Teevee Time: What makes a b “E.”

I never watched this show. But they are dressed like pilgrims and that makes it topical.

via.

I feel just the same. It’s why I prefer my full name.

This post originally appeared on November 25, 2010.

R.I.P. retread — Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Happy Holidays from Cynthia Myers, Miss December 1968

Been buried in academic work, but I needed to throw out a quick, sad retread of Ms. Myers’ “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” post. Beautiful, adventurous Cynthia passed away yesterday of undisclosed causes, per Hef.

R.I.P., Ms. Myers (9/12/50-11/4/11).

Photographed by Pompeo Posar.

“Wholly Toledo!” is the name of the article that accompanies the pictorial for the lovely and talented Cynthia Myers, Playboy’s Miss December 1968. Her wildly popular centerfold shot her to stardom among the troops in Vietnam, and a pinup of her is featured in the film Hamburger Hill. She has been a teen model, a television personality, played a lesbian songstress in one of the most famous camp films out there, and become an unwitting space cowgirl in her 60 years on this planet. Buckle up, because here we go!

Cynthia wrote to Playboy a few years ago, informing us that she’d like to be considered as a centerfold beauty. Assistant Picture Editor Marilyn Grabowski answered with a reminder that our Playmates must be of legal age but that Cynthia should keep in touch. She did just that.

Well, kind of.

The shoot was in June of ’68, and Ms. Meyers was born in September of ’50, but Playboy waited until Cynthia was comfortably 18 to publish her pictorial. It had become common practice for the magazine after the scandal with Elizabeth Ann Roberts.

In fact, the most recently featured “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” playmate, the fantastic Susan Bernard, was also 17 at her photoshoot and saw her spread published after she turned 18.

Posing underage for Playboy is not the only common ground between Ms. Bernard and Ms. Myers. While Ms. Bernard was featured in Russ Meyers’ cult classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, today’s special gal starred in his 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

I promise to have a full-out Movie Moment for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls one of these days. For my friend’s recent 31st birthday, I sent him a picture of the cast of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with him tagged as Dolly Read and me as Cynthia Myers. I explained that I originally had me as Dolly and him as Cynthia, but I switched it because it was his birthday.

You know Roger Ebert wrote it? I don’t think he ever gets to criticize a movie again.

Cynthia is pictured reading a five-year-old palmistry pamphlet about what the following year once held for her because she placed a large credulity in psychic phenomenon.

“I’ve known since I was 15 that I’d be a Playmate. It’s almost as if this had been fated to happen.” Cynthia’s penchant for precognition can be traced to her early teens.

(Ibid.)

“A junior high school friend of mine in Toledo,” she says, “was a nut on palmistry, astrology and even reading tea leaves and crystal balls. Like most people, I thought is was just a bunch of baloney. But when I began reading about prophets like Edgar Cayce, I began to realize that there are strange spiritual forces in the world undreamed of even in The Playboy Philosophy.”

(Ibid.)

Ms. Myers, I think you’d be surprised by what the Playboy philosophy can dream of.

In 1994, it was revealed that a picture from Ms. Myers’ centerfold pictorial was among several that crafty NASA jokesters have launched in to space over the years. Ms. Myers, together with Leslie Bianchini, Angela Dorian, and Reagan Wilson, was snuck in to the checklist for the Apollo 12 mission that was placed in astronauts’ suit cuff on their trip to the moon in November of 1969. Ms. Myers specifically took her space journey with astronaut Al Bean.

Don’t forget: Describe the protruberances.

Boobs : Geeks :: Horse : Carriage. I think it’s kind of funny and sweet.

And the gals didn’t just go up in the lunar landing module: they straight moon walked. The astronauts found their pictures while fulfilling their extravehicular (read: outside the module on the lunar surface) mission duties on the moon itself.

Pete Conrad got Miss September 1967, Angela Dorian, (“Seen any interesting hills and valleys?”) and Miss October 1967, Reagan Wilson (“Preferred tether partner”). Al Bean got Miss December 1968, Cynthia Myers (“Don’t forget — Describe the protuberances”), and Miss January 1969, Leslie Bianchini (“Survey — her activity”).

(“Playboy Playmates pranked into Apollo 12 mission checklists.” January 13, 2007. BoingBoing.net.)

