Robot Folding Socks

That sounds like a line from a haiku. But the video below looks like an act of war. Yes, war: it starts with socks, and it ends with folding human bodies into suitcases that the robot overlords (the Pod?) shoot into the sun.

It actually kinda sorta looks like Rosie the Robot Maid:

An Inconvenient Film

Wow. This video was banned because it "violated human rights". Never mind the drug war, videos that show the truth must be stopped (you don't need to speak Spanish to watch):

Mist Giant's Latest Release: Glass Walls

Come and check it out! My band's latest release: Glass Walls. You can hear it here or on bandcamp, where you can also pick up a copy. We're also on Velvet Blue Music (our label), iTunes, SoundCloud, and under your bed. Let me know what you think!

ADmented Reality: Google Glasses 2

As per my post yesterday, someone out there feels exactly the same way I do:

20 Years Ago Today Isaac Asimov Died

Isaac Asimov died 20 years ago today. I thought I'd throw up this interview he did on Fresh Air with Terri Gross (she sounds so young!) back in 1987.

You might know him as the most famous nerd of all time, but he was also a writer/editor of some 500 books. That's right: 500. And where did he find the time to write 500 books? Well, if you've ever read any of them I'm sure you noticed they're a bit... dry. Let's just say there are aspects of storytelling that he just didn't bother himself with. Such as character, dialog, pacing, style. Well, actually 'no style' was his style. Still, he had wonder and insight. Come on, you know it's true. He even admits as much in the interview below. Little known fact: Asimov died of AIDS.

 

So much of the industry has changed, and yet, so much of it is the same. The biggest difference is that people aren't as receptive to boiled down pulp. Nowadays all the editors are looking for character, depth, emotional center. This is a good thing. But they haven't raised the pay! They want more for the same price they've been paying for 20 years +. And with inflation that's really more for less. Anyhow, this is about Asimov, not the industry.

It's hard to really encapsulate how much we lost with his death from AIDS. Not just a genius humanist, but also an opportunity to look at the human cost of the AIDS epidemic and the embarrassment over the public reaction to Arthur Ashe and Anti-AIDS prejudice. Back then AIDS=Gay and Gay=Evil, when in reality AIDS=Human and Human=all us mortals.

Lots of people remember Old Asimov:

Kinda creepy, goes to lots of Cons.

But let's not forget Young Asimov:

Kinda hunky. I bet he had some moves.

Project Glass Gives Me The Willies

It's coming. It's near. The Singularity.

Actually, it's probably been around for some time. Since the 60's. Maybe sooner, maybe since the Industrial Revolution (at what point on a exponential curve can one demarcate the beginning of the curve?).

It's a point of no return, really: by the time you realize you're there you've been so for some time and can no longer get out (think waterfalls and event horizons). So, we've actually been in the Singularity for a while (it would have been very difficult for me to explain to 14 year old me in 1990 how Facebook and Twitter would dominate popular interactions). For me, there's no greater emblem of the rate of technological change than interactive augmented reality. We have it on our camera phones and now we're about to have it in our field of view: Project Glass.

It's Vingean Heads-Up-Display (Fire Upon the Deep, Deepness in the Sky), it's Strossian Glasses (Accelerando), it's every first-person-shooter (Doom, Halo), it's RoboCop's targeting system (at 5:25, though the whole video is frikkin' awesome). This technology will start a bridge between the virtual and the Real. Imagine a book with blank pages. Slip on these glasses and the pages fill with text as the video feed is edited en route to your eye. Play first-person-shooters in the Real. You'll be able to handle faux-objects that exist only in cyberspace (imagine the tamagotchi they'll come up with). You'll be able to tele-presence. 3D viewers and photography will be obsolete as 3-dimensional looking objects will be able to appear in your field of view (maybe not obsolete, maybe finally rendered realistic and manageable, no need for projectors other than those in the Glasses). You'll be able to book mark locations, and leave faux-graffiti notes on Real objects for your friends who are tuned into your 'channel'. The Web will exist in the Real. You'll be able to walk into a webpage, thumb through the blog, fold up text and put it in your pocket. This is great, this is the future, this is knowledge at my fingertips. 

So, then why when I watch the video above do I feel abject revulsion?

