I'll Be You

Eclipses

2010-12-21T12:26:00.003-06:00

Every year when Gallup releases this poll, I get the exact same drop in my stomach, remembering again that I live in a nation where 4 out of 10 people think Earth is less than 10,000 years old. How do we make informed choices as a democracy when such a large percentage of the population is unwilling or unable to accept the most basic scientific knowledge?

I love seeing all the excitement over the recent eclipse, my Facebook feed is proof that people are excited about nature. And that's what this is about- nature. Sometimes I dislike the word science, so weighed down by white coats and high school chemistry labs. I believe the desire to learn about nature is universal, am I wrong? How do we convince ourselves, as a species, that understanding the world we live in is not only vital, but beautiful and interesting, like seeing an eclipse?

Republicans in Science and Art

2010-12-10T13:44:00.002-06:00

As Slate's Daniel Sarewitz, points out, "A democratic society needs Republican scientists." His point being that less than ten percent of American scientists are republicans, and thus our nation's views on science are that much more divided. Think of issues such as climate change, stem cell research, and endangered species.

What Sarewitz's article doesn't address is the question of why the field is so strongly skewed to the left. Combined with the small number of typically democrat-leaning demographic blocks in the field (women and minorities are famously underrepresented in the math and science world), this question becomes even harder to answer.

Here's one theory of mine, admittedly rather speculative, and it comes from an idea I've held for years that began when I was attending art school but taking physics classes from a theorist at Fermi Lab; the life-choice required to become a scientist is not so different from the life-choices made by artists. Scientists and artists might use opposite sides of the brain (and there's plenty of evidence that even this claim is bogus), but both groups are full of people who've shunned the traditional path to success in this country. They share an interest in explaining, teaching, learning, rather than building, producing, and earning. They've chosen to follow a passion that doesn't include starting a small business or climbing a corporate ladder. And, tellingly, they've chosen paths that almost certainly exclude any chance at wealth.

The old cliche, "if you're not liberal when you're young you don't have a heart, and if you're not conservative when you're old then you don't have a brain" might be of some use here. Democrats are the party of youth, and art and science are are both passions that flourish at an early age and embrace youthful thinking, unlike, say real estate investment or wall street brokerage, where wisdom and experience are favored. And how many people grew up wanting to be a real estate investor, anyhow?

Generalizations aside, Sarewitz is right, we do need more Republicans involved in science, and for that matter, art and culture. This would only help spread science literacy and make for more balanced policy. It wouldn't hurt the candidate either, in my view at least. A republican with strong pro-science views would get my vote over a whole lot of democrats.

So how do we get a more republicans involved in science? Honestly, other than getting more people involved in general, I can't think of much we could do. Especially if the far right continues to pull the whole party down with its craziness, the claims that education is somehow elitist and un-American in particular.

A few questions for NASA

2010-12-02T14:19:00.003-06:00

Does NASA engage in building unnecessary suspense? Regardless, the wording of their press release preceding today's press conference certainly built suspense, and NASA did little or nothing to combat this. So, was the hype useful? Did the suspense help garner public attention? Certainly. But for those expecting ET on stage, does the let-down hurt NASA?

The story seems to be doing pretty well in the media, so did the hype over this press conference goad the media into covering a story they might otherwise have glossed over? And to what degree was the media's focus on the hype itself rather than the science at hand? At least one reporter from the USA Today claimed their readers were disappointed and asked the scientists to explain they unnecessary hype.

Indeed, to scientists, this was a rather important discovery. To those in the biology, biochemestry, and astrobiology fields, many of whom had preliminary access to the embargoed paper, the story warranted hype. Perhaps the folks at NASA saw nothing wrong with the rampant speculation, since they were themselves rather excited.

In the end, I'm most interested in how this hoopla and related media coverage reveals the schism between the public and the science community. What can we do to bridge this gap?

Cassini to make important fly by of Enceladus this weekend

2010-11-24T11:47:00.010-06:00

Enceladus has recently become my favorite object in the solar system. The tiny, icy moon of Saturn has revealed so many surprises in just the last few years, and I'd wager it's got a few more shockers in store.

The moon of Saturn, once believed to be cold and dead, has become one of the strongest candidates to harbor extraterrestrial life that we know of. Small bodies without atmospheres at this distance from the sun are usually dead, yet something very interesting is going on under the ice of Enceladus' south pole. Cassini should be able to tell us a lot more on its next pass, coming up November 30th. Universe today has a better write up about it than I could manage, so check that out for details.

