Home

Advertisement

Customize
08 December 2009 @ 01:49 am
<3  
As usual, I've been forgetting I have this thing...

This weekend, the girlfriend came up for a visit after several months of being away, back from school on her winter break.
So... yes, clearly this was awesome.

As mentioned earlier, she was interested in learning circuit-bending. I've also (I think) mentioned that a professional circuit-bender lives here. Turns out he was running a workshop in how to circuit-bend this weekend, so I signed us up for the workshop.

In short, it was the weirdest date ever, and I love that I have a girl who will go to a two-day circuit-bending workshop with me.

She ended up with a pretty kickass toy guitar with a pitch-bend that can dive down into pulse-modulated crazy land.
I had two toys that were total duds... had boring pitch-bends with little useful range to them... until near the end of the last day I cracked open the final one of my 3 toys I brought and it happened to be a toy that's apparently popular to bend. Now that I'm working on it, I can see why-- it may be my new coolest bend yet. Unbent, it is the most 80s-tastical keyboard toy ever... but bent it turns into a really harsh and badass industrial music drum machine.
 
 
07 December 2009 @ 09:17 pm
Though it was frigid outside with snow on the ground, I got my tree eyes project completed today! I made three sets: straight, right, and left looking eyes. I mounted these with small nails and then colored the nail heads black with a sharpie. Did I mention that there is snow on the ground! My hands are still cold!



More pics of close-ups behind the cut! )

x posted
 
 
07 December 2009 @ 02:45 pm
The White Card Project. Brought to you by Dummypress.

Unobtrusive white cards are printed with single words, phrases, thoughts and other lovely things and distributed throughout the world by you. Cards can be left on the bus, tucked into a book at your local store, left on the table at a coffeehouse, handed directly to the recipient, hidden somewhere, slipped in with a gift or a letter or kept in your sock drawer for the next 85 years.

The idea is to inspire thought, a laugh, a conversation, collaboration and a sense of discovery.





 
 
07 December 2009 @ 12:38 am
¨
Brazilians couldn't be more perplexed at the country being the target of an unbelievably rude, irresponsible, and unjustifiable attack by an accomplished asshole named Robin Williams, who missed a golden opportunity of keeping his big mouth shut while being interviewed by David Letterman. It was an appalling thing to happen and understandably the press is giving it a lot of space. Nobody knows what got into this idiot (to say the least) to do a thing like that.

I have this theory thatRead more... )
 
 
06 December 2009 @ 11:22 am



"Truffles"
November 2009
8.5"x10" pen on paper
 
 
 
 
02 December 2009 @ 01:46 pm
Enough is too much!
I love to singa
About the moon-ah
And the June-ah
And the spring-ah
Ahem...

Sing to me
Only
With thine eyes...

Stop stop stop!
Enough is too much!
 
 
Current Music: owl jolson "i love to singa"
 
 
27 November 2009 @ 01:50 pm
The backgrounds, borders, clip arts are great for: scrabooking, card design, invitations, stickers, jewelry, paper crafts, web design, small commercial products, t-shirt design or button design, plus many more.

 
 
29 November 2009 @ 10:43 am

Anna Silivonchik
"Winter dream " 2009. 60х50cm. Oil on canvas
silivonchik.ru/
 
 
01 December 2009 @ 03:54 pm
*** Attention artists! ***


This is for a college project. I'm making a webpage featuring a gallery of a variety of artist's works. I need people to draw/paint/sketch half of the right side of a face (the subject's right, and you can use an already completed work as long as you made it, or have permission from the artist), and any photograph of a face of your choice for the left half of the face. I'm interested in what people will come up with. Please put your name, initials, or some manner of ownership either on the work or in the description and send it to vividarchetype@gmail.com. Also please comment in this post that you contributed, so I can make sure that I got your email. I'll post the gallery's website here so everyone can view it. The website should be done by mid December. Multiple submissions are welcomed.

I'll highly appreciate any contributions, but please submit your work or works before December 12th.

Thank you!



**



If this is not the right place to post this, please delete this entry.
 
 
Current Mood: jubilant
 
 
30 November 2009 @ 11:49 pm


10"x14", watercolors, pen and ink
 
 
30 November 2009 @ 11:27 pm
For those who might think Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population irrelevant except for historical interest, I'd make the following remarks:

Although Malthus uses very little empirical evidence in his essay, it would be a mistake to view this shortcoming as an antiquation from a less "scientific" age. For example, one of the more influential essays in public policy written in the last century is Garrett Hardin's infamous The Tragedy of the Commons, published in a 1968 in an issue of Science. Just as Malthus' sketchy proclamations were rapidly gobbled up by the bourgeoisie of his day to justify limitations on social welfare, so too did Hardin's concept proliferate beyond the boundaries of his original article; today the "tragedy of the commons" has become a self-justifying truism used by politicians, academics, and those laboring in think-tanks to recommend the privatization of virtually everything from public utilities to the planet's atmosphere, even if people are unaware of or unwilling to defend the arguments which spawned it. It has become an ideological fixture.

And much like Malthus' 1798 essay, and spite of its venue of publication, Hardin's 1968 piece contained virtually no scientific evidence to support its sweeping claims. Indeed, the main "evidence" of the article centers on a purely hypothetical grazing arrangement which, in addition to being proven wrong by the grazing practices of actual pastoral economies, also includes a sort of puzzling scenario for political philosophies which see common rights as being rather central to any alternative to capitalism.

