Joshuah Bearman

Werewolf Update

So I didn't wake up naked in the zoo covered in tapir blood. But Todd did use some photo sleuthing to uncover this bit of uncanny:

5 More Days

And I'm already high on candy corn.

I think she's...

...talking about me.

Jesus fucking christ, it's a little panda eating a birthday cake

American Gothic

My friend Todd just bought the second smallest house in all of Pasadena: 450 square feet on a 600 square foot lot. Here we are on the porch/storage area:

Cute, right? Now look a little closer at my face:

Maybe that house has some bad juju. Peep the Omen: the camera shows the spiritual truth, I said to Todd. Or perhaps it's not the house. Todd says it looks like the snapshot caught me in a moment of werewolf transformation. (Note the teeth.) I do have a weird bite that I thought came from my cat. Hope I don't wake up naked in the zoo surrounded by a disemboweled goat tomorrow.

Towards a (Re)newed Katamari: The Oepidal Index and the Subversion of Flat Culture in the King's Fractured Cosmos

Answering the call to offer cultural criticism of video games, a Vancouver film student is writing a multi-part series that opens with the question:

Movies, literary works, and pieces of art all have critiques written about them all of the time, so why not video games?

Right question, followed by the wrong answer, as the series then jumps headlong into a desultory catalog of formal critical techniques from the fine arts as applied to Katamary Damacy. That'd definitely be a good test case for thinking about video games as art, but the sample criticism on offer is a real stretch 95% of the time. Just like the  strict Biographical, New Critical, Marxist, Jungian, Structuralist, Pyschoanalytical, Feminist, Post-Colonial criticism of real art!

Violin String Theory

If chaos can create order in oscillators, maybe we can live forever.

Pyrrhic Victory Primer

Somehow, I wound up on the Project on Defense Alternatives email list. When I finally took a close look at their site, I discovered they are a pretty good resource for aggregated information on security issues. This report summarizes how the Bush administration's myopic "security" policies make us less safe. This page is a round up of various essays and perspectives on the the same topic, including a link to a look at how, despite Bush's abject failure, the Democrats haven't managed to propose anything better. Don't want to stay on Bush's collision course with failure but not sure what to do about the mess he's made? Another roundup looks at various plans for dealing with Iraq. Here's a list of 700+ .mil publications online. And this is just a great gateway page to resources on key strategy topics, like Terrorism, Revolution in Military Affairs, and -- oh right, almost forget about that other looming sunset on the Pax Amerixana -- Chinese military power.

Mo Money Mo Problems

Ever wonder where all those billions of aid wind up in a place like Afghanistan? Here's the answer:

The U.S. easily outstrips other nations at most of these scams, making it second only to France as the world's biggest purveyor of phantom aid. Fully 47% of American development aid is lavished on overpriced technical assistance. By comparison, only 4% of Sweden's aid budget and only 2% of Luxembourg's and Ireland's goes to such assistance. As for tying aid to the purchase of donor-made products, Sweden and Norway don't do it all; neither do Ireland and the United Kingdom. But 70% of American aid is contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff, especially American-made armaments. Considering all these practices, Action Aid calculates that 86 cents of every dollar of American aid is phantom aid.

Olivo Barbieri

I saw these photos in Shanghai. The prints are huge, which enhances the effect of screwing with scale, since this is not a model of the coliseum, but the coliseum itself. Here's another one:

The show I saw overreached, however. A few too many photos in the exhibit allowed a few to betray the illusion, undermining the effectiveness of the others. Plus, the gallery felt the need to print a giant, unintelligible artists' statement on the wall,  which, as with most artists' statements, made the work seem like an accident that befell some jargon-struck critical studies student. Still, the illusion of the Rome pictures is wonderful, and poignant in its reminder that our scale, even in monuments, isn't always what we think it is.

La Discussion

Finally got around to reading, in its entirety, the 10,000 word exchange in the American Prospect between Bernard Henri-Levy and Anaton Lieven. Two well-informed intellectuals exchanging emails sound like it could come up a snoozer, but this is worth it, as they do well synthesizing vast amounts of information into a summary of our current predicament. Here are a few highlights, including the important and often overlooked point that the neo-cons are Johnny-come-latelies to idealism:

You set up a radical opposition between neoconservative idealism and Kissingerian realpolitik. This is quite false. What you seem to have forgotten is that the neoconservatives initially broke with the liberal Democrats, and began their march toward the Republicans, in large part precisely because of their belief that the United States should continue to wage war in Vietnam by all necessary means, however ruthless.

What is more, when the Carter administration tried to make human rights and democracy the centerpiece of its international strategy, the neoconservatives were the first to denounce this as hopelessly naive and to insist that America continue to support the Shah of Iran against his population and a variety of bloodstained Central American military regimes against their “Communist” opponents. Idealism, anyone? How exactly was this different from Kissinger’s belief that American vital interests, and the defense of Western democracy, often required support for anti-Communist dictatorships?

Historical hypocrisy, outdone only by today's right-wing interventionists, who intone about democracy but seem to have no real interest in it: 

The problem with emphasizing democratization in this way is that it is radically incompatible with the actual policies of the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, as fully encouraged and supported by the neoconservatives. This contradiction between ideals and realpolitik was always there in U.S. policy. The neoconservatives and the Bush administration, however, have raised this contradiction to surreal, virtually Orwellian heights. They believe in spreading human rights and the rule of law? So they kidnap suspected terrorists and have them tortured in illegal U.S. prisons and in those of Muslim dictatorships whose human-rights records they publicly profess to despise.

