Thursday 31 March 2005

The Mysterious N. Senada

reminiscent of Hakim Bey's concept of The Unseen Obelisk:
N. Senada is best known for his "Theory of Obscurity", which states that an artist does his or her best work when working in obscurity, unhindered by the influence of an audience. Things such as trying to gear one's work to the audience's likes in order to sell better, or the conflicts and ego problems which fame brings only serve to destroy true creativity....

N. Senada's "Theory of Phonetic Organization" is not as well known. According to this theory the musician should put the sounds first, building the music up from them rather than developing the music then working down to the sounds that make it up. The analogy is with the phonetic structure of language: spoken language is made up of the sounds which are produced as needed to convey the meaning. It's sort of the opposite of Lewis Carroll's malapropism "take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves". Under the Theory of Phonetic Organization the artist doesn't know how the final music is supposed to sound but rather works from the sounds which he or she wants to put into the music. This is in part how the blueprints work: Senada knew what themes he wanted in the work, but not how they would be going together.

Then again, some have said that the whole thing is just an excuse to cover the fact that The Residents didn't know how to play 90% of the instruments they used and had no training in music theory whatsoever -- but that fit in nicely with Senada's love of mistakes.
n. senada wiki

Alchemy Electronic Dictionary

definitions by word or by symbol. very nice

a subsection of alchemylab.com

Sir Francis Bacon and John Dee : the Original 007

A Bond for All the Ages : Sir Francis Bacon and John Dee : the Original 007
By D.W.Cooper & Lawrence Gerald

Dee has been defamed through the centuries as a necromancer, but it's the opinion of many writers that his angelic-cabalistic- alchemical work, his Philosophers Stone, the"Monad Hieroglyphica"(1564) may have been a cover for covert operations carried on in the name of her majesty. The 007 was the insignia number that Elizabeth was to use for private communiques between her Court and Dee.


(i miss dw)

a friend pointed this out to me at work, and we both started pondering ian fleming's masonic ties

Ann Coulter causes stir at KU (well duh)

Heckling, standing ovations interrupt right-wing commentator
Coulter stopped and called for assistance from students when hecklers started in again and no one of authority was seen trying to stop them.

"Could 10 of the largest College Republicans start walking up and down the aisles and start removing anyone shouting?" Coulter asked. "Otherwise, this lecture is over."

Several people responded, leaving their seats to confront the hecklers, and verbal confrontations erupted in parts of the auditorium....

Later, when heckling broke out again, a couple of uniformed KU Public Safety Department officers appeared and escorted about six people out of the auditorium.

Coulter resumed her critical remarks, calling Sen. Ted Kennedy a "human dirigible" and the Democrats' "spiritual leader." She also made fun of the Democrats' dalliance with filmmaker Michael Moore and former presidential candidate John Kerry, who she said got away with telling "big, fat, enormous lies."


Wednesday 30 March 2005

Friday 25 March 2005

East Texas house stolen brick by brick

speed makes you do dumb things more efficiently
Authorities allege Brandon Ray Parmer, 29, and Darrell Patrick Maxfield, 44, both of Tyler, took the house apart and sold it for drugs, in plain view of everyone cruising by on U.S. Highway 69, Lindale's main street. Both men were arrested this week.

Taylor said the men worked slowly and haphazardly in daylight, with no one questioning their work, because everyone assumed it was the work of Wal-Mart or Lowe's, the two large retail stores laying new foundations nearby.

"It's the strangest case I've ever worked in my life," Taylor said. "Everybody drove by and waved at them."..

Authorities also arrested Jesse Gino Vega after executing a search warrant at his Lindale home Tuesday. Vega, 36, is accused of giving cash and methamphetamine to the other two men in exchange for the materials from the home.

Wednesday 23 March 2005

Blast hits BP Texas City refinery

Gasoline futures jump to record high on supply fears (posted because of the 23s)
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A huge blast ripped through part of BP's sprawling petroleum refinery in Texas City, Texas, Wednesday, killing and injuring several workers, the company said....

While it was still too early to know what caused the blast, terrorism was not a prime suspect, BP said.

Company officials confirmed several workers had been killed and injured, but they did not know how many, adding that they were still trying to account for all the workers near the blast site. The plant employs about 1,800 people.

