Boring from Within

Graham Larkin's other blog. No re-posts. The odd riposte. much more @ grahamlarkin.info

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Daring Greatly

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

-- Theodore Roosevelt (1910)

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Real isn't how you are made ...

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (1972)

[grahamlarkin]

The Nodder

"It is not easy to explain to the lay mind the extremely intricate ramifications of the personnel of a Hollywood motion picture organisation. Putting it as briefly as possible, a Nodder is something like a Yes-Man, only lower in the social scale. Man's duty is to attend conference and say 'Yes.' A Nodder's, as the name implies to nod. The chief executive throws out some statement of opinion, and looks about him expectantly. This is the cue for the senior Yes-Man to say yes, He is followed, in order of precedence, by the second Yes-Man—or Vice-Yesser, as he is sometimes called—and the junior Yes-Man. Only when all the Yes-Men have yessed, do the Nodders begin to function. They nod."

— P.G. Wodehouse (from here)

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Bruce Schneier on Facebook: You're the Product

From this October 2010 report.

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poem

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  Typographic rendering by yrs trly based on quotation from Robinson Jeffers' 1936 poem The Answer. Full poem here. Found here last night in The Dark Mountain Manifesto. (Thanks Dan.) Feel free to share in any way.

[grahamlarkin]

Quel Drag

"Both Borges and Duchamp worked hard to scramble the signals in some of the ways Philip K. Dick was advising. Their splendid selves–stealthful, low-emission, Zen-like in their recognition of life’s paradoxes and the futility of joining a clamorous political fray–seem like an increasingly viable model for surviving a time when it seems like all the experts have solutions and none of them are working." From Borges, Duchamp and I.

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It Gets Personal

A remarkable likeness of my brother Matthew.

Click image for video.

RIP John Belushi & "Big Al" Hope-Simpson.

[grahamlarkin]

Relativity seeks Adjustment; Adjustment is Art

Kakuzo Okakura as quoted in McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village, p. 20.

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Graham Larkin: McLuhan's Media Practice (video)

Video of a centenary lecture in Berlin, November 2011. Click image for link to description and video.

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Doll Man vs. The Minstrel (1949)

Great children's entertainment always elicits the big question: 

WHAT were they SMOKING?

Click image for full cartoon.

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New Documentary: The Arsehole Gene

(Click image for YouTube video.)

After years of investigation, a group of European scientists had discovered that the vulgarly called 'arseholes' are actually suffering a genetic mutation that conditions their behaviour. This discovering had opened a door to end with the unfair stigmatization of this group of patients. Understanding how the disease works is the first step to the cure, but there's a lot of work to do before that moment arrives, including informing the citizenship about its existence. Because arseholes... are just sick people.

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Meta-Post: My Mind Split Open by Krautrock Legend Damo Suzuki

Hey kids! Click on this image for my first music review since high school, over on my serious blog.

[grahamlarkin]

New Agitprop: Free Pussy Riot

The Russian state's reaction to Pussy Riot’s harmless church prank–separating two of the perpetrators from their children to place them in labour camps and clamping down on any mention of the band–is chilling to say the least. The words are from 'Schumacher' of Pussy Riot as quoted in this recent New Statesman interview. Click on image for large version. As indicated in tiny print at upper right my mashup is Creative Commons (©©), meaning you're free to distribute and print it. For more such work hit #agitprop in the tag at the bottom of this post.

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Jeremy Hammond vs. the State

Made this little piece of agitprop after reading this important op-ed detailing the US gov’s troubling War on Reality.

Click on image for larger version. Steal it & spread the word!

RIP Aaron Swartz.

[grahamlarkin]

The New Urban Uncanny

Apple Maps snafus gathered by Peder Norrby. Click on pic for larger image (via Flickr) or go here for the whole set.