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.


There are two striking things about this scenario.

The first is that it assumes that use of the commons is completely unregulated. This would be fine if Hardin's essay were aimed at being meaningful only to a libertarian fantasy-world, but it's not; presumably Hardin means for it to have relevance to the actual exercising of common rights. And in this case the assumption of absolute freedom, completely unfettered by any mechanism of social organization, seems not only implausible, but is contradicted by what we know about the use of commons in historical economies.

Among the more carefully-studied common lands, for example, were those prevalent in premodern England. But rights to the English commons could not simply be exercised by anyone with a cow or sheep, but by "stints" -- grazing regulations which were designed to prevent the overuse of the pastures at village meetings. Ironically, it was only after the privatization of the commons that wealthy landowners began overstocking their lands in order to achieve higher profits. A similar situation happened in Africa: grazing rights in the Sahel where regulated by tribal leaders for until they were disrupted by the introduction of colonial European rule and its system of private property rights, a fact which is remarkable given the frailty of that ecosystem.

Which leads to the second interesting thing about "tragedy": the system assumes a pastoral commodity capitalism wherein there is an incessant pressure to convert livestock into its exchange value. Again it's worth noting that this is remarkably unlike the way all or most preindustrial, precapitalist societies actually operated, where production for exchange value was generally only a small part of the economy, which in most societies depended primarily upon subsistence production, the division of labor within the extended family, and the regulation of production by the traditional rights associated with informal communal institutions.

Hardin essentially assumes an a priori choice between absolute anarchy and modern institutions of private property ownership, and assumes conditions of commodity capitalism to be essentially ahistorical. It's difficult to imagine how an paper with such a ridiculous premise could gain such currency, at least not without interpreting its ideological utility as being the foremost factor in its rise to prominence.
 
 
30 November 2009 @ 03:53 pm
Hi everyone! A nice lady ordered a pair of custom Converse as a gift to her son. I've never painted on shoes before, so I was a little worried. This is the design she chose:


This was the other design I gave her.

How they turned out )
 
 
30 November 2009 @ 03:51 pm
This is probably not the ideal place to get an answer to this question, but I've looked around and asked a lot of other people, and thought I might as well ask for opinions here.

What are some good graduate programs in continental philosophy? I am specifically looking for departments that are all continental or primarily continental. I'm already looking at SUNY Stony Brook, Memphis, NSSR, etc.

And yes, I've seen the epic list of Philosophy Graduate Schools Friendly to Continental Philosophy, but just thought I would fish for a little more information. Has anyone out there attended graduate school for continental philosophy, and, if so, do you have any advice.

Crossposted to Philosophy, Real_Philosophy
 
 
27 November 2009 @ 04:32 pm
My novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God" is now available for free download from Obooko.com at http://www.obooko.com/obooko_general_poetry/bookpages/general/gen0070_stealingheaven_sunshine.php

My poetry book, "Visions Of The Drowning Man" can be downloaded for free at http://www.obooko.com/obooko_general_poetry/bookpages/poetry/poet0018_drowningman_sunshine.php

And my collected poems, "Red Dreams And Razorblades: Collected Poems 1980-2005" can be downloaded for free at http://www.obooko.com/obooko_general_poetry/bookpages/poetry/poetry0019_reddreams_sunshine.php

You need to register with Obooko, and you can download up to 4 books a day for free. And, if you want, you can also upload your books for free.
 
 
28 November 2009 @ 10:12 pm
Here is a thing I came up with today while slumping some glass. I made it from reclaimed electric fencing wire. I thought this would be neat to display those super special/old/breakable ornaments that you don't want the dogs/cats/kids to knock off the tree and break, or maybe for someone with a really small place with no room for a tree.


It still needs to be cleaned and painted before it goes up in my shop.
 
 
Два дня я участвовал в работе конференции «Дни петербургской философии – 2009», проходившей на философском факультете Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета. В этом году она называлась «Философия в диалоге культур: взгляд из Петербурга». В рамках этой конференции мне удалось поучаствовать в работе трёх круглых столов: «Искусство после философии», «Коммуникации: метафизика и метадискурс», «Консерватизм: альтернатива или перспектива».

Конференция этого года показалась мне менее содержательной, нежели прошлогодняя.
Философия, кажется, ещё умирает, хотя и не умерла окончательно. Показательно, что в философию идут женщины, а мужчин становится всё меньше.
Некоторые доклады напоминали ситуацию, когда надо что-то сказать, а сказать по сути нечего.
Накануне я прочитал любопытное высказывание Николы Тесла: «Современные учёные мыслят глубоко вместо того, чтобы мыслить ясно. Чтобы мыслить ясно, нужно обладать здравым рассудком, а мыслить глубоко можно и будучи совершенно сумасшедшим».



Не буду пересказывать содержание докладов (их можно прослушать по ссылке). Выделю наиболее интересные идеи в выступлениях участников конференции.
Читай и смотри далее - НАИБОЛЕЕ ИНТЕРЕСНЫЕ ИДЕИ УЧАСТНИКОВ КОНФЕРЕНЦИИ )
 
 
26 November 2009 @ 10:58 pm

click on image to see and know more
 
 
26 November 2009 @ 08:37 pm
 
 
 
 

Advertisement

Customize