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cats rule
nogutsnoglory blog- Netdynam 2.0
- More email newsletters July 2, 2014
- new language annotation software June 25, 2014
- Software, Culture, and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism June 25, 2014
- ye olde net… June 25, 2014
- re the big data explosion June 10, 2014
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If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite variety in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. [Charles Darwin (1859) On the Origin of Species]
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“It is essential to such a government, that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” James Madison -
All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. -Benjamin Franklin - Flowing Data
- IO9
- This Cat Does Not Want to Be Outside July 30, 2014To be fair, this is pretty much how I react to being forced out of my home against my will.Read more...
- Episode VIII won't be out until 2017, so when asked about it, writer director Rian Johnson made the July 30, 2014Episode VIII won't be out until 2017, so when asked about it, writer director Rian Johnson made the following joke: "With these films, I am trying to harken back to the original Star Wars… Christmas special. We do have Jefferson Starship." Funny. But painful. [Filmspotting via Sci Fi Now]Read more...
- Messages From Your Old Abandoned Computer, Which Has Achieved AI July 30, 2014While old, Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks is amazing. Made by Neil Cicierega, it's such a good idea, we'd love to see a movie with the plot of a computer with Windows 95, stored in the attic, developing sentience, and going insane. Someone make this.Read more...
- First Outlander Clip Showcases Its Very Capable Female Lead July 30, 2014You may have noticed that we're very excited about Outlander, Starz's adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's time-travel series. It's shaping up to be the stand-out summer premiere, and this clip does nothing but reinforce that feeling.Read more...
- Marvel at Our Favorite TV Shows and Movies As Children's Books July 30, 2014If you're in the Los Angeles after this Friday, definitely stop by Gallery 1988 (East) for Storytime, a show of Joey Spiotto's work. We would read all of these to any children we know.Read more...
- This Cat Does Not Want to Be Outside July 30, 2014
- Make Blog
- ODROID-W: The First Raspberry Pi Compatible Development Board July 30, 2014
- Stunning Layered Wax Type Sculpture July 30, 2014
- 3D Robotics Acquires Sifteo July 29, 2014
- Silicon comes to Kickstarter July 29, 2014
- VR Headset Made of Lego Pieces July 29, 2014
- Weird Universe
Category Archives: personal
New URL for Symmetry-Hypotheses
Two Views of Coleridge
On July 2 I publicized the new Tumblr site for barely washed results from the symmetry section of the visual lab.
Soon enough I realized the title of the Tumblr blog and the URL were not in alignment. I cast off the old URL and sent all the old addresses into something like intertube purgatory. However, the now congruent site at least reflects its theme in its titling and addressing.
Posted in personal, visual experiments
Tagged art, digital art, my art, symmetry experiments
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Typological Shifting
I recently did a short version free MBTI. It showed by Feeling function slipping into Thinking by 1%. In addition, my Extroversion was barely captured–so it would seem. However, I am an extroverted feeling type.
The tendency to separate the opposites as much as possible and to strive for singleness of meaning is absolutely necessary for clarity of consciousness, since discrimination is of its essence. But when the separation is carried so far that the complementary opposite is lost sight of, and the blackness of the whiteness, the evil of the good, the depth of the heights, and so on, is no longer seen, the result is one-sidedness, which is then compensated from the unconscious without our help. C.G. Jung Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955). CW 14: 470
The closeness of the E/I and F/T in my typology (close to) paradoxically reflects much greater differentiation of their functions in my psyche. For me the transformation from ENFP to, in actuality, something like XNXP is hard won.
Bonus:
My short version Big Five never changes much; I’ve been more agreeable and less introverted at times. I wish it captured realistic/unrealistic and, in doing so, could gain-say deeper neuroticism.
Posted in personal
Tagged Big Five, C.G. Jung, personality test, psychology, typology
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Fathers
Stephen, Crede C. Calhoun, cousin Crede Merchant-Prashkar, Crede H. Calhoun
One of the few photographs in existence–with myself and my father in it as adults.
My dad loved to skipper and race Highlander sailboats.