Conrad told us in 1994: “I had no idea they were with us. It wasn’t until we actually got out on the lunar surface and were well into our first moon walk that I found them.” Bean recalled: “It was about two and a half hours into the extravehicular activity. I flipped the page over and there she was. I hopped over to where Pete was and showed him mine, and he showed me his.”

(Ibid.)

A large, color version of the shot of Cynthia that was smuggled up to the moon in the Apollo 12.

Lest we forget, the lovely and talented DeDe Lind, Miss August 1967 and, like Cynthia, one of the most popular Playmates in the magazine’s history, also rode shotgun on the Apollo 12 mission. She was in the control console, her picture labelled, “Map of a heavenly body.”

I always feel compelled when talking about the Playmate pictures and NASA to bring up the fact that my sorority’s badge is on the moon. Neil Armstrong put it there for his wife. It’s my sorority’s badge and it is on the moon. The moon that is in space. Sorry, but I get pretty cocky and excited by that. Tell a friend.

This much more recent picture of Ms. Myers just might get her kicked out of the Red Hat Society.

Can our prescient Playmate predict anything about her future? “I’m going to be an actress,” she says simply. “Notice I didn’t say ‘I’d like to be,’ but ‘I’m going to be.’ I don’t know how good I’ll be as an actress, but I’ll be one.”

(“Wholly Toledo!” Playboy. December 1968.)

Judging from her track record as a prophetess — and from her already abundant attributes — we’d like to venture a prediction of our own: Playmatehood should be just the beginning for the remarkable Miss Myers.
(Ibid.)

Blinding you with Science: “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex” — Breaking news you can use

Tell a friend.

via.

We all knew that, right? I mean, that’s why I can’t stand what I consider to be monotonous or repetitive, flat, uncreative music. I’d rather listen to nothing than something that doesn’t pull me in and start making me feel things. It makes me frustrated and mad. I really need music to take me There. You know?

Take-two Tuesday — Daily Batman: Enter the Bookworm and Up With Love plus Surprise Connections and Zodiac-quackery

This post originally appeared on January 5, 2010 at 8:05 pm.

Roddy McDowall and Francine York, Batman, “The Bookworm Turns,” Season 1, Episode 29. Original airdate April 20, 1966. Well, that’s inauspicious. Shit.

I hate to come off as a down-at-the-mouth grump on the topic of love. I am a romantic. Here is the Bookworm and his lady, the lovely librarian Miss Lydia Limpet, and may I add that I rooted like gangbusters for this pair to win?

via Batman villains database — I love clunky contraptions on men’s heads. I find it so fucking cute. I really do.

In fact, I remember pretty strongly wanting him for myself (girls like a boy who reads!), but I rightly understood Miss Limpet having him was almost the same thing. Later, when I figured out he was in Planet of the Apes, I was even more impressed, but, being a fickle little girl, I soon made way for other crushes, like Matthew Broderick and the Great Mouse Detective — shut up, because that could work — to the point that, when I stayed at La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona several years back and was given the “Roddy McDowall room,” I merely remarked that I’d “once thought he was cute,” and meant nothing more by it.

Interestingly, after his role as the Bookworm in the live-action television series, McDowall continued to wreak villainy in the DC world. He voiced Jarvis Tetch/the Mad Hatter for both Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, as well as performing him in a brief cameo for the late ’90s animated Superman.

In the original television series, the Mad Hatter was played by David Wayne. More on the Mad Hatter another day cause he was really depressed as a character and had some killer-great deadpan lines, even though no one matches King Tut in my estimation for the male villains’ comedic value. But back to love, because that is what I’m trying to prove is probably more important than trivial details of cartoons and old lunchbox-selling serials.

No, I can’t stop talking about it. Okay, because I’m looking at his page on the imdb to make sure I had the dates and titles right and it ends up Roddy McDowall was also the Breadmaster on Edlund’s masterwork The Tick, which is of grave emotional significance to me, and, moreover, had cameos on Darkwing Duck, Quantum Leap, and mother-effing Gargoyles. Also, he was monumentally in to photography and experimental camerawork. So, holy hell, I was smart to have a crush on him as a kid and now I’m going to have to get back to Roddy McDowall another day; he’s obviously been far more of an important thread in my life than I ever could have possibly understood … y’all please excuse me because Roddy McDowall has just now blown my mind.

