The average American, according to the Clean Air Council, creates 4.6 pounds of trash per day. Much of the trash is non-biodegradable, meaning that it will accumulate, and not necessarily where we’d like it to, if left unchecked.

Californians Against Waste estimates that Americans consume some 84 billion plastic bags a year (the product of roughly 12 million barrels of oil)—many of which, along with many other forms of terrestrial waste, are collecting in an area in the northern Pacific Ocean known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, a floating mass now more than twice the size of Texas.

The mandate of consumerism requires a certain amnesia about what we waste: It encourages us to forget the old and buy the new. Confronting the physical reality of our waste, however, might force a reexamination of our relationship to rampant consumerism.

The sudden interest in found-object art at the recent exhibitions seemed to suggest that the art world was prepared to encourage precisely that sort of reexamination —or so I thought before I actually attended them. (…)

What, however, is one to make of Richard Prince’s pieces, around the corner from Arman’s? The photographs are of Marlboro ads, carefully cropped to remove any ad copy. Prince argues that the iconic Marlboro cowboy, when removed from its original advertising context, encapsulates a certain segment of the American mythos. Perhaps, but the images never are removed from their advertising context—Marlboro’s images are enough of a cultural mainstay that we’re perfectly capable of identifying them without the Marlboro logo. The brand is far stronger than Prince’s effort at artistic dislocation. The primary effect of Prince’s appropriation, rather than rescuing our detritus from obscurity, is merely to extend the reach of advertising into the gallery and the museum. One can hardly claim this is a radical political act, certainly not one that runs counter to consumerism.

{ Pop Matters | Continue reading }

somehow related { Damien Hirst, Appropriation | Wikipedia }

painting { Zhong Biao, Dark Lens, 2002 }

Psychologists have used an inventive combination of techniques to show that the left half of the brain has more self-esteem than the right half. The finding is consistent with earlier research showing that the left hemisphere is associated more with positive, approach-related emotions, whereas the right hemisphere is associated more with negative emotions.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

Iain McGilchrist has recently published ‘The Master and his Emissary’ a book which posits that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of the world, with quite different priorities and values.

{ Interview | Frontier Psychiatrist | Continue reading }

illustration { Kristian Hammerstad }

It’s tempting to try to sort out the good Derrida from the bad but the longer I try the more it all seems bad. (…)

In his early work Derrida makes two valid points.

1. Much of the philosophical tradition attempts to reduce all of existence to a single fundamental concept such as God, Spirit or Being, to derive everything from one idea which is itself somehow not part of the world, creating an inverted pyramidal relationship of emanation between the many and the one.

2. The same tradition also tends to treat the written sign as something secondary, external to and dependent on the immediacy of speech.

In making the first point, Derrida is using the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure to critique the search for a foundation of meaning, something the latter’s theory of signs as conventional and arbitrary would seem to rule out as impossible. In making the second point, he turns on Saussure for not taking his own ideas far enough, for trying to protect the purity of speech from the parasitic corruption of the sign.

It is partly from trying to avoid the trap of a new master concept that Derrida refuses to adopt a stable, consistent vocabulary for the exposition of his ideas.

{ S. Shirazi/Print Culture | Continue reading }

related { Derrida and yummyburgers | NY mag }

The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.

JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth’s rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth’s axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth’s figure axis (the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).

By comparison, Gross said the same model estimated the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted Earth’s axis by 2.32 milliarcseconds (about 7 centimeters, or 2.76 inches).

{ Nasa.gov | Continue reading }

Breast implant stopped bullet, saved woman’s life, says cosmetic surgeon.

Drinking, smoking russian chimpanzee sent to rehab by zookeepers.

Woman live-tweets her abortion to ‘demystify’ procedure, receives death threats.

A Colorado family and an Arizona nonprofit are fighting in court over who gets the head of a woman who died this month, along with a $50,000 annuity she left behind.

Man was charged with beating another man at a motel with a Worcestershire sauce bottle and a fire extinguisher.

Argument over a parking space escalated, ended up with a shoot-out between a man and the police.

Ohio police officers get drunk as part of a training exercise on how to give field sobriety tests.

Man crushed by own car in own garage. [New Zealand Herald]

Burglar freed after 3 hours in chimney.

Singer of Norwegian satanic blackmetal band Gorgoroth, sentenced to 14 months in prison for beating a 41-year-old man and threatening to drink his blood.

A massive aquarium tank housing hundreds of sharks in a Dubai shopping center sprang a leak Thursday, sending shoppers fleeing and prompting the mall owners to close large parts of the building.

Brazilian tourist Joao Lucio DeCosta Sobrinho and his girlfriend were at an underwater viewing area when they suddenly saw a whale with a person in its mouth. SeaWorld experienced trainer died when a killer whale grabbed her with his mouth and dragged her underwater as horrified witnesses watched. More: Colleagues will continue working with whale that killed trainer.