The Houston Chronicle reported on its Web site that four people had been killed by the explosion and 23 hospitalized with injuries, some of them critical, at nearby medical centers...
(someone just made a fortune at the expense of tragedy)

13 things that do not make sense

From issue 2491 of New Scientist magazine, 19 March 2005:
1 The placebo effect
2 The horizon problem
3 Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
4 Belfast homeopathy results
5 Dark matter
6 Viking's methane
7 Tetraneutrons
8 The Pioneer anomaly
9 Dark energy
10 The Kuiper cliff
11 The Wow signal
12 Not-so-constant constants
13 Cold fusion

(the article actually goes into detail on each of these - I'd never heard of the ultra-energetic cosmic ray issue)

Friday 18 March 2005

Clemson University researchers print living tissue using standard printers filled with 'bio-ink.'

August 10, 2004 article
In the name of science, researchers have developed a way to print sheets of solid animal tissue by filling Hewlett-Packard and Canon inkjet cartridges with animal cells, or "bio-ink."...

Boland says that just as blending primary colors results in new colors, so does printing different cells create new tissue.

The idea to use common computer printers occurred when a student was conducting a common micro-patent printing, which is done by hand. Boland realized his student was having difficulty repeating the results and the printing process was time-consuming.

"I went to the lab to see what we could use," he says. "The computer printers were printing patterns in liquid drops." That gave him the inspiration to try what he calls "protein printing."


via mefi:IKEA, your days are numbered

via Dr. Hyatt: The Neuromancer Radio Play

William Gibson's NEUROMANCER in a dramatisation by Mike Walker with John Shrapnel, James Laurenceson, Nicola Walker and Owen McCarthy.



I can't listen to this at work let alone download it, so I'm storing it here on mutato nomine so I'll remember it when I get broadband in a few months & can go back & listen to it... gods damn it, I want broadband back in my den...

I suppose petitioning Papa Legba for high-speed internet access might be in order

Wednesday 16 March 2005

Toxins, Brain Chemistry, and Behavior

by Prof Roger D Masters
c.vita
In seven different groups of prison inmates, violent criminals had substantially higher levels of lead or manganese in their hair than nonviolent criminals or law-abiding controls. Otherwise puzzling geographical differences in rates of violent crime in the U.S. are highly correlated with environmental pollution and death rates from alcoholism. Counties in which the EPA did not report industrial releases of either lead or manganese, and where alcoholism was lower than average, had a rate of 228 violent crimes per 100,000 people (well under the national average). In contrast, counties with industrial releases of lead and manganese and higher than average alcoholism had rates of violent crime of 969 per 100,000 (three times above the national average). (The statistics linking differences in the rate of violent crime to lead, to manganese, and to alcoholism would each occur by chance less than once per 10,000 times.) Controlling for 17 other factors, including population density, poverty, and ethnic composition, the three sources of neurotoxicity are significantly associated with violent crime.

Sunday 6 March 2005

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Manuscripts 'treated as fossils'

good article

right now I'm reading The Astrology of Personality by Dane Rudhyar and Ægypt by John Crowley at the same time because there's a pretty interesting interplay between the ideas

since 2005 started, I've also read these books


The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon
Tao Teh Ching translated by Dr. Wu, edited by Dr. Sih
Lords of Chaos (revised 2003) by M Moynihan & D Soderlind
Mandala Symbolism by Carl Jung
The Spirits in the Wires by Charles de Lint
The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K Dick
Alchemical Studies by Carl Jung
The 30 Trials of Ix and the Angels by Mark Durant
The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley
Four Archetypes by Carl Jung
This Is Not A Game - By Dave Szulborski
The Stars Around Us - edited by Robert Hoskins
Poker Without Cards by Ben Mack
Stone Junction by Jim Dodge


well, that's more or less the order I read them in - I read a couple of books at a time, so while I read alchemical studies I read mark durants book, the book of lies, and the cosmic puppets. during four archetypes I read TINAG & Poker without cards again - come to think of it I think I read stone junction last year, finished it around the beginning of this year

that's not counting the research for the upcoming altar, consciousness article that ended up in the reader on key23


I'd love being omnilexiscient, but reading on the clock is the next best thing

Tuesday 1 March 2005

digitrash studios in tandem with scarsmyown.com presents

over the weekend I've been working with local
progressive melodic metal group scarsmyown to help them get a demo
together.. the guys let me host it in my area to share until they get
the main band site up & running - so without further ado here's the
tracks - right-click & you can save as

scarsmyown - the duke ep



  • Poisening the Pure

  • Scars My Own

  • The Ink in the Skin




    recorded/produced in feb 2005, released locally and online on 3/1/05 - share under cc