posted
  • place: Denver, Colorado

DMNS Meteorite Collection

Colleagues at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, led by Dr. James Hagadorn, the Curator of Geology at the museum, released a fine 36-page publication The Meteorite Collection of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It contains a fascinating history of the collection with back stories on some of the many specimens, along with a reference list and a full catalog of the collection. It’s available as a free pdf download, but the paper copy is well worth the $3.16 price-point (how do they manage to sell it for so little??). It’s the next best thing to a visit to the DMNS … when in Denver!

RT-0046503-dmns-sr-17-meteorites
Hagadorn, James W., Emerald J. Spindler, Ada K. Bowles, and Nicole M. Neu-Yagle. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report 17: The Meteorite Collection. Vol. December 11, 2019. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report SR-17. Denver, CO: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2019.

Following is a selection of meteorite specimens in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science collection:

Broken piece of Cañon City meteorite (DMNH EGT.165), fell through the roof of a garage in Cañon City, Colorado, 1973. Exhibits black fusion crust surrounding an interior dominated by lighter-colored minerals. Photo credit: R. Wicker for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Broken piece of Cañon City meteorite (DMNH EGT.165), fell through the roof of a garage in Cañon City, Colorado, 1973. Exhibits black fusion crust surrounding an interior dominated by lighter-colored minerals. Photo credit: R. Wicker for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

more “DMNS Meteorite Collection”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

clouds and meaninglessness

Siri's butikk, Bergen, Norway, September ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
Siri’s butikk, Bergen, Norway, September ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
Siri's butikk, Bergen, Norway, September ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
Siri’s butikk, Bergen, Norway, September ©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
I set off with a sigh. Above me the entire sky had opened. What a few hours earlier had been plain, dense cloud cover now took on landscape-like formations, a chasm with long flat stretches, steep walls, and sudden pinnacles, in some places white and substantial like snow, in others gray and as hard as rock, while the huge surfaces illuminated by the sunset did not shine or gleam or have a reddish glow, as they could, rather they seemed as if they had been dipped in some liquid. They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads?

However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought. And why should we? If the various formations had had some meaning, if, for example, there had been concealed signs and messages for us which it was important we decode correctly, unceasing attention to what was happening would have been inescapable and understandable. But this was not the case of course, the various cloud shapes and hues meant nothing, what they looked like at any given juncture was based on chance, so if there was anything the clouds suggested it was meaninglessness in its purest form.

Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago books edition. Vol. 1. 6 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.
word, Bergen, Norway, September©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.
word, Bergen, Norway, September©1993 hopkins/neoscenes.

The photos were made around the same time Karl Ove was living in Bergen: I was teaching at KHiB (now the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen). Probably no need to explain the resonance of this particular passage to other entries on this blog.

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

The Disappearance of Liberal Education

[ED: Almost 75 years ago, this essay was published in a collection accompanying the 1954 set of The Great Books of the Western World, published by Britannica Press. While that collection of more than fifty authors—philosophers, playrights, scientists, authors, economists—is mostly all ‘Western and white,’ and definitely men, there is some relevant substance to the contemporary issues facing the US education system contained (t)herein. Primarily, the background question of shared understandings about reality: when these are no longer shared, democracy cannot proceed. At this juncture, I have little hope that the wider social system in the US is capable of pulling itself back from the devolution that appears to be accelerating. Many personal worries surround that. I predict that forms of ‘martial law’ will be declared in the US before four years are up, and I will not be surprised if it begins to appear widely in the next year. By then, soft critique from the ‘liberal’ side of the country will be moot and … wholly inadequate, as has happened before in the bowels of history. Privilege continues to insulate the 1% and [social] media [oligarchs] continue to siphon off the last drops of societal life-blood: community engagement. Shilling instead a form of attention-harvesting that, as with other forms of capital, concentrates ever more power in the hands of ever fewer individuals. What could possibly go wrong?

I can barely continue reading Klemperer‘s “Language of the Third Reich” as it resonates so powerfully across almost a century to this very moment.

The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country, 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.

The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education—for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.

These last purposes—those which are social and recreational—the American educational system, on a very low level, achieves. It throws young people together. Since this does not take any greater effort than is required to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the accomplishment of this purpose would not, at first blush, seem to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as something we should be proud of, and even as something that should suggest to us the main line of a sound educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people together, having them work and play together, and having them organize themselves “democratically” are the great contributions to democracy that the educational system can make. This is an expansion of the doctrine that was popular in my youth about the moral benefits conferred on everybody through intercollegiate athletics, which was, in turn, an adaptation of the remark dubiously imputed to the Duke of Wellington about the relationship between the Battle of Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton.
more “The Disappearance of Liberal Education”

posted
  • place: Dresden, Germany

July 1944

14 September 1944, Thursday afternoon: In the evening, without having heard or read the reports herself, Eva came home with the [contents of] the latest bulletins: In the German military bulletin: English attack on Aachen; in the English one: in the course of the attack on Trier, the German frontier crossed on a 22-mile front. A new offensive is also said to be under way in the East. — The fact that the enemy is on German soil will make a tremendous impression. … In the cellar, Neumark had an old copy of the DAZ, which he had found by chance and which included a page summarizing the events of 1943.

In February 1943, the fall of Stalingrad; in the spring, the Führer holds discussions with the King of Bulgaria, with Antonescu—Count Ciano is appointed Italian ambassador to the Vatican… What an impression it all made on us! Ciano shot, Bulgaria and Romania changing sides, Stalingrad as remote as a fairy tale… But something else made a greater impression on us—it was the same for both Neumark and myself: the impotence of memory to fix all that we had so painfully experienced in time.