Finally, according to authorities on these matters, the Catwoman outfit regularly worn by Julie Newmar appears to have been “upcycled” and worn by Francine York (who played librarian Miss Limpet on Batman) for the Lost In Space episode “The Colonists.” Also, in looking for pictures of her, I stumbled across a page where a woman had collected a bunch of pictures of famous Virgo women and though I always claim to put almost zero stock in that stuff, I have to say that they/we all have the faces of birdlike closet freaks who are too shy to smile with our lips parted but rock straight-up crazy do-me eyes despite our distrust of other people — to say nothing of the number of patron saints in her gallery of too-close-to-home horror. Good thing I think that’s largely bunk, or the unnerving similarities might have me concerned that my chakras weren’t aligned with the downward dog position of my chi and I’d have to bury a peeled potato under a full moon or some shit.

Truly the end of this post. Moving on for my own sake.

Take-two Tuesday — Talk nerdy to me: LeVar Burton “The science of peace” edition

This post originally appeared on April 25, 2010, at 2:18 pm.

I have mentioned before that I follow me the shit out of some LeVar Burton on the twitter, which keeps me abreast of his doings. I have these pictures up mainly to get your attention.

From LeVar Burton’s twitpic account. With the Shat-man. Look at those OG’s! Super-cute!

It is obvious, accepted, manifest fact that LeVar Burton is one of the coolest and best human beings to walk the earth. Duh. Would you like to be as basically all-around amazing and centered and loving and a vessel of karmic groove in this universe Just Like Him? Then let’s talk about LeVar’s involvement with the extremely cool documentary The Science of Peace, dudes!

What if …

…science discovered a unified field of consciousness which affected the way people think and behave?

…we could find a way to consciously impact this field with our thoughts and feelings?

…a global media event would succesfully enroll millions of people to participate in an unprecedented world peace experiment?

(official site)

with the amazing STEVIE WONDER!!

Great minds from Tesla to Kant to Rosseau to Jung have believed in this tantalizing possibility of reaching a positive meta-energy which just might happen to be God’s will for mankind, so don’t dismiss it straight out of hand as tree-hugging hippie crap! There is some real Science to this, guys.

Hosted by LeVar Burton, The Science of Peace features pioneering physicists, biologists, and philosophers who are established in the emerging new field of Peace Science.

The film effectively illustrates how each person, when bringing peace in to his or her own life, becomes an instrument for global peace.

He is also the executive producer. Putting this post together lead meto some really neato-terrific and amazing sources.

Yes.

I hope to share more about Peace Studies soon but here is the essential lowdown on relative newcomer Peace Science, which is the subject of the documentary: it is a hard-science effort to unify the threads of ideas that run through the incredibly important social sciences movement of Peace Studies. The Peace Science Society has an explanation of the various philosophies and social sciences that comprise the touchstones of the “argument” for peace studies at Penn State, and it is always well-spent time to give the latest articles in The Acorn a spin. (The Acorn is the official journal of the Gandhi-King society. If you don’t feel like subscribing, it’s on ProjectMUSE and the JSTOR.)

Great picture with Nichelle Nichols. Remember on Dr. King’s Day when she came up? In case you forgot, the factoid that was related then was how she was thinking of leaving the TOS cast and Dr. King told her to stay because Lt. Uhura was a wonderful role model for people of color, especially women. Soooo great.

Anyway, check the documentary’s official site out and show some love by visiting the “How You Can Help” section — it’s too late to participate in the documented experiment, but you can still donate and help subside costs for production, travel, distribution, etc. Cool beans!

Daily Batman: Vinyl vision

via WFMU’s Ichiban on the blogger. Official site of WFMU.

Photo for the Thor-Ables’ “Batman and Robin,” the B side of their “My Reckless Heart” single. The A side was a remake of a song one of the band members, Willie Davis, had already recorded in 1958. Two singles, four songs in all, were released by the Thor-Ables on Titanic Records, 1962. The Thor-Ables named themselves after the two-stage rocket launching mechanism. End fragmented backstory.

/ end

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Choose wisely, take two

Gotta keep ’em separated.



(Previous edition featuring Rammstein.)

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 7 — *fin*

The afore-promised celebrity criticisms of the Farbenlehre.

“Wake up, Dr. S — there is science afoot!” via.

Goethe delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: data toward a theory of colour. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of colour. He has not, however, undertaken to furnish the theory itself … but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is.

(Arthur Schopenhauer, Über das Sehn und die Farben/On Vision and Colors. 1810.)