Ol’ 954
I did not like to do so, and would not after the summer of 1967; the summer I turned 14. On the other hand, the summer before, his strong hand grabbed my arm and plucked me from my spot sleeping in the bow on the spinnaker just as the boat buried its port rails and capsized on a brisk late June racing day. Thanks, man!
I inherited his almost perfect nose. We were about the same size too. And, many have remarked over the years that my dad and I share a ribald sense of humor. I suppose I got some of his very big brain. Among many differences is a singular one: psychology terrified my father in about the same huge portion that it fascinates me.
The photo above was taken at his 75th birthday party in 1999. I learned a lot about my dad’s influence on young lawyers, sailors, and, witnessed his movie star’s charm in action too. It was very moving. After returning in 1992, by 1993 I got to spend quality time with him on occasion. Susan, myself, his third wonderful wife Joanne, and pops, would get together for dinner. Joanne inspired him to really make an effort to reconnect with his sons and my mom in the aftermath of his eldest son’s and our brother Tim’s, death in early 1993. She worked magic. This led to many memorable holiday seasons.
I’m a deep diver, and Crede my dad was a sailor. His comment to me on one face-to-face in his home office in 2000, the year before he drowned in a sailing accident, was, “Hey, as long as you’re happy, and you should be–because Susan is great!”
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
Tim Calhoun
My fraternal (duh!) twin brother Tim the day of his college graduation in, I think, 1986. He is father to my nephews Jesse and Nathan. He’s the only Calhoun son to graduate from college, which is statistically surprising because our parents reflect a Haverford/Bryn Mawr romance. (I once was told I look like a college professor!) Tim was a poet and he loved his kids with all his might and mighty heart.
Crede my brother, Crede my dad, Jesse my nephew
Three generations of Calhoun male folk. My younger brother Crede–yeah, lots of credes–and his wife Carol McMahon Calhoun are parents of daughter Caleigh. She’ll be 14 soon.
Grandfather Crede holding Caleigh, September 2000
Great dad and mom–brother Crede and sister-in-law Carol–and spitfire daughter, make for a fantastic future legacy: my parents had three sons and so Cails has a big job to help individuate the family’s deep feminine future.
Yesterday a stranger in a parking lot told me, “Happy father’s day.”
“Thank you.”
Susan’s son is my step son but I have never ever played the role of surrogate father. He’s got a great dad, and Matt is a terrific man.
I did on one occasion give Matt advice. I told him, and did so trying to frighten him, that “if you fool around too much you’ll end up like me.”
He gave me a horrified look.
advice. . . seemed to have done the trick!
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Surf Forever
One Hour of San Diego Surfing Time Collapsed: San Diego Study #4 from Cy Kuckenbaker on Vimeo.
This video was created from one hour of source footage shot from a bluff in San Diego the morning of Jan 21, 2014. I was interested in exploring the manipulation of water and to see how the movements and patterns from surfing interact. For more information about this video please visit cysfilm.com and MOPA.org
Shot on a Canon C100 + Atomos Ninja in CLog, with a Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5 L lens at 24p. The post work was done in After Effects.
Thanks Cy.
The once a summer–posted to the explorations blog–surfing video, posted annually because I was an enthusiastic goofy-footed surfer during the summers of 1968, 1969 and 1970 at, respectively, the breaks of: Oahu, Virginia, South Carolina. Then, crossing it off my bucket list, I soon became a long-haired hippie.
Goodbye Mr. Trane
The last photo of my car Coltrane and me, minutes before departing for a Suburu dealer in Wickliffe to trade it in as downpayment on my wife’s new car. I took over her car, now named Booker (after saxophonist Booker Ervin.)
I’ve always named my cars. There has been a bunch of ‘em, even so while including driving Coltrane to just shy of 97,000 miles, and, putting 148,000+ miles on Monk, an 1984 Honda Accord. I’ve owned or co-owned cars names Ella, Betty,Duke, and Miles.