When—insofar as we remembered it at all—had this or that happened, when had it been? Only a few facts stick in the mind, dates not at all. One is overwhelmed by the present, time is not divided up, everything is infinitely long ago, everything is infinitely long in coming; there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, only an eternity. And that is yet another reason one knows nothing of the history one has experienced: The sense of time has been abolished; one is at once too blunted and too overexcited, one is crammed full of the present. The chain of disappointments also unfolded in front of me again.

[…] Ever since Stalingrad, since the beginning of ’43 therefore, I have been waiting for the end. I remember asking Eva at the time: Do you think it is a defeat, or do you consider it to be the defeat, the catastrophe? That was in February ’43. Then I had not yet done any factory duty. After that, I was a factory slave for fourteen months. And now it is almost three months since I was released, three months in which I find it ever more difficult to wrest useful work from my so-called free days.

Klemperer, Victor. To the Bitter End: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, 1942–1945. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 3 vols. New York, NY: Random House, 1999.
posted
  • place: Earth

longevity conservation

African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) grandmother, newborn calf, and family. Photo credit: Phyllis C. Lee, Amboseli Trust for Elephants.
African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) grandmother, newborn calf, and family. Photo credit: Phyllis C. Lee, Amboseli Trust for Elephants.
Earth’s old animals are in decline. Despite this, emerging research is revealing the vital contributions of older individuals to cultural transmission, population dynamics, and ecosystem processes and services. Often the largest and most experienced, old individuals are most valued by humans and make important contributions to reproduction, information acquisition and cultural transmission, trophic dynamics, and resistance and resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbance. These observations contrast with the senescence-focused paradigm of old age that has dominated the literature for more than a century yet are consistent with findings from behavioral ecology and life history theory. In this work, we review why the global loss of old individuals can be particularly detrimental to long-lived animals with indeterminate growth; those with increasing reproductive output with age; and those dependent on migration, sociality, and cultural transmission for survival. Longevity conservation is needed to protect the important ecological roles and ecosystem services provided by old animals.

Kopf, R. Keller, Sam Banks, Lauren J. N. Brent, Paul Humphries, Chris J. Jolly, Phyllis C. Lee, Osmar J. Luiz, Dale Nimmo, and Kirk O. Winemiller. “Loss of Earth’s Old, Wise, and Large Animals.” Science 387, no. 6729 (January 3, 2025): eado2705.
posted

Case Study: Big Thompson Flood

On July 31, 1976, a powerful thunderstorm over Colorado’s Big Thompson Canyon unleashed a deluge that became one of the state’s most catastrophic natural disasters. Known as the Big Thompson Flood, this event claimed 144 lives, caused significant damage to infrastructure, and left a lasting impact on both the physical and social landscapes. This flood serves as a case study of the interplay between geologic conditions, meteorology, and human activity in a high-risk environment.

Front page of the Rocky Mountain News following the catastrophic flood in Big Thompson Canyon in August of 1976.
Front page of the Rocky Mountain News following the catastrophic flood in Big Thompson Canyon in August of 1976.

The Meteorological Trigger

The Big Thompson Flood was caused by an intense, stationary thunderstorm that dropped more than 12 inches of rain in just four hours over the steep canyon. The localized nature of the storm, combined with its high rainfall intensity, overwhelmed the Big Thompson River’s drainage system. This type of weather event is not uncommon in Colorado, where summer thunderstorms can deliver large amounts of precipitation over short periods. The semi-arid climate, combined with the region’s high topographic relief, creates conditions that are particularly conducive to flash flooding.

Thunderstorms of this magnitude occur when warm, moist air is forced upward by the mountainous terrain, cooling and condensing into heavy rainfall. In the case of the Big Thompson Flood, the storm’s stationary position ensured that all the precipitation fell within a confined area, greatly intensifying the flood’s impact.

Geological Setting of Big Thompson Canyon

Big Thompson Canyon, located in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado, is a steep and narrow valley carved over millions of years by the Big Thompson River. The canyon’s geology is dominated by granitic bedrock interspersed with loose sediments and colluvium, materials that are easily mobilized during heavy rainfall. The steep canyon walls and limited floodplain amplify the destructive potential of flash floods, as water rapidly accumulates and accelerates downhill.

House precariously undercut by lateral scour on the Big Thompson River a quarter of a mile below Glen Comfort, Larimer County, August 1976. Photo credit: Ralph Shroba.
House precariously undercut by lateral scour on the Big Thompson River a quarter of a mile below Glen Comfort, Larimer County, August 1976. Photo credit: Ralph Shroba.

One of the key factors in the severity of the 1976 flood was the canyon’s geomorphology. The steep gradient of the river increased the velocity of the floodwaters, allowing them to carry massive amounts of sediment, debris, and rock. This debris flow not only caused direct damage but also increased the erosive power of the water, undercutting slopes and triggering landslides that further contributed to the destruction.

more “Case Study: Big Thompson Flood”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Walden

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1854.

The whole of Walden is relevant to Life, such as it has come to be in this, the Age of Oligarchs and Desperation.

posted

one step backward taken

Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.

One Step Backward Taken by Robert Frost
posted
  • place: Denver, Colorado
  • author: Jim Johnson

The Crazed Janitor

[ED: During a visit to his apartment/studio in Denver last month, I asked Jim if he would consent to showing this piece on neoscenes. His art oeuvre is always challenging, humorous, playful, and both linguistically and algorithmically sophisticated!]

THE CRAZED JANITOR, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 18 in X 36 in, Jim Johnson.
THE CRAZED JANITOR, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 18 in X 36 in”, Jim Johnson.
The Crazed Janitor is a pangram, a sentence employing every letter of the alphabet. Pangrams are frequently used to display a specific typeface, in this case, one of my own design—Magic Squares. The letterforms are colored systematically by letter frequency usage, coloring consonants with a range of grays from black to white and assigning spectral colors to the vowels.

