Undulating Ungulate

Every now and again Warren Ellis justifies his existence in the most excellent fashion.

This time via providing this treasure from Ubuweb, a documentary about Buckminster Fuller..

“This film by Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Snyder, like his other documentaries on “the greats” (Michelangelo, Henry Miller, Willem de Kooning, Pablo Casals, among others), transports the viewer into Fuller’s mind and soul. Told entirely in his own words, the film is an intimate, personal and inspiring message from Fuller to our fragile world.”

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READ

Psychomagic – Alejandro Jodorowsky

Woo-ha! The book I have always wanted from Jodorowsky but didn’t know I wanted. Two book length interviews, chronicling the intertwined development of his creative and spiritual lives, culminating in his development of a highly idiosyncratic style of therapy. Jodorowsky is larger than life in every way, and this is a massively entertaining account of an artist achieving enlightenment. Exactly the right book at exactly the right time; totally recommended. Fabulous, superb. As ever, his art seems tame compared to his life. And recall that Holy Mountain was decades ago, and he has been nonstop doing awesome crazy shit before and since. Works as more or less a companion piece to his bio The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Mystical Dimensions of Islam – Anne-Marie Schimmel

Classic study of Sufism, its history and development. Excellent.

Millennium – Felipe Fernandez Armesto

Never uses a simple word where a complex one will do. But yeah, a really exceptional study of the last thousand years of world history, with excellent human level detail and great sweeps. Particularly valuable as a comparative study of human empires, giving equal time to those who achieved much but fell by the wayside.

The Seven Basic Plots – Christopher Booker

Exceptional tome analysing why we tell stories. Identifies 7 basic forms of plot, and argues fairly convincingly from a Jungian archetypal perspective that they are really about providing models for achieving psychological integration of the Self. This is part one of four. Where it gets interesting is when he applies this, describing how things have changed, and why, in the past two hundred years, and how it applies to culture and identity and more.

Extremely stimulating. Will probably get a full post at some point. Recommended to all who have an eye on story as a profession, if only to work out why you disagree with him.

A thousand rooms of desire and fear – Atiq Rahimi

Short novel by afghani writer. Man, Afghanistan is fucked and in pain, and has been for a while. Beautiful and sad.

Who is Bugs Potter – Gordon Korman

Found this at the bach and ripped through it. Loved Korman as a teen. Man, these books go. Fun.

Tomorrow When the War Began – John Marsden

Found this on the street one day. Pretty solid, good grip on teen dynamics, really tight and tense. Can see how this is the start of a wildly successful series.

Endless Things – John Crowley

Final book in the Aegypt Quartet. Which is one truly colossal novel in four parts that took 20+ years to emerge.

Again, the sequence deserves a full post sometime. But in short: a while back I blogged Russell Hoban saying “The real reality, the flickering of seen and unseen actualities, the moment under the moment, can’t be put into words: the most that a writer can do – and this is only rarely achieved – is to write in such a way that the reader finds himself in a place where the unwordable happens off the page.”

Aegypt achieved more of those moments than anything else I have read. Just sublime. Effortlessly – well, subjectively – beats the living crap out of most fiction.

The speculative chapter about Giordano Bruno surviving his execution, and how, and what he did next, basically destroyed my mind in terror and exultation and opened a rent in space-time. Books are cool.

For the first time ever I am writing a fan letter to an author.

Aboriginal Men of High Degree – AP Elkin

Classic study from the early 20th century of aboriginal karadji and their powers. (Was a primary resource for Eliade’s Shamanism.) Fascinating, and stark; aboriginal culture lost a hell of a lot through contact with the west, and this study was from when living memory knew about what it had lost.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling

The Harry Potter cycle will get its own lengthy post soon. Oh yes.

The Call of Silence – Abdullah Dougan

Complete text of the Tao Te Ching, with a commentary on it by an NZ Sufi sheikh. Seriously amazing.

Our Life with Mr Gurdjieff – Thomas de Hartmann

Russian aristocrat and noted composer who, with his wife, followed Gurdjieff for twelve years, sticking with him closer and longer than anyone. Amazing account of working with a master, and life in Russia during wartime, and Europe, and the world.

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World

The 200 years of the Abbasid Caliphate. Includes stuff about Haroun Al-Raschid, famous as the Caliph in the Arabian Nights, and his reign. Fun evocation of a fascinating time – a high point in culture in many ways not eclipsed until the Renaissance.

