2.12.08
Additional Richard brautigan
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
New York State Regents Exams Comprehensive English test, Wed. 19 June 2002, 9:15—12:15 AM.
The question associated with the poem was:
After you have read the passages and answered the multiple-choice questions, write a unified essay about the coexistence of humans and computers as revealed in the passages. In your essay, use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about the coexistence of humans and computers. Using evidence from each passage, develop your controlling idea and show how the author uses specific literary elements or techniques to convey that idea.
Four questions, with multiple choice answers related to the poem were provided. The questions and their answers (in bold) were:
1. What does the speaker suggest about the relationship between mammals and computers in cybernetic meadow?
(1) They influence each other in positive ways.
(2) They compete with each other for domination.
(3) They are unaware of each other's existence.
(4) They tend to avoid each other.
2. In lines 9 through 16, the poet uses images of both
(1) past and present
(2) nature and technology
(3) death and eternity
(4) age and youth
3. The expressions in parentheses (lines 1 and 2, 10, and 18) convey a sense of
(1) eagerness
(2) anger
(3) loneliness
(4) curiosity
4. The speaker implies that, in a cybernetic ecology, machines will have a role as
(1) artists
(2) commanders
(3) guardians
(4) jailers
25.11.08
22.11.08
this page belongs to Baby Seal
Caravaggio used 'photography' to create dramatic masterpieces
Like my art teacher used to say, you have to learn from the classics. Its ok to copy their paintings, even they used to copy their own images onto the canvas.
13.11.08
11.11.08
6.11.08
1.11.08
28.10.08
Slide Show: Vampire Animals
From NYTimes:
Nature's Born Phlebotomists
With his soft voice and friar’s manner, Louis Sorkin hardly seems the type to flout the sensible advice of a nursery rhyme. Yet on a recent afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Sorkin, a renowned entomologist, did precisely, luridly that CONTINUED...
23.10.08
22.10.08
Listening Thyme: Subway Kora
Tang Wei's character sings a classic Chinese folk song for Tony Leung's character in Ang Lee's "Lust Caution."
The song is called 天涯歌女, which translates to "Wandering Songstress."
17.10.08
16.10.08
8.10.08
The Incredible Awsomeness of JELLYFISH
fascinating research that just won the Nobel Prize'08:
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Two Americans and a U.S.-based Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for research on a glowing jellyfis
h protein that revolutionized the ability to study disease and normal development in living organisms.
Japan's Osamu Shimomura and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien shared the prize for discovering and developing green fluorescent protein, or GFP, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
Researchers worldwide now use GFP to track such processes as the development of brain cells, the growth of tumors and the spread of cancer cells. It has let them study nerve cell damage from Alzheimer's disease and see how insulin-producing beta cells arise in the pancreas of a growing embryo, for example.
The academy compared the impact of GFP on science to the invention of the microscope. For the past decade, the academy said, the protein has been "a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers."
When exposed to ultraviolet light, the protein glows green. So it can act as a tracer to expose the movements of other, invisible proteins it is attached to as they go about their business. It can also be used to mark particular cells in a tissue and show when and where particular genes turn on and off.
Tsien developed GFP-l .....CONTINUED.....
5.10.08
Purple Sun
somthng about how the sun is not a perfect sphere?
The “cantaloupe ridges” are magnetic in nature. They outline giant, bubbling convection cells on the surface of the sun called “supergranules.” Supergranules are like bubbles in a pot of boiling water amplified to the scale of a star; on the sun they measure some 30,000 km across (twice as wide as Earth) and are made of seething hot magnetized plasma. Magnetic fields at the center of these bubbles are swept out to the edge where they form ridges of magnetism. The ridges are most prominent during years around Solar Max when the sun’s inner dynamo “revs up” to produce the strongest magnetic fields. Solar physicists have known about supergranules and the magnetic network they produce for many years, but only now has RHESSI revealed their unexpected connection to the sun’s oblateness.
“When we subtract the effect of the magnetic network, we get a ‘true’ measure of the sun’s shape resulting from gravitational forces and motions alone,” says Hudson. “The corrected oblateness of the non-magnetic sun is 8.01 +- 0.14 milli arcseconds, near the value expected from simple rotation.”
Further analysis of RHESSI oblateness data may help researchers detect a long-sought type of seismic wave echoing through the interior of the sun: the gravitational oscillation or “g-mode.” Detecting g-modes would open a new frontier in solar physics—the study of the sun’s internal core. continued...
30.9.08
28.9.08
MAP: Tesela in NYC
Photo: Courtesy of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York
One of Tesla's closest friends was Mark Twain, seen here in Tesla's Fifth Avenue lab. Here, Tesla perfected his high-frequency coil (Photo 2), and transmitted long-distance radio signals up the Hudson River to West Point, N.Y. Tesla lost the lab in a fire, described by author Samantha Hunt. Despite this, Tesla was able to file for the first radio patent in the U.S., Patent No. 645,576.
27.9.08
Listening Thyme: Little Dragon
[Lyrics]
After the rain the temperature dropt
And covered in ice was my window top
I say goodbye I wave my hand
As a thousand doves fly
Across the blackened night
After the rain we forget
We make sure we gain then we leave it
‘Cause were a nation of forgetters
Oh after the rain we pretend
It’s easier to begin without looking back
‘Cause all at once air so thin
And there’s nothing left to breath in
After the rain we forget
After the rain we forget
Behind a dream so rosy and red a pile of things to forget
A voice of the past tiptoes in a cracking ghost whispering
After the rain we forget
We make sure we gain then we leave it
‘Cause were a nation of forgetters
After the rain we forget
After the rain we forget
People where have you been
Have you been hiding
In you big houses
People after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same
Oh people what will you do
When you luck
When it turns on you
Wow people after the rain
Will your life
Will it ever be the same
After the rain we forget
After the rain we forget
After the rain we forget
24.9.08
23.9.08
Poetry; Richard Brautigan
Oh, how perfect death
Computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps,
and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars
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| From man eaters of the sex jungle, misch |
22.9.08
Listen Thyme
Dharma Talk; Thict Nat Hahn
Newtown Ave, Astoria, NY
Music: Little Dragon
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| From Scanned Photos |
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| From Scanned Photos |
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| From Scanned Photos |
Astoria, N
walking back after drinking at Astoria Beer Garden, aka Cezch-Slovakian Community Center by day