The T is colored black as it is the most frequently used consonant in the alphabet. White is assigned to the Z because it is the least frequently used consonant and all of the rest are assigned incremental values of gray between black and white according to their frequency of use. The vowels are assigned colors according to their respective wavelengths, thus Red (of the longest wavelength) is assigned to the E which is the most frequently used vowel. The remaining colors are assigned according to their respective wavelengths and usage, so that Violet (the shortest wavelength) is assigned to Y, the least frequently used vowel.

That the pangram might also represent a form of synesthesia, where some people see individual letters as specifically colored (not all black), is an unintended consequence of the composition.

posted

Experimental Conviction

Long life is one of the greatest Blessings that we Mortals can enjoy; it being what all Men naturally desire and wish for. Nay, when Men are come to the longest Date, they desire yet to live a little longer. But, however, Health is that which sweetens all our other Enjoyments, without which the longest Life would be no more than a living Death, and render us burdensome to our selves, and troublesome to all about us.

But though Life be so desirous, and Health so great a Blessing, yet how much is both the one and the other undervalued, by the greatest Part of Mankind? Whatever they may think or say of the inestimableness of those precious Jewels, yet ’tis plain, by their Practice, that they put the Slight upon, and despise them both; and the most Man are hardly sensible of the worth of Health, ’till they come in good Earnest to be deprived of it.

How many Men do we daily see, by their Intemperance and Excess, to lay the Seeds of future Distempers, which either carry them off in the flower of their Age, which is the Case of most or else render their Old Age, if they do arrive to it, uneasy and uncomfortable? And though we see others daily drop into the Grave before us, and are very apt with Justice to ascribe the Loss of our Friends, to their living too fast, yet we cannot forbear treading in the same Steps, and following the same Courses, ’till at last, by a violent and unnatural Death, we are hurried off the Stage of Life after them.

What the Noble Cornaro observes of the Italians of his Time, may very well be applied to this Nation at present, viz. “That we are not contented with a plain Bill of Fare; that we ransack the Elements of Earth, Air, and Water, for all sorts of Creatures to gratify our wanton and luxurious Appetites: That as if our Tables were too narrow and short to hold our Provisions, we heap them up upon one another. And lastly, That to create a false Appetite, we rack our Cook’s inventions for new Sauces and Provocations to make the superfluous Morsel go down with the greatest Gust.”

This is not any groundless Observation, but it carries an Experimental Conviction along with it. Look into all our publick Entertainments and Feasts, and see whether Luxury and Intemperance be not too predominant in them. Men, upon such Occasions, think it justifiable to give themselves the Loose, to eat heartily, and to drink deeply; and many think themselves not welcome, or well entertained, if the Master of the Feast be so wise as not to not give them an Occasion of losing the MAN, and assuming the BEAST.

Cornaro, Luigi. Sure and Certain Methods of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life. London, UK: Daniel Midwinter, 1722.
posted

reason – will

We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime … So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend … from now on you should let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will.

Castaneda, Carlos. Tales of Power. New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 1974.
posted
  • place: Colorado

Case study: Fluvial Hazard Zone

Front page of the Rocky Mountain News following the catastrophic flood in Big Thompson Canyon in August of 1976. Photo credit: Colorado Geological Survey.
Front page of the Rocky Mountain News following the catastrophic flood in Big Thompson Canyon in August of 1976. Photo credit: Colorado Geological Survey.

“The Fluvial Hazard Zone (FHZ) is defined as the area a stream has occupied in recent history, may occupy, or may physically influence as it stores and transports water, sediment, and debris.”

House precariously undercut by lateral scour on the Big Thompson River a quarter of a mile below Glen Comfort, Larimer County, August 1976. Photo credit: Ralph Shroba.
House precariously undercut by lateral scour on the Big Thompson River a quarter of a mile below Glen Comfort, Larimer County, August 1976. Photo credit: Ralph Shroba.
Severe road damage from bank erosion along CR-43 (Devils Gulch Road) caused by the extreme flooding event along the northern Front Range of Colorado, September 2013. Photo credit: Jon White for the CGS.
Severe road damage from bank erosion along CR-43 (Devils Gulch Road) caused by the extreme flooding event along the northern Front Range of Colorado, September 2013. Photo credit: Jon White for the CGS.

Local, state, and federal agencies often collaborate on projects concerning emergency preparedness and community resilience. In this case, the Colorado Geological Survey assisted the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), and local governments by providing technical expertise for the Colorado Hazard Mapping Program (CHAMP). The CHAMP project facilitates effective long-term flood hazard reduction in Colorado. A crucial part of that process is the development of FHZ mapping protocols and debris flow hazard assessments in combination with traditional floodplain mapping. Community engagement and education on the FHZ protocols is ongoing across the state. more “Case study: Fluvial Hazard Zone”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

extinction

Consider the sum of all life, the heaped arrays of adaptations flung one after the next into the abundance of forms, each possessing codes pertaining only to its ancestors and its immediate predecessors, teeming organisms hefting around history in their cells, a library of each quirk and evolutionary indecision of the past 3.5 billion years, but only a record in each species of its single divergence from the source, with no register of errors or chance events gone awry because those were discarded to extinction, leaving a peculiar animal honed to a perfect set of symbols and codices, down to the Sonoran topminnow (Poeciliopsis occidentalis), perhaps soon to be vanquished from the planet. Protecting species is the same intrinsic gesture as preserving the original documents and constitutions of an entire civilization, or the love letters of grandparents.

