Saturday, August 30, 2003

A napkin with a past:  Read some vintage theology by a previous incarnation of my true xtian friend, Jonah, at the Dromedary Syndicate. 11:29:45 PM    comment []

Dr. Omed’s Horn Book:  a  Primer for Newbie Netizens    Lesson One: Lamarck and the Meme   Jean Baptiste Lamarck was a French natural scientist and philosopher who flourished in the late 18th century.  He proposed a theory (a couple of generations before Darwin) of evolution by acquired characteristics rather than by natural selection (Darwin).  The cartoon example of his idea would be that giraffes have long necks because their ancestors stretched them little by little reaching for those hard to reach fruit, and passed on the longer necks they acquired by stretching to their offspring.  The Darwinian cartoon (natural selection) would be that the giraffes with short necks starved, and thus had no offspring, and the giraffes with the longest necks (due to random genetic mutation) got the most food and had lots of offspring, thus propagating genes for longer necks.   Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene (Oxford, 1976) proposed that while biological evolution was best modeled by Darwinian natural selection, Lamarckian evolution by acquired characteristics fit human cultural evolution to a tee.  He invented a neologism (new word) "Meme" playing both on "gene" and "memory," meaning a unit of cultural information imbedded in a human mind or artifact, equivalent to a gene, which is a unit of hereditary biological information imbedded in our chromosomes.       10:45:11 PM    comment []

Howard Dean recently spoke at a rally in Manhattan in front of Graffiti mural by  "Keo" commisioned for the event.  NYC Republicans saw an opening and jumped at the chance to criticize Dean for "promoting vandalism."  The dueling quotes:   "Maybe in your world, graffiti vandals are artists," Staten Island Councilman James Oddo wrote in a letter to Dean's campaign on Thursday. "In New York City _ and in the real world _ they are criminals who destroy our quality of life."  Eric Schmeltzer, a spokesman for Dean's campaign, said Keo is "a very well-known, respected artist." "Anybody who criticizes a politician for giving an artist space to express himself is out of touch with American values of free expression _ especially the culture that exists in cities," Schmeltzer told the Daily News.   "It's unfortunate that Mr. Dean would promote and romanticize a form of vandalism, especially considering this city's success in eliminating this urban blight," said Edward Skylar, a spokesman for Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  The artist Keo, whose real name is Blake Lethem, disputed that graffiti is vandalism. "The vandals were an ancient tribe that used to run through countries, plundering and pillaging," he told The New York Times. "I don't do that. That's what the Republicans are doing (Dr. Omed's italics). I try to beautify my surroundings. I may fall short of that goal, but at least I'm trying." Sample of Keo's work WRONG Keo himself sent me an email to tell me he loved my blog but "the pretty purple thingy" is NOT I repeat NOT his work. I most humbly apologize for such a grievious error. Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. Ego pater Omed I am not very objective about the subject of graffiti.  To me, grafitti artists perform a public service on their own time and at their own expense, creating meaning with color and image in urban waste spaces.  When I lived in Denver, an anti-graffiti campaign was organized.  Whenever I came across one of these self-righteous yuppies whitewashing graffiti, say, on the Cherry Creek bike path, I would be sure to stop and spit on them.  Now that I sing in the Lithium Chorus, I would never do something like that.  Of course not.  6:09:19 PM    comment []

Mars and Earth have been dancing cheek to cheek, orbitally speaking, and last Wednesday the two planets were closer to one another than they have been in about 60,000 years.  This pas de deux makes amateur astronomers do their own Snoopy-like happy dance, but may leave urban net-spuds wondering the excitement is about when they step out their front doors of an August evening, and squint through the haze of light pollution for a glimmer of the Red Planet.  (Of course, some of you did have dark skies during the blackout...) There are, however, alternative close up views of Mars.  The Mars Global Surveyor has been in orbit around our neighbor planet since 1997, transmitting sharp, highly detailed, and often stunningly beautiful images (reminescent of abstract paintings) of the surface of Mars back to Earth ever since.  Dr. Omed is on the JPL mailing list, and so gets the latest images in his email periodically.   Go look for yourself. Click image to see larger. 4:52:46 PM    comment []

I HAD A DREAM   Or dreams, but the details evaporate rapidly on waking.  Several were rebus dreams but lost their ahas in the shower—Elspeth is a bit of a distraction I'm afraid.  I've been visiting Grandma's house quite a bit—the ur-home of my maternal grandmother in my mother's ur-hometown.  In one of these dreams I followed a spinning silver cube that floated in front of me at eye level just beyond arm's reach.  The axis of rotation was through two opposite corners of the cube rather than through two sides.  It was about the size of a child's building block and like one of those blocks it had a letter on each side, but typically considering the daniac obsession with alphabets the letters were something like Hebrew, and mutated continually.  After a while I realized each face of the cube was made of smaller cubes, also rotating, and the letters changed according the varying spin of the small cubes.  I never tried to touch or catch the cube, it was just spinning in front of me where ever I went.   Then I dreamt that I toured hell, and instead of Virgil my guide was an aged and wrinkled Annette Funicello.  With horns instead of Mickey Mouse ears.  Hell was a mall which sold nothing but televisions.  Even in the food court, when you ordered a drink, what you got was a hand held tv showing a video of a drink.  Then I was sitting in my car at a crossroads looking at a road atlas, and on each page the map only showed the routes between towns of the same name, and the name was "Strange."       9:20:31 AM    comment []