Coltrane, a 2000 Civic, was the first new car I ever owned. The funny Coltrane the car story is about the trouble the sales person had in 2000, finding a new 5 speed Civic with just a radio/cassette player. I told him right from the beginning,
Basically, for me, a car is a sound system that can also go from point A to point B.
new squareONE: experiential toolmakers web site in progress
And, the fundamental approach is to intentionally take wrong turns.
The squareONE web site, my professional web site, is published but will remain for the next several months a kind of swirling work-in-progress.
My hope is to make 2014 the year squareONE finds its beneficial grip on the diffuse, and difficult-to-grab clientele of persons who could benefit from building their ability to explore, discover and transform.
Linked-In experiential toolmakers
from the home page:
SquareONE combines innovative and accessible experiential processes with keen facilitation skills to provide powerful applications for professional and personal development, and, for open-ended collaborative exploration.
squareONE’s goal is to guide learners to remarkable insights using playful exploration and collaborative discovery. Once realized, such discoveries often provide a way to address a wide variety of everyday or unusual human challenges.
Other times, truly intrepid learners may simply enjoin squareONE to capture what arises from unique and creative forms of open-ended experience.
New Music From Kamelmauz – Apparently
My music making alter ego is: Kamelmauz. He does sonic experiments and lets me produce and issue them on Duty Free Records. Finally, these records are issued on Bandcamp, in one of two locations.
Got it? There today exist fourteen different audio productions. Each can be downloaded or auditioned at Bandcamp.
The vein of music I create is variously reduced to categories–experimental/avant-agarde/ambient/industrial/dark ambient–which miss the personal point of my efforts. Oh well. ‘we’ make music for the sake of my enjoyment of the process of making music, and, to actively support my enthusiasm for learning, novelty, and experience.
Full length: Kamelmauz.bandcamp
EP’s and single tracks: Kamelmauz-soundz.bandcamp
As you should know by now, my musical activities and interests are documented on the blog of noguts noglory studios.
I go meta about my creativity. Meta means: I make stuff and I reflect on making stuff.
There’s a video for the new ep, Apparently There’s More.
Who Are Your Luminaries?
In my studio, on the wall with the window, I tacked up pictures of ‘mission-critical’ luminaries. The poster-like reminder above–using an original photo collage–tops the construction.
I’m well-aware of my own personal pantheon of influential persons. One question I sometimes pitch for the sake of understanding better where a person has been is: who are your luminaries?
Sweetened
To our neighbors:
What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.
Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home.
Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!
Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.
Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.
Lou Reed remembered by me, but mostly a post recounting how long it took me to find my way to his artistry: The Murshid of the Underground
Sonny & Steel
A member of the Pedal Steel Guitar Forum asked lap steelers to post pictures of his or her herd. I obliged, although Sonny apparently wanted to be in the picture.
Sonny turns two in January. Here’s a pick from the old studio, taken when he was about three months old. Sonny came into our lives because we happened to have an appointment at our vet the day after somebody left a box full of kittens in their parking lot. Sonny, named after Sonny Rollins the jazz saxophonist, was playing in a waste basket of shredded paper when one of the assistants pulled him up and out so Susan and I could see “The kitten nobody has spoken for yet.”
“We will take him off your hands.”
(Incidentally, this was a very good example of serendipity, and, in technical terms, this exemplifies the requisite structure of dependent realized contingencies that interlock (or conjoin,) to construct a ‘fortuity.’)
Each a Posit, Each a Tale Unto Itself
Each posit being a plant.
Tending my very own garden for the very first time was a learning experience. My prior learning and experience helped, but next year will demonstrate a great deal of learning from mistakes.
There were three focal points: first is the gardening set-up left to us by the previous owner; second was a small plot of vegetables and berries I planted; third was a lot of potted flowers we bought or I planted. The first garden–what was already here on the lot of our new house–came in surprising and delightful waves, starting with the five rose plants and right now building to a culmination out of black eyed susans and plants I do not know the names of.
