Head Drugs

....but not like the stuff you get coming from my kitchen. We have a couple of things for you viewing enjoyment.

First, the Dactyl Fractal Zoom, a small flash animation.

El segundo is a video called, Alive In Joburg. Awesome production values, slightly tongue in cheek while still staying serious, and vaguely reminiscent of Half Life 2.

Finally, one of my favorite MacHall strips:

To kick the Thursday Thoughts off right I've pulled up something that I wrote in Fall of '04. This is probably the best summation of basic spirituality that I can come up with. Slight edits since the original, but nothing serious.

*Disclaimer: I don't believe in God with a G, and not really in a god with a g. I do, however, have a pretty good idea that physics and science alone don't explain the universe and that humanity is not the be-all, end-all of sentient life. There's a lot a strange energy out there that could well be something more powerful than anything we yet comprehend. So where I use God here, it's shorthand for this nebulous concept of something spiritual that I've just written.*

The Northern Lights were out tonite. It was truly incredible. They took up more than half the sky. Long streaks that seemed to point to a spot just over my house. They pulsed and shone and wavered. You could even see them to the south of us! (That never happens) I'll bet even California got a glimpse tonite.

It was so ethereal, and eye popping visual display. You feel that it has to accompanied by explosions or, better yet, symphonic music. Because that's what they resembled: a symphony in light. It would trill from west to east and everything would pulse with a kettle drum beat. If living clouds could gather and have a heated discussion using nothing but light, this is what it would look like.

I kept hearing a phrase in my mind as I looked up at it. "The face of God moving over the waters." And that's exactly what it was like, the face of God. Think of all that awesome majesty and the untold power sitting up above as you look at this sight. This is some real Moses shit.

Imagine that you were there three thousand years ago to see this. You're rolled up in a blanket, listening to your sleeping herd of goats. And then the sky is alive! There, looming above you, is nothing that you have ever seen before. Nothing in your life has ever remotely resembled this celestial apparition before you. It's so large, it's so inexplicable, it's so mysterious and complex. What else could it be but God and a chorus of angels, singing in light? Isn't that the conclusion you'd come to? Imagine never being told that God was a an ancient man with a long white beard. Imagine never having been told that there was a scientific explanation for any phenonmenon. You would think that this was the face of God.

And you know what? You would have been right. That is God. The inexplicable. The order underlying the chaos, and the disorder in the system. Some people could explain that's it's merely highly charged solar particles interaction with the upper atmosphere. But is that it? Think about just the 'scientific' explanation. This is solar silt, smaller than an atom, that has blown accross the hard vacuum of space to splash into our atmosphere and make brilliant flashes of light on the horizon. The mistake most people make is to set themselves above the atom. Very few people assign mystical weight to an atom, it's just a dumb little particle that behaves as it does because of the 'natural laws' of physics. Can't you hear those cheesy '50's science films? "Finally, with the nuclear bomb, man has mastered the atom." Most people don't get it. Just because there's a scientific explanation for something does not render it sterile. Science does not rule out faith. *I'm looking at all the intelligent design idiots out there.* And we don't even have a true explanation for why or how each atom works. We've got rules for how groups of them interact and what those groups will do, but ask a scientist what a single atom is going to do in a given instant and they can't tell you. A single atom today is just as inexplicable as the Northern Lights three thousand years ago.

Everything on this planet is made up of atoms, these crazy little things. People, rocks, plants: everything. Which is pretty wild in and of itself. You, me, the computer, the dog laying on the floor, and the tree outside are all made up of the same atoms, they're just put together in different ways and different amounts. So, where did all these atoms come from? This is where science and the spiritual actually overlap. We all once sat at the heart of a star. What is more mystical than realizing that everything we see, everything we know, is made of stardust?

And the face of God is writ above us in stardust.

Heh. I wish more people would react like this.

Here's the guy's personal website. Worth a look, even if you don't know any Hebrew.

