From Pluto with Love

I wonder if there's someone on Pluto wondering this
Whether mass extinction or a pandemic could result from an asteroid
colliding with their world...
...and whether early warning systems exist to prevent such a thing.
They probably have an early warning system.
With many heroic types ready to scramble at a moments notice.
In defence of the realm.

Would they have realms on Pluto ?

After all, Pluto is so small it was declassified for a while.
But who's to say it's not inhabited by Lilliputian people ?
To them it could be infinitely large.

Tardigrades could be their biggest threats.

They survive in space...

The reason for this ramble is the imminent flypast -
New Horizons, after an epic journey of nine years
will hurtle past Pluto, taking snapshots as it goes
at approximately 32000 miles an hour.

Not even slowing down for a pit-stop.

Drive-by mapping.* ( now is a livelink to New Horizons app )

But I digress, I was discussing the possibility of someone on Pluto watching a shooting star cross the heavens.
Would they make a wish for luck ?
What would they think if they knew it was us ?
It makes me aware that we are the aliens...

New Horizons, the Google street - mapping car of the heavens?

Not quite, but you get the idea.
It's one thing that Google are not involved with.
Speaking of which,
the latest tinkering Google-wise seems to stem from software known as Deep Dreams*
essentially virtual neural networking which can produce dream - like images.
 Do computers dream of electric sheep, and all that.
They've even made it open source , so everyone can get strange...

I tend to be wary of this sort of thing as it makes me question - why are they so intent on showing us their new toy ?
Do they really want people feeding endless images into it ?

Monkeys, dogs and insects are common Deep Dream warps...

Personally, I think the end results are interesting / nightmarish, but ultimately, rather dull.
Exactly what you'd expect from a virtual attempt at dream simulation;
Beyond the initial 'oh that looks trippy like 'shrooms or acid',

Images that look ' a bit weird ' but are ultimately repetitive in content.
Morphing and convoluting into endless permutations of increasingly outlandish oddities.

So, yes, it's a bit trippy -  if every trip was a bad one.

It's as though the machinery freaked out and went into meltdown, obsessing one element of the 'trip'.

The images are only really interesting when you realise they have been made by a device with no cognitive awareness.
The ongoing attempt to emulate humanity by machine is absorbing huge amounts of money and producing - not much.

Give it up, I say.
Or show us ground-breaking advances in medical technology.
Just stop tinkering with this sub - Terminator world of Skynet that doesn't exist.
Although recent news involving a death at a German car factory indicates otherwise.

Perhaps we could combine the two -

Let's make Pluto a Penal colony for murderous robots !

I'm sure there's a film there

If so , please remember where you read it first - intellectual property and all that.

I want a percentage on the merchandise.

Thank you!


This post contains a link to a sequence created  by Johan Nordberg , using Deep Dream .
Please exercise caution if viewing under the influence of psychedelics.
Actually, you won't need any...
I accept no responsibility for disturbance / flashbacks induced...

A Backyard Full of Flybys

Apparently there was flowing water on Mars until about 500,000 years ago.
Evidence is visible in images taken by Curiosity -
It's also what the orbiting craft Maven is looking for :
What caused the atmosphere to dissipate and the water to dry up ?


Was the planet inhabited ?
Did they leave suddenly because of drought ?
Did they come here ?
Are we the descendants of Martians ?

And why so many questions ?

Evidence of waterflow on Mars  Newton crater pic by NASA

Anyway, this idea has moved from the tin - foil realm into 'maybe' territory.
Actually it hasn't - but I like to speculate.

'Speculative fiction' seems to be a new category, although the term was allegedly coined in 1941.
This may have happened in a strange parallel multiverse, and has only now come to light.

I suppose that if the future is now, (as we frequently seem to hear ),
then speculative fiction is closer to now than science - fiction.
It sounds more plausible.
With events being 'Just around the corner'.

500,000 years ago was the last evidence of flowing water on Mars.
About the same time here on Earth, we see evidence of interbreeding in the human fossil record,
As modern man develops from diverse archaic threads...
...food for thought ?

Or just the premise for a hokey sci-fi ?

- Deep breath -

Dr David Miller, chief technological officer at NASA, says we are aiming to colonise Mars now, not
just go for a  visit.

This being the case , are we  returning en - masse to the old homeworld ?
I say 'en -masse', but it will probably be a lottery.
Or like the Hunger Game of Thrones, a fierce challenge
Winner Takes All
Survival of the fittest.


I was going to include a time-line diagram of the development of flight, but I'm no good at technical details, so -

2,400 years ago, kites were invented by the Chinese.

1783 was the year of the first hot air balloon flight (courtesy of the Montgolfier brothers).

The Wright brothers made the first manned aircraft flight in 1