MonthJanuary 2010

Hunter S. Thompson documentary from 1978 – Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision

The Slaver writes:

This is the famous Documentary on Hunter S. Thompson from 1978. You know … the one where he attributes his good health to grass in his whiskey. It’s part of the “Omnibus” TV series. Also, a rare glimpse of the British weirdo, Ralph Steadman and, the less rare, Bill Murray.

Is tech taking us to a world more medieval than modern?

cyberwarfare

For most people over most of man’s time, however, history is more like a mob movie than a courtroom drama: The Vikings burn the village, the Huns or Mongols ride through with swords, child soldiers arrive in pickup trucks. Violence is the only argument. That is history, too chaotic and reactive for any organized telling.

The mayhem Menn portrays is not that stark, but it seems closer to that than to a world of rules and order. Cybergangs rise and fall in varying degrees of anonymity and alliances with Russian, Chinese and other governments that are more ad hoc than understood. Norms of behavior among individuals and governments are a moving target. Crimes are not solved as much as controlled, through informal alliances of small agencies within and outside the state, or when there is publicity of the crimes that embarrasses higher ups in government. It is crime and crime fighting within a massive, illicit social network, fueled on greed, speed and reputation.

Forbes: The Web’s Return To Chaos

(via Bruce Sterling)

This sounds partially right, except that it overlooks the amount of thuggish violence governments have continued to be involved in – wars, strikes, proxy wars, assassinations, etc. If we’re moving into a world of cyberwarfare instead of physical warfare: great. I’d rather people get their “identities stolen” than end up dead. I’d like to think that’s happening, rather than a mere expansion of aggression. Whatever the case, there’s never been a time when governments didn’t act like gangs.

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

augmented reality contacts

These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach; in fact, my students and I are already producing such devices in small numbers in my laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle [see sidebar, “A Twinkle in the Eye”]. These lenses don’t give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet. But we have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology. […]

These lenses don’t need to be very complex to be useful. Even a lens with a single pixel could aid people with impaired hearing or be incorporated as an indicator into computer games. With more colors and resolution, the repertoire could be expanded to include displaying text, translating speech into captions in real time, or offering visual cues from a navigation system. With basic image processing and Internet access, a contact-lens display could unlock whole new worlds of visual information, unfettered by the constraints of a physical display.

IEEE Spectrum: Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

Scientologist accused of murdering business partner

scientology ruins lives

Adams County District Attorney Don Quick filed charges against William Rex Fowler in the shooting death of 42-year-old Thomas Ciancio, his former business partner at Fowler Software Design.

Investigators say Fowler shot Ciancio three times in the head with a 9mm Glock handgun when Ciancio came to Fowler Software Design to collect $9,900 in severance pay. […]

Employees of the software company told investigators Ciancio had blamed Fowler for the company’s recent financial difficulties.

The employees said Fowler had taken about $200,000 of the company’s money without asking and gave it to a church or charity, according to the arrest affidavit. […]

Investigators say the gun was registered to Andrew Hyung Fowler, 26, who lived at 1413 L. Ron Hubbard Way in Los Angeles when it was purchased. In interviews with police, Andrew Fowler said he gave the gun to his father for Christmas in 2007.

Police also found a briefcase and a typed note, dated Dec. 30 and signed by Fowler. The note said nothing confidential was in the satchel and that it should be given to his wife, Janet.

When Janet Fowler was interviewed by detectives, she demanded the briefcase.

“It is important to me and my church. It is religious material and I want it now,” she said to investigators. “Even if you looked at it, and read it, you would not understand anything in it. Because it is way above a normal person and you would not know what it meant. I want it back right now.”

Janet Fowler also reportedly told investigators that her husband “is a Scientologist and would not have gone without a fight. He would have grabbed a gun in a struggle and would not have let someone shoot him.”

Denver Post: Adams County software-firm owner charged in killing of ex-business partner

(via Religion News)

I have to admit it feels a little tabloidy to be blogging this, but I can’t help it.

Archive of Burroughs and Ginsberg Lectures at Naropa Online

burroughs

The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university’s Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde.

The collection represents several generations of artists who have contributed to aesthetic and cultural change in the postmodern era. The Naropa University Archive Project seeks to enhance appreciation and understanding of post-World War II American literature and its role in social change, cultural criticism, and the literary arts through widespread dissemination of the actual voices of the poets and writers of this period. Current interest in Oriental religions, environmentalism, political activism, ethnic studies, and women’s consciousness is directly indebted to the work of these New American Poets, writers and musicians.

