MonthMay 2008
“David Abram is an odd combination of anthropologist, philosopher and sleight-of-hand magician. Though he worked as a magician in the United States and Europe for a number of years, he attributes most of what he knows about magic to the time he spent in Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka learning from indigenous medicine people. Performing magic is not simply about entertaining, he points out in this interview. “The task of the magician is to startle our senses and free us from outmoded ways of thinking.” The magician also plays an important ecological function, he says, by mediating between the human world and the “more-than-human” world that we inhabit.
When Abram published his book The Spell of the Sensuous in 1996, the reviewers practically exhausted their superlatives in praise of it. The Village Voice declared that Abram had “one of those rare minds which, like the mind of a musician or a great mathematician, fuses dreaminess with smarts.” The Utne Reader called Abram a “visionary” for “casting magic spells through his writing and lecturing” and for his deepening influence on the environmental movement.
The Spell of the Sensuous went on to win the prestigious Lannan Literary Award for non-fiction. It touches on a wide range of themes, from our perception of the natural world to the way we use of language and symbols to process our experience.”
(via Scott London. h/t: Neuroanthropology)
 "The gps generated selt portrait - click to enlarge")
“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet. My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing.”
![[image]](javascript:bigImage('http://www.archaeology.org/image.php?page=0805/etc/jpegs/indy4.jpg'))
“Along with superstars like Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, and Shia LaBeouf, the newest Indiana Jones movie promises to showcase one of the most enigmatic classes of artifacts known to archaeologists, crystal skulls that first surfaced in the 19th century and that specialists attributed to various “ancient Mesoamerican” cultures. In this article, Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh shares her own adventures analyzing the artifacts that inspired Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (in theaters May 22), and details her efforts tracking down a mysterious “obtainer of rare antiquities” who may have held the key to the origin of these exotic objects.”
(via Archaeology)
Above right: Large Hadron Collider Left: a Dharma Initiative logo
This Popular Mechanics article on “debunking” the science of Lost does little debunking and much fawning and speculating.
Michio Kaku, author of Physics of the Impossible, thinks the Lost creators are using cutting-edge science to lay the groundwork for a transversible wormhole to another point in space and time—a trip foreshadowed in an off-season video about the so-called Orchid station, which Lindelhof and Cuse promised would be a key to the next few episodes. “They’re amping up the energy to the point where space and time begin to tear, and the fabric begins to rip,” Kaku tells PM. “When the fabric of space and time begin to rip, things that we consider impossible become possible again.”
Full Story: Popular Mechanics (via Daily Grail)
See also: More LOST physics in Popular Mechanics.
?In the past, the Church used graphic, sometimes pornographic images of the devil as an enemy against which everyone could unite, and as a way of quelling dissent. Today we have lost the devil. The devil disappeared from public culture in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and what replaces it? At the moment, child abusers are the new devil we all can rail against.’ That is why, he says, paedophile panics often come across like ?religious crusades’, where those who ask critical questions about the facts can be denounced as ?unbelievers’ and ?deniers’.
Most strikingly, the Jersey bone episode reveals an essential truth about paedophile panics: they come from above rather than below. In recent years, it has become fashionable in intelligent, liberal circles to fret about the ?anti-paedophile lynch mob’, who, triggered by a News of the World headline, might go out and burn down people’s homes or beat individuals to a pulp. In truth, it takes people with clout to trigger a moral panic – and in the case of the dark, secretive, murderous Jersey home scare, the panic was triggered by top policemen and the metropolitan, latte-drinking media elite in London. As Webster wrote in The Secret of Bryn Estyn: ?Of all the misconceptions about historical witch hunts, perhaps the most important is the notion that they were driven forward by the common people – that they were based on the untutored instincts of the mob. This is the very opposite of the truth.’ And so it remains today.
?Jersey shows that it is not ordinary people who start this off’, he tells me. ?Witch hunts don’t happen without an educated elite behind them. In the past, bishops and priests let panics loose. Today it is the police, social workers and broadsheet journalists.’
(via OVO)
‘In the past, the Church used graphic, sometimes pornographic images of the devil as an enemy against which everyone could unite, and as a way of quelling dissent. Today we have lost the devil. The devil disappeared from public culture in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, and what replaces it? At the moment, child abusers are the new devil we all can rail against.’ That is why, he says, paedophile panics often come across like ‘religious crusades’, where those who ask critical questions about the facts can be denounced as ‘unbelievers’ and ‘deniers’.
Most strikingly, the Jersey bone episode reveals an essential truth about paedophile panics: they come from above rather than below. In recent years, it has become fashionable in intelligent, liberal circles to fret about the ‘anti-paedophile lynch mob’, who, triggered by a News of the World headline, might go out and burn down people’s homes or beat individuals to a pulp. In truth, it takes people with clout to trigger a moral panic – and in the case of the dark, secretive, murderous Jersey home scare, the panic was triggered by top policemen and the metropolitan, latte-drinking media elite in London. As Webster wrote in The Secret of Bryn Estyn: ‘Of all the misconceptions about historical witch hunts, perhaps the most important is the notion that they were driven forward by the common people – that they were based on the untutored instincts of the mob. This is the very opposite of the truth.’ And so it remains today.
‘Jersey shows that it is not ordinary people who start this off’, he tells me. ‘Witch hunts don’t happen without an educated elite behind them. In the past, bishops and priests let panics loose. Today it is the police, social workers and broadsheet journalists.’
(via OVO)
Wishtank: There’s been some commentary around this question within the comment section of Skilluminati.com, but could you give us your definition of fifth generation warfare (5GW)? How might this differ from popular understandings of the phrase?
Justin Boland: “Solo warfare” would be the most concise. It’s slippery because both words are deceptive – “solo” implies that you’d never collaborate with other 5GW operatives, and “warfare” implies overt agression and violence.
I’m very much uncommitted to the 5GW orthodoxy, the framework is just another model to me and of course all models are toys. Toys for thinking and analysis, but toys just the same. I like to disassemble things to see how they work and ideas are no different.
In terms of the generations of war, I think the distinction between 3GW – traditional, nation versus nation warfare – and 4GW is very useful. 4GW is non-state ‘guerrilla’ organizations going to war against nations, and it’s a great unsolved problem of our time. Nations all around the world are losing these wars right now, and the USA is no exception.
I really enjoyed Antero’s The Greater Circulation, which I had the pleasure of seeing at the Hollywood Theater a couple years ago. I’m excited to see his latest film. Antero will be on hand at each screening to talk about his film and answer questions.
Thursday June 5, 9pm: DIVA Center, Eugene OR $5.
Friday June 6, 9:30pm: Hollywood Theatre, Portland OR $6.50
Sunday June 15, 2pm: NW Film Forum, Seattle WA. $8.
Wed. June 18, 8:30pm: Pickford Cinema, Bellingham WA $7.50
Friday June 27, 7pm: Shiny Object, West Sacramento. $5.
Synopsis:
A sleep-deprived theatre director undergoes hypnotic regression to stop a reoccurring nightmare and unexpectedly participates in an ancient dreamtime ritual that sends him through the labyrinths of madness and transcendence in Antero Alli’s surrealistic journey, “The Invisible Forest”.
Inspired by the radical ideas of French playwright Antonin Artaud, the filmmaker also borrows from Rimbaud’s poetics of delirium for the “deliberate disorientation of the senses” to achieve a series of altered states. In Alli’s own words, “Cinema is a drug. If some movies put us to sleep like
tranquilizers and others jack us up like triple espressos, The Invisible Forest is a 100% organic, user-friendly hallucinogen”.
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