them) that spaceflight is less a technical achievement than an inevitable stage in the evolution of life. Whether or not you agree, I hope you’ll join me in raising a toast April 12 — or better yet, raising your eyes to the stars.

Fig. 1. Created by http://yurisnight.net/.

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