Matthew Cusick's Map Collages

Kara's Wave, 2009

Inlaid maps and acrylic on aluminum panel

24 x 36 in

Math Win

erroneously categorized on Math Fail

Who Doesn't Love John Waters?

Especially when he dishes out such excellent, concise life advice.
Ooh, and Pink Flamingos, lest we forget.

Putting Religious Extremism in Perspective

Hey, Loud-mouthed Racist Guy on the Subway- know who you're talking about! Quit speaking such nonsense. Muslim does not automatically equal extremist, just as American doesn't automatically mean libricide. Look how few extremists there really are. The guy who made this had to inflate the relative size of Al-Qaeda and the would-be Qur'an burners just so you could see the insignificance of their numbers.

And still this guy, going on and on, like there's no common ground between the most of us!

What do extremists have in common, regardless of religion, within and without the U.S.? Their hatred of pluralism - the radical notion that we should embrace more than one idea. It's "both/and" not "either/or".

Which is why you, Loud-mouthed Racist Guy on the Subway, don't seem to get that when you treat people like they're all the same, like they're all extremists, you yourself are being an extremist jackass. Run tell dat to your equally-ignorant friends. Then read a book or something.

La Planète Sauvage AKA Fantastic Planet (1973)

IMDb • Wiki • Rotten Tomatoes • Youtube

A movie whose English subtitles are worth hunting down (as opposed to trusting a dub). The animated La Planète Sauvage concerns an intensely psychedelic future world where humans, known as Oms (a pun on hommes, men), are kept as pets or hunted like pests. Their masters, the gigantic Traags (those blue guys), never forget what they learn, live for centuries (one Traag season is 5 years) and have the ability to influence their surroundings through meditation- wickedly trippy meditation.

Like this.

An Om narrator, named Terr, is orphaned as an infant when his mother is killed by Traag youths. Terr grows up alongside his doting Traag owner and eventually learns French from her. Benefitting from the knowledge of his mind-blowingly colorful and melty captors, Terr is able to escape to and ingratiate himself with a society of wild humans. A series of bizzare creatures dreamed up for Terr's journey reinforces the film's feral whimsy.

Conrad Gesner's Historiae animalium

Conrad Gesner [26 March 1516 – 
13 December 1565]

 Gesner was most noted in his day as a physician, botanist, and Classical linguist. Throughout his life he was interested in biology and collected specimens and descriptions of wildlife through travel and extensive correspondence with other scholars. His approach to research centered upon four tenets: observation, dissection, travel to distant lands, and accurate description. This emergent empirical approach was new to Renaissance scholars, who usually relied entirely upon Classical writers for their research.

His Historiae animalium (Zürich, 1551-1587; "Studies on Animals") is considered to be the first modern zoological work. Building a bridge between ancient, medieval, and modern science, he chronicles data from old sources, such as The Old Testament, Aristotle and medieval bestiaries, and adds his own observations, creating a new, comprehensive description of the Animal Kingdom. In what is the first attempt by anyone to describe many of the animals accurately, the book is illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts drawn from personal observations by Gesner and his colleagues.

Thesauri Totally Got Shelved

[Source]

Characters For an Epic Tale

Artist: Tom Gauld & his 

flickr photostream

LibriVox Helps Us Free the Words

If you're like me, you have a long memory for the really good things about childhood: pajamas, PB&J, getting and staying dirty, and being read to before bed. I've never tired of falling into the rhythm of a well-told story (except for, you know, when I actually pass out) and I see no reason to stop now that I'm "an adult". Especially when the internet and its vast army of friendly strangers are there to lull you into slumber! 

It's way less creepy than I just made it sound. It's LibriVox, a collaborative project built around the concept of people reading to one another. Its mission is to record audiobooks of all public domain works in any and every language. Anyone with a voice and a microphone can play a part.

From the few that I am trying out ("The Machine Stops", by E. M. Forster; "2 B R 0 2 B" by Vonnegut; selections from Don Quixote; et al.), what the production quality lacks in terms of "feeling finished" it often makes up for by being simply more interesting than most hyper-polished audio projects - that is, sometimes they are real gems, found for free, that capture a real feel for the text. Sometimes they're not the most spot on. It's that chance that's part of the appeal. I'm considering applying my cartoonishly deep voice towards H.P. Lovecraft or any number of Sherlock Holmes tales which are close to my heart. I'll keep you posted.

Browse the catalog or subscribe to their podcast.

Even better, learn how to contribute yourself.

Gnooks Similar Author Search

If ever you've just needed a recommendation for an author, this German dude named Mark Gibney has come up with an A.I. tool called Gnooks. Gnooks introduces you to new authors based on what other people with similar tastes read. The basic concept of the A.I. tool, called Gnod, has also been applied to music and movies. Last.fm is of course the last word on music suggestion for me (my user name is everythingiszen, say hey), but Gnooks' principle is still sound for movies and books. The more people who use it the more eclectic it gets.