Which fact we have already seen well-defended by my b’loved Werner H. so I will not dwell on Schopenhauer’s criticism other than to say I generally like the things he has to say on just about any subject and agree with him here as usual.

“One of the most important works.”

(Wassily Kandinsky, qtd. in Rowley, Allison. “Kandinskii’s theory of colour and Olesha’s Envy.” Canadian Slavonic Papers. September-December 2002.)

A Russian artist and one of the famous Blue Four, Kandinsky is the father of abstract painting and was an instrumental theorist and professor for the Bauhaus before the National Socialists destroyed a bunch of their compositions. Kandinsky taught the most basic design courses at Bauhaus and used Goethe’s color wheel in his avant-garde art theory lectures. Also, note the hotness. Girls Like a Boy Who Reads [scathing criticisms of Nazis and protests against the public destruction of his art which eventually lead him to flee to Paris ahead of persecution by said Nazis]!

“Farbenkreis zur Symbolisierung des Menschlichen Geistes und Seelenlebens,” Goethe, 1809. This is the aforementioned color wheel that art rebel hottie Wassily Kandinsky would use in lecture.

Can you lend me the Theory of Colours for a few weeks? It is an important work. His last things are insipid.

(Ludwig van Beethoven, Conversation-book, 1820.)

Love how he goes from wanting to read Goethe because he considers his work important to “His last things are insipid.” Man, Beethoven had such an attitude.

He was such a crazy deaf grump by the time he died. Amazing and bittersweetly comical that a creative genius was also so churlish and curmudgeonly — like he genuinely made other peoples’ lives hard despite bringing beautiful music in to our world. The generosity of his composition and fame in the wide world is so jarring in juxtaposition with his infliction of discomfort and temper on the people close to him. The complexity intrigues me and also amuses me somehow but makes me sad too. That reminds me: I need to plan an Immortal Beloved Movie Moment.

Shit, now I’ve given over most of the last entry on Theory of Colours to talking about Beethoven. What can you do. Thoughts happen.

Fin!

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 6 — We are dazzled

If we keep the eyes open in a totally dark place, a certain sense of privation is experienced. The organ is abandoned to itself; it retires into itself.

If we pass from a totally dark place to one illumined by the sun, we are dazzled.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840. pp. 3-5.)

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 5 — Goethe vs. Newton and a whole lot of Heisenberg with bonus Fermi hotness

A famously uncertain doc.

Goethe’s colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology, and aesthetics. But victory — and hence, influence on the research of the following century — has been Newton’s. (60)

(Werner Heisenberg, “Bermerkungen zur Theorie der Vielfacherzeugung von Mesonen.” Die Naturwissen-schaften Vol. 39. 1952).

Heisenberg was deeply interested in Goethe’s Farbenlehre. He delivered a lecture in 1941 on the differences between Goethe’s and Newton’s color theories, in which he essentially argued that both were right but that what Goethe had done was outline very specifically and accurately the phenomenon of human perception of the spectrum, while Newton’s thrust was more toward definition and demonstration of the spectrum’s essence and proveable existence itself.

Fermi, Heisenberg, and Pauli. Fermi was such a tragic hottie. Do you think he killed himself? I kind of do.

The views Heisenberg espoused of Goethe’s experiments being valid insomuchas they are observably repeatable and scientifically sound have fortunately come to be the modern perception of Goethe’s color theory research — that Goethe was accurately exploring the definition of a physiological, human sense of color and drew credible conclusions about colors and the human eye.

Prior to a re-surge of interest in Goethe’s color theory that began in the 1930’s and was legitimized largely by Heisenberg’s lecture and writing, Goethe’s work had been suffering for most of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century under something of a cloud of suspicion due to his theory’s eclipse by Newton’s with popular physicists. In his book Goethe Contra Newton, British physicist and scholar Dr. Dennis Sepper beautifully describes the shadow of early, dichotomous criticism which hung over Goethe’s Farbenlehre and was part of a larger debate in science:

A characterological or typological trait of the poet prevents him from grasping the real essence of science. On the other hand, the scientist must, to some extent, be open to the demands of spirit, and science is fundamentally part of a grand ethical quest. Goethe’s apparent inability to grasp the essence of Newton’s science reveals the chief differences between those who cultivate imagination and human truth and those who pursue objective truth in nature.