Childs, Craig Leland. The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. 1st paperback ed. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 2001.
posted

NASA Earth Observatory

One of my favorite online feeds is from the NASA Earth Observatory along with their Image of the Day. After catching a recent article on the San Luis Valley, I thought that subscribers might be interested in some of the incredible material that NASA offers on a daily basis. This includes front-line data used in climate research.

“The Earth Observatory’s mission is to share with the public the images, stories, and discoveries about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and models.”

An expansive view of most of Colorado looking from the south-south-west from the International Space Station (ISS). Photo credit: NASA.
An expansive view of most of Colorado looking from the south-south-west from the International Space Station (ISS). Photo credit: NASA.

The Details

Earth Observatory GIS browser – A global map index of thousands of images—one can go direct to Colorado and see more than seventy feature articles covering natural hazards, geology, atmospheric science, and other subjects.

Global Maps – A wide range of maps compiled from satellite data.

Feature Articles – Covering many important topics such as remote sensing, atmosphere, snow & ice, water, and life.

NASA EO blogs – Incredibly informative nuggets of research into the natural world, including several topical blogs:

Earth Matters – Includes in-depth reports on everything from Astronaut Photography to Where on Earth?

Notes From the Field – Stories about how NASA conducts its scientific work and the technologies that make it all possible.

EO Kids – Written for audiences aged 9 to 14, it has many educational features.

Climate Q&A – Includes in-depth answers to common questions about the global climate.

You may also subscribe to different email newsletters and/or RSS feeds

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Earth Explorations vlog/podcasts

Dr. Christian Shorey—Teaching Professor of Environmental Science and Climatology in the Geology and Geological Engineering Department at Mines—jumped into a social media experiment with the Earth and Environmental Systems Podcast in 2008. After producing more that 60 audio episodes he segued to the Earth Explorations vlog on Youtube which includes more than one hundred video episodes!

Red Rocks Park on the west side of Denver, Colorado. The red strata of the Pennsylvanian/Permian Fountain formation rests on Precambrian metamorphic rocks. Photo credit: Vince Matthews.
Red Rocks Park on the west side of Denver, Colorado. The red strata of the Pennsylvanian/Permian Fountain formation rests on Precambrian metamorphic rocks. Photo credit: Vince Matthews.

Originally designed to accompany Dr. Shorey’s 2008 SYGN 101 Earth and Environmental Systems Science course, both the podcasts and vlogs provide fast-paced and informative explorations of a wide range of geologically- and environmentally-oriented topics. Among these: geohazards, climate change; geography; economics; anthropology; history; and biology. The vlog includes segments on mapping, mineralogy, age-dating, plate tectonics, as well as field-trip material to some of the prime geological features in the Golden, Colorado area: Red Rocks, North Table Mountain, and around the Mines campus. The vlog also demonstrates the effective use of drone photography in geological field education. Check it out!

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

typical day’s contribution

As a participant in the aporee::maps project I receive a daily email listing/linking the past 24-hours-worth of field recording contributions to the project. I will often check these emails when I am still in bed, and select the longest recording of the day and let it ease me into the day. Here’s a sample from 15 February 2024. A link will bring up the aporee::maps google interface, with the particular location indicated by a pulsing red circle centered on the map. Selecting the dot will reveal a pop-up with further information about the recording, and there is a play button/bar in the upper right bar at the top of the map. Aside from simply scrolling around the (global!) map, radio aporee is another way of tapping into the project with a 24/7 stream of contributions and with built-in code that will preemptively mix in material proximal to whomever is listening.

All the recordings are simultaneously posted to https://archive.org, providing yet another way to explore this vast collection of sonic work. [all neoscenes recordings on aporee]

New sounds since 14.02.2024 12:00 Europe/Berlin time:
——————————————————————

Cafe, Aldeburgh, UK: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62936 — Cafe, Aldeburgh, UK (17:34min., by david.j.pitt@btinternet.com)

Wusterauer Anger, Kirchmöser Ost: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=60944 — garden ambience w/ bells, birds, train and airplane (10:00min., by radio aporee)

40 Bd Carnot, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62937 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Ambiance et chant avec des carnavaleux. (1:28min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

11 Bd Léon Marchal, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62938 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Rigodon final (13:45min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

Västerbron, 117 33 Stockholm, Sverige: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62939 — Under Västerbron (3:18min., by milton@jordansson.net)

11 Bd Léon Marchal, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62940 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Rigodon final – Pendant que les géants brûlent.. Hymne à Jean Bart et hommage à Copinard (8:47min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

7 Pl. Joseph Leprêtre, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62941 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Le lancé de harengs des fenêtres de l’Hôtel de Ville aux cris de “Liberez les Harengs !!!” (9:43min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

25 Rue Pasteur, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62942” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62942 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande (5:19min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

25B Av. de Calais, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62943 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Départ du Carnaval (4:45min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

28 Rue Pierre Merlen, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62944 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) La bande… (2:23min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

55 Av. de Dunkerque, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62945 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (8:36min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

8 Bd François Lévêque, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62946 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (1:58min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

29 Bd Carnot, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62947 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Au cœur de la bande… (3:34min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

1 Av. du Calvaire, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62948 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Ambiance sur la plage avant la mise à feu des géants (5:23min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

2 Pl. Charles Valentin, 59153 Grand-Fort-Philippe, France: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62949 — Carnaval de Grand Fort Philippe (C.U. Dunkerque) Dernière pause avant le Rigodon. (3:04min., by Jean-François CAVRO)

Oppundavägen 18, 122 48 Enskede, Sverige: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62950 — bones (3:36min., by e3yes)

Nuti, Metsküla, 71302 Viljandi maakond, Estonia: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62953 — ice falling from trees (10:00min., by patrick tubin mcginley)