Here's the short story: it appears that a combination of tidal heating caused by the pull of Saturn and other moons combined with radioactive heating in Enceladus' core might be sustaining a subsurface ocean of liquid, salty water. The great thing about Enceladus compared to the other potential habitable sites in the solar system is that Enceladus is spewing the evidence right into space, in the form of geysers erupting from the south pole. The plumes from these geysers achieve amazing speeds of over a 1,300 miles an hour, easily fast enough to escape and contribute to Saturns E ring. Cassini has already flown through the plumes several times and analyzed their content, revealing lots of H20, salt, and ammonia, but the each flyby reveals more and more about the subsurface world of Enceladus.

Cassini's latest flyby will once again use spectrometry to analyze the content of the plumes, as well as radio instruments to help understand the gravitational dynamics of the tiny moon, perhaps leading to a better picture of the subsurface oceans. Determining the composition of the plumes will tell us a lot about what kind of heating mechanisms need to be involved. For instance, a high ammonia content would greatly lower the melting temperature of water and thus less heat would be needed to sustain a liquid ocean.

Keep in mind that Cassini was not designed to probe for signs of life on Enceladus, but what it finds might just coax NASA into designing a specific mission.

What I really love about Enceladus is how it has forced us to rethink habitable zones. Even if Enceladus doesn't have life in its subsurface oceans, the fact remains that the mechanisms exist to support life on cold, icy moons and planets. If tidal heating combined with the natural radioactive heating (found in the core of most planets) is enough to sustain a liquid ocean, what's to stop us from considering even extrasolar planets as harbingers of life, i.e. rogue planetary systems adrift in space, not orbiting any star?

The more we look, the more hospitable the universe seems!

Missile launch probably just a plane

2010-11-10T09:10:00.005-06:00

As should be expected, Michio Kaku gets it right on CNN. Wired's Noah Shachtman also has a good write-up debunking this one.

After seeing video of the so-called California missile launch, I immediately thought it was a plane. Unfortunately, I changed my mind when news reports mentioned that NORAD and the Military were investigating the 'event'. Because news reports indicated the Military brass were referring to this as 'an event', I assumed there must be some sort of colluding evidence, radar data in particular, to support the contrail as rocket theory.

Now I'm kicking myself for not doing a smidge more research and being able to call this one as bullshit immediately.

Yet another example of the power of suggestion, and, for me and I suspect many others, the power of the x-files effect. It's so much more fun to imagine a rogue group sneaking out to sea, launching a clandestine satellite into orbit. So much fun that you want to believe, even though a much simpler and mundane explanation usually exists. Being a skeptic can be a buzzkill.

As an amusing side note, this whole ordeal showed up in my dreams last night as a prelude to some kind of Red Bull stunt. How awesome would rocket-flugtag be?

Edit: I originally referred to this as an example of the power of suggestion. While out walking the dogs it occurred to me that this is an imprecise phrase carrying a lot of hypnosis-baggage. So I did some research into apophenia and pareidolia related ideas but I'm having a hard time finding the right term for what I'm thinking of here. One would think the field of psychology would have coined an apt term for the process of being misled by the framing of an issue. Think of the verbage involved, news stories all referred to a 'launch', and the military is investigating a 'launch event'. Indeed I think the journalistic sense of the term 'framing' comes closest to what I'm getting at here.

Animation of Hartley 2 flyby

2010-11-06T12:52:00.011-05:00

When the Deep Impact probe finishes taking images of comet Hartley 2 in a few weeks, it will have made some 120,000 images of the comet. Yet from just the first five images released of the close-up flyby, Daniel Macháček created a very nice animation of the flyby. Animation is almost the wrong word here, because it conjures up the idea of something being drawn, instead, Macháček used the actual images and software to put the flyby into action.

From the youtube page, "Daniel Macháček created this smooth animation from the five images of Hartley 2 released by the Deep Impact team immediately following its flyby on November 4, 2010. He used Squirlz Morph. Time in the animation is five times faster than the actual speed of the flyby."

The part that fascinates me about this animation is the timespan involved. This animation is only accelerated five times. In other words, this video in real time would run just over three minutes, which isn't that long.

Because of the scales involved in space exploration, I imagine events like this taking hours or days. That this glimpse of the flyby involves only a few minutes shows just how close we came to Hartley 2.

This is another one of those moments when it strikes me just how tangible space exploration can be. We're a strange species, humans. We took little bits of rock, broke them down and refined them into their elemental parts; aluminum, titanium, magnesium, carbon, silicon; assembled these bits of rock into a brilliant design, placed on top of a semi-controlled bomb of liquid oxygen and lamp fuel (kerosene, more or less), and blasted it into the depths of space on a trajectory calculated with the equations of an alchemist and occultist who lived 250 years ago, to visit another bit of rock floating in space, trying to learn how those elemental pieces came to form our own floating speck and the solar system as a whole.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

A snowy morning on Mars

2010-10-29T14:07:00.007-05:00

It's almost Halloween, and in Colorado that means we should have seen our first snowfall. As a child, trick or treating in blizzards was a common experience (I dressed up as Edmund Hillary or Ernest Shackleton those years). But this year, not so much as a frost on the ground.