Funding for this project was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Save America’s Treasures, the GRAMMY Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Collaborative Digitization Program, and private donors. If this collection is important to you please help us preserve it with your donations.

Naropa Poetics Audio Archives

(via Dangerous Minds)

Glenn Greenwald: What the Supreme Court got right

supreme court

There’s been much bathos since yesterday’s Supreme Court decision regarding restrictions on political speech. Greenwald is the voice of reason here:

The Supreme Court yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, declared unconstitutional (on First Amendment grounds) campaign finance regulations which restrict the ability of corporations and unions to use funds from their general treasury for “electioneering” purposes. The case, Citizens United v. FEC, presents some very difficult free speech questions, and I’m deeply ambivalent about the court’s ruling. There are several dubious aspects of the majority’s opinion (principally its decision to invalidate the entire campaign finance scheme rather than exercising “judicial restraint” through a narrower holding). Beyond that, I believe that corporate influence over our political process is easily one of the top sicknesses afflicting our political culture. But there are also very real First Amendment interests implicated by laws which bar entities from spending money to express political viewpoints. […]

All of the hand-wringing sounds to me like someone expressing serious worry that a new law in North Korea will make the country more tyrannical. There’s not much room for our corporatist political system to get more corporatist. Does anyone believe that the ability of corporations to influence our political process was meaningfully limited before yesterday’s issuance of this ruling?

Glenn Greenwald: What the Supreme Court got right

Read the whole thing, including the updates at the end.

Top Five (Less Sensational But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson

2) Robertson’s 1991 book, The New World Order, recycled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and stated that George Bush Sr. was part of a conspiracy to institute “an occult-inspired world socialist dictatorship” (through his work with the United Nations in the first Gulf War). This caused few of Robertson’s neoconservative allies to break with him in any decisive way—although one former neocon, Michael Lind, denounced him in a major exposé in the New York Review of Books.

Religion Dispatches: Top Five (Less Sensational But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson

(via Religion News)

See also: Fascism by the Numbers.

Defense contractor to remove Bible references

jesus code

A Michigan company that manufactures combat rifle sights for the U.S. military that carry Bible verse citations said Thursday it would send kits to remove the inscriptions, NBC reported.

Trijicon Inc. also said it would take off Biblical references from all U.S. military products that are still in the company’s factory and ensure future items do not have any inscriptions on them.

MSNBC: Defense contractor to remove Bible references

Previously: U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes

(Thanks Bill)

Technoccult’s 10 Year Anniversary

It’s been ten years since I posted the first article to this site from the family computer at my parents house in Sheridan, WY. I was a senior in high school, the “Y2K” scare was already forgotten, and the dot-com bubble had yet to burst. I guess, for me, that’s where the 00s really started – with this site. It started out more like what Disinfo was like back then – with “dossiers” on various subjects. (Here’s what Disinfo looked like back then).

Since then I’ve gone a lot of places and experienced much. Evergreen State College, Burning Man, art squats in Berlin, Christiania, EsoZone… marriage. Just to mention a few things.

At year 7, I’d been doing Technoccult for longer than I was in high school and college combined. But a decade. Yikes. That’s really something. I even tried to quit last year, but, well, that didn’t work out. So you’re stuck with me, dear readers, and I thank you for sticking around.

As to what’s next… who knows. One thing I’ve learned in the past 10 years is that I can’t predict where my life is going. But I’m pretty sure I’ll be releasing my first full length album Return to the Wasteland next month. So for the Technoccult “birthday weekend” I’m putting up the first track as a free download on SoundCloud. Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

klintron 2010

Artificial life + granular synthesis = aDiatomea

aDiatomea: ColonyI from MRK on Vimeo.

aDiatomea is an artificial life system that uses various methods and notions of a-life research. The basic principle of aDiatomea is that every aspect of it is entirely mathematically generated and thus it is not created purposefully as an art piece but as a complex system that takes a life of its own. These artificial organisms are based on actual unicellular organisms known as Diatoms. These beautiful microscopic creatures are constructed using the superformula, an equation that can reproduce organic forms. Granular sound is injected in these organisms, acting as their life-force, while they interact with each other and their environment. This film shows a recording of 36 seconds of evolution, pushing the boundaries of complex computer calculations.

Vimeo Gallery

Flickr Set

aDiatomea Site

(via Fadereu)

adiatomea

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