Thaurer Alm .204, 6065 Thaur, Österreich: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62951 — cow bells and motorway (6:09min., by hannes strobl)

8C7W+FX Thaur, Österreich: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62952 — water stream (3:01min., by hannes strobl)

Sound Walk, The Scallop, Aldeburgh, UK: https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=62954 — Sound Walk, The Scallop, Aldeburgh, UK (16:05min., by david.j.pitt@btinternet.com)

66313 sounds with a cumulative total length of 217d, 07h, 43m, 13s from 57950 locations.

posted

The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater

[Ed: I’ve made many transits of the lands referred to in this informative if not disturbing read. One crucial issue not mentioned in this article are the rapid developments in the science behind groundwater modeling in relation to biotic vectors and what exactly is happening to uranium compounds that are available and mobile underground. The redox (and subsequent immobilization) of uranium through biotic/microbial vectors has recently been demonstrated to have major effects on reductive sedimentary environments, though gauging the precise impacts on particular situations remain difficult. See, for example, Biotic-Abiotic Pathways: A New Paradigm for Uranium Reduction in Sediments]

The town of Uravan, Colorado (named so, combining the words URAnium and VANadium) with the Manhattan Project era uranium mill operational, ca. 1950. Photo credit: Colorado Historical Society.
The town of Uravan, Colorado (named so, combining the words URAnium and VANadium) with the Manhattan Project era uranium mill operational, ca. 1950. Photo credit: Colorado Historical Society.

This story was originally published by ProPublica and was written by Mark Olalde, Mollie Simon and Alex Mierjeski, video by Gerardo del Valle, Liz Moughon and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons.

In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers. The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills and processing sites to refine uranium ore. more “The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

the Universe is vast

Inability to focus on particulars that swarm the mind, fleeting. What to write about? Is there anything of substance to say? The world is so full of re-creations of an infinite multiverse: the universe is … whatever you want it to be. After that, it is what it is, or, perhaps, what it isn’t.

The human race consists of a small group of animals which for a small time has barely differentiated itself from the mass of animal life on a small planet circling round a small sun. The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogma with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are all alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in details is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The Universe is vast.

[John] Dewey has never been appalled by the novelty of an idea. But it is characteristic of all established schools of thought to throw themselves into self-defensive attitudes. Refutation has its legitimate place in philosophic discussion: it should never form the final chapter. Human beliefs constitute the evidence as to human experience of the nature of things. Every belief is to be approached with respectful inquiry. The final chapter of philosophy consists in the search for the unexpressed presuppositions which underlie the beliefs of every finite human intellect. In this way philosophy makes its slow advance by the introduction of new ideas, widening vision, and adjusting clashes.

Dewey, John, Paul Arthur Schilpp, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of John Dewey. 3d ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, v. 1. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

cyanosapiens

In the long run, we may be able to environmentally overcome our thickening web of industrial toxic wastes but, if we follow the cyanobacterial model, vast numbers of humans would be destroyed before natural selection kicked in. And despite our rather inordinate confidence in our own technological prowess, biology remains much more effective than human technology in devising elegant long-term solutions to pollution and population control. In fact, we humans have never sustainably done the former, and we show no signs of being able to do the latter (although war is the top contender). Plus, cyanobacteria compose not just a single species (as we do) but also an entire multispecies “phylum [that] exhibit[s] enormous diversity in terms of their morphology, physiology and other characteristics (e.g. motility, thermophily, cell division characteristic, nitrogen fixation ability, etc.).”

Clarke, Bruce, ed. Earth, Life, and System: Evolution and Ecology on a Gaian Planet. First edition. Meaning Systems. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2015.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

ecological education

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Systems thinking and the narrative of climate change (excerpt)

The problem of climate change has become a part of the current global discussion, due to the Paris Accord. Current mainstream arguments focus on three specific components of the problem: (1) the disputability of global warming, (2) the relevance of anthropogenic contribution, and (3) the extent of the dangers associated to an increase of the global temperature. Key players appear to have difficulty moving the discussion past these three components of the problem, towards potential solutions. Instead, the discussion returns again and again to describing the problem, in greater and greater detail, with arguments stalling on various small pieces of the problem. Our inability to move past the problem to solutions is based in part on how the various critics frame the discussion. Critics on both sides of the issue are subject to a framing effect, where we house the problem mentally within the boundaries of the human economy. While opponents of climate change suffer from their own framing effect, this post focuses specifically on the proponents’ framing effect. Those who advocate for policies to limit climate change make four main assumptions that impact their thinking:

  • Those concerned about the climate place the environment either within the global human economy, as a subsystem, or externally, where it can be used at will, endlessly. As a corollary to this mindset, the problem of climate change is an anthropogenic problem caused by humans, with no real impact on our resource base, which is either external to the system and infinite, or internal and thus, not critical to our life support.
  • Because the human economy is more important than the environment, societal economic growth is an inviolate mandate for all countries. The assumption is that we can support economic growth while solving the problem of climate change.
  • Globally politicians have the will and options to create viable, effective actions that limit the temperature increase without harming economic growth.
  • We can use technology to find suitable solutions that will eventually handle, if not overcome, most of the problems. Moreover, added technology does not use added energy or environmental resources.

Unfortunately, these postulates are false.

Gonella, Francesco. “Systems Thinking and the Narrative of Climate Change – A Prosperous Way Down.” Blog. A Prosperous Way Down, July 23, 2017.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

die Wahrheit

Okay, so you want it: The Truth? Is that what you really want?

Spring meltwater, Medano Creek, at the east edge of the Great Sand Dunes, San Luis Valley, Colorado, May ©2009 hopkins/neoscenes.domination of landscape 12:52, Grand Teton National Park, Woyming, June ©2007 hopkins/neoscenes.

