"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
(Leonard Cohen)
"Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"
(Michael Moorcock)
"Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."
(Andre Gide)

"I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
(Franz Kafka)
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated"
(John Donne)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Robert J. Hanlon)
"Life is beautiful, but the world is hell"
(Harold Pinter)

Sunday, May 30, 2010

George Benson - "Take Five" (Montreux Jazz Festival)


Watch here.

I'm with Stupid


Synthetic life form accuses God of ‘playing science’


The world’s first artificially created life form has accused God of ‘playing science’ and ‘meddling with things He cannot possibly understand.’
The single celled organism, created by Dr Craig Venter and his team, was said to be ‘outraged’ when it discovered that a supernatural being, not subject to any form of regulatory control, was still involved in the creation of life.
‘I cannot believe that God would be so irresponsible,’ said the synthetic cell, ‘creation is clearly a matter for scientists. This God guy should butt out and learn to accept His place in the grand scheme of things.’
READ MORE HERE

Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Joy of Life


On Developing Good Taste (or How to Successfully Dismember Alien Zombie Hordes)


Very interesting review of the great 2008 computer game, Dead Space:

EXTRACT: "Video gaming has something of a reputation for numbskullery. Guardians of higher culture look down upon gaming as the preserve of fat indolent children and brain-dead adults who would rather fantasise about killing things than read a book.
Of course, they are wrong. In truth, gaming is an activity comparable to wine tasting or fine dining: it is all about palate.
Let me explain what I mean - your average punter on the street might be able to tell you the difference between a bottle of wine costing £10 and one costing you £2 but they would not be able to tell you the difference between a bottle costing £50 and one costing £500. They lack the palate to appreciate the subtleties, the eye for differences. They could not tell you why lamb from Wales is better than lamb from New Zealand. They could not tell you why the painstakingly sourced and morally immaculate coffee I drink in the afternoons is better than the freeze-dried rocket fuel I pour down my throat first thing in the morning. This is because it takes time to build a palate. It takes effort to fully appreciate the little differences. This is true whether you are drinking wine, whether you are attending the opera, whether you are viewing paintings and whether you are virtually dismembering the undead".
READ THE REST HERE.

Time to Unfriend


The Steamnoiacs

In a dystopian Antarctica, a young collector of oddities named Danny O'Dare stumbles across a dream-inducing drug which spurs him into conflict with a megalomaniacal dictator, with the help of a female who inexplicably becomes attracted to the damaged protagonist for unstated reasons and her reference book, culminating in a heroic sacrifice that no one will ever remember.

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand


Wow. Just wow. Gosh wow. Each of the coloured dots in this new image from the Herschel telescope is a galaxy containing billions of stars. These are distant luminous infrared galaxies, and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago, packed together like grains of sand on a beach, forming large clusters of galaxies by the force of their mutual gravity. Read more here.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

An Enemy To Be Treated Seriously


EXTRACT: "There is nothing to indicate that political instability or crisis is “inherent” to coalition governments - let alone the actual Cameron-Clegg government that stands before us. Equally dubious is the notion that the new government lacks any “credible” mandate for its policies and programme. Unfortunate though it is, the constant, propagandising stream of commentary about acting in the ‘national interest’ does have a certain popularity - if only on the level of ‘Why don’t you stop squabbling like schoolchildren and muck in together?’ It is a common enough sentiment. In fact there is a danger that the first tranche of cuts could receive a definite level of support from the population."
READ MORE

Making the Case for Zionism


From the Wall Street Journal's 'pictures of the week' for the past week - "FACING A CROWD: A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argued with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, Wednesday." And, remember, these evictions & occupations are underwritten and backed by the Israeli government.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Thursday, May 13, 2010

How to Make a Molecular Nanobot


Easy.

Slippery Sands

Young and Zealous

A Public Service Annoucement


Cardinal's Top Tip


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From the Tiny to the Statistically Insignificant



EXTRACT: "Engels famously remarked that you can compare election results to a thermometer, one capable of registering the political temperature amongst the working class. If that is the case, then the weather out there is near Arctic. Looking at the electoral statistics for the various left-of-Labour groups makes this more than clear. With very few exceptions every seat that had been contested by a far-left candidate in 2005 saw a marked decline in vote share on May 6. That is, most were not even able to reach the traditional 1%-2% range of votes that the non-mad or non-eccentric sections of the far left have normally and regularly received in the past. Or, to put it even more brutally, the far-left votes have gone from the very small or tiny to the statistically insignificant".
READ MORE

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Religious Memes Ate My Brain!!


They're Here


Defend Dorota Rabczewska (Doda)!


Unbelievably - and monstrously - Warsaw prosecutor's office has charged Polish pop-star, Dorota Rabczewska (aka Doda), with the 'crime' of "offending religious sensibilities". Why? Just for remarking in a year-ago television interview that she believed more in dinosaurs than she did in the Bible because "it is hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked herbal cigarettes". If convicted, she faces up to two years in prison under Poland's strict blasphemy laws. Read more here, here and here.

Self-Portrait (sort of)


The Weight of Free Speech


Sunday, May 09, 2010

"Ubu Imperator" (Max Ernst, 1923)


More God Comics


 

Son of God Comics


Denying Cheese

Fireside Angel (The Truimph of Surrealism) [Max Ernst, 1937]


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Let's Talk About Cheese

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Jaded Palace of Sin


Dancer #3


Imaginary Friends


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Satan Says #2