So instead, here's a remarkable video of clouds and snow falling on Mars, taken by NASA's Phoenix Lander one Martian morning in 2009.

Watching the clouds move in such an earthly way across the martian sky is neat enough, but every few moments you can glimpse a few falling white specks.

Scientists have evidence that the snow and clouds are similar to snow and clouds on Earth; i.e. based on water-ice (rather than say, carbon dioxide). Universe Today did a nice write up on the scientific findings of the Phoenix team.

The video gives me chills! Not for the temps, but for the fact that we've sent a little bit of earth up to another planet, just to find out that it's not as different from our home planet as we thought.

Lame headline baiting on CNN

2010-10-29T11:13:00.006-05:00

"Mohammed is England's top baby name"

I woke up a bit hungover this morning, so perhaps that's why when I saw that headline on the front page of CNN, my first thought was "this is going to suck".

Right off, I'm a bit taken by the lede, "Hit the road, Jack. Last year's most popular name for baby boys in England has been knocked off -- by Mohammed." Am I being oversensitive in reading this as an allusion to violence? Muslims are taking over England and offing the good (white) Jack?

What really bothers me about the article, though, is that many who read it, especially those who see just the headline, might come away thinking that England is being overrun with Muslims, or even that Muslims are outproducing or more populous than non-muslims.

In itself, analyzing baby names is an interesting way to look at demographic trends, but you've got to be very careful with the data. As CNN points out, Oliver was technically the most popular name in England, and Mohammed only took the spot (offing Oliver) after accounting for variations in spelling.

The fact that a Muslim name is more popular than any non-Muslim names could mean two things, either that Muslim families are having more babies than non-Muslim families, or that Muslim families are less diverse in naming their children than non-Muslim families.

So which is it? As the article mentions, to its credit, less than 5% of England is Muslim. The article also briefly states, five graphs in, "And Muslims have a strong tendency to name their sons Mohammed."

Greene then devotes the rest of the article to talking about the rise of Islam in Europe and growing anti-Muslim sentiment, further evidence that this article is trying to use this baby-naming thing as support for the idea that England is awash in Muslim immigrants.

Indeed, the Muslim population is growing, both in England and Europe, but we know this through census data, not baby-naming data. The fact that Mohammed is now the most popular name in England is certainly interesting, but it's easy to get carried away with this sort of fact, especially in the current global climate of hostility towards Muslims.

Back at it.

2010-10-29T10:43:00.004-05:00

Over the past six or seven years, I've had quite a few different blogs, and mostly they've died slow, neglected deaths. Not unlike this blog here. Well I've been writing more this fall, due in no small part to my shacking up in a tiny apartment with three dogs and two cats, just a few blocks from a liquor store and five thousand miles from my girlfriend; my few possessions including a box of books, a coffee maker, my bike and my keyboard. No job to write home about.

I've been posting new poems over at patrickjustus.blogspot.com for a few weeks now, but I've also been writing general pieces and want to keep them separate.

So I'm starting this blog up again, sort of. My original idea here was a rip off of sites like boingboing or darkroastedblend. I don't think it ever had any readers.

I've been considering an attempt at something like that again, a blog with a thesis, per se. But I can't come up with any single idea that grabs me, so I'll let this just be a random conglomeration of my writings on anything other than poetry.

Artists and the Amish Hacker

2009-02-12T11:40:00.005-06:00

The Amish aren't as anti-technology as you'd think. They'll use gas engines to cut blocks of ice for their non-electric refrigerators, and they'll buy half-millon dollar CNC machines to manufacture tools that run on compressed air so that farmers don't have to use electricity. Check out this article for more unexpected amish tales.

One of the main points raised by the article is that the Amish are a great example of the DIY and Maker cultures that are getting oh so popular lately. The author and other bloggers really admire the amish for their approach to community-sustanence and off-the-grid living.

Indeed, young urbanites seem to be on a path of convergence with the amish; just look into stories about urban foraging, or running a self-sustaining farm in a brooklyn backyard. And just look at Steampunk!

This got me thinking about how future generations are going to adapt to technology. Already I've been noticing a strong anti-technology trend amongst some of my friends, a trend that baffles older generations who expect us youngins to have our laptops and iPhones genetically morphed unto our bodies at all times.

For instance, my recent alma mater, SAIC, forces all students to buy a subsidized MacBook Pro when they enroll at the school. On a study trip last summer, a lot of the students, myself included, chose to leave our laptops at home for the six week trip. We needed the time away from the internet and its distractions, while our professors were shocked that we made this choice voluntarily.