‘Zombies’ have free speech rights too, US court rules.

Orange County jury convicted accused serial killer Rodney Alcala, 66, of five counts of murder.

More than a third of ecstacy seized globally in 2008 was bound for Australia. In Iraq, valium is the most often abused prescription drug.

Circumcision: Zimbabwe’s latest anti-HIV weapon.

When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.

Underwater home-owers: Demand principal reductions. It only requires basic math skills for all parties to recognize that it is in the banks interest to avoid foreclosures. Underwater borrower with this knowledge — and the cojones — should let the bank know they understand simple math: Foreclosures = 50% bank loss.

Sweating your mortgage? Maybe it’s time to bring in friendly outside investors. How to IPO your house.

Do I need maths to be an economist?

Can humans distinguish between sequences of real and randomly generated financial data? Scientist have developed a new test to find out. What does it show? It shows that humans are good at pattern recognition. Nothing more and nothing less.

When I was young and worked briefly at Goldman, the firm was a pig and let even the very junior staffers understand precisely how its pigginess worked so that they would improve upon it when they grew up.

The consumer psychology of mail-in rebates.

Economists, especially those who cross the disciplinary boundary into psychology, have recently begun informing us about what makes people happy. The entire field of behavioral economics — the term used to describe the intersection of economics and psychology — has about it a maverick temperament, as if its practitioners are determined to disprove the silly notion that people know what is best for them.

An interview with propulsion physicist Marc Millis. All about space travel, time travel, quantum tunneling & zero-G Sex.

The hottest science experiment on the planet. In a Long Island lab, gold particles collide to form a subatomic stew far hotter than the sun.

Psychotropics and youth, Part 2 – The solutions. Unrelated: Internet lures kids into porn addiction.

To salt or not to salt? [read more]

How Google’s algorithm rules the web.

After taming the Web, Google is now helping researchers see the world with fresh eyes.

Last year, less than 2 percent of all books sold were e-books.

How to learn just about anything online… For free.

What do gombo, hidden cameras and advertorials have in common? Hint: Each is a part of mainstream journalism somewhere in the world.

Once I applied to give a talk at an academic conference, and the conference chairman asked me to rewrite the abstract to make it more “Yale Post-Graduate like.” Um, what? I can’t tell you how pissed off I get when academics act like “serious academic writing” only means completely unintelligible word-Calculus.

Nietzsche was a composer (and not just of books).

Here is what Virgina Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, said about Jane Austen in 1876.

Good poems about ugly things.

The Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories.

What knowledge is necessary for virtue?

The gallery’s curator, David Zelikovsky, said that the police forced Ms. Hanford, 26, out of the gallery’s storefront. Ms. Hanford is part of the gallery’s latest exhibit by Brian Reed. She stands fully naked under a suspended web made of various objects including shark eggs and teeth, beads and clay pipes.

The Warhol Foundation on trial. [In response to What Is a Warhol?: An Exchange.]

Starburst takes viewers on a journey through the explosion and development of color photography in America. [Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970 – 1980, Cincinnati Art Museum.]

Christopher Capone is the direct grandson of the most notorious gangster in history, Al Capone.

50 Cent is being sued by a South Florida woman who says the rapper posted her homemade porno on the Internet.

Stars caught by candid camera. [pics]

Roadside attractions and sights spotted during travels about the country. [Thanks Matthew!]

Cooking with Bruno [video | Thanks JJ]

A day in the life of New York City, in miniature. [Thanks Joe/Jeremy]

Chat roulette. [tutorial video]

DIY RFID (radio frequency identification).

I’m Fine Thank You, personal work.

OK Go. [Thanks Glenn!]

Two music blogs: alain finkielkraut rock + skegnesschilled.

The Indian rope trick is stage magic said to have been performed in and around India about the 1800s. The trick’s existence was almost certainly a hoax invented by John Elbert Wilkie of the Chicago Tribune.

I collect lost luggage, photograph it, and then try to find the owners. Is it your luggage?

Toyota’s “sudden-acceleration” problem+ Dansk Port Teknik, a garage door company.

Scientific evidence for health supplements (green tea, vitamins, snake oil, etc).–This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness.

Yawwwn.

Who says there are no single men in New York?

How often do you think about…

‘To be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy.’ –Hegel

‘I have a precursor, and what a precursor!’ –Nieztsche

‘Spinoza is the Christ of philosophers, and the greatest philosophers are hardly more than apostles who distance themselves from or draw near to this mystery.’ –Gilles Deleuze

{ Robert Heinecken, L is for Lemon Slices, #3, 1971 | photogram with pastel and chalk }

One of the most interesting things we learned in Artificial Intelligence is that what we consider hard, like chess and multiplication, is easy for a computer. What we consider easy–like recognizing emotions on faces, or visually distinguishing between a dog and a cat–a computer finds quite difficult. What is hard for us, is only because we know the right answer, and know how difficult it is to do the logic in our head. Most thoughts we take for granted are really quite complex, yet because we can’t even begin to write down how we do it, we do not realize it.