Perhaps because of how it's presented: a better way to consume. A better way to advertise. "Where's the music section?" Seriously? That's what you're going to do with your Glasses? Ask directions to where you can buy more crap you don't need? Actually, yes, that is what you're going to do with your Glasses. Makes me feel like, "Oh, it'll be that much easier for them to advertise to me. Wonderful. All I need is Visual Spam." Reminds of a recent Stross Diary entry: 

a) All advertising tends towards the state of spam (which is merely free-as-in-dirt-cheap-and-unregulated advertising),

b) Funding content via ad sales holds our public arts hostage to a boom/bust bubble economy. Furthermore, there is an incentive for web publishers to prioritize paid ads over editorial content, and to censor editorial content that threatens advertizing revenue,

c) The idea that "most people only want to consume" is profoundly offensive and serves the interests of abusive "producers" who tend towards rent-seeking,

So, the future will be the Gap scene in Minority Report? More data gathering, more marketing? Will Google sell off what I've been looking at? Pump ads tailored from what I've been viewing in the Real? Will they sell it all to the NSA (and don't give me no paranoia/conspiracy shit until you read this)?

Another aspect of the Singualrity is something that Vinge wrote about in Deepness in the Sky: Ubiquitous Policing. We think, because of Twitter revolutions and Facebook activism (and advertising that fosters these images. Wait, what am I saying, those revolutions are the greatest ads those companies could have hoped for) that the internet exists as this system of unfettered expression, democracy, and information. And it can be. But what if the GPS in your baby's pacifier is also being monitored by a police parolee surveillance program, or is gathering data for a custody and divorce case you don't even know is coming your way? Or the urinal you're pissing in can also test for THC and can cross reference who's pissing when by querying your WiFi-enabled desk chair when you got up, and pinging your phone and Glasses for position? (If you haven't yet, take a look at episodes 2 and 3 of the BBC mini-series Black Mirror). I personally don't think it will all be this doom and gloom tech-paranoia dystopia (well, anymore than it already is). The point is, it easily could be. David Wall, in his book Cybercrime: the Transformation of Crime in the Information Age, puts it this way: "Unless checked, the 'ubiquitous policing' that follow this 'hard-wiring of society' could contribute to the destruction of the democratic liberal values". Okay, maybe that's putting it on a bit thick. But, still, watch the above, tell me it's not creepy. Tell me I'm wrong. Please. 

Robot Cutting Hair

It starts with a haircut and ends with Skynet.

I can't help but think of that scene from The Ice Pirates where those dudes get emasculated... literally (at 1:30).

How to Get to Mercury

In the absence of Bussard ramjets, Einstein-Rosen Bridges, or a Captain who says "engage" and it is made so, this is how you actually travel between planets:

Crazy. And beautiful. No one ever talks about the circuitous route one would have to take to go starwards because of the acceleration you pick up from the star's gravitation. Gorgeous.

Original article here.

News: Soda and Fingers

Normally, I would blog about this, but the craziness of this story (severed kid fingers randomly found by a woman digging through the trash who thought they were ginger root, in a ziploc bag, to retain freshness) combined with a typo and some crazy quotes, I couldn't resist:

Yes, all those people without consciousness, all those (p) Zombies, have been hampering the investigation, drooling and growling over the phone.

Then add in the statement: "I was drinking soda, and I knew for a fact those were fingers when I seen the fingernails." I haven't seen the PLOSOne article yet, but apparently soda helps in severed body part identification, thus why she thought the fingers were ginger root UNTIL she sipped on a soda.

Finally, Sgt. Buffett of the Honolulu Police Department waxes some how one "normally" finds body parts. It's true, all the body parts I've ever found have still been attached to the rest of a body.

Truth: this really isn't funny, or a joke, but sometimes one has to point out the absurd in bizarre/grisly situations in order to deal with them. 

"Many questions remain."

Original article here.

Tajazzle: We All Deserve to Die

"...vampire discovery... and acceptance."

Book Report: Max Ehrlich's The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

Reincarnation of Peter Proud by Max Simon Ehrlich

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Some books are great because they capture a story, others a place, and still others a time. Max Ehrlich's Reincarnation of Peter Proud is a great snapshot of the early 70's, with the "trippy" 60's still reverberating and morphing into burgeoning New Age movement. At least, that's how it feels. I wasn't there, so I really don't know. The closest I can get is the TV, books, and movies of that time, and it feels like Reincarnation of Peter Proud fits right into that, despite it wanting to be a supernatural thriller.

New Project: Al Lover & The Haters reviewed by Impose Magazine

Nice little write up in Impose Magazine about a new project I'm doing with my Mist Giant bandmate Mike G. and DJ Al Lover. It's a free release so download away! Al's got tons of great trippy music on his site for free. Favorite line of the review: "The Haters bring a keg spiked with acid. We approve." I approve of their approval. Check it:

Coronal Mass Ejections = Gorgeous Aurora Borealis

Faskusfjordur, Iceland

That huge solar storm I posted about earlier this week, where you could see the Sun's magnetosphere ripple from Million mph EIT waves? This is how they lit up Faskusfjordur in East Iceland. Wow.