There's this idea that we're becoming ever more dependent on technology, the youth in particular, that we're heading towards the technological singularity. Yet somehow most of the people I know and see on a daily basis are moving in the opposite direction. Most of the people I know don't own a TV, and most of the people I know don't own a car. Indeed, most of the people I know don't constitute a fair slice of American culture, but they do make up what I consider to be part of the trend-setting culture of America.

A lot has been said about artists and their role as cultural path-breakers, and a lot of it's probably bullshit, but there's some truth in there. Look at gentrification. Look at style, look at music. If artist isn't the best descriptor, then lets just settle on young, creative types. These young, creative types aren't rushing to embrace the latest gadget, and they might love myspace but admitting to that is a big no-no these days. And at this point, I bet few of my peers do actually love myspace or facebook. Most seem to hate them and many have abandoned the sites all together.

The trends I'm noticing might also rise from the fact that twenty-somethings like myself are already behind the curve. Maybe we're shunning technology because we can't keep up. One side effect of exponential technology advancements will be that generation gaps widen and become more apparent at smaller increments. For instance, facebook debuted when I was a freshman in college, so it never played a role in my high school social life; neither did text messaging. Hence I've already noticed something akin to a generation gap between myself and kids just two years younger than me in the way they use technology. It scares me. And this process can only increase in the future.

Thus it seems possible that a new subculture is looming, one that takes off-the-grid to it's extreme, a new back to nature movement like the hippies had perhaps. The growth of the Evangelical movement and religious fundamentalism in America could also be exemplary of just such a backlash.

Do I think we'll really all move to the woods? probably not, although I'm hopeful. Do I think we wont be so quick to adapt to new technology as 'adults' think? It'll at least be grudgingly so, kinda like the amish.

Proof I don't really live here/nobody knows who Darwin is.

2009-02-12T07:59:00.001-06:00

Living in an urban, yuppie, hipster enclave like the northside of Chicago has downsides (duh). For instance, sometimes I find myself so out of touch with real America that I'm truly embarassed. Reading that less than 40% of Americans believe in evolution is one of those moments. Furthermore, almost half of Americans don't know who Darwin is. Wow. Happy Birthday Darwin? Gallup Poll

Honestly, I'm shocked by these numbers. And I'm embarassed because I just don't know anyone in the majority. How can I be so out of touch?

Wyoming's gonna get us afterall

2009-01-03T18:54:00.008-06:00

Earthquake swarms hit Yellowstone, foreshadowing eruption?

My mom's a rational person, but she's more than a bit paranoid about the Yellowstone Super Volcano. Today she told me to be ready to get back to the house at any moment, so we can start driving south! Not that really I blame her, I mean if this thing blows it'd be bad news for just about everyone west of the Mississippi, and probably knock all of America back a few millennia. If you're not familiar, the Yellowstone Super Volcano is many levels of magnitude larger than even the current largest active volcano, Mauna Loa. The caldera of the volcano is almost as large as the park itself, i.e. a good chunk of Wyoming is actually a volcano. The Yellowstone caldera seems to erupt like clockwork every 600,000 years (at least the last three eruptions fall on this time-line), and now the volcano is some 40,000 years over-due for a good continent-razing blast. Lava from the last eruption can be found from Washington to Louisiana.

It turns out USGS monitors show the caldera and yellowstone itself are rising several inches a year, at a rate much higher that any seen in the hundred or so years that the USGS has been keeping track of the area. The speculation is that pressure is building at an accelerating rate. It's not that I'm going to miss Wyoming much, but, you know, Colorado's not so bad.

The Sound of Space

2008-12-28T14:39:00.005-06:00

There's no sound in space, you say? There's nothing to transmit sound, you say? Well you're (sort of) right, but that hasn't stopped people from listening. For instance, professors at the University of Iowa have posted sound recordings made by satellites and other spacecraft, recordings of everything from lightning on Saturn to the sound of the solar winds. Space is filled with all sorts of radiation, everything from radio waves to visible light and so on, and these recordings are made by translating these waves into audio.

Minimalist composer Terry Riley has even composed a string quartet performance based on these recordings, called Sun Rings

This dreadfully academic video explains the composition and some of the recordings. I'd skip ahead to about half way, or just skip it all together and just listen to these really beautiful sounds from Jupiter, via Nasa.

Caspian Sea Monster

2008-12-28T12:44:00.007-06:00

Now that I'm both unemployed and out of school, I figured I should devote my time and this space to my hobby of amassing neat but completely useless e-junk.

So first up, this amazing, eerie soviet video of ekranoplans; ground effect planes/ships that fly just a few meters above the water, taking advantage of the ground effects that occur when a plane flies lower than its own wingspan. The video has a great drone soundtrack too, I can't stop watching it.

