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Amusing. It's sure got I'm the Juggernaut [Expletive Deleted]!! beat for originality and skill. With a soundtrack like that, I was expecting Gil Gerard's Buck Rogers to waltz across the screen at any minute.
Medeski Martin and Wood's Uninvisible
I was first introduced to acid jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood about 4 years ago when a bass player in my old group who knew that I liked Emerson Lake & Palmer loaned me his Uninvisible CD. John Medeski, the organist, is one of the best (if not *the* best) Hammond organ players working these days. Check out this super trippy video of the song Uninvisible:
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Sporadicus Maximus
RP came up with a great nom de blog today that could equally apply to me: Sporadicus.
It's not that I don't have anything to write about. I'm just having trouble doing the actual writing. I think my blogging has hit some sort of existentialist crisis: is this all there is?
Aside from that, the wonderful wife and kids got me the complete First Season of 24 for Fathers' Day and I have already devoured the first four episodes (I've never watched the show before). For the next several days I will be spending prime blogging time in front of the TV instead.
So endeth another lame "why I'm not blogging" post. More later.
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Yes. Yes, John. This is all there is.
But don't stop on account of that. Just read my blog... Not having anything meaningful to write hasn't stopped me!
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Placing one vote for the white halter rouche panel-back dress. Wait; we *are* talking about fashion, are we not?
All of those great dresses are available for purchase online from gorgeouscouture.com.
Who knew that Mr. Grok was such a style maven?
Posted by: Beth A. at June 20, 2006 12:24 PM (Q5rtQ)
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Uh...
I can't believe that I just watched that...
For shame! For shame!
(But I've got to say, Yellow.)
And CHECK OUT that bartender's juggling moves...!
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Beth - just ask Mrs. Grok sometime about my shopping [for her] acumen. I may not be a maven, but I know both what I like and what looks good on her. And you knew about that gorgeouscouture site pretty quickly. What gives with that?
Don, It's got a catchy beat and melody, doesn't it? [Yellow was a *close* second to green, btw]. Congrats on graduating and on your pending nuptials.
Posted by: JohnL at June 20, 2006 05:44 PM (dYzx6)
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Love to read those silly fashion rags. But sadly dealing with Valentino taste on a Wal-Mart budget. The Girls Aloud video is brilliant advertising for those smokin' gowns. Wealthy teenager watches the Girls Aloud video on VH1, tells daddy "Buy me that dress for prom!" And daddy says "Anything you want, pumpkin." Ka-ching, another sale. Don't need to remind you that most of the dresses will be sold to gals who probably are delusional. Frau Grok, on the other hand, is one of the select few who could actually wear couture a la Audrey Hepburn. Yes, it is an unjust universe.
Posted by: Beth A. at June 21, 2006 04:05 PM (Q5rtQ)
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Frau Grok and I are taking a cruise in September, and I half-jokingly told her I was going to get her one of those gorgeouscouture dresses for evening wear. She demurred, stating that she's "too old." Now I'm going to make sure she reads your comment so that she knows an unbiased observer you concurs with me that she could pull it off.
Posted by: JohnL at June 21, 2006 09:30 PM (dYzx6)
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I don't like manufactured pop groups but I must confess to enjoying Girls Aloud. They're all just so vacous and vain but I can't help but like them, kind of like cotton candy.
Posted by: Hucbald at June 29, 2006 03:03 AM (evNaa)
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Aw c'mon, Hucbald. It wasn't that bad... you could hit mute and still enjoy the video. Or just cleanse your palate with the Medeski Martin and Wood video above.
Posted by: JohnL at June 29, 2006 05:14 PM (dYzx6)
MemeTherapy: It was once said that Science Fiction is the only pill for Future Shock. Do you think the predictions of Future Shock that were made back in the 70s have now or ever will materialize?
Sawyer: ... We talk about starships, but no human has left Earth orbit for thirty-four years now; we talk about AI, but Deep Blue is not one whit more self aware or intelligent in the sense that you and I mean "intelligent" when we use that word in daily conversation, than Eniac, the very first digital computer. Does reading science fiction inoculate us against future shock, or does it distract us with what are essentially fantasy visions? It's a good question; I don't have a solid answer, but I tend to think the value of SF is much more in its sociological thought experiments than it is as any sort of predictive science.