(Sepper, Dennis L. “The Critical Dilemma.” Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color. Cambridge: University Press, 1988. 6.)

via.

I feel like these different thrusts of firstly poetry and science, and secondly the science of physiology and psychology, faith and beauty-based, rather than a perception of a more “hard” science are completely exemplified in the above shot.

A flock of pigeons takes off from the steps of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Istanbul.

Here is hard, natural science, pure biology, that is also poetry — a bird in flight — and all against the backdrop of human faith as symbolized by the cathedral, which is furthermore situated in one of the oldest cities in modern existence, through which millions of human feet have passed. That is one fucking deep picture of pigeons. Am I right?

That was fun. I think I’ll suss out and post up some other famous critical responses a different day.

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 4 — Reciprocal evocation, or, Goethe’s color wheel

The colours are here arranged in a general way according to the natural order, and the arrangement will be found to be directly applicable in the present case, for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.

Thus, yellow demands purple; orange, blue; red, green; and vice versa: thus again all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler colour demanding the compound, and vice versa.

The cases here under consideration occur oftener than we are aware in ordinary life; indeed, an attentive observer sees these appearances everywhere.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840. pp. 20-22)

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 3 — A rainbow ain’t shit if it ain’t got red in it

Favoritest color in the world. And may I add that this journal is now going to be the first blog entry to get a Pulitzer prize due to my stunning combination of “rainbow” and “shit” in the same sentence?*

While therefore we may assert that the chromatic scale produces an agreeable impression by its ingredient hues, we may here remark that those have been mistaken who have hitherto adduced the rainbow as an example of the entire scale …

… for the chief colour, pure red, is deficient in it, and cannot be produced, since in this phenomenon, as well as in the ordinary prismatic series, the yellow-red and blue-red cannot attain to a union.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840. p. 320.)

Take that, Newtonian spectral reasoning. Goethe was all like, “I’m no physicist but guess what? Suck iiiiiit.” Just kidding. They were both kind of right and kind of wrong. And I admit Goethe was slightly wronger.

*Actually once I knew this beagle that ate a half a box of crayons and later on his shit had faint waxy rainbows in its sheen, and I’ve frequently reported this to friends in pretty much exactly that wording (often predicated on only the most tenuous of topical connections — what can I say? It’s a good story and I’m not exactly a class act). So I suppose in truth now I have twice used rainbow and shit in a sentence, it’s just that this is the first time I’ve ever written it down.

Goethe Month: Theory of Colours, Day 2 — On the catalytic moment

But I was astonished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, how it stayed white! That only there where it came upon some darkened area, it showed more or less some colour, then at last, around the window sill all the colours shone, in the light grey sky outside there was no colour to be seen.

“L’arcobaleno” by anglerfishies.

It didn’t take long before I knew here was something significant about colour to be brought forth, and I spoke as through on instinct out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were false.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre/Theory of Colours, 1810 transl. Charles Eastlake. John Murray Publishing: 1840.)

Fun bonus picture: I am not a big one for .gifs but obey this one and enjoy the result.

Flashback Friday — Movie Moment: Switchblade Sisters (1975), Patch edition

This entry was originally posted on December 5, 2009 at 2:42 pm. Captions have been added to some of the photos.

There are many recommendable qualities about what is, to me, the title holder of all-time greatest cheeseball popcorn-flick, writer-director Jack Hill’s masterpiece of the exploitation genre, Switchblade Sisters (1975).

For one thing, the four taglines are as follows:

They’d Rather Kill Their Man Than Lose Him

So easy to kill. So hard to love.

Mothers… lock up your sons. The Switchblade Sisters are coming!

Lace… Maggie… Patch… Donut… Bunny… The wildest girl gang that ever blasted the streets!

Dig the poster art (click any of them to blow it up).

The film, which do not think this is the last entry in which I will talk about it, centers on girl gang The Dagger Debs — a sort of ladies auxiliary of their boyfriends’ gang, the Silver Daggers — who later change their name to The Jezebels (some bootlegs of the film still have this as the title) under the advice of their new co-leader.

That bowling alley is rougher than the cantina on Mos Eisley.

Name changes and the new co-leader do not sit well with what is for my money the number one reason with a bullet (or switchblade, if you prefer) to watch this movie:

This flyass bitch right here.

Monica Gayle as “Patch.”