These things are some of the biggest planes ever built. The largest, dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster, was longer than a football field, could move over 1000 tonnes of cargo, and crossed the Caspian at speeds over 250mph. The soviets kept the project secret, so you can imagine the poor fishermen who undoubtedly found themselves in the path of these speeding behemoths. Keep in mind they never flew more than a few meters above the water.

The project ended sometime in the mid-nineties, and you can see a couple of abandoned ekranoplans in google earth at 42°52′50″N, 47°39′57″E

Commercial interest in ekranoplans continues, and several private companies apparently produce or plan to produce ekranoplans in the future. Interestingly, ekranoplans are considered a ship rather than a plane by international maritime regulations.

Ground effect is a complex phenomenon that involves the air underneath the wing and its relationship to the ground. If a plane has a wing span of twenty meters, then ground effect takes over when the plane flies lower than twenty meters. In regular aircraft, the effect allows for smooth landings, creating a pillow of air that dampens turbulence. It also reduces drag, so if you can fly low enough, you'll be able to fly further and faster using less fuel. And of course you'll be flying under enemy radar.

On the other end of the aviation spectrum, just last week WhiteKnightTwo flew for the first time in the California desert. This high altitude aircraft will launch SpaceShipTwo, the private spaceship that will carry space tourists into low Earth orbit. Check out Mojave Skies for a write up of last weeks test flight.

pic from Alan Radecki at Mojave Skies

2008-07-10T04:41:00.002-05:00

The following is a series of paths that could be traced between North Platte, NE and St. Cloud, MN, following the rules of Feynman Diagrams.

North platte Oneil Vermillion St. James Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Plankinton Madison Litchfield St. Cloud

North platte Oneil Vermillion St. James Slayton Litchfield St. Cloud

North platte Oneil Vermillion St. James Slayton Pipestone Madison Litchfield / St. Cloud

North platte Oneil Vermillion St. James Slayton Pipestone Plankinton Madison Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Plankinton Pipestone Madison Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Plankinton Pipestone Slayton St. James Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Vermillion Slayton Pipestone Madison Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Vermillion Slayton Pipestone Plankinton Madison Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Plankinton Pipestone Slayton Vermillion St. James Litchfield St. Cloud

North Platte Oneil Plankinton Madison Pipestone Slayton Vermillion St. James Litchfield St. Cloud

Ways and Means

2008-06-18T13:33:00.006-05:00

Chicago street artist Solve was murdered a couple days ago. Although I never met Solve, he lived (and was killed) just a few blocks from where I live, we probably knew many of the same people in the arts community, we probably even went to the same parties. These aren't, however, the reasons why his death hit me in such a profound way. It's because I knew his art so well. His work, like a few other prolific street artists in Chicago, followed me everywhere I went. It became familiar; I looked for it subconsciously wherever I went, and I often looked for it consciously too. It enhanced my life, made me smile, and made this already interesting city even more complex and beautiful.

Street art, graffiti, whatever, anything from tags all the way up to stuff like Solve's clandestine video installation on the blue line, these works take private property and make it public. It reclaims something lonely and gives it to the community. When I see a great piece of street art, it becomes mine, I own it, and I possess it in a way that studio art never allows.

It also sucks because apparently Solve was super nice guy, and his name was really his message- solve. Solve the problems our community faces.

photo by Joyful Morgana

We're computerizing and we just don't need you anymore

2008-04-30T13:14:00.004-05:00

Well, to my surprise, the reading went rather well. The not-so-cheap cheap beer helped, certainly, but I think I'm actually getting the hang of performing in front of crowds. Seemed like most of the people in attendance were teachers (probably because one of the other writers performing was a teacher at columbia), but still, when SAIC hosts readings, we're lucky if even one faculty member shows up. Furthermore, everyone I spoke with was friendly and down to earth, except for the one fellow SAIC student, who was the most awkward, withdrawn artist type in the place, and she told me my work "paired object with emotion" and then quickly meeked her way out of the room. Oh artspeak, blessed artspeak; anyone care to decipher what 'pairing object with emotion' actually means? Cause I haven't a clue.

Our living room looks like some sort of meth lab gone wrong; we've got blenders, fans, tarps, tubs of murky water, shredded paper, sawdust and cement dust, a few dozen beer cans... more on this later.

Here's a picture I took last fall. The sepia bugs me but not enough to change it or anything. Just visualize it color-balanced.

Somehow

2008-04-29T11:15:00.002-05:00

I completely forgot that I'm giving a reading tonight at Manhattan's Bar in the south loop. I guess it's part of Columbia's grad writing program, or at least organized by one of their students. I don't know how, but I almost missed it completely, I just woke up in the middle of the night and realized it was today. I'm not exactly prepared...

Wow

2008-04-20T22:24:00.002-05:00

31 people were shot this weekend in chicago. And the crazy part is this- that's not much more than normal apparently.