I'm not sure if I totally agree with his point about SF not inoculating us against future shock. But I'm not ready to argue the point, either, yet. Maybe later.
Go read the whole thing. Sawyer is one of the better recent SF authors out there.
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I think Sawyer's underlying point is that he isn't much a believer that the predictions of Future Shock didn't come to pass.
Remember Future Shock was never a "reality" just a very popular prediction of how we as a culture might react to change.
Personaly I'm inclined to agree with him people living at the dawn of the 20th century saw more dramatic change than we have had over the past thirty years.
The next thirty years might be a different story though.
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I see his points but he conveniently talks about two areas which have not kept up with Science fiction, but how about the area of genetics?
Cloning, transgenetic food, and animals? these are all a reality. In some other areas such as the impact of personal digital devices, I think reality has outstripped a lot of Sci-fi.
The reason there is no Future shock is because these things happen incrementaly and we anticipate them.
Posted by: kyle8 at June 16, 2006 08:02 PM (vKsut)
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I wouldn't go so far to say that our genetic technology outstrips SF predictions. Most of the older SF steers clear of biotech in general but there are plenty of counterexamples.
I agree with you on the Future Shock front but its also true that our modern world resembles 1950 a lot more than 1950 resembles 1900. Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, was talking about a radicaly different, unrecognizably alien future compared to the one we have today.
The Instamatic
One of the benefits of moving from time to time is the opportunity to go through old boxes of stuff. Last year's move unearthed an old box of pictures that I took with my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 44. I had great fun going through the old pictures with my kids, including showing them some pictures of places that still exist (the Dinosaur statues in Glen Rose, for example, which they have seen in person several times).
Tonight I scanned the first few of what I expect to be many. I'll do a bigger post on the camera itself someday (I also have pictures taken with a Kodak Disc camera -- a film disc, not a digital disc and my mom's old Kodak Retina).
Your humble author, making himself the center of attention even then:
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Dig those crazy World Book Yearbooks in your self portrait. I'll bet it was the old green-and-white World Book set, with gold stamping on the spine. How we loved those encyclopedias.
Posted by: Beth A. at June 08, 2006 08:09 AM (Q5rtQ)
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You got the color scheme right. I'm pretty sure my parents still have both the World Book set you see and a complete 1980s set of the Encylopedia Britannica. What a treasure.
It would be interesting to compare (contrast) a single entry in one of those books to an equivalent topic in Wikipedia today or even the online Britannica.
PS - see the resemblance between the mini-me and my second son?
Posted by: JohnL at June 08, 2006 10:13 AM (YVul2)
Texana - It Ain't Braggin' If It's True
The local paper's Travel section had a couple of nice bits of Texana this past Sunday.
First, a selection of great burger joints easily accessible from the I-35 corridor, recorded here so that I can easily find their addresses in the future (I haven't tried any of these, but invite comments from my readers who have):
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Ah, that explains the Christmas tree/Christmas present discussion we had back in December.
You might find this article interesting.
The second paragraph in particular was thought-provoking to me, since I've classified myself from agnostic to Deist for the last 20 years or so.
Posted by: JohnL at June 05, 2006 03:28 PM (dYzx6)
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Considering that atheists are the most distrusted minority in the US (of those minorities checked; I hope we still come out better than axe murderers), I'm sure that you'll understand that I wasn't going to spill my dirtly little secret until I got to know you better. But once I learned that you're a libertarian, even though a regular church-goer, I figured that I was safe with this.
The article you cite is very interesting. I'm been trying to work out my own view on the matter. On one hand, I try to be as non-confrontational as possible. I won't make a fuss about crosses in public places and things like that.
But on the other hand, I am more confrontational: To the extent that religious ideas shape history they must be fully open to public scrutiny. That is, I should be a free to ridicule someone's ideas about the ascention of Mary as I would be to ridicule someone's idea UFO abductions. There is a taboo about criticizing religious beliefs (we are supposed to be respectful), but that taboo shields religion from the kind of scrutiny that other idea are subject to. If religious ideas were purely private matters with no impact on the public sphere, then there would be no need for much public scrutiny. But religion is important and influention, and so the ideas must be open to scrutiny with the "respect" shield.
Anyway, I'm preparing a longer essay on that issue. But I haven't worked on it lately.
