12 December 2007
Ed Regis’s “Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition” [Amazon] is a wonderful and funny collection of science writing. The tone is set in a great prologue about ‘bezoar stones’, but the focus of the book is on the big names in late 80s ‘extropianism’. The author spends a lot of time with them, talking to them, finding them to be both calm and engaging people, who just happen to have really wild, really really wild, ideas about the future.
Fifteen years after first reading that book, and catching up with what has been going on with the extropian/transhumanist movement, I was surprised and slightly saddened (at first) to find it being tainted with a small dose of mainstream acceptance. Stanford University hosted a ‘Singularity Summit’ in 2006, and they even managed to pull in Douglas Hofstadter to give a talk. You can watch videos of speeches from last year’s Singularity Summit including Hofstadter’s diplomatic and slightly shambling appearance. Love him or hate him, his presence should be a reliable indicator that something interesting, and not 100% whacked out, is going on here. more »
Alan in Proven By Science • 1 Comment
I am sure a fuller discussion of the virtues and vices of The Golden Compass: The Movie will be forthcoming on FT soon, but a quick mention must be made of the Golden Compass QUIZZER which we saw afterwards. Fast work from IND:E games and lavish production values but ultimately not a success.
The game involves picking symbols on an alethiometer, causing the compass to point to another symbol, which determines your category. more »
Tom in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments
Doing the rounds on Livejournal over the last couple of days has been the “Wikipedia band meme”, a methodology for creating a fake band and record using random wikipedia articles. I first saw it on Rosie’s journal (her of Popular comments box fame) and since then it’s sprawled all over my LJ friendslist, with more and more detailed descriptions of what these records might actually sound like. Some of the best ones (like Dave Moore’s ironic oi revivalists Fear Of The Daleks) are sadly behind a lock but my very favourite, which has made me larff out loud in the office several times, comes from FT’s own p^nk s lord sukrat etc. and is publically available:
“Using a Fairlight, the band here build a classical symphony out of a single cry!”
If that isn’t in the next Da Capo book there’s no justice. (The link also includes, at the bottom, details of how to play yourself).
Tom in FT • 6 Comments
11 December 2007
Looking through the old FT backups for lost material I came across the links list I made in 2000 when I ended Blue Lines. I’d thought it would be a good idea to run the links list as a personal history essay, so presented them in more or less chronological order. This post is simply me seeing what’s happened to them. Comments in italics are what I said in 2000. I had a non-google policy for most of this post – I followed the breadcrumb trail of the sites as far as they’d go then stopped. more »
Tom in Blog 7 /FT • 10 Comments
10 December 2007
9. The Orb – Assassin
Another brilliant transition takes us from Anita’s dying echoes (“Don’t be afraid, it’s just the magic friend, friend, friend, friend…“) into a track that could be its polar opposite. more »
katstevens in FT • 7 Comments
Yes yes there is an obvious answer to the question but the specific phenomenon of all the big Christmas hits (and Andy Williams) getting back into the Top 40 still bears closer examination. For instance, why is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” the most successful of these re-entries? more »
Tom in FT • 25 Comments
There is a moment when critics unleash their wrath on a particular film which is akin to bear baiting. Except often the film is not the cinematic equivalent of a bear, and the lashing is completely justified. Two films have been savaged by critics this week. Both, in their own way, deserved it. Though I’m guessing Codename: The Cleaner (because even I didn’t see that) deserved it more thoroughly. Because I’ve seen Southland Tales and whilst it is tawdry, stupid, labyrinthine, pretentious, outdated, second-hand, derivative and did I say stupid – it is also more entertaining than most films I have seen this year. So bad its good? Not quite that simple. So unpredictable that it entertains by virtue of promising little and delivering – er – little BUT a wholly different little to the little you expected.
Firstly its is just one tale. Everything ties together neatly from the neo-Marxists (yeah right) to the liquid karma (some hippy shit) and the time travel. Some reviews have noted the density of ideas. Er, its the guys second film and he is already repeating himself. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 5 Comments
9 December 2007
Delicious, usually sweet and well photographed foods can be found on this US bakinblog. They earn a link to food science for their Experiments in deliciousness: Bacon chocolate chip cookies with maple cinnamon glaze. OH YES
Alan in Proven By Science /Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
this is perfect for winter, nice and easy (a variant on all-purpose fish stew)
YOU WILL NEED
chicken <– deboned if lazy, and chopped small with scissors, or else with a CHOPPER
sausages <– any cheap type will do; last night was lamb-and-mint as i live in a turkish quarter
2 onions, garlic, tomatoes, big bag of white mushrooms
chillis <— powdered or dried fine, i use fresh scotch bonnet cz they look so nice in the shop, IF THIS USE ONE AT MOST
butter and olive oil, thyme, mixed herbs, bay leaf, saffron if you have it, chicken stock
^^^OPTIONAL BUT AN AWESOME PURCHASE: lee kum kee panda brand oyster flavoured sauce <— this is the best thing EVAH to go with wok-fired chicken, easy to find in vietnamese supermarkets, maybe also chinatown more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
8 December 2007
Something I’ve been meaning to do for ages now is restore some of the “lost” content of FT – essays, old blogs and writing experiments like Blue Lines and A Loafer’s Discourse – to the main site. This post indexes some of my initial attempts at this, apologies for the indulgent tone: more »
Tom in FT • No Comments
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Ed Regis’s “Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition” [Amazon] is a wonderful and funny collection of science writing. The tone is set in a great prologue about ‘bezoar stones’, but the focus of the book is on the big names in late 80s ‘extropianism’. The author spends a lot of time with them, talking to them, finding them to be both calm and engaging people, who just happen to have really wild, really really wild, ideas about the future.