Only two people were stabbed though. What happened to a good knife fight?

Huh

2008-04-18T07:35:00.005-05:00

I kid you not, just yesterday I spent a good half-hour reading about mid-west earthquakes- the New Madrid fault and whatnot, you know, in southern Illinois, where this earthquake thing just happened this morning.

And I won poker last night. I'm pretty sure this makes me a certified clairvoyant, if not all out soothsayer.

Oh 7th grade vocab words.

Elsewhere, here's proof that my home town Colorado Springs is the only place home to crazies a notch crazier than those silly mormons in texas.

How it feels to be something on

2008-04-17T11:37:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure why blogs seem to come and go. This is my fifth blog in as many years, and they've all followed the same trajectory- in a creative fit i'll start one, spend lots of time designing it to look half-way not shitty, update feverishly for a time, then get bored with it, then comes that strange embarrassment phase where I wish I'd never started it, then I delete it.

well I'm not going to do that with this blog, yet, although I've already stopped updating very often. I sold my little digital camera last week because I was broke and figured my digital SLR was enough for one man, but it's so big that I never take it anywhere- hence no pictures these days. Oh well.

On the bright side, this week is rather fantastic. Tuesday was the joint BFA/MFA reading at the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection, which scared the shit out of me since I was collaborating with someone I'd never met, and his work was the exact opposite of mine- he had these odd poem things that were loud, screamy, almost rap, almost scat, almost slam, and I had my whimpy little regular poems. We read side by side, alternating after each poem, so this exaggerated the contrast. Surprisingly I think people liked it.

Then tonight at SUGS I'm in a show about the suburbs, mostly painting and photography, and then there's my poem- in vinyl on the wall. The curator called me last week freaking out because even at one inch letters the poem was 14 feet long. 14 feet! talk about compensating...

Plus we finally broke 70 degrees for the first time in half a year. That's the third longest span of sub 70 degree weather in chicago's history.

And the blue line was fucked on tuesday, people were trapped for hours, smoke, evacuations, thousands of angry passengers yelling, fun fun. The funny thing is that I'm really glad stuff like that happens, it brings the city together and shows us how much we need public transportation, and also how fun it is for half the city to be three hours late for everything.

I owe my roommate a third of a bottle of cheap champagne and some grape soda on top of that, but let me say- yay for grape soda mimosas before class.

Oh, and one last thing, my friend mike and his awesome awesome awesome band the Jack Trades called me up last night and asked me to design them a flier. Thoughts?

The Fabulous Destiny of... (how it ends)

2008-04-13T15:32:00.002-05:00

More artists should be like Peter Doig. Down to earth, humble, good sense of humor, and also a great painter. He deservedly has a big show at the Tate right now. Check out this video of him talking about his work.

Memorie Dal Futuro

2008-04-08T20:38:00.002-05:00

hilarious, if a bit heavy handed, article in the Onion.

the temple

2008-04-06T18:22:00.013-05:00

I like this photo because it's sort of like time travel.

I don't know much about the older building, except that it houses an anachronistic Sears department store on the first four levels and a bunch of empty offices on the upper levels. It looks to date to the same era as the Carson Pirie Scott building across State Street, which would put it at 1899, although I'd bet it was a built a few years later. I could see into the upper floors of the building from my old residence in the Chicago Building, and they were mostly empty offices and rusty stairwells. The cornerstone of the newer building, One South Dearborn, claims 2005, so I'd bet there's a hundred years between these two buildings. When I took this photo there was this group of thirty-something secretaries huddled in the alcove smoking, and one of them asked me if I painted, and if I would make a painting for her. I told her i was an excellent painter and gave her my number, but she never called. She could probably tell I was full of shit.

I like sunday afternoons with roommates baking apple pies and me learning how to play the mandolin and all the windows open for the first time in six months. I like Madison and her puns like apple pi. I like not having to kill time, I like being satisfied just looking out the window and seeing people on the corner and kids playing in the street. As Jayme said once, don't think of it as killing time. Just don’t think of it that way. She’s right.

I like mathematicians. I like them because they always wear shirts that look like graph paper, and sometimes they make beautiful music, especially if they're also canadians, like Dan Snaith...

I also like this video and this documentary of the same guy.

I like not being cynical and not being a jerk but sometimes this is hard for me. I like being chipper.

I like geology because it's one of the best story tellers we have, and I like the megafloods in the northwest that must have been amazing to see.

I like Logan Square. I like Pilsen. I like Chicago; a lot.

I like making lists of things I like.

Amarillo by Morning

2008-04-05T23:27:00.000-05:00

my bank got robbed. by a woman. a woman who weighs less than me, and i'm quite the dandie. she had no weapon, just a note. I should point out that this is the branch I use weekly, across the street from where I lived last year. I'm kinda sad I wasn't there.

