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Warren Ellis on Hunter S. Thompson’s Legacy

  • Posted on May 17, 2012 at 6:00 am

In a wide ranging interview with Disinfo’s Matt Staggs, Transmetropolitan writer Warren Ellis discussed the legacy of Hunter S. Thompson.

You can listen to or download the interview at Disinfo. Here are some of the points Ellis made:

  • In Transmet Ellis was more interested in the effects of celebrity on Thompson.
  • Celebrity had a corrosive effect on Thompson. Although he became more well known, he was portrayed as a cartoon character and that resulted in him being defanged and not taken seriously.
  • Because Thompson’s work is so seductively well written, it can actually be a bad influence on writers who try to imitate his style.
  • The point of drawing on 60s and 70s politics in Transmet was to show how little things had changed in the 90s and 00s when Ellis was writing it, and how unlikely it was that things would change substantially in the future.

I love Thompson’s work but think he can be a bad influence on writers and journalists who wind up writing crappy prose in an attempt to be edgy and play it fast and lose with the facts to be “gonzo.” And because of his image and style, his message was often lost. Too many people remember him as a character.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/17/warren-ellis-on-hunter-s-thompsons-legacy/

Care to leave a comment?

Genesis P-Orridge, Hakim Bey and John Perry Barlow in Conversation (1993)

  • Posted on May 9, 2012 at 9:04 am

Here’s an old Mondo 2000 interview from 1993 with both Genesis P-Orridge and Hakim Bey conducted by Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow:

JOHN: Right, Taoism has no truck with good and evil at all.

HAKIM: Taoism seems to be the one religion that doesn’t have the Gnostic trace.

JOHN: In our culture, the problem arose with the Romans.

HAKIM: I think it goes further back. It’s Babylon. It’s just like the Rastas say, “It happened in Babylon.” It’s Marduk and Tiamat. It’s Mr. Hard-on God up against Sloppy Mom. In China, chaos is a benevolent property. Huntun is the gourd or the egg out of which everything comes. He’s a wonton. Huntun and wonton are the same words. He’s like this little dumpling and everything good comes out of him. In Babylon, chaos is the disgusting monster vagina that has to be ripped up by Marduk into myriad blobs of shit and slime. And we are those globs of slime. That’s how the human race came into being. What is the purpose of the human race? To serve Marduk, to serve the masculine principle, to store up grain in the granary for the priests, to pay for the priests for their sacrifice so they get the free hamburgers. That’s the whole Western myth. It’s St. George and the Dragon. St. George pins the dragon down.

In China, the dragon is the free expression of creativity. He’s the mixture of Yin and Yang, the principle of power. But here’s evil, plain and simple. This is why chaos has kicked off, for me, for Ralph Abraham, and others, an interest in making a critique of this Western mythology, and saying, “Let’s put Humpty Dumpty back together.”

JOHN: There’s been an interesting co-evolution lately of a lot of apparently disconnected things, like chaos mathematics and neo-tribalism, a sudden interest in Taoism and what I perceive to be a deep feminization of Western culture.

GEN: Some philosophers feel that there’s a risk in absolute unconditional surrender of that male-God power, even though it’s obviously failed miserably. Should we seek out every possible male trait and subordinate it to a female principle?

HAKIM: I didn’t like the rule of Dad, but I don’t think I’m going to like the rule of Mom either.

Pastbin: Zoning Out, Temporarily with Hakim Bey and Genesis P-Orridge

See also:

Douglass Rushkoff in Conversation with Genesis P. Orridge (2003 and 2007)

Hakim Bey dossier

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge dossier

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/05/09/genesis-p-orridge-hakim-bey-and-john-perry-barlow-in-conversation-1993/

3 New Dossiers: Process Church of the Final Judgement, Amber Case, David Cronenberg

  • Posted on April 30, 2012 at 11:07 am

Three new dossiers are up:

The Process Church of The Final Judgement, the 60s cult.

Amber Case, the cyborg anthropologist.

David Cronenberg, the body horror film director.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/30/3-new-dossiers-process-church-of-the-final-judgement-amber-case-david-cronenberg/

3 New Dossiers: Process Church of the Final Judgement, Amber Case, David Cronenberg

  • Posted on April 30, 2012 at 11:07 am

Three new dossiers are up:

The Process Church of The Final Judgement, the 60s cult.

Amber Case, the cyborg anthropologist.

David Cronenberg, the body horror film director.