The big successes in a vegetable garden, that turned out in June and July to be a grocery store for squirrels and rabbits, were cherry tomatoes, blackberries, green peppers and salad greens. The potted flowers for the most part did well, although a great deal of newly gained experience will come into play next year as I better tune the potted flowers to the changing rhythm of sunlight.
June
Bee Balm
I took a lot of photos with secondary goals in mind. Photos of flowers lend themselves to being used to create color maps, masks, and I’ll use photos as source material for visual experiments.
Hydrangea; photo repurposed using CIF/FX in OSX.
Model ship set in garden in April and photographed and then photo-manipulated.
Garden Ship Wreck
Posted in Cleveland, personal, visual experiments
Tagged flowers, gardening, gardens, photography
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Of Cats & Flowers
Kliban
Sonny on top shelf of records
As the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot
carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flower pot
Poem (As the cat) by William Carlos Williams
Petunias rock.
Kizzy & Sonny, hangin’ out
Lillies also evoked some FX-driven visual experiments.
Sathima Bea Benjamin 1936-2013, African Songbird
After negotiating a very short hallway, Abdullah Ibrahim and Sathima Bea Benjamin‘s suite at the Chelsea Hotel opened up to a living room with a window, and off to the left a small table mediated the entryway to the small kitchen.
Several times, while waiting for Abdullah Ibrahim to return or (other times) materialize through a doorway on the other side of the main room, I would take tea with Sathima Bea Benjamin at this table. We chatted. I would attempt to inspire her to go on at length about any subject whatsoever because I loved the sound of her lilting, singer’s voice, I loved the way her eyes would sparkle, and, I loved her light and easy consciousness. In a way, those moments constituted some of the most beautiful experiences of waiting I ever experienced.
Sathima Bea Benjamin passed away over night on Tuesday in Cape Town, South Africa. (Article by Peter Hum, Ottawa Citizen) (Wikipedia)
I have a handful of diamond-like memories (from 1987-1990,) yet the main thing for me was how deeply magnanimous and optimistic was Sathima. (She once said, after I was recounted some jejune story about crappy characters in the music business, “Remember, they’re God’s Children too.”) She was very warm and welcoming and possessed an unforgettable vibe. Thank you Sathima for those precious moments hanging out.
Another memory etched in my mind is of Sathima and Tsidi, her daughter–today, the gifted storyteller and rapper Jean Grae–getting ready to go shopping. I remember Sathima spelling out the parameters and plan. I also remember everybody getting dressed up and then, with Sathima and her sister in the crowd, everybody going out ‘after hours, African style’ in NYC. Either the drummer Brian Abrahams or family friend Camara told me that evening, ‘Everybody loves Sathima.’
I saw her perform once, at Town Hall in NYC in, I believe, 1989. Town Hall was not an intimate enough space, although the concert was fine. Sathima, no doubt the finest jazz-flavored singer Africa has produced so far, struck me as being very close in vibration to Abby Lincoln, whom I would call her American counterpart. Their outstanding, shared qualities were the tremendous vulnerability and intimacy and unalloyed ‘heartfeltedness’ they achieved in opening up their humanity, and setting in their distinctive ways utterly direct communiques upon honest wings of song.
Sathima’s artistry was completely grounded in Africa at the same time she inhabited the American songbook. Again, She was in complete sympathy with the profound conjunction of words with music. When Sathima sang a standard she transformed it into universal spiritual soul music. Her own music crystalized this integration.
Over at the noguts noglory, I have set down some fantastic resources to help people dip into the deep well of Sathima Bea Benjamin’s music. Fifty years have passed since she made the Paris session with Duke Ellington. The most startling situation was that Sathima was celebrated in Cape Town in a series of performances in mid-July. As Matsuli Matthew Temple writes, this turned out to be her swan song.
Sathima, Peace Be With You (resources and music at noguts noglory blog)
Nashville
Susan is in Nashville for work. She said she would send me photos that I might dig. Thanks, honey! These are cool.
Here’s Connie Britton and Charlie Esten performing as themselves in a sweet meta moment touching upon their network, shy-of-a-hit, show, Nashville.