So, the Big Brother concerns are running high this month. Google is censoring its Chinese content. The U.S. government wants billions, if not trillions, of search records so it can protect us from porn. Then there was this news: a company in Ohio is chipping its employees for access to a records room. Made me remember that all U.S. passports are going to be RFID readable* by the end of '06. Upon further looking around it turns out that some Scandawhovian (that's a person of Nordic descent if you hail from the Inland Empire) has come up a p2p system for companies (and others) to read and track any RFID, regardless of platform. I don't know what to do about the government or Google, but some intrepid Germans have come up with and RFID Killer that you can make at home. Basically it's a disposable camera that's had its flash wired to create a very intense magnetic field. Place it next to the offending RFID tag, fire up yer mini-EMP, and *phhzzzt* no more Big Brother chip. The build process is described, but there's no step-by-step HowTo for those of us not technically inclined. Hopefully that comes later. Fight the power, children!

*I do know better that to fully trust a very political source like World Socialist Committe X, but they had the best round up of the final decision.

Here's a chaser to get some of that bad taste outta yer mouth: robot-plant prOn video.

The only thing I knew about the Red Elvises when I went to see them on a sunny Seattle afternoon was 'surf rock.' The next thing I knew there were four guys on stage tossing around thick Russian accents and a three foot wide fluorescent red bass. The show only got better from there. The drummer, Avi, was a Texan who did most of the talking. Having just recently been turned on to William Gibson, with his themes of Russians everywhere and America turning into a redneck urban wasteland, I laughed every time I thought about a band of of Soviet political refugees being fronted by a Southerner. By the next time I saw 'em, they'd shrunk to a trio, trading instruments every couple songs and lost a lil' of that russki gruffness. Even more fun was had.

Early Red Elvises is definitely surf rock, with a little bit of swing and country mixed in. The writing is good-naturedly lecherous with a sly wit and an underlying impression of earnestness. They haven't lost their touch but things have progressed since their early incarnations. They've been a trio and a four piece at various times. Right now they're a quintet. Elements and themes from electronica, folk, and klezmer have played a large part in later albums. The red bass has even been supplemented by a wooden balalaika of the same proportions. Tho most of their music is in English, most of the album Rokenrol is in Russian. For your listening pleasure the official website has hella live songs (warning: they're all WMA), while the fan club has a pretty good selection of mp3's.

I've never met anyone who's heard these guys on the radio, but they've got a very dedicated fan base who call themselves Red Heads. Parts of their site are a little dated, but they have a new stuff every month. There's one girl who was so crazy about the band she wrote her thesis on 'em. It's called Elvis and Bears:A Semiotic Approach to the Red Elvises and Rokenrol. Fairly interesting, if you want to be an egghead and place them in cultural context.

One thing that will keep earning these guys fans for a long time to come is Six String Samurai, a very low-budget post-apocalyptic indie flick with samurai, '50's revival, roller-skating bad guys, and a soundtrack entirely by the Red Elvises. Celluloid has been very kind to them, despite their under-the-radar status. Other credits, some unconfirmed include: Armageddon, Mail Order Bride, Skippy, Heartbreakers, and Tree Girls South of Oxnard. Television: Melrose Place, Kit-Kat commercials, Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular, VH-1, and Talk Soup.

After a significant hiatus your beloved Doctor of Dementia is back! Being a neophyte at this whole digerati-thing, I had to rethink my approach. So I'm back now and I think I have a scheme to keep you all entertained. We're gonna have a schedule! (Original, I know.) Here's how it works: Mondays are for Music, new and old and whacky, even the ficticious. Tuesdays are for Technology, be it nanotubes or the latest software or retractions of claims to human cloning and definitely some DIY howto's. Wednesday is the World, a look at politics, culture, and corners of the globe Americans may not see much of. Thursdays are for Thinkings, when you shall be exposed to whatever memes and memories my head has been pondering. Fridays are Funky, but you can always depend on at least a video and a comic to keep you happy. Saturdays and Sundays will be my time, but of course this is the bare minimum schedule, so you can also look forward to random posts on various things throughout the week.

As a preview of coming attractions take this video of Ladytron's Destroy Everything You Touch. I loved the song when I heard it on the radio and Bruce Sterling's blog turned me onto the video, which makes me love it even more.