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/30/3-new-dossiers-process-church-of-the-final-judgement-amber-case-david-cronenberg/

Beautiful Old Moebius-esque Nintendo Comic

  • Posted on April 7, 2012 at 2:08 pm

“Howard and Nester” was a comic in the magazine Nintendo Power. I read it as a kid but I’d forgotten how gorgeous the Moebius-style/”frenchmanga” style art was:

Howard and Nester

Nintendope has archived the entire series, but it’s not clear who drew these strips.

Howard and Nester Comics Archive

(via Brandon Graham)

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/04/07/beautiful-old-moebius-esque-nintendo-comic/

Posters Explaining How Classic 808 Drum Sequences Were Programmed

  • Posted on March 28, 2012 at 2:58 pm

Planet Rock 808 programming poster

A series of informative posters detailing how some of the most notable drum sequences were programmed using the Roland TR-808 Drum Machine. Each sequence has been analyzed and represented as to allow users to re-programme each sequence, key for key.

If you would like an A3 print please send a mail to shop@robricketts.co.uk and I will email you as soon as some become available.

Rob Bricketts: Program Your 808

(via Iso50 via f mass)

From http://technoccult.net/archives/2012/03/28/808-programming-posters/

Were the “Snakes” Cast Out by Saint Patrick Really Pagans?

  • Posted on March 17, 2012 at 7:01 pm

saint patrick

Nope. The Wild Hunt quotes scholar and Celtic Reconstructionist pagan P. Sufenas Virius Lupus:

“Unfortunately, this isn’t true, and the hagiographies of St. Patrick did not include this particular “miracle” until quite late, relatively speaking (his earliest hagiographies are from the 7th century, whereas this incident doesn’t turn up in any of them until the 11th century). St. Patrick’s reputation as the one who Christianized Ireland is seriously over-rated and overstated, as there were others that came before him (and after him), and the process seemed to be well on its way at least a century before the “traditional” date given as his arrival, 432 CE, because Irish colonists (yes, you read that right!) in southern Wales, Cornwall, and elsewhere in Roman and sub-Roman Britain had already come into contact with Christians and carried the religion back with them when visiting home.”

The Wild Hunt: Saint Patrick, Druids, Snakes, and Popular Myths

See also: Bring the Snakes Back to Ireland.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/D5PUhvZ7Rp4/

Covers From Ah ! Nana, the All Female Creator Version of Heavy Metal

  • Posted on March 15, 2012 at 5:49 pm

Cover of Ah ! Nana # 1

From the Women in Comics Wiki:

Ah ! Nana was a French comics magazine published from October 1976 to September 1978, running nine issues. It was published by Humanoïdes Associés, best known as the publishers of Métal Hurlant, or Heavy Metal. It was the first French publication featuring work entirely by women (though each issue invited one man to contribute) at a time when comics were still almost exclusively male environments. It included work by such French cartoonists as Chantal Montellier, Florence Cestac, and Nicole Claveloux, as well as Americans such as Trina Robbins. It sold 15,000 copies on a print run of 30,000, before the ban on sales to minors proved fatal, due to its frequent taboo and controversial material.

Women in Comics: Ah ! Nana has covers and a history of the publication.

(via Popjellyfish)

Previously: Leah Moore on Women in Comics

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/v5xZosnb80M/

Cyberculture History: Electronic Music Pioneer/Soviet Spy Leon Theremin

  • Posted on March 13, 2012 at 6:43 pm

leon theremin

Theremin saw little of the $100,000 he was paid, Glinsky says, which most likely went straight into Soviet coffers. But he stayed in the US for a while working on other projects, and engaging in industrial espionage.

“His very reason for being sent over was his espionage mission,” says Glinsky. Demonstrating the theremin instrument was just a distraction, a Trojan Horse, as it were.

“He had special access to firms like RCA, GE, Westinghouse, aviation companies and so on, and shared his latest technical know how with representatives from these companies to get them to open up to him about their latest discoveries. [...]

Later that year he returned suddenly to the Soviet Union, leaving his wife behind. Some people suggested he’d been kidnapped by Soviet officials, but Glinsky says a combination of debt and homesickness led to Theremin returning voluntarily.

He returned to a Soviet Union in the grip of Stalin’s purges. He was arrested and falsely accused of being a counter-revolutionary, for which he received an eight year sentence in 1939.