The TV show is an hour long grown-up soap set in Music City. It’s interpersonal dramas touch upon romance and career jostling in the country music business, so it counts as the first prime time drama about the music business. When anybody in its cast sings, all is good. Connie Britton, playing a veteran country super star, Rayna James, turns out to be a serviceable singer and her stage presence is stellar. Clare Bowen, who plays Scarlet O’Connor, is a find. We already knew Hayden Panettiere, who plays a Miranda Lambert type, Juliette Barnes, can sing. The female songbirds are balanced out by handsome crooning male counterparts. When people sing, I dig Nashville.
When almost anything else happens, I’m reminded how needlessly horrible the show is, how ludicrous is its treatment of the music business, and how wasted are its cast members. Britton obviously is one of the most appealing and most charismatic of all current TV stars. The show is well acted even if the scripts are humorless and the pacing is painful. In the new season, I hope the new showrunners give some velocity to much better dialogue. This could make one of prime time’s sexiest and songful hours shoot up the charts.
The First and Last Surfing Video of This Summer
Theatre of Sport: Bali from SURFING Magazine on Vimeo.
Hey, while surfing Vimeo…
In prior posts. (here and here,) I tell of my very brief surfing moments during the summers of 1968 and 1969.
Roses
Our new neighbor on the south side asked me over the fence why I liked to garden and I told her it’s not appreciably less absorbing than the sonic and visual worlds of creativity I’m devoted to. The new landscape is rough in spots and my vision is rustic, but my big advantage is that the previous owner also loved to garden. Thank you Eleanor.
Her house’s back yard has five rose bushed tucked by the crab apple tree. The one highlighted in these pictures has sixty plus blossoms. In March I cut the roses back just a tiny bit. I don’t know anything about roses. My late mother abandoned rose gardening because it was so hard to figure out how to meet the numerous challenges from blight to bug. Obviously, our rose bushes are healthy. Bless ‘em.
Screening Needs
Ummm, cats.
Last May, when Sonny, our male cat, was five months old and a lithe leaper, I constructed a video and posted it to youtube. Since then 62 people have viewed the video. Thank you. I did my part. The video did not go viral.
Sonny, grown-up, apparently.
Yeah, now he’s a big lad; 15lbs. He cannot really elevate like he used to be able to do, but when he gets up a head of steam he can get himself up five feet. As always, he doesn’t stick the landing as much as try to wrestle his ‘touch-down’ momentum back down to zero.
Crawling Into 2013
It’s six weeks after our move, and I’m sensing in myself small urges to publish stuff on the Explorations Blog. Probably, on some morning in the near future, I will climb the stairs into the new third floor studio-in-progress, sit down at the screen, and, keep this endeavor lurching into the new year.
It is likely that there will be a “flurry” of activity.
For the moment, I am ticking off tasks on the formidable master list, re-acclimating to the demands of home ownership, printing and framing the results of visual experiments (and littering our fresh walls with these,) and, building strength to set up shelving and unbox the darn music collection.
I’ll have something to express about our finding a kome almost exactly one mile from the house I group up in between zero-seven years of age in good ol’ Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
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Now Returning to Our Irregularly Scheduled Programming
Kizzy. Looking over the wash of posts oriented to the recently past political season, and the interjections of Freeplay Softball reports and a few postings of my art, I see right away the points of emphasis will soon be shifting. I don’t plan much out, still, I’ve been collecting teaching cartoons, and interesting captures from the web tubes, and, other stuff, while I neglect packing up for the big move into the new house–except I’m remaining behind in important respects until the current house is sold!
Sassy.
People who know me well might find it amusing to learn my preoccupations aren’t throwing me all about as they usually do. Ironically, the research project into Strategic Serendipity is on hold just as the whole field blows up on the breath of several best-selling, albeit non-technical, treatments of the subject.
Occupy Me.
Posted in my research, personal, serendipity
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Phew!
Before packing up 18,000+ records and discs, and, after emptying out the basement record library, prior to the excellent Pure-O-Clean coming in to remove the Pergo. I’m still sorting out the damage from the August water tank leak. It is what it is.
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