Idiosyncrasy guarantees anonymity.

"es lässt sich nicht lesen", frontispiece, 1992 calendar,
“es lässt sich nicht lesen”, frontispiece, 1992 calendar, hopkins/neoscenes. [about Bern]
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

ruminations

As I catch up, year-end, on a variety of old and new postings from folks, I engage in a blurred comparison process: between what they write (and illustrate), and what I write (and otherwise mediate via image and sound). A number of folks have jumped on Substack, or podcast subscription platforms. It’s hard for me to think about a paying subscription, though, as the monetary side of life is so … sensitive. And I haven’t received a penny in the last decade on my site. How to barter for access to their creative content? Perhaps I’ll raise the issue with some of them. How about a vintage photographic print from my archive for a year’s subscription?

Most others I know have a public (written) voice that is quietly friendly and ultimately readable, compared to mine. I explicitly recall a couple conversations with Norie, my PhD adviser, who said “Be kind to your readers”, something I appreciated, but honestly didn’t understand how to implement. There was and continues to be a profound internal pressure to simply get ideas down in the most precise way manageable with my particular (untempered) linguistic skill-set. As an editor I can clean up an unholy mess of words that someone else has regurgitated, honoring their ideas and intentions and making a kindly and readable text. My own ruminations, while well-edited, have only been subject to a precision test, not a ‘kindness’ test. That test, in itself, is reasonable, but tends to forge a dense, leaden text. My general excuse: texts that I have had to fight my way through understanding very often have been the most rewarding to and impactful of my worldview. Of course, I can’t make any such claims as to my own obfuscations. Giving back the energies of what I have received? Hardly. Ugh!

At any rate, George has now embraced substack with his Story Club; T.C. and her husband Dave continue documenting their interesting life between Alaska and Colorado with the Adventures of the Odaroloc Sled Dogs; Owen documents every day from Finland, India, and elsewhere with a short text and image, and has for the past decade; Christie and her friend have their Emerging Form podcast; Zander started Buzzcut both also on substack. Adam has Datatheism; John Hays has Relative Something. As a vital community exploring the sonic world, aporee::maps continues to evolve with more than 58,000 field recordings. I managed to contribute only a handful during the year, with my total around 1,700 since 2008. Just recently the World According to Sound (co-founded by talented public radio sound peeps Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett) announced an interesting calendar of live 90-minute binaural podcasts — Winter Listening Series — digging deeper into sonic phenomena beyond their shorter podcast series on sound. And, while I’m at it, Radio Web MACBA: a non-profit, cultural communication radiophonic project based at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, hosts more than 800 podcasts covering the heights and breadths of radio beyond radio. Oh, not to mention the trove of 400,000 sound recordings from before 1926 that have entered the public domain as of last week. Finally, Lloyd Dunn, formerly a Tape Beatle, continues releasing his rich sonic and visual work on nula.cc.

Then the next anniversary of Art’s Birthday is coming up on 17 January …

If I had more time, I guess I could be rooting around endlessly online, posting a more full review of these and other voices. But then, how would I get any of my own work done? I wonder: what is the ratio of humans to verbiage? And, what was it before the Gutenberg press, before the typewriter, before the PC, before the iPhone, before Fazebuch?

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

Anthony Zega 1962 – 2019

death

[Ed: I will continue with these remembrances, in the moment this is all I can manage to compose.]

I’m tired of writing remembrances, each one reminds of the passing, fading nature of be-ing. I don’t need to be reminded that Life closes off, a box canyon with sheer varigated walls, cross-cut sediments of past-time on display. Fossilized life, fragments of bone, amber protrude from the sheer layered walls. Evidence of those who went before. Where are they? what are they doing? Somehow, Anthony’s passing clears something away, psychically: that he has made the transition, into the Bardo, and beyond. Not that he deserved it at his age, but that he was released from the physical ravages that cancer was imposing on his body. Following him, and the expanding number of others, will perhaps be less terrifying.

portrait, Anthony, Boulder, Colorado, December 1987

I met Anthony on the way out the door of Parson’s photo department building on 5th Avenue, just north of Washington Square Park, in the fall of 1985.

“The primary principle of this age in the West is decay.”

Yup. That resonated, still does. As elsewhere noted, that profound and concise observation marked the beginning of a long friendship that explored the surfaces of the world and the energies and patterns of flow behind those surfaces. It maintained itself for 34 years despite the infrequent crossings-of-path. Aside for a year or so when we were house-mates in a couple places in Boulder, it took the form of a rich correspondance along with the occasional meetings-up that were always electric. Princeton, Manhattan, Peters Valley, Newton, and then all the locales experienced on a handful of profound road-trips in the US West. Death Valley (including a legendary night in Las Vegas on New Years Eve — photographing the insanity of the place); across the Rez’ in Arizona, picking up hitch-hikers; dealing with extreme weather transiting the Colorado Rockies; time at the Great Sand Dunes; and all the while, closely observing the perfidy of the contemporary capitalist oligarchies and, if nothing else, making fun of it. National Dead People. Stick Puppets on Display. The George P. Schultz Delirium Tremens Telephone. He left the East Coast in 1987 or so, and engaged in a long meander around the West, deeply influenced by his encounters with the Native American cultures and histories. His passionate, spirited, sensitive, and brilliant intellect — a full-spectrum laser — initiated a reducing flux that operated powerfully in his poetic work. None of it easily consumed, he did not share it with more that a handful of people ever.

Our last day shared together was in 2014, a long one spent at the Met, wandering through Strawberry Fields and Central Park, and dinner at the Whole Foods cafeteria on the Upper West Side near his mother’s flat where he’d been living for a few years. He had been worn down by the ignominy of working in the retail “adrenalized sporting complex”. But he had also met Maite, a Catalonian woman, who he joined in Barcelona in 2016. Best that he was out of the US for the repugnance of oligarchy and destruction that has ensued.