BBC: Leon Theremin: The man and the music machine

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/heq_oZc7k3w/

Researchers Say Humans Didn’t Wipe Out the Neanderthals

  • Posted on February 28, 2012 at 8:01 am

new xmen neanderthals

I thought the idea that humans killed off the Neanderthals was already losing currency. And now a paper published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution casts more doubt on that particular hypothesis.

i09′s Alasdair Wilkins summarizes:

A team of Spanish and Swedish researchers say that new DNA evidence paints a far grimmer view of the state of Neanderthals. Their analysis suggests the Neanderthal population had crashed 50,000 years ago, and a relatively small band of survivors then recolonized central and western Europe before their final end 20,000 years later. In a statement, Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History explained what they discovered:

Instead the paper’s authors suggest climate change had a greater impact on neanderthals than previously thought.

Alasdair Wilkins writes: “This also raises the question of just how humans would have really fared against a Neanderthal population at full strength. I’m sensing some pretty serious alternate history fodder here…”

i09: The extinction of Neanderthals had nothing to do with us

Image from New X-Men

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/dVVmIbgFl7g/

Alex Burns on the Creation of The Book of Oblique Strategies

  • Posted on February 27, 2012 at 11:00 am

Alex Burns, who was editor of Disinformation from 1998 to 2008, has made his work The Book of Oblique Strategies available online as a free PDF. It’s not so much a work on Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s famous deck. Alex describes it as a channeled work in the vein of Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies.

In addition to the work, Alex has explained how he came to write it and its significance to him. I don’t really understand the work itself and haven’t read the list of prerequisites that Alex suggested. But I appreciate the insight into Alex’s life and work and think anyone else who was shaped by Disinfo during his tenure as editor will appreciate it as well. Characteristic of Alex’s work at Disinfo, the write-up is more link dense Memepool and contains a huge number of references connecting seemingly disparate people and ideas.

My life changed dramatically in the next month. I hit a series of simultaneous inflection points or a Black Swan event cascade that overshadowed the document. REVelation Magazine folded and could not publish my interview with the late ethno-botanist Terence McKenna. 21C Magazine folded and could not publish my interview with space migration advocate Marshall Savage. The real estate sold out the rental house from beneath us. The relationship broke up. The 20th anniversary loomed of my mother’s death in a car accident on 28th March 1978. I experienced a period of referential ideation and had a nervous breakdown that my family helped me to recover from. I then struggled to pull together freelance magazine articles. When reconciliation was impossible with my former girlfriend, I attempted suicide (which influenced a later article on the Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile). A few months later I started to correspond with Richard Metzger and to write for the Disinformation alternative news site. I attended an academic seminar on process philosophy. Sean Healy invited me to This Is Not Art. I negotiated re-enrolling in my undergraduate degree on film and politics. Hence, the ‘Ordeals of Transmutation Fire.’

Alex Burns: The Book of Oblique Strategies

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/KQCln_AqgNQ/

The Myth of the Eight-hour Sleep

  • Posted on February 25, 2012 at 1:58 pm

A 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam

Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, believes that he’s found evidence that until sometime between the 17th and 19th century Europeans used to sleep in two separate blocks, known as first and second sleep, rather than one eight hour block. According to historical literature he’s uncovered, people would wake up for an hour or two between blocks.

From the BBC:

During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.

And these hours weren’t entirely solitary – people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.

A doctor’s manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day’s labour but “after the first sleep”, when “they have more enjoyment” and “do it better”.

BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

(via Hacker News)

See also:

Segmented Sleep

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/qSX4jIhtA3M/

How a Team of Outsiders Created Doctor Who

  • Posted on February 20, 2012 at 10:22 pm

Doctor Who

i09 has some interesting back history of Doctor Who and how difficult it was to get the show made:

Also, at the panel, Hussein and William Russell talked about how the first Doctor, William Hartnell, wasn’t just a cantankerous old man — he was also a very traditional Englishman, who wasn’t used to the idea of women working outside the home. And he didn’t know what to make of Hussein, “an East Indian who spoke posh English,” said Hussein. Thus, Hartnell took a lot of convincing that an East Asian man and a young woman were going to be up to their jobs. The first lunch Hussein and Lambert had with Hartnell, he seemed reluctant to take on the role, and they almost gave up. In the end, they decided to have a second lunch with Hartnell, at which it became clear that the actor wanted them to prove their qualifications.

i09: The creators of Doctor Who were a scandal

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/xuIWravY1Hw/

Supervert on Mark Dery’s New Book I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

  • Posted on February 20, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Supervert, author of Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish and webmaster of the definitive William S. Burroughs site Reality Studio, reviews Mark Dery’s new book I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts:

