Thursday, May 27, 2010

Америкийн Dj Memnok


Notice from Sancho, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia:

“Date: Friday, May 28, 2010
Time: 9:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: Зөгий Fm 107.0

“Энэ Баасан гарагт буюу 2010-05-28 ны дугаараар Америкын Dj Memnok бид нартай шууд холбогдон тун сонирхолтой ярилцлагыг өгөх гэж байна. Мөн түүний Dark Minimal урсгалаар хийсэн сэтийг сонсох болно Гадаадын Dj нарын сэт болон тэд нарын сэтийг сонсноор дэлхий дахинд электрон хөгжим хэрхэн хөгжиж байгааг мэдэхээс гадна Dj хүн ямар байх ёстой мэдэх боломжтой. Холбогдох цаг 21.00 цагт Клуб Соёл булангаар.”


“Memnok's music evokes dark spirits and black energies. His name is Jeremy Brown, a native of West Michigan not too far from Detroit, and his music speaks this reality. Despite the renowned bleakness of this area of the world, Memnok masters the ability to channel his creative energy, yielding a product that is sinister and moody while retaining a level of stripped-to-the-bone dark funk.”

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Hagar the Realistic


Risk and Peril

"This Book explains the Universe....

"Each one of us has an universe of his own....

"The object that you see is never the same as the one that I see ; we infer that it is the same because your experience tallies with mine on so many points that the actual differences of our observation are negligible. For instance, if a friend is walking between us, you see only his left side, I his right ; but we agree that it is the same man, although we may differ not only as to what we may see of his body but as to what we know of his qualitites. This conviction of identity grows stronger as we see him more often and get to know him better. Yet all the time neither of us can know anything of him at all beyond the total impression made on our respective minds....

"The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.

"Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril."


--Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law, 1938


Wednesday, May 19, 2010

all my life the cost of living has been rising

"An hour of light will cost you about a quarter of a second of labour -- a little more if you include the cost of the bulb.

"According to economist William Nordhaus, to get the same amount of light with a conventional filament lamp in 1950 and the then average wage, you’d have needed to work for eight seconds. Using a kerosene lamp in the 1880s, you’d have needed to work for 15 minutes; a tallow candle in the 1800s, more than six hours. From a quarter of a day to a quarter of a second is an 86,400-fold improvement. That’s how much better off you are than your ancestor two centuries ago -- in lighting, at least....

"Yet all my life the cost of living has been rising. Why? It’s partly because prices are quoted in money, rather than in hours worked, and partly that the basket of goods used to measure inflation is slow to include new inventions, which are the items that are the fastest to fall in price....

"The computing power of one of today’s pocket calculators would have cost you a lifetime’s wages in 1970, yet I don’t recall ever calculating that it would be sensible to wait until 2009 before buying one....

"Moreover, in satisfying your needs more cheaply, you have more money to spend, so you chase up the cost of your wants. So the money that you’ve saved on candles now gets spent on homoeopathic pet medicines."


--Matt Ridley, Wired UK, 2009 April 21

Friday, May 14, 2010

bug reports

"So, you have had a glitch. Send in a bug report. The programmers need a laugh too."

--Cracked.com

Yes, per logical consistency, and in denial of self-righteous fiction

"The conditions of combat place human beings under unbearable and extraordinary circumstances of stress that can and have provoked decent and good men to perform terrible acts. Is it just for those judging these acts to place standards on combat behavior that they cannot say with any confidence that they could meet themselves, if placed under the same conditions?

"The United States walked right into this one when it launched the first international war crimes trial at Nuremberg after World War II. Nobody doubted that what the Nazis had done to Jews and others during the war was monstrous, but subjecting it to official and legal condemnation under the category of 'war crimes' was, and remains, problematical. The tribunal at Nuremberg would not accept 'following orders' as a defense, but neither does the US military permit soldiers to pass their own moral judgements on which orders they will obey.

"Ultimately, the importance of officially condemning the atrocities of the Holocaust was determined to be more important than consistency. What the Nazis did could not stand unpunished, even though, in truth, there were bound to be actions by American soldiers in future wars that could be called war crimes under the Nuremberg definition. There were such actions during W.W. II: should the crew of the Enola Gay have refused to drop the atom bomb?"


--Ethics Scoreboard, "The Housewife and the Marine," 2004 November 22

Sunday, May 02, 2010

in the great loneliness

"The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness."

--Igjugarjuk, as quoted by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, 1988


Of all this fiery life

"Of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!"

--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale