Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Glass Sculptures: The Unsettling Beauty of Lethal Pathogens



 E. coli, by Luke Jerram.
 
 


 Enterovirus 71 (involved in hand, foot and mouth disease) by Luke Jerram.

 


Swine Flu, by Luke Jerram.

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Luke Jerram’s microbial sculptures are on display in “Playing with Fire: 50 Years of Contemporary Glass,” an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Art and Design through April 7, 2013, and “Pulse: Art and Medicine,” opening at Strathmore Fine Art in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 16. “Pulse” runs through April 13, 2013.

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Note: Click Title Link for More Photographs/Smithsonian Mag. Article

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Kim Deal – Solo Series - Limited Edition 7"s

 1st Release - Editon of 1,000 - Sold Out

“Walking With A Killer” B/W “Dirty Hessians”





Sunday, February 24, 2013

Breakdown: The Four Major American Sports

(*) NBA: Pro Athletes In Best Physical Shape

(*) NHL: Toughest Pro Athletes Who Play Through Injuries

(*) MLB: Best Pro Contracts

(*) NFL: Worst Pro Contracts

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Personal Note: Am excited about the upcoming MLB season. Finally installed a digital converter box (antennae) so will be able to watch Phillies' games in the comforts of home instead of a bar or listening to the games on a small hand-held transistor radio (2 AAA batteries).

Friday, February 22, 2013

Beautiful Decay: Ben Thomas - City Shrinker Series

Ben Thomas photography

 Ben Thomas photography

Ben Thomas photography

"These are not photos of miniatures or models. Rather these are images from photographer Ben Thomas‘ Cityshrinker series and are actual cities around the world. Thomas uses what is called a ’tilt-shift technique’. Among other things, the technique basically corrects the distortion caused by perspective. This correction often has the appearance of miniaturizing the camera’s subject. Thomas’ images present the world as if it were a toy. Some of the world’s largest cities seem to shrink into playful places. The images turn a lighthearted eye onto some of our favorite places."  -- 


Note: Click Title Link For More Photographs

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Aquarium Drunkard

John Cale & Friends :: The Ocean Club – NYC, July 21, 1976




"Ten years after they first emerged from Warhol’s Factory, the Velvet Underground loomed larger than ever before in the CBGB-centered NYC punk scene of the mid-1970s. With Patti Smith leading the charge — she covered the Velvets frequently— John Cale and Lou Reed suddenly found themselves with a whole new generation of acolytes.

"What to do with these feedback-worshiping followers? Why, get onstage with them, of course. This tape, recorded during the Bicentennial summer of ’76 (a fantastically fertile period brought vividly to life in William Hermes’ highly recommended book, Love Goes To Buildings On Fire), features Cale tussling with Smith, David Byrne and Chris Spedding for a rough-n-ready, 45-minute set. And of course, his Lou-ness also shows up to chug along on the old Velvet chestnut 'Waiting For The Man.'

"Byrne’s presence is intriguing — legend has it Cale was very excited about producing Talking Heads, at one point telling Brian Eno “THEY’RE MINE!!” Guess we know how that turned out. Smith is maybe the weakest link; she’s enthusiastic as hell, but her caterwauling backup vocals on the pastoral “Buffalo Ballet” come close to ruining a perfectly lovely song. One of the cooler things here is the spooky reading of “The Jeweler,” with Cale intoning a surreal short story as his cohorts create a wall of ambient noise worthy of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the sound of the Underground boiling over." -- T. Wilcox


Track Title Downloads:

1. Ghost Story
2. Buffalo Ballet
3. You Know More Than I Know
4. Guts
5. I’m Waiting For The Man
6. I Keep A Close Watch
7. The Jeweler
8. Gun
9. Pablo Picasso
10. Cable Hogue
11. Baby What You Want Me To Do
 

Monday, February 18, 2013

JF Ptak Science Books

The Last Word in 55 Novels:

Again
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Aitches
Road to Wigan Pier
Bloom
Watership Down
Bombs
Homage to Catalonia
Both
End of the Affair
Brother
1984
Combustion
The Loved One
Days
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Distance
Frankenstein
Distance
Lord of the Flies
Earth
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Earth
Wuthering Heights
Ended
Crime and Punishment
Exercation
The Stranger
Feet
Great Wall of China
Gun
Johnny Got His Gun
Guys
Of Mice and Men
Ha!
The Tin Drum
Happy
A Moveable Feast
Hate
The Stranger
Him
Continental Op
Honor
Madame Bovary
Hotel
Age of Innosence
In
Maltese Falcon
It
Brokeback Mountain
Know
A Tale of Two Cities
Life
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Life
Auto-Da-Fe
Lived
Moll Flanders
Mediterranean
A Room with a View
Moby Dick
Orphan
Morning
To Kill a Mockingbird
Multiply
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Off
Catch-22
Past
Great Gatsby
Place
The Sound and the Fury
Play
The House at Pooh Corner
Played
The Recognitions
Poo-tee-weet?
Slaughterhouse Five
Ravine
Under the Volcano
Restored
Claudius the God
Room
Bell Jar
Seen
Speak, Memory
Shining
Of Human Bondage
Smiled
The Good Earth
So
The Sun Also Rises
Them
The Long Goodbye
Them
Charlotte's Web
There
Cat's Cradle
This
Little Women
Time
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Union
Emma
Way
Paradise Lost
Which
Animal Farm
Yours
Breakfast of Champions