How is it that Dery is able to produce this uncanny feeling of identification? You get the sense that, while the rest of us were living the zeitgeist, Dery was holding a stethoscope to its heart. His essays are EKGs showing that our pulse goes haywire in the presence of extremes — perversion, violence, satanism. In an introduction, Dery declares that it is “the writer’s job” to “think bad thoughts”: “to wander footloose through the mind’s labyrinth, following the thread of any idea that reels you in, no matter how arcane or depraved, obscene or blasphemous, untouchably controversial, irreducibly complex, or preposterous on its face.” All of us take in these abominations as they play across our flatscreens and iPhones, but Dery’s distinction is to really think about them — reflect on them, contextualize them, pursue their logic to sometimes unpalatable consequences. “The writer’s job,” he means to say, “is to transform ‘bad thoughts’ into good ones — insights and observations — through a process of examination.”

Supervert: I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

See also: Mark Dery: How the Cephalopod Became Our Zeitgeist Mascot

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/Yw4UuCql6hg/

New Electric Sheep Comic: First Word

  • Posted on January 28, 2012 at 12:55 pm

First Word

Patrick Farley’s Electric Sheep is back with a new comic First Word, a psychedelic meditation on the origin of language.

WARNING: NSFW and contains strobing imagery.

Here’s a favorite old one: The Guy I Almost Was.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/Q6SCcRKdHSY/

Has the Cost of Books Gone Up, Adjusted for Inflation?

  • Posted on January 4, 2012 at 12:14 pm

The answer, apparently, is no. The Awl looked through the cost of different New York Times best sellers from the past seven decades and comparing the costs using a tool from Bureau of Labor Statistics to convert all the costs into 2011 money. The conclusion? Hardcover books have cost roughly $30 2011 money since 1951, with the exception of some large outliers in 1971.

The article concludes:

And it’s good that we’re doing this now, as the uncertainty looming over the publishing industry is unimaginably big. Both the competitive pricing and release patterns of e-books and the ascendance of Amazon and similar e-tailers (okay, just Amazon, really) threaten to change the business of book publishing into something that will be completely unrecognizable on an historical basis. All this at a time when even members of the Fourth Estate are railing against the horrors of bookstores, even the independent ones. (Needless to say, I disagree with him in a manner that involves the use of profanities: support your local bookstore.) I hope this is not the case, but maybe only James Patterson can save us.

The Owl: How Much More Do Books Cost Today?

(via Matt Staggs)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/4qalcsZ66GA/

Acedia: The ADHD of the Middle Ages

  • Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Acedia

John Plotz writes for The New York Times:

By some miracle, you set aside a day to tackle that project you can’t seem to finish in the office. You close the door, boot up your laptop, open the right file and . . . five minutes later catch yourself thinking about dinner. By 10 a.m., you’re staring at the wall, even squinting at it between your fingertips. Is this day 50 hours long? Soon, you fall into a light, unsatisfying sleep and awake dizzy or with a pounding headache; all your limbs feel weighed down. At which point, most likely around noon, you commit a fatal error: leaving the room. I’ll just garden for a bit, you tell yourself, or do a little charity work. Hmmm, I wonder if my friend Gregory is around?

This probably strikes you as an extremely, even a uniquely, modern problem. Pick up an early medieval monastic text, however, and you will find extensive discussion of all the symptoms listed above, as well as a diagnosis. Acedia, also known as the “noonday demon,” appears again and again in the writings of the Desert Fathers from the fourth and fifth centuries. Wherever monks and nuns retreated into cells to labor and to meditate on matters spiritual, the illness struck.

New York Times: Their Noonday Demons, and Ours

(via Adam Gurri)

Acedia was also considered a precursor to the deadly sin of sloth.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/L8GMMcXHCSw/

Acedia: The ADHD of the Middle Ages

  • Posted on December 30, 2011 at 12:00 pm

acedia Acedia: The ADHD of the Middle Ages

John Plotz writes for The New York Times:

By some miracle, you set aside a day to tackle that project you can’t seem to finish in the office. You close the door, boot up your laptop, open the right file and . . . five minutes later catch yourself thinking about dinner. By 10 a.m., you’re staring at the wall, even squinting at it between your fingertips. Is this day 50 hours long? Soon, you fall into a light, unsatisfying sleep and awake dizzy or with a pounding headache; all your limbs feel weighed down. At which point, most likely around noon, you commit a fatal error: leaving the room. I’ll just garden for a bit, you tell yourself, or do a little charity work. Hmmm, I wonder if my friend Gregory is around?

This probably strikes you as an extremely, even a uniquely, modern problem. Pick up an early medieval monastic text, however, and you will find extensive discussion of all the symptoms listed above, as well as a diagnosis. Acedia, also known as the “noonday demon,” appears again and again in the writings of the Desert Fathers from the fourth and fifth centuries. Wherever monks and nuns retreated into cells to labor and to meditate on matters spiritual, the illness struck.

New York Times: Their Noonday Demons, and Ours

(via Adam Gurri)

Acedia was also considered a precursor to the deadly sin of sloth.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/L8GMMcXHCSw/

Grey Lodge Occult Review Archives

  • Posted on December 29, 2011 at 4:12 pm

glor Grey Lodge Occult Review Archives

I might be courting a SOPA charge by linking to this, but someone’s made the entirety of the defunct Grey Lodge Occult Review available for download.

Psychedelic Heroin: Grey Lodge Archives

The rest of the site is worth poking around in as well. For example, here’s a collection of spoken word snippets from various thinkers that Technoccult readers may be familiar with.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/h6nBRQKL0DY/

The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

  • Posted on December 28, 2011 at 4:03 pm

john titor insignia The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

Mike Lynch, a private detective hired for an Italian documentary on Titor, suggests that Haber’s brother, John Rick Haber, is Titor. John Rick Haber is a computer scientist who would have known about the IBM 5100 and Unix 2038 problem, with a post office box application later linking John Rick Haber with the John Titor Foundation. Lynch believes John Rick Haber to have the computer knowledge and wit to perpetrate the Titor hoax.

i09: The Man Who Told the Internet He’d Come from the Future

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ndQ5KV38nn0/

The Search for the Woodstock Babies

  • Posted on December 13, 2011 at 4:30 pm

woodstock The Search for the Woodstock Babies

From the AP back in 2009:

Welcome to middle age, Woodstock Baby – if you’re really out there.

The babies reportedly born at the Woodstock festival 40 years ago remain the most enduring mystery from that chaotic weekend that defined a generation. Depending on the source, there was one birth on that patch of Sullivan County farmland between Aug. 15-17, 1969. Or two. Or three. Or none.

AP: Born at Woodstock? Gave birth at Woodstock?

(Photo by Mark Goff)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/ZdsqjqWAJpY/

Coil Retrospective

  • Posted on November 28, 2011 at 6:01 pm

coil Coil Retrospective

The Quietus ran a retrospective on Coil‘s career for the one year anniversary of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s death:

Through a potent trinity of chemically-altered states, occult arcana and technological transmutation, Coil was, perhaps, the strangest and occasionally the most frightening of bands. While their twenty year history saw much in the way of personal turmoil and tragedies as they moved through the extreme hedonism and post-AIDS fallout of London’s gay clubland to a more hermetic but no less intoxicated existence on England’s South West coast, John Balance (née Geff Rushton) and Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson remained true to their original intentions to explore, as the cover of their debut release puts it: “How sound can affect the physical and mental state of the serious listener”. Such explorations produced a unique and incomparable body of work that not only charts a most unconventional route through emergent musical technologies, but also signposts a hellishly complex set of references to occult theories and deviant figures throughout history (from Aleister Crowley to William S Burroughs) along the way. But the high physical and mental cost of their creative processes often lead to long gaps in their output. Indeed, the most elusive album in their back catalogue eluded the band themselves: Backwards, originally intended as a follow-up to 1991’s Love’s Secret Domain, was mentioned in the band’s semi-regular updates describing sessions with mainstream players such as Tim Simenon and Trent Reznor, yet the album was never released (although some of the recordings were later re-arranged posthumously for The Ape of Naples and its companion piece, The New Backwards).

The Quietus: Serious Listeners: The Strange And Frightening World Of Coil

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/geBXn036ixY/

Majority in the U.S. Supported the Shooting of Kent State Shooters in 1970

  • Posted on November 21, 2011 at 6:53 pm

Kent State massacre Majority in the U.S. Supported the Shooting of Kent State Shooters in 1970

It’s not the case that nobody sides with the National Guard at Kent State — terrible people abound — but it’s definitely true that history condemns them. We can’t reconcile the massacre of protesters, even less-than-peaceful protesters, with our idea of democracy. We do not condone it when soldiers slaughter unarmed teenagers on US soil. We ‘re not willing to be that country.

We were then.

A Gallup poll conducted after the shootings showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students for the massacre. Nixon’s prepared statement said that the protesters’ behavior “invite[d] tragedy” — in other words, they were asking for it. You can bet your ass that if there had been Internet comments sections in 1970, they would have been full of misspelled missives about how those hippies only got what they deserved. Since there weren’t, those people sent hate mail to the victims’ mothers instead.

xojane: For Some Reason UC David Did Make Me Give Up On Humanity

(via Alexis Madrigal)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/1xt_MdJnhr4/

Majority in the U.S. Supported the Shooting of Kent State Shooters in 1970

  • Posted on November 21, 2011 at 6:53 pm

Kent State massacre Majority in the U.S. Supported the Shooting of Kent State Shooters in 1970

It’s not the case that nobody sides with the National Guard at Kent State — terrible people abound — but it’s definitely true that history condemns them. We can’t reconcile the massacre of protesters, even less-than-peaceful protesters, with our idea of democracy. We do not condone it when soldiers slaughter unarmed teenagers on US soil. We ‘re not willing to be that country.

We were then.

A Gallup poll conducted after the shootings showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students for the massacre. Nixon’s prepared statement said that the protesters’ behavior “invite[d] tragedy” — in other words, they were asking for it. You can bet your ass that if there had been Internet comments sections in 1970, they would have been full of misspelled missives about how those hippies only got what they deserved. Since there weren’t, those people sent hate mail to the victims’ mothers instead.

xojane: For Some Reason UC David Did Make Me Give Up On Humanity

(via Alexis Madrigal)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/1xt_MdJnhr4/

Researchers Trying to Build a Functioning Babbage’s Analytical Engine

  • Posted on November 9, 2011 at 11:00 am

800px Babbage Difference Engine Researchers Trying to Build a Functioning Babbages Analytical Engine

A photo of the Difference Engine constructed by the Science Museum based on the plans for Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2 by geni

Forget big data:

The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision. That project was completed in 1991.

The new effort — led by John Graham-Cumming, a programmer, and Doron Swade, a former curator at the museum — has already digitized Babbage’s surviving blueprints for the Analytical Engine. But the challenges of building it are daunting.

In the case of the Difference Engine, a complete set of plans existed. The Analytical Engine, by contrast, was a work in progress, as Babbage continually refined his thinking in a series of blueprints. Thus, the hope is to “crowd-source” the analysis of what should be built; plans will be posted online next year, and the public will be invited to offer suggestions.

New York Times: It Started Digital Wheels Turning

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/CSt1NKZ2aIY/

When Did Magic Become Hereditary?

  • Posted on November 4, 2011 at 10:16 am

The Twelfth Enchantment author David Liss on the portrayal of magic in popular story telling:

In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan. Anyone could learn magic as long as he or she had access to the knowledge or could make a connection with the right supernatural entity. The important point is that in theory, the gates of magic were open to everyone, and what I find most interesting is how that has changed in popular culture. [...]

Magic has gone from being an open system to a closed one. Their massive popularity make the Harry Potter novels and films the most glaring example, but it’s everywhere, and has been for decades now: TV shows like Charmed and Wizards of Waverly Place, books like those of Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris. More often than not, magical practitioners are born, not made. Magic is an exclusive club. You can watch and be envious, but you can’t join.

i09: When did magic become elitist?

Also, Alyssa Rosenberg writes: “I wonder if a sense of biological magic also correlates to a sense of unease about how much power we have to impact our lives and to change the world. Believing that you can put the evil eye on someone, or that you can summon the devil, means believing in your own capacity to learn, hold, and wield power. Biological conceptions of magic are a way of explaining your own powerlessness. We can’t change our lives — but we’re also not responsible for changing the world — because we’re not Harry Potter, or the Slayer, or the Halliwell sisters.”

(both links via David Forbes)

Not unrelated are Michael Moorcock’s essay on the fascist, conservative and/or reactionary strains running through sci-fi and fantasy fiction, and this essay by Stokes on the aesthetics of fascism and the TV series Game of Thrones.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/s0xjwB_tM90/

Generation Catalano: Between Generation X and the Millennials

  • Posted on October 31, 2011 at 3:07 pm

catalano Generation Catalano: Between Generation X and the Millennials

Doree Shafrir writes for Slate:

I was born during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a one-term administration remembered mostly for the Iran hostage crisis, the New York City blackout, and stagflation. The Carter babies—anyone born between his inauguration in January 1977 and Reagan’s in January 1981—are now 30 to 34, and, like Carter himself, the weirdly brilliant yet deeply weird born-again Christian peanut farmer, this micro-generation is hard to pin down. We identify with some of Gen X’s cynicism and suspicion of authority—watching Pee-Wee Herman proclaim, “I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel,” will do that to a kid—but we were too young to claim Singles and Reality Bites and Slacker as our own (though that didn’t stop me from buying the soundtracks). And, while the proud alienation of the Gen X worldview doesn’t totally sit right, we certainly don’t yearn for the Organization Man-like conformity that the Millennials seem to crave. [...]