Her name is Patch. Former first lieutenant of the Dagger Debs, Patch came to kick ass and look hot as hell — and she’s all outta blue eyeliner.

You will want to marry her when you watch her snarl and flip and hiss across the screen. It’s wonderful.

Look at that willowy neck and perfectly snide expression. I cannot believe that Monica Gayle did not go on to ridiculous heights of stardom and fame, but at least it ups my chances of running in to her at the grocery.

Quentin Tarantino put up the money through his Rolling Thunder productions company to oversee the recent remaster and distribution of this film in dvd format. He claims it is among his favorite 70’s movies, and QT devotees insist that shades of the plotline, composition, and even characters from Switchblade Sisters can be seen in some of Tarantino’s films.

Note the composition, with organic materials framing the hard face and the strong horizontals in their look-space.

I cannot imagine where they are getting this. Even if he has seen Switchblade Sisters, I doubt it has in any way influenced his own work.*

What am I talking about?, they clearly have patches on different eyes — psh. Not alike at all.

*Obviously that’s in jest … but actually I love the fact that he based the “look” of Elle Driver on Patch. Love it. And then he put Daryl Hannah in the role on top of it?! Winner winner, chicken dinner! It’s like that loquacious elfin genius makes movies purely so I don’t have to. My hat is forever off to him.

addendum 7-2-10: It’s still true. I know it is becoming vogue for some reason to consider QT “tired” or “irrelevant” or “pretentious” or any one of a million labels that float about like baseless ice cubes in the tall glass of haterade Hollywood critics pass around, but I will love him, deeply and without measure or reservation, until the end of time. Call me.

Talk nerdy to me: LeVar Burton “The science of peace” edition

I have mentioned before that I follow me the shit out of some LeVar Burton on the twitter (for the record, the Red Cross “Haiti” texting thing is still on like Khan so think about donating, because the need is still very strong, especially as summer comes on and people have gradually stopped donating money needed very badly to keep plenty of clean, purified water around and sanitized conditions for the food getting to refugees, for example: to displaced children — a diptheria epidemic happening now among all those orphaned kids would basically be about the most disastrous and heartbreaking thing I can even think of, you know?).

From LeVar Burton’s twitpic account. With the Shat-man. Look at those OG’s! Super-cute!

I have these pictures up mainly to get your attention. It is obvious, accepted, manifest fact that LeVar Burton is one of the coolest and best human beings to walk the earth. Duh. Would you like to be as basically all-around amazing and centered and loving and a vessel of karmic groove in this universe Just Like Him? Then let’s talk about LeVar’s involvement with the extremely cool documentary The Science of Peace, dudes!

What if …

…science discovered a unified field of consciousness which affected the way people think and behave?

…we could find a way to consciously impact this field with our thoughts and feelings?

…a global media event would succesfully enroll millions of people to participate in an unprecedented world peace experiment?

(official site)

with the amazing STEVIE WONDER!!

Great minds from Tesla to Kant to Rosseau to Jung have believed in this tantalizing possibility of reaching a positive meta-energy which just might happen to be God’s will for mankind, so don’t dismiss it straight out of hand as tree-hugging hippie crap! There is some real Science to this, guys.

Hosted by LeVar Burton, The Science of Peace features pioneering physicists, biologists, and philosophers who are established in the emerging new field of Peace Science.

The film effectively illustrates how each person, when bringing peace in to his or her own life, becomes an instrument for global peace.

He is also the executive producer. Putting this post together lead meto some really neato-terrific and amazing sources.

Yes.

I hope to share more about Peace Studies soon but here is the essential lowdown on relative newcomer Peace Science, which is the subject of the documentary: it is a hard-science effort to unify the threads of ideas that run through the incredibly important social sciences movement of Peace Studies. The Peace Science Society has an explanation of the various philosophies and social sciences that comprise the touchstones of the “argument” for peace studies at Penn State, and it is always well-spent time to give the latest articles in The Acorn a spin. (The Acorn is the official journal of the Gandhi-King society. If you don’t feel like subscribing, it’s on ProjectMUSE and the JSTOR.)

Great picture with Nichelle Nichols. Remember on Dr. King’s Day when she came up? In case you forgot, the factoid that was related then was how she was thinking of leaving the TOS cast and Dr. King told her to stay because Lt. Uhura was a wonderful role model for people of color, especially women. Soooo great.