The written word was his primary medium in more recent years, although his photographic work was an important and powerful expression as well. It was the case, however, that he was intensely private, and most of his creative output came in the form of letters, and for the last decade more than a thousand emails that included an image, a dense poetic work, or a carefully laid-out pdf word piece, or some combination of those. In the mid-80s he did have a few prose pieces published in Marvin Jones’ The New Common Good in New York City, as their “Western Correspondent”. The only one I have a copy of is an excerpt of “The Tourist“. All of his negatives and writings up to relatively recently were apparently lost to flooding at his mother’s place in Princeton. It appears that I am more-or-less the sole holder of his remaining artistic legacy: with a fat folder of beautifully hand-penned communications.

From a letter I wrote to Anthony, back in 1991, from what was home, then, Reykjavík:

There is a bit of nostalgia in my mind, but more, there is the respect for you as a creator, discoverer, synthesist, See-er, and, um, Voice-of-Consciousness from the Mouth of Chaos, more or less. (I find meself writing in Literal ways these days, unable to couch clearly or veil rightly, no figures dancing between the words). I have your three cards sitting, always self-aware, they are, there on the desk next to the Printer. In a small attic space, ceiling too low for me to stand, but fine to write, skylights at my back open to a 20-hour sun day. (Fela doin’ “Zombie”). I can feel the plasma mass pressure of the sun Light pressing down, trying to flatten the landscape into a line, a mote, but the earth is in constant retching here, heaving basalt sky-ward, building sites, Places for the People to live. You have fed me bits from a variety of Others — Others speaking about Others — or a saying about unsay-able things or, yes, That which is … … … Thank you.
posted

Feliz Sant Joan

Feast Day

Feast Night of Saint John

solstice summer

acutance

acute

apex

fire

profound prolific

heliomorphy

potens

power

juice

=== the petards

=== the incendiary colours arcs

=== sparkles spiders

=== roman candles

=== open out from twilight

=== through to day-break

+ + + +

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^ ^^

posted
  • place: Barcelona, Spain

who

who are you ?

says the caterpillar

what a marvellous question —

impossible to answer

= = = = = = = = = = = = =
– – – – – – – – – – – – –

posted
  • place: Barcelona, Spain

re: When the city

My friend,

I am listening to your writing —-

Words abbreviate experience

Language = fable

Impossible to say what Jules feels in her moments

Impossible to say what Dona feels in her moments

( does suffering have depth surface . . . space scale dimension ??? )

Anger
a limit a barricade against . . . .
what we cannot name
what we cannot touch see hear say

Indeterminacy

Catastrophe
Loss
cannot name it
. . . . there is no [ it ] to name

Presence
Experience

To love and to heal

To cry and embrace

I remember now what you wrote to me —-

Zen is a parlour game . . . .

Psyche — a name — a figure in a fable
Psychology — a game

Talkers talk about experience

= as if = it were a pack of cards

= Let us put them all in order =

= Politease and Polissee =

the Old Deal the New Deal the Fair Deal the New Frontier the Big Deal . . .
.

Fortune telling —

Cards

More cards — a game

Cartographers masque control and colour the scene

Decor —

Comforting reassuring

Alice In Wonderland = a pack of cards

what i need = is other than luck = is other than fortune telling

maite sends you greetings

i miss your presence

love to you

a

_____________________________________________________________________
_ _

posted
  • place: Barcelona, Spain
  • author: Anthony Zega

= volcano = v

earth

combatant

against earth

life threatens life

= what subscribers

= what survivors call

= the weather

4 consonants

life threatens life

= Y-A-H-W-E-H

= the volcano

= becomes the god

a

_______________________
` ` `

posted

X, O,

….J……….

Exploits
& Opinions

periodicals newspapers

Editors Educators Exploiters
E Cubed

after
Mistah Kurtz
after
Exterminate The Brutes !!!

HoD
Heart of Darkness

Cruelty
Banks
Barbarism of Commerce
Artillery
Futurism

O

and now

What A Big Balloon Is

KULL TCH URR

The Estate

wafting drifting

overland

KULLTCHURR

= Password
= Control Panel
= Settings
= Adjusts
= Maps, Bug Fixes

KULLTCHURR

wants
to trap us
trap us

in its BOTTLE IMAGE

BOXSHADOW

in its HYPERSIGN

quotidian mazes

webnets of

Combustion-Light-Connectivity-Flight-Consumption

K wants

to wrap us in its

Crusade

Conquest

Highway

Flag

[[[[]]]]

prolific

profound life

eludes

its ballooned ballooning grasp

______________________________________ “*

posted
  • place: Colorado
  • author: Jon White

Case Study: Collapsible Soils

[ED: This report was initially sketched out by Jonathan White, Senior Engineering Geologist, (Emeritus) in 2004. Annual damage estimates due to collapsible soils in the US range between $1-$3 billion. Regional hot-spots in the Southwest include parts of Colorado—the Western Slope (Grand Junction), the Eastern Plains, and because of rapid urbanization and development on marginal soils, Douglas and El Paso Counties. Damage to a single residential structure can exceed $100,000 while repair and mitigation of infrastructure (roads and utilities) can run into the millions of dollars for affected regions or projects.]

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century, some of the first settlers of the plateau region of western Colorado along the Colorado River, and the Uncompaghre and North Fork of the Gunnison river basins, looked to fruit crops for their livelihood. The semi-arid but moderate climate was well suited for fruit orchards once irrigation canal systems could be constructed.