But maybe we’re not the only ones who feel unmoored. After explaining the gist of the piece to a 29-year-old friend over email, she responded: “I feel like I’m especially without generation because I’m not quite a Carter baby but not really a Millennial either. … I feel like Noreen, who is only two years younger than me, is of a slightly different generation, which seems crazy! But it feels true.” Her email was a classic Generation Catalano move: dancing near the spotlight, and then dancing with herself.

Slate: Generation Catalano

(via Amanda Sledz)

I hate the name, but I can identify with this, although I missed the Carter administration by about 10 months. Some measures of when Generation X place its end as late as 1981, while the Millennial generation starts as early as the late 70s. There’s a lot of overlap.

I’ve previously generations aren’t really that different from each other, but I get really annoyed at articles like this that refer to young people’s desire for a better life as a “sense of entitlement” (especially since the author of that article clearly didn’t even read the article he was replying to). I was lucky enough to graduate college in 2003 as the economy was recovering from the dotcom bust, so I was able to establish a career and avoid many of the long-term effects of the current recession on young people. But those effects are real, they’re worse for the millennials than most and they have every right to be upset about it.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/soc8u-h3BXQ/

Last Living Master of Fading Sikh Martial Art Seeks Successor

  • Posted on October 30, 2011 at 11:00 am

sikh warrior 300x245 Last Living Master of Fading Sikh Martial Art Seeks Successor

Nidar Singh is the last known living master of the Sikh martial art shastar vidya, the “science of weapons”:

“I’ve travelled all over India and I have spoken to many elders, this is basically a last-ditch attempt to flush someone out because if I die with it, it is all gone.”

He would be overjoyed to discover an existing master somewhere in India, or to find a talented young student determined to dedicate his life to the art.

BBC: The only living master of a dying martial art

(via Mrvi)

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/Da5EnEifNW0/

RIP Comics Code Authority

  • Posted on October 16, 2011 at 12:20 pm

The Ten Cent Plague RIP Comics Code Authority

Whoa, just saw Archie dropped the Comics Code Authority seal at the beginning of this year (yeah, I’m pretty late with this one):

With time the moral panic subsided, the rules softened, and a new wave of adult-oriented titles appeared. In 2001 Marvel Comics adopted its own rating system and dropped the code altogether. In January 2011 the other major comic book publisher, DC, did the same thing. And a day after DC’s decision, Archie Comics followed suit.

Reason: The Comics Code Goes Cold

And last month the Comic Book Legal Defense fund acquired the Code’s intellectual property:

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund today announces that it has received the intellectual property rights to the Comics Code Authority Seal of Approval in an assignment from the now-defunct Comic Magazine Association of America, which administrated the Code since the 1950s.

The Comics Code Seal comes to the CBLDF during Banned Books Week, a national celebration of the freedom to read, and just a few months following a decision in the U.S. Supreme Court where Justice Scalia cited CBLDF’s brief addressing the comics industry’s history of government scrutiny and the subsequent self-regulation the Comics Code represented. Dr. Amy Nyberg, author of Seal of Approval: The History of Comics Code has prepared a short history of the Comics Code Seal and the era of censorship it represents exclusively for CBLDF that is available now in the Resources section of cbldf.org.

CBLDF Receives Comics Code Authority Seal of Approval

See also:

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu.

The New Yorker’s lengthy coverage of the above book.

Online text of Seducing the Innocent (with different illustrations from the original print version).

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/bM6yezVOyH8/

Did James Madison Say “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”?

  • Posted on October 16, 2011 at 4:45 am

james madison Did James Madison Say If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy?

A debate has surfaced over whether James Madison ever said “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy” in the comments section a previous article on the origins of the phrase “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.”

That quote is widely attributed to Madison, but I haven’t been able to find a source. Wikiquote lists the quote as “unsourced” and suggests that it’s an inaccurate and out of context paraphrase of the following quote: “Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.” However, Wikiquote does have a listing for this quote (emphasis mine):

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Wikiquote cites a speech by Madison at the Constitutional Convention as printed in Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787.

I searched Google Books and found that the “foreign enemy” quote turns up numerous times, but couldn’t find any source (there were a couple books that had footnotes or endnotes for the quote, but the pages were missing from Google Books).