Thursday, February 14, 2013

F.M. : Let’s All Sing Like the Dirdies Sing



Found by Brian Giwojna in Decatur, Georgia

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

John Wilcock: Thelonious Monk's Heroin Arrest

Boing-Boing: The John Wilcock comic returns with the story of Thelonious Monk’s heroin arrest, followed by Jeffrey St. Clair's personal memory of seeing Monk play at the Five Spot.

Excerpt:



Plus: NPR on "Unearthing Unknown Monk, Coltrane Recording" (Audio discussing the Five Spot performances at 4 minutes)

Friday, February 8, 2013

Fast Forward: Cassette Magazine

Volume 11

Track Titles

Introduction
Kid Moccassin
Pel Mel - 'Shoes Should Fit'
Go-Betweens interview
Dorian Gray - 'Priceless Dream'
R. Stevie Moore - No Body
R. Stevie Moore - interview
R. Stevie Moore - Advertising Agency of Fucking
The Tablewaiters - 'Confrontation with a Mountain'
Colette and Chantelle interview
Red Dark Sweet - 'Oh! Carol'
The Triffids - 'You Can Keep It'
Blitz Classics
Turn Over
Beatrice Faust - excerpt from 'Women, Sex and Pornography'
Speedboat - 'Sex Without Grunting'
The Cramps - '(New Kind of) Kick' (live)
The Cramps - interview
The Cramps - 'Drug Train' (live)
Annie Bleach - 'Hi, I'm Craig'
Aeroplane Footsteps - 'Latin Whisper'
Birds of Tin - 'Day at the Beach'
The Nolan Sisters - 'Hi to all F.F. listeners'
Wildlife Documentaries interview
Wildlife Documentaries - 'Promise Me'
Premier Peanut
Nuvo Bloc - 'Beaten to a Pulp'
Karen Ansell - 'Theme for the Invisible Man'


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Via: The Dust Congress (Blog)

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Astronaut's Incredible Photos from Space

Astronaut Chris Hadfield beams back incredible photographs of Earth from aboard the International Space Station.



The pall of smoke clouds over Australia, as seen from orbit. A rare view of the bushfires' effect.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

First Look at an Atom's Shadow (Smallest Shadow Ever Captured)



The Shadow of A Single Atom of Ytterbium (Magnified 6500 Times)

Monday, February 4, 2013

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Thought For The New Month

"Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion."

-- Jim Rohn

Friday, February 1, 2013

Kurt Vonnegut - Class Syllabus

Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.

This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.

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FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:
 
This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all ...”
 
I invite you to read the fifteen tales in Masters of the Modern Short Story (W. Havighurst, editor, 1955, Harcourt, Brace, $14.95 in paperback). Read them for pleasure and satisfaction, beginning each as though, only seven minutes before, you had swallowed two ounces of very good booze. “Except ye be as little children ...”

Then reproduce on a single sheet of clean, white paper the table of contents of the book, omitting the page numbers, and substituting for each number a grade from A to F. The grades should be childishly selfish and impudent measures of your own joy or lack of it. I don’t care what grades you give. I do insist that you like some stories better than others.
 
Proceed next to the hallucination that you are a minor but useful editor on a good literary magazine not connected with a university. Take three stories that please you most and three that please you least, six in all, and pretend that they have been offered for publication. Write a report on each to be submitted to a wise, respected, witty and world-weary superior.
 
Do not do so as an academic critic, nor as a person drunk on art, nor as a barbarian in the literary market place. Do so as a sensitive person who has a few practical hunches about how stories can succeed or fail. Praise or damn as you please, but do so rather flatly, pragmatically, with cunning attention to annoying or gratifying details. Be yourself. Be unique. Be a good editor. The Universe needs more good editors, God knows.
 
Since there are eighty of you, and since I do not wish to go blind or kill somebody, about twenty pages from each of you should do neatly. Do not babble. Do not spin your wheels. Use words I know.

poloniøus

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