{ Falken Blog | Continue reading }

photo { Robert Whitman, 80s my livingroom }

The most audacious burglary gang in recent Hollywood history–accused of stealing more than $3 million in clothing and jewelry from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and other stars–appears to be a bunch of club-hopping Valley kids, motivated by vanity and celebrity-worship.

{ Vanity Fair | Continue reading }

‘The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.’ –John Lyly, Euphues, 1578.

All’s fair in love and war, we hear at a tender age. Though this is tempered by schoolboy concepts of fair play and never hit a man when he’s down. Fair play is reasonable if you don’t mean to win at any cost and the other guy doesn’t mean to kill you, but all that goes by the board in any genuine confrontation.

{ via OvercomingBias | Continue reading }

A new mathematical model of hurricane formation finally solves one of the outstanding puzzles of climate change but also predicts dramatic increases in the number of storms as the world warms.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

photo { Christophe Kutner }

A machine that prints organs is coming to market.

The great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs.

The new machine, which costs around $200,000, has been developed by Organovo, a company in San Diego that specialises in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia.

{ The Economist | Continue reading }

photo { Robert Whitman, 80s my livingroom }

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar.” When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account.

{ Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, 31, 1807 | Continue reading }

It’s with some courage that Melanie Glenwright and Penny Pexman have chosen to investigate the tricky issue of when exactly children learn the distinction between sarcasm and irony. Their finding is that nine- to ten-year-olds can tell the difference, although they can’t yet explicitly explain it. Four- to five-year-olds, by contrast, understand that sarcasm and irony are non-literal forms of language, but they can’t tell the difference between the two.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

photo { Mando Alvarez }

It is amazing that out of the countless trillions of ways molecules can be arranged, only a few million ways result in things that can reproduce themselves.

The biologist E.O. Wilson estimates there are about 13 million species, broken down as follows:

Insects 9 million
Bacteria 1 million
Fungi 1 million
Viruses 0.3 million
Algae 0.3 million
Worms 0.3 million
Plants 0.2 million
Protozoa 0.2 million
Echinoderms 0.2 million
Mollusks 0.2 million
Crustaceans 0.2 million
Fish 30 thousand
Reptiles 10 thousand
Birds 10 thousand
Amphibians 5 thousand
Mammals 5 thousand

It has been estimated that since the Pre-Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago, during which the predecessors of most of these species arose, upwards of 90% of all species are extinguished each 100 million years due to environmental catastrophes. Hence, even counting the ways life might have been organized in the distant past, not more than a few hundreds of millions of molecular patterns have worked.

In comparison, a practically infinite number of molecular patterns are possible given the dozens of atomic building blocks nature has to work with and the astronomical number of possibilities for stringing these atoms together in three-dimensional space. (…)

Life owes its improbable existence to an exceedingly rare kind of code. This life-code does two things unique to life.

First, it enables self-replicating order to be structured out of disorder. Second, it enables that order to be maintained (for a while) against all the forces that make things fall apart. Wow yourself with this: life-codes are merely a mathematical sequence, like a formula, that shazam-like transforms randomness into purpose and entropy into organization.  


{ Martine Rothblatt, Will Uploaded Minds in Machines be Alive? | Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technology | Continue reading }

photo { Garry Winogrand }

Dignity is apparently big in parts of ethics, particularly as a reason to stop others doing anything ‘unnatural’ regarding their bodies, such as selling their organs, modifying themselves or reproducing in unusual ways. Dignity apparently belongs to you except that you aren’t allowed to sell it or renounce it. Nobody who finds it important seems keen to give it a precise meaning. So I wondered if there was some definition floating around that would sensibly warrant the claims that dignity is important and is imperiled by futuristic behaviours.

{ Meteuphoric | Continue reading }

photo { Manolo Campion }

1 out of every 10 electrons you consume in America comes from dismantled Russian warheads. Half the uranium we consume comes from a program called Megatons to Megawatts. And 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear. Hence 10% of all electricity in this country comes from post-Cold War weapons dismantling. Bombs once pointed at your cities now power them—from swords to ploughshares, indeed.

{ Josh Wolfe Newsletter, Feb 19, 2010 }

Back in the real world, of course, most major espionage activities look more like farce than anything else. I mean, the Bay of Pigs? Oliver North? Accidentally murdering suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and then removing the corpses’ throats because, hyuk!  hyuk!, gee nobody’ll notice that?

Clearly, the real secret of intelligence is that these people aren’t Machiavellian geniuses. They’re bumbling shitheads, just like most government functionaries—or, for that matter, most people.

{ Noah Berlatsky/Splice Today | Continue reading }