The only place I found any attribution to the quote was this PBS.org page which claims he wrote it in the Federalist Papers. You can find a copy of Madison’s contributions to the Federalist Papers here. I searched through them, but neither of the above unsource Wikiquotes turn up.

I also searched the Library of Congress’ James Madison Papers collection. Nothing.

Conclusion

If Madison said or wrote “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy,” no one seems to know when or where. That doesn’t mean that Madison never said it, but it definitely calls it into question. However, “The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home” is pretty close.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/_W7_nuMZt-g/

One Man Army: The Stormer Generation

  • Posted on October 13, 2011 at 9:02 pm

OMAC Kirby 200x300 One Man Army: The Stormer Generation

Ikipr outlines all the reasons he thinks Iain Spence’s prediction that the youth culture of the 00s would be dominated by so-called “Stormers” actually did come true.

It’s a good, long article defending Spence’s Sekhmet Hypothesis, which as we’ve seen here before Spence himself no longer subscribes.

Kook Science Resistance: Stormer Generation and the Aeon of Sekhmet

I recommend reading it, but I have a couple notes to make:

1) It wasn’t just the lack of Stormer culture that made Spence abandon the Sekhmet Hypothesis. It was the lack of correlating solar data.

2) I think what Ikipr is exhibiting here is… not apophenia – because the patterns more certainly are there. But there are other patterns as well. As Ikipr notes towards the end, Alex Grey’s work was tremendously popular during the 00s. There were whole psychedelic and magickal subcultures at play, from the psyhipsters seen in Arthur to the digital occultnik underground on sites like Disinfo, Irreality, Frequency 23 and Key 23/64 which eventually culminated in the meatspace EsoZone events.

Each of the movements Spence originally identified had aspects other than the ones that Spence highlighted (as Spence admitted in the comments here, and says he never said that movements like hippie and punk were mutually exclusive). The 60s counterculture wasn’t entirely peaceful. There were the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Hell’s Angels. The punk movement wasn’t just rage and destruction – there were animal rights and anti-war sentiments throughout. By night, ravers were about PLUR – but they experienced some nasty morning afters. And James St. James pointed out some of the darker corners of the party scene (and that’s to say nothing of the other subcultures of the 90s).

3) I’m surprised Ikipr didn’t mention Woodstock 99, though I guess the testosterone fueled violence there doesn’t quite fit with his Stormers, who are more cyber than physical.

I’m not sure what, if anything, my two notes above matter.

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/BvDw5TGJg-o/

How to Do Asian Steampunk Right

  • Posted on October 11, 2011 at 10:47 am

Zheng Yi Sao1 How to Do Asian Steampunk Right
Zheng Yi Sao, 19th centry female pirate

Jess Nevins wrote an article on “the problem with Asian steampunk.” Nevins points out that most people default to ninjas, samurai and geishas when they try to do Asian steampunk, but there’s a much richer world of possibilities. “Pirates, submarine captains, hard-boiled reporters, female private detectives… these are all part of east Asian history and popular culture in the steampunk era. Steampunk writers and cosplayers, expand your horizons!”

Here are some examples:

  • Zeppelin pirates are a staple of steampunk, but nautical pirates were a reality in the waters of Southeast Asia. Notable among these were the female pirates, from Zheng Yi Sao and Cai Qian in the beginning of the 19th century to Lo Hon Cho and Lai Choi San in the early part of the 20th century. These women were captains and admirals, commanding dozens of ships and leading them into battle from the front, gaining reputations as fierce fighters. According to a contemporary Chinese account Cai Qian Ma even commanded ships with crews of niangzijun, “women warriors.”
  • The hardboiled, crime-solving reporter was a part of Western mystery fiction from the 1880s, but in real life there were large numbers of reporters just like that in China, especially Shanghai, where the competition between newspapers was intense and reporters and editors did anything they could for a hot scoop. These newspapers were modeled on American and English newspapers, and though many of them were aimed at the Europeans in China, some were written by Chinese for Chinese.
  • Roguish treasure-hunters need not automatically be white. Since the 11th century there has been a tradition among Nyingma Buddhists in Bhutan and Tibet of a special class of lamas, the gter-ston or “treasure hunters,” who “discover” gter-ma (scriptural treasures) which have supposedly been hidden away during the Buddha’s lifetime so that they can be found and revealed to the world at a foreordained time. The gter-ston were active through the 19th century, and while some were genuine many were fraudulent.

TOR: The Problem With “Asian Steampunk”

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/3KViMCTQaqc/