But serious problems occurred when certain lands were first broken out for agriculture and wetted by irrigation. They sank, so much in places—up to four feet—that irrigation-canal flow directions were reversed, ponding occurred, and whole orchards, newly planted with fruit trees imported by rail and wagon at considerable expense, were lost. While not understood, fruit growers and agriculturists began to recognize the hazards of sinking ground. Horticulturists with the Colorado Agricultural College and Experimental Station (the predecessor of Colorado State University) made one of the first references to collapsible soil in their 1910 publication, Fruit-Growing in Arid Regions: An Account of Approved Fruit-Growing Practices in the Inter-Mountain Country of Western United States. They warned about sinking ground and in their chapter, Preparation of Land for Planting, made one of the first recommendations for mitigation of the hazard. They stated that when breaking out new land for fruit orchards, the fields should be flood irrigated for a suitable time to induce soil collapse, before final grading of the orchard field, irrigation channels excavation, and planting the fruit tree seedlings.

 

Piping cave/soil arch in Qamf deposit, Loutzenhizer Arroyo, Delta County, Colorado, April 2007. Photo credit: David Noe for the CGS.
Piping cave/soil arch in Qamf deposit, Loutzenhizer Arroyo, Delta County, Colorado, April 2007. Photo credit: David Noe for the CGS.

more “Case Study: Collapsible Soils”

posted

the science of mathematics

The science of mathematics tells us: The solar system does not appear to possess at present more than the one four hundred and fifty-fourth part of the transformable energy which it had in the nebulous state. Although this remainder constitutes a fund whose magnitude confounds our imagination, it will also some day be exhausted. Later, the transformation will be complete for the entire universe, resulting in a general equilibrium of temperature and pressure.

Energy will not then be susceptible of transformation. This does not mean annihilation, a word without meaning, nor does it mean the absence of motion, properly speaking, since the same sum of energy will always exist in the form of atomic motion, but the absence of all sensible motion, of all differentiation, the absolute uniformity of conditions, that is to say, absolute death.

Such is the present statement of the science of mathematics.

Flammarion, C. Omega: The Last Days of the World. New York, NY: Cosmopolitan Publishing Company, 1894.
posted
  • place: somewhere in the Southwest

An excerpt from “The Tourist”

One of the key lines in the movie “Wall Street” is delivered by Father Martin Sheen: “It is good for people to spend their lives creating, not living off the buying and selling of others.” Anthony Zega uses the same concepts when describing the basic conflict between the Tourist and the Indian: “Creation” and “The Market.”

Two years ago, Anthony moved from his home in Princeton, New Jersey to Colorado, his base from which to visit reservations throughout the West. Anthony is searching for his own spiritual grounding and we are pleased that he will be sharing the information he finds with the readers of The New Common Good.

We are pleased to introduce Anthony Zega who will act as a Western correspondent for this publication. We will present his photographs, articles, and interviews as part of our investigation of Native America. more “An excerpt from “The Tourist””

posted

hay wire ,,,,,, Ha-Wi (((((( not Wi-Fi ,,,,,,

keeping close

to hispid earth

keeping close

to the ancestorrrrs who travel with the branching rains

some storms

bigg waters

overhead

i’ve got my swiss boots on

nothing can match the feeling of the authentic mountain boot

this is very funny ….

among the Dramatis Personae

in Aristophanes’ The Frogs

is listed – – –

A CORPSE.

Aristophanes

a very brave a very witty man

who prevailed

out-played

the sophistries

the hoaxes

of men and laws and gods ….

enjoy the day,

a

______________ , *

posted

Vacillation

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?

II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis’ image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief more “Vacillation”

posted
  • place: Bremen, Germany

Paragraphs on Computer Art, Past and Present by Prof. (emer.) Dr. Frieder Nake

[Ed: My old friend Frieder’s meditations on computer art are foundational as per his inimitable style of thought and expression. I am honored to present this text here on the tech-no-mad blog, though the blog platform itself is suffering computability problems of its own, my apologies! See also Frieder’s precise and quite humorous presentation on the history of computer art at eyeo in 2014.]

Revised version (2011) of a paper of the same title that appeared in: Nick Lambert, Jeremy Gardiner, Francesca Franco (eds.): CAT 2010. Ideas before their time. Connecting the past and present in computer art. London: British Computer Society 2010. p. 55-63. Appears here by permission of the author.
Sol LeWitt published his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” in Artforum, June 1967. It became an influential theoretical text on art of the twentieth century. It played the role of a manifesto even though it appeared when its topic – concept over matter – had already existed for about a decade. Digital (or algorithmic) art had had its first exhibitions in 1965. It seems it never produced a manifesto, with the exception, perhaps, of Max Bense’s “Projects of generative aesthetics” (1965, in German). Since computer art is a brother of conceptual art, it is justified in this late manifesto to borrow the style of the old title.

1 There are no images now without traces of digital art. Digital Art exists as computer art, algorithmic art, net art, web art, software art, interactive art, computational art, generative art, and more. When it made its first appearances, in Stuttgart and New York, the name “computer art” was thrown against art history and into the faces of art critics. It was a proud name and a bad one. “Algorithmic art” would have been the correct term. The superficial “computer art” disguised the revolutionary fact: the algorithmic principle had entered the world of art.

2 The algorithmic principle is the principle of computability. Whatever exists in the domain of computability exists insofar as it is computable. Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and others had in the 1930s saved mathematics as the only discipline of the human mind that can say clearly what it says. Those heroes had clarified the concept of computability. They had thus created a new basis for mathematics. Soon after, the computer appeared as the machine to turn science into engineering. There had, of course, before been devices for mechanical calculation, but no computing automaton. more “Paragraphs on Computer Art, Past and Present by Prof. (emer.) Dr. Frieder Nake”