Kiss me on the Bus

2008-04-04T13:58:00.005-05:00

I've been following the Children's Museum issue for a while now and I didn't have much of an opinion until I read this post at the Beachwood Reporter.

I don't want another building in Grant park, but come on, it's not pristine open space. Half of the park is already paved with tennis courts, skating rinks, and ego-fueled architecture. The Beachwood points out, though, how much other neighborhoods would benefit from the Children's Museum. Not to mention how much money they could save and put towards better causes, like maybe keeping our kids alive long enough to go to a museum?

Anyway, last night we ventured towards the Map Room, but the Armitage bus had stopped running by 8:30 (wtf?) so we hit the Green Eye instead.

Fin Du Monde isn't as good as I remembered, I like beers with lots of alcohol, but this time it just had too much of a liquor aftertaste.

That bountiful feast just showed up on our kitchen counter yesterday. I'd eat it, but I think maybe my roommate is a... what's the word for people who have sex with vegetables?

Special Collections for special people

2008-04-02T13:11:00.007-05:00

Once again, I’m blown away at the access schools and museums give a clumsy chump like me. Last month I got to flip through an original printing of Napoleon’s Description de l'Égypte at the Ryerson Library, and yesterday I browsed the University of Chicago’s special collection of Poetry Magazine’s early archive. They have the original manuscript of T.S. Eliot's first published poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, typed by Eliot, with his scribbling all over it. They’ve also got hand-written letters and rough drafts of poems by Pound, Eliot, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost (who haggled over $50 with Moore in a long series of letters), Wallace Stevens, and so on. And they let me hold this shit! Pick it up, make paper airplanes, etc. I don’t know who else they let in that place (I got in because one of my professors has the hook up), but if you can make it happen, it’s a top-notch place to geek out. I also recommend stopping by the bar at the bowling alley next door beforehand; they’ve got huge baskets of fries for cheap, ensuring you’ll leave your greasy thumbprint on history, like I did. And come on, you need a few strong drinks to handle some of Pound’s bullshit.

p.s. I just spent the last hour messing with the template, hopefully everything on this blog looks good to you faithful readers out there?

Night Windows

2008-04-01T00:02:00.001-05:00

view from my window

So i know that photo probably looks all blown out and whatnot but I can't
figure out how to make the photo look as good online as it does on my camera or
on my hard drive. meh, I still like it a lot.

here's one katherine took...

anyway so earlier i went for a walk/train-ride/bus-ride and was gonna take
a thousand pictures of my adventure but ended up with just this sad one of
candy hearts:

oh, and here's my ass being retarded:

AND... after the rain set in, one last one for the night.

Too nice a day to read a novel set in England

2008-03-31T11:56:00.004-05:00

Well it's rainy and feh out and I skipped class for no reason so i've been in bed
all day listening to NPR with my hood on like i was actually gonna go outside, which
I might soon...

but NPR was interviewing people in the suburbs about how much it must suck to live
in the burbs if you're trying to be green, and of course how much better the city is
for the environment, and how chicago is supposedly trying to be the greenest big city in america.

then we should have decent recycling, right? how come we have almost no
public recycling program, like the kind san francisco has (recycling thingys on top
of every trash can), and how come my school only just this month started installing
recycling bins in our buildings? Well I'm pretty shitty at this anyway, seeing
how much recycling I tend to generate in bottles and cans, and our building doesn't
have recycling (only a big dumpster) and I haven't even thought about doing anything
about that until now.

yup, threw all that away.

Step into my office, baby

2008-03-30T23:36:00.007-05:00

I got really excited for earth hour so I ran around unplugging stuff and glaring at neighbors who still
had their lights on and i even turned out the lights on madison as she was putting on make up and she got pissed.
But there weren't any stars, as Nikkita was wondering. The chicago sky looked just as orange and empty as ever. I
miss the west...

Photo by pilgrims

p.s. that wass my back yard, like really, I could walk there in ten minutes.

The sound of settling.

2008-03-29T12:05:00.004-05:00

What's with chicago this week? everyone I know is in a slump, myself included. ugh. The weather sucks, i know,
but spring is almost here. I'm broke but that doesn't normally get me down. I've got a gallery show coming
up and a couple readings, but that's not helping stay excited for school or writing.

Maybe a silly picture of me will help?

Anyway, tonight's earth night or something and the hippies are making us turn off the lights which is actually
really awesome, I can't wait to see the skyline dark and maybe even stars! I miss stars.

Don't Fool Yourself

2008-03-27T22:14:00.003-05:00

This hip new "restaurant" opens sometime around april first, but you'll
never get to eat there... as the Reader says, don't fool yourself.

So very cold in the mansion after sunset.