And how that failure is counter-productive to the neo-con's and Bush's "visionary" goals:

And this, in the end, is my most bitter accusation against the neoconservatives and the Bush administration, one in which I believe you may well wish to join: that by a whole set of actions at home and abroad, they have badly damaged the image of American democracy in the world. By doing so, they have also damaged the attractiveness of democracy in general, and strengthened the arguments of democracy's enemies. This has been their fundamental betrayal of the ideals of which they profess to be the arch-defenders. For this, I believe, they will be cursed by posterity.

With a nice rhetorical barb at the end -- well put! If only posterity's curse didn't also portend potentially grave consequences for the future of the world.

Thanks, But No Thanks

With friends like these...

The Religious Left

Now that it's clear how cynically Rove and company exploited the religious right, maybe their disarray will allow the true progressive politics of christianity to emerge. It's out there; it's just not being heard. Here's some statistics suggesting that the religious left is as big as the religious right. This might be a bit optimistic, or, in the case of the poll numbers, somehow overcounted, but I think it does represent a latent political force that the Democrats should stop ignoring.

I think it's the face

that makes this so effective:

When you google "radioactive scorpion venom" and "sex stimulant"

You find awesome news. All the radioactive cobra venom researchers must be bummed. (Thanks, Brent!)

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!

Way Scarier Than a Wet Nymph

This is what a black hole would look like. In radio waves. For real.

Help Me Help Colin

This here on the left is my homie Colin:

This snapshot really says it all about Colin's relationship with Casey, the dude on the right. But Casey's not important right now. Perhaps you recognize Colin from the New York Times Thursday Styles inevitable foray into the beard phenomenon: Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol. As evidence were (as usual) two examples: a picture of Clooney, in hirsuit Syriana mode, and Colin, on the runway in New York sporting Ralph Lauren's blue label. When he started modeling, I told Colin that we need to name his looks. You know, brand the beard. Above, you see it all in situ. That natch style is the core, the essence of Colin, so we decided to start there. And how's this: Desert Breakfast. It's rugged, yet evocative; woodsy, yet refined. Then his print campaign started showing up. I flipped open Vanity Fair one month to find this:

Ooh, fancy! Clearly this is not the natch style. Desert Breakfast cleaned up all nice and accessorized himself with a tux, a gal in pearls, and a regal hound to boot. I call this new look Lord Greystoke. Maybe a little obvious, but on point. OK, Done. But as we all know, you gotta have three looks. What would day and night be without late afternoon? Or as Diana Vreeland used to say, "a stool don't stand on two legs!" Colin needs one more style. What should it be? Colonial? Mercenary? Massage therapist? Help us expand the man's range and send in suggestions.

That Spooky Eyeball in the Pyramid Again

Whatever happened to this reincarnation  of Total Information Awareness? I guess they decided to go under the radar rather than advertise themselves as a sub rosa conspiratorialist's nightmare come true. I but it's probably a good idea and working just fine. Maybe I'll look into it. If only to find out who originally designed that seal

What if it learns to swim backwards?

On a nine-month turnaround with posts,here, but what the hell. Here's another reason to love DARPA: remote-control sharks. Let's hope they're still susceptible to LL Cool J's crucifix.

Shirt-No-Pants & More

In June, me and Starlee and Davy Rothbart and his gang went into the hills in search of hippies and hot water. Here we are asking directions:

We found the hippies, among them Mr. Shirt-No-Pants:

I wrote about it here for the LA Weekly for the Best of LA issue. See also, the best place in LA to get old school video games; the formerly secret location of the best peanut butter cookies in the city; and a how-to for neopolitan gelato.

The stars make music

And of course it sounds really spooky. Also, what's a starquake soundlike? F sharp.
 

I'd heard about them trapjaws

But only just seen the video:

No
Freaking
Way

Ligers and Tions and...

This is neat

Customizable streaming music thingy. I typed in "baby huey" and got a bottomless selection of his and similar jams. Joan Baez was less successful, though. Lots of later stuff, and the tags threw in all kinds of indigo girl-type shlock.

Friday on Sunday

More here.

Ironisch, oder?

This, from a friend:

Jonathon Hexner is an artist whose work was censored yesterday in Berlin, Germany. Hexner arrived in Berlin this past Saturday for an opening of his work only to discover that the sponsor of the exhibition, Axel Springer, refuses to display his art on the grounds that the work is "Anti-American."

Hexner was commissioned to participate in a show entitled "EAST/WEST" by SLEEK Magazine. He worked around the clock for weeks creating a two-and-a-half minute video that is specifically designed to be displayed on the monitor atop the Axel Springer building. Hexner's video was scheduled to be broadcast once an hour, 24 hours a day from October thru December.

His video is simple: he documents himself making a drawing of the phrase “I Like America and America Likes Me." This sentence is the title of a very famous art "action" performed by Joseph Beuys in New York in 1974. (Beuys is one of the most important German artist in the last 50 years). The curators love Hexner's video, yet executives at Axel Springer have determined that his work is "Anti-American" and therefore unfit for display.

The ironies of this situation are hard to ignore: an American artist being dubbed "Anti-American"; an enormous publisher suppressing one person's right to free speech; an homage to one of Germany's greatest artists being

deemed unfit for public consumption. If there is anything "Anti-American," about this situation it is Axel Springer's censorship of Hexner's work.

Video here.

This stuff

just won an emmy.

A Moth in the Machine

Click on the picture to see the system bug up close. Click here for interactive.

I don't know how this works

But I want to buy one.