The Imperial Capitals Of China – Cotterell

China is seriously different than everywhere else. Geography and history are the same thing.

SKIMMED
the dragon reborn (robert jordan), the high king (lloyd alexander), several harry potter novels (4, 5, 6), how to win friends and influence people (dale carnegie), a book on Babylon: Myth and Reality by a museum, and Richard Bandler’s ‘Get the Life You Want’, which is really pretty brilliant, after 30 years of changing people’s brains.

Have started Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, which looks as thought it has the potential to be truly brilliant. And The Conquest of Morocco, which looks interesting, if, say, you wanted to travel to Morocco soon.

Filed by billy at 1:10 pm under consciousness,culture,language,reading,research,technology
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Grow your own algae – food source of the future? “Imagine that – you can have a personal algae tank that provides fresh, ultra-nutritious food on a year-round basis.” Link is to an interview with a guy at NASA who does this.

“It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth will be characterized in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics.” Way to start a book, dude. One of the world’s ‘most successful practical scientists’, Carver Mead, seems bent on overturning quantum physics: interesting interview with him. Helps if you are a bit of a physics geek.

Global Consciousness Project. It seems like I should have already known about this.

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites around the world. The archive contains more than 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second.

Our purpose is to examine subtle correlations that may reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We predict structure in what should be random data, associated with major global events. When millions of us share intentions and emotions the GCP/EGG network data show meaningful departures from expectation. This is a powerful finding based in solid science.

Rethinking learning and study habits. Article about learning styles, teaching styles, and factors that influence learning. This bit struck me, as I have long abhorred the right/left brain distinction as anything other than a clumsy oversimplification.

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas.

Filed by billy at 10:08 pm under consciousness,research,sunday mutants,the moose,utopia
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Didn’t do a lot of reading while working and on the road…

God’s Mountain – Erri De Luca

Picked this up quite at random from the library. A delightful light coming of age fable, gorgeously written; sort of warm and fuzzy without sucking.

Save the Cat – Blake Snyder

Pragmatic practical book on screenwriting for commercial success. Both a map of everything that is wrong with a Hollywood movie, and a description of why they are that way (they work, and make $$). Both loved and hated it, and would definitely and strongly recommend it to screenwriting types. It certainly changed the way I think about movies, and to an extent, stories.

Neuromancer – William Gibson

A rare re-read. Was probably at least 13-15 years since I read it the first time. At that time, it didn’t have much impact – I read it after Count Zero and Burning Chrome, and it all blurred together, diluting the originality of vision. I didn’t get why the legend status.

This time, I was surprised by how fresh it felt. A lot of the detail and references that would have washed over my younger self made sense, and the curve it was way ahead along at the time stands out. I enjoyed the first half a lot, the characters, setting and setup – the Straylight run itself was just the working out of things, and less interesting. Its influence on SF and culture since becomes clear, as do its influences – Alfred Bester looms heavily in the background.

But yeah. Good shit. Think I still prefer Pattern Recognition as a novel, but now I ‘get’ Neuromancer. (And what the hell was Gibson on when he wrote this?)

Shadows in the Sun – Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire by Wade Davis.

Wade Davis is fucking amazing. Have been binging on him lately, because it is just so good. I highly recommend his 2009 Massey lectures and TED talks.

This collection so far contains the best essay I’ve ever read on Haiti/voodoo, one of the best essays on shamanism I’ve ever read, and a pretty excellent one on psychedelics…

Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky

The intersections and evolution of social media, communications tools, and group behaviour. Skimmable but brilliant and necessary if you are interested in this area. (Looking at you, Morgue.)

Filed by billy at 6:50 pm under culture,reading,research,technology
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Norman Spinrad survives cancer at 70 and comes out pulling no punches about the state of the publishing industry, writing, and their future. Parts One and Three are *required reading* for any writers reading this. Part Two is interesting and salutary, but not essential.

Filed by billy at 12:22 pm under culture,language,reading,research
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is the man.

I blogged one of his TED talks a while back, and since then have explored further. Last year he gave the 2009 Massey Lectures in Canada. They are fucking awesome, and if you snoop around you will probably find the audio available somewhere online (Not sure if it is legit, so not linking; his SALT talk on the same themes is here.) (EDIT: actually, the talks seem I am on about seem to be here fairly legally )The lectures are collected into the book The Wayfinders.