2008-03-27T10:07:00.007-05:00

"I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house." -Edward Hopper

I've fallen in love with the Hopper show at the AIC. There’s something about the way he painted simple scenes; he captured an emotion I can’t put into words, which is exactly what painting should be- a medium to express all those emotions beyond words.

Hopper was "a master whose poetry was light and paint."

Slate has a good photo essay, but the work needs to be seen in person- the crux of Hopper is so subtle that photography seems to fail it.

Hair: Debatable

2008-03-27T09:43:00.003-05:00

Now-

Once-

in between-

Time for a cut? Or go for long-haired glory?

2008-03-25T09:28:00.002-05:00

Jayme and Nelson were the best hosts ever jayme bought us beer and dinner and drove us
EVERYWHERE in all of california i'm pretty sure.

San Francisco's winos are hard core. And believe in pyramid power.

Kiki really isn't this fat. the internet adds ten cat pounds.

Nelson draws just about all the time, it was awesome to see someone not so jaded about art n stuff

whats up with the bay area and all the crack heads?

Jayme demanded that we paint something on the walls before we left. I was trying to
get katherine to paint something since she's the painter between the two of us, but
they tricked me and got me drunk and handed me paint so this is what they have in
their kitchen:

A How-To Book

2008-03-24T17:28:00.008-05:00

Back from San Jose/San Francisco. Really awesome trip; more on that later. The camera
I rented from school broke, so no pictures for now (soon), and I took the thing back
today and told the media center boss that I'd pay for repairs and he still felt the
need to scold me and call me a liar. Why do middle-aged balding men with fucked up
teeth and a menial job at college have to be so bitter?

In better news, America's best brew pub will soon be bottling their beer, saving me
from the impossible trip to the burbs. The bottles look goddamn great:

As for other things white people like, hulu.com has every episode of Arrested Development.
I think I'm gonna fire up a fresh batch of hot ham water immediately.

Travel is Dangerous

2008-03-20T23:36:00.003-05:00

We decided to go to evan's house between loads of laundry, so when we finally got around to packing for california at two in the morning we were pretty up to the task.

evan and his compensatory camera:

Wii tennis makes me feel like arthur fuckin ashe. this is wii baseball though, which I
suck at.

in our front yard:

Scott misses spooning me. We used to be roommates, so naturally we did this every night:

And one final gem...

2008-03-19T20:44:00.005-05:00

So here's the one and only thing you learn in art school- if you have something,
anything; you can make it better by juxtaposing it.

Like these two videos I took on the blue line yesterday and today. Pretty neat eh?
just put two things next to each other and make sure to use the word juxtapose.

Tomorrow Katherine and I leave for san francisco on our 'spring break' which is only
four days long counting saturday and sunday. feh. when I was a student at CU they
implemented fall break in late october to lower the school's suicide rate.

We're gonna see Explosions in the Sky at the American Music Hall, then we're going to
find out just how many cigarettes it takes to have an asthma attack hiking with our
pals Jayme and Nelson. wheeeeeeeee.

2008-03-18T21:41:00.002-05:00

This guy was holding a 'homeless' sign and shaking a cup on michigan ave
while wearing a northface-esque jacket, sitting on a Chrome messenger bag,
and sporting some vaguely hip black rimmed glasses. Now I'm not saying the
guy wasn't homeless, but come on, that fancy Chrome messenger
bag has gotta be worth a month's rent in some parts of the country.

One perk of not being homeless is getting to play with this Analog Synth. I'm
working on a late 80s video game soundtrack as we speak.

And finally, stephanie gave me shit for posting a bad picture of her, so here's
a bad one of me. Note the tricked out collar.

Stupid holiday if you're a drunk anyway

2008-03-18T11:42:00.005-05:00

St. Patrick's day is dumb. He wasn't even irish, he was a british religious nut who drove the snakes (read: pagans) out of ireland.

Danny Boy is a great song. To slit your wrists to.

Do we really need an excuse to drink on a monday? It's monday. It's already the best weekday for drinking. except for tuesday.

green beer. three parts Old Style one part cancer.

We went to the two-way. we stood around.

don't make fun of my shoes.

Stephanie got eloquent.

2008-03-17T20:31:00.006-05:00

Punctuation at school

So we went to this travel grant raffle thing where an old lady gives away $1500 to twenty students so she can feel good about being rich and old and wrinkly. We didn't win.

When she was getting up on the stage, she fell. I felt pretty bad for her. Being old and in front of a lot of youngsters. But now that I didn't win her money, I can admit I laughed inside.

Just kiddin, I feel pretty bad for old people. Like this dude sleeping on the train.

Here we go

2008-03-17T20:05:00.004-05:00

First post on the new webloggg.

I'm in this picture. Somewhere.

Credit due to myelectricsheep