Click on this pic from NASA, it's pretty awesome:

The Battle of the Sun and Earth

Sounds: Some Ophelia, Human Tree EP, Mist Giant

We wrote "Some Ophelia" towards the latter half of our first crop of songs, when we'd started to zero in on sounds and structures we enjoyed exploring. Besides the basic drum line that Dan brought in, we wrote this song as a band.

Originally we called this song "Modular A-C" as that's pretty much what it is: a transition between A and C (those are the only two notes I play on the bass). The Modular part came from the fact that you could play any part at any point. With C being a minor 3rd of A, as long as you don't play full chords, you can play pretty much any melody you like (okay, not quite "anything"; there are still harmonic limitations, but the point is that the song follows no real structure, so as long as you played in the A minor/C major key, you're pretty golden). We do this a lot with our songs. Our upcoming Glass Walls (Velvet Blue Music) release has another song with a similar modular structure, called "Catch & Release", which I'll eventually link to here. It's a fun way to play, not limited to strictures of structure [sounds like a shitty post-rock band: "Strictures of Structure"]). Of course, over time this doesn't hold up: you start making changes based upon when others make changes; that part leads into this part. Eventually hills and valley form and the song starts to take on a shape that is That Song. Nonetheless, it's an exciting organic way of playing and writing. 

Watching the Sun Ripple

Or something to that effect. First, you have GOT to see this:

The video was taken at 12 second intervals up in the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope range (EIT range = 171 Angstrom wavelength) and shows two different solar flare events. Notice the Sun's magnetosphere and surface RIPPLE? It frikkin' shook the Sun! The Sun we are talking about: you can fit 1.3 million Earths inside it; it's 850,000 miles in diameter (compared to the Earth's 7,819 mile diameter). And yet you can see the Sun ripple from these two solar flares. Ripple! These "EIT" waves travel at about 1 million miles per hour and traverse the entire star. It looks like a James Cameron production.

The flares send out coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are expected to hit earth around 1:25 AM EST on Thursday. So, gird your loins.

More from NASA.

News: Today's News from Tomorrow's Victims

Full disclosure: I've been helping out writing and researching for this. Even still, pretty crazy:

Tornado on the Sun

That's right, a tornado... of super-heated plasma! For 30 hours on February 7 & 8, 2012, cool plasma (cooler than the surface of the Sun) spun around in competing magnetic forces in a tornado the size of the Earth at somewhere near 300,000 kph. I have no response to that.

Sounds: Empty Archipeg, Human Tree EP, Mist Giant

I  don't actually recall how "Empty Archipeg" began. It's one of our "Hits", the first batch of our songs. I know at least some of the structure came from a sample Dan brought in, at which point I was playing the cello. Back then, Fall of 2009, this song was a lot brighter, easier, lighter. We started it together and then midway through Mike G. got a chance to work for a month on Greenpeace's Esperanza (Mike schooled us when we called it a boat: it's a ship which is defined as that which can fit a boat. Confusion over). By the time he got back all the songs we had been working on had undergone pretty drastic changes: I was on keys now and the lyrics and overall tone of the song got very dark. I remember Mike standing there listening to what we'd come up with and then pausing for a moment once we finished. Then he said: "These songs have gotten a bit dark". It can be a tough challenge to inject oneself back into a song after it's changed a lot, but he did it and as you can hear, he nailed it. My favorite part is the interplay between the lead organ line and the guitar. That's the song's hook to me.

(We tend to try and hold back on hooks and payoff/super-dominant lines, trying to maximize their effect by  NOT playing them over much. The organ/guitar interplay is only in the middle and at the end, pulling out completely for the "rebuild". Mike is good at pointing out when/where we should do this [I'm always horrible and want to play the best parts over and over again], which we do on the soon to be released "D-Loop" on Glass Walls, the unreleased "The Late Keanu Reeves", and others.)

Fool's Republic, by Gordon W. Dale: Pretty Effing Adequate

Readable. That's the first thing I'll say about Gordon W. Dale's Fool's Republic: readable. I'm not sure it's much more than that, but there you have it. 

Fool's Republic is the story of Simon Wyley (get it!?), a misunderstood genius who can't (or won't) fit into modern social standards who's on a quest of revenge against the government (read: stand in for modern life) for the death of his daughter, an active duty soldier who willingly put her life in harm's way. That's right, he wants revenge on the system that his daughter chose to join. Yes, it's a bit of a stretch, but Mr. Dale manages to sell me on this motivation, though that might have been because we're left in the dark about it for most of the book. 

Book Report: The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Where to begin. I love Vernor Vinge. Fire Upon The Deep, Deepness In The Sky, I'm not going to say they are masterpieces, but they deliver such great ideas that whatever problems the stories had mechanically (2 dimensional characters, wonky plots, horrible dialogue), just got buried under the scope and wonder. Not so much with The Peace War.