Anyway, check the documentary’s official site out and show some love by visiting the “How You Can Help” section — it’s too late to participate in the documented experiment, but you can still donate and help subside costs for production, travel, distribution, etc. Cool beans!

Talk nerdy to me: Blinding you with science — Icelandic Volcano edition

“Ash and Lightning Above an Icelandic Volcano,” credit & copyright: Marco Fulle. via the Gentleman via Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Christopher Rouxbin: just sent you a thing
E: I am about to go read it
Christopher Rouxbin: good. you should. because i sent it.
E: wow, that looks like the cover to a heavy metal album

Unsigned heavy metal bands, feel free to contact Sgr. Fulle about the use of this shot for your next EP!

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland began erupting in late March but has gotten a lot more attention in the last week or so, as some glacial ice has melted and been reheated by the lava into badass glass particles that are floating around in the ash. Pretty hot stuff. Get it? That’s right, I like science and I make terrible puns. Try to keep your pants on!




(Please do not attempt to relate this natural occurrence to recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. Please do not tell me how this means we are “due” for a disastrous geological event in North America. Please have a better basic understanding of nature than that. Please. Please.)

Daily Batman: Blinding you with Science

Can Beach Bunny Batgirl get Scientific with you?

On this date in 1981, the space shuttle Columbia completed its first successful orbit, landing safely at Edwards AFB in Antelope Valley, CA. In 1932, the atom was split by Cockroft and Walton in the Cavendish Labs. Like, dang. Those are some incredible scientific landmarks of just the sort that Sir Isaac Newton was speaking in the above quote.

My god, what a century of achievements. What will we do next? Keep your mind open and don’t be afraid of advancements — the only way to prevent a dystopian future run by cyborgs and genetically enhanced a-holes is to stay ethically invested in the coming leaps of technology. The only way to guarantee Bizarro Robocops and sentient microwaves stalking your cloned stem-cell baby with iPod implant neck shunts and laser gun wristwatches is to not care and not keep up with change. Cell phones freak me out and I don’t even know how to begin to use touchscreen notebooks, but I’m determined to learn this year. No burying my head in the sand (or clouds, more likely) and hiding from Change for me — not anymore.

Because I look at that quote from the freaking father of physics, thank you very much, and think of all the science that has rocked our world through the years, and each time a new advancement came along, there were frightened people, shellshocked Luddites like myself waving their arms around and crying “We’re all gonna die! Apocalypse now!” but it never happened, because humanity’s better nature has inevitably prevailed, and we’ve assimilated as best we could each new challenge to keeping the lid on our growing godlike powers. As fearsome as that is, if I am concerned, that’s exactly why I should not give up on the Future, right? If I’m so worried about it, why don’t I put my money where my big scared mouth is and stick around to defend it? Ought we not fight for the future to be a brave and conscience-guided good one instead of cringing in the corner, wringing our hands and refusing to look growing technology square in the eye?

I believe that great changes at which, like Sir Isaac Newton, we can not even possibly begin to guess are going to come in our lifetimes but we can make it a safe and morally-centered time with the potential to better the lives of everyone on Earth, so long as we try and don’t give up or get overwhelmed. I believe this is possible. I really do. I’m in a new and more positive place than I’ve ever been.

Okay, so I guess in addition to getting Scientific with you, I also got a little Hippie. I have those kind of tendencies. Thanks for loving me anyway. (My providing you with all kinds of softcore porn has I’m sure nothing to do with it.)

Take-Two Tuesday — Art of the nude: Andre de Dienes

I knew I had one more. Originally posted January 14, 2010 @ 11:06 am.

Photograph by Andre de Dienes.

Take-Two Tuesday — Believe the Impossible

Originally posted September 10, 2009 @ 11:48 am

The Gentleman just linked me to this. The Butterfly Nebula as imaged by the repaired Hubble, brief article.

“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.” –Ray Bradbury

Believe it. We are extraordinary. How can I focus on my tiny, insignificant problems and feel beat down when I am moving through this beautiful, miraculous universe? I will try to stop staring at the ground and scuffing my feet when I could be gazing at the stars. Thanks for the perspective, Christo!

PSA: The road to respect from your peers

PSA: The road to respect from your peers runs smooth and straight through the battery-powered legs of a robot stuffed animal. Did You Know?

via comically vintage on the tumblr.

Aces, dude. No one will laugh at you now.

Long story short, this is where Teddy Ruxpin came from.