You'll have to spell it out for me

The "Letterman" feature from The Electric Company stands as an example of how lucky my generation was, in a way. This was children's entertainment mixed with education that someone had really expended some care on. While the animation was somewhat limited, the backgrounds had a fascinating quality, like etchings that had suddenly become stages.

Also, Letterman was voiced by Gene Wilder and the Spellbinder by Zero Mostel, so while I didn't have that context, it was a grand battle between Leo Bloom and Max Bialystock.

amnesia.com

Nothing lasts forever. Even on the internet.

Well, pictures might. Especially naughty ones. But after a while it becomes impossible to tell where they came from. That might be a good thing.

But I digress. You can look up phrases from day to day, month to month, year to year. Results you used to get you don't get anymore. Whole articles sometimes go dark, never to be seen again.

That's not so bad in itself. But as a race we've come to think of the web as the sum of all human knowledge. Which of course everyone is carrying around in their back pockets at all times. But it's not. It's a non-representative cross-section of thoughts, jokes, and abuse that can shrink as fast as it grew.

Arms race

This song was unknown to me. I just recently heard it when someone left it as a comment on a blog. (Not this one.)

This was a gift of Gil Scott-Heron. He could take topics that were tense and uncomfortable - and make no mistake, they still are - and make music out of them. Laid back music, yes. But the tension is still there, still felt.

Anyway, thought I'd share.

C&C Music Factory (sorry)

China Miéville's The City and the City is a truly eye-opening book. It's an urban detective story that works at the edges of plausibility: probably outside those edges, but that's up for debate. The author meant it to be thought-provoking and it is.

I was surprised to learn that there was a TV adaptation in the works. And yes, I'm a little behind the curve here, because it must be just about all in the can by now. Will it translate well to the small screen? It could. There's enough trippy material. I hope people continue to read the novel.

Truthfully I would have expected Kraken to be the first China M. book to be adapted for either the big or little screen. It's also both intelligent and entertaining, but hews somewhat closer to the thriller form.

Circles of life

Charcoal animation - AClockwork of Dreams from Alesh macak on Vimeo.

Trippy little piece, representing - perhaps - the places that life can go. Your life. Life in general. Charcoal seems to breathe, which makes it a good choice. Then there's the claymation, about which you could say the same thing.

I'm not sure I'd have picked such discordant music, but I can see what the animator was going for with it.

In too deep

I have a friend who says he wants to get into the Deep Web. Well, he says it. Not sure if he actually does want to. He hasn't done any more than talk about it.

It strikes me that most of it is probably boring as all hell. Long strings of numbers and impenetrable code that don't show up on search engines because no one would be searching for them in the first place. And the rare bits of salacious stuff would just be depressing in practice.

NC

At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

This is a quote from John Keats, writing to his brothers George and Thomas. It struck me when I first heard about it in college. And the quality he's talking about is as necessary as ever, as rare as ever.  Fact and reason are important, of course, and too many make arguments bereft of them. But there's the sublime as well, which we're destitute without.