His fundamental message – that the diversity of world-views adds to the collective wonder of humanity, and that each of these world-views has astonishing depth and richness and makes a unique contribution to that collective – comes at an incredibly relevant moment in time.

We are facing a cultural mass extinction, and a corresponding impoverishment of the human collective. We face a linguistic catastrophe – around half the languages spoken in the world are going to be dead in a generation. With each language we lose a world-view, a way of understanding and being, a unique set of answers to the questions posed by humans – who are we? what are we? why are we? how do we survive? what does our existence mean?

His grasp of diverse cultures and ability to express them is second to none. His talks are a hell of a ride. Appreciating what is at stake through his examples is literally mind-blowing. The diversity of human belief and behaviour is staggering.

I find it flat out inspiring. There is a massive convergence with my own work on consciousness, belief, and world-views, though from a really different point of entry; and I can see potentials that excite the heck out of me. There is something hugely important here.

Filed by billy at 12:53 pm under consciousness,culture,language,oblivion,reading,research,the world,utopia
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Over the past month or so on his blog Charles Stross has been running a series on “Common Misconceptions About Publishing”. It is pretty much required reading for any writers out there; anyone interested in knowing how the publishing game works, from the point of view of a working mid-list writer. The first one is here; numbers two and four are pretty amazing; the rest you can find yourself.

***

Meanwhile, Hix linked to this talk by the showrunner of Bones about what it takes to succeed with a mainstream audience. He lays things out pretty bare, and it is probably required reading for anyone interested in achieving mainstream creative success. I found it fascinating.

Filed by billy at 10:01 pm under culture,research
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We have blogged about dark matter a few years back, and have been tracking it a little as it is interesting if mysterious stuff.

One of the people actually doing the research on which dark matter is based, and so actually well placed to talk about it, is Professor Robert Kirshner from Harvard. Last week I went along to see him speak.

He talked about his research measuring the expansion of the universe via searching for supernovae and measuring their brightness and distance, and how this leads to detecting dark matter and dark energy.

Basically, the expansion of the cosmos should have slowed down due to the effect of gravity. While billions of years ago the expansion of the cosmos was decelerating, the convergence of data is that the expansion of the cosmos is currently accelerating. For this to make sense, there needs to be a lot more matter than we can detect pulling on things.

Hence, cold dark matter, about which little is known, beyond that it is estimated to make up 23% of the universe (as opposed to the 4% of the universe which is “normal” matter, which, according to quantum physics, is frankly in itself pretty peculiar and unknowable stuff*). And dark energy, about which even less is known, but is estimated to be 73% of the universe. The history of the universe can now be seen as a history of the struggle between gravity and dark energy.

There isn’t a hell of a lot to add since so little is known. But it was cool to go through the process of discovery in detail with someone who gets it, rather than reading brief and bizarre articles, and to get a taste of science actually living its myth of exploring the frontiers of knowledge to get us closer to truth**.

Today dark flow appeared on my radar again. Basically, a bunch of galaxies are accelerating away in a particular direction that indicates something really big is attracting them, maybe another universe.

Anyway. Humbling. Stuff is Big. We don’t know much. Be nice. In fact, let’s quote Kurt Vonnegut, who got this particularly right.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

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* I would seriously recommend The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav as the best book on physics I have read. There have been a few over the years, so there was a certain amount of scaffolding to build on, but Zukav communicates things clearer and better than anyone else I have encountered.

** If you take exception to that statement, go read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

Filed by billy at 9:49 pm under consciousness,research,the world
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This is really quite extraordinary. Please do watch it. A video from an autistic woman, communicating first in her own terms, in her own language, then explaining where she is coming from in english.

The first part is in my “native language,” and then the second part provides a translation, or at least an explanation. This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.

Yeah. Amazing.

Filed by billy at 1:15 pm under consciousness,language,research
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“In a small affair or in a big affair, first consult yourself and find out if there is any conflict in your own being about anything you want to do. And when you find no conflict there, then feel sure that a path is already made for you. You have but to open your eyes and take a step forward, and the other step will be led by God.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan

Filed by billy at 3:52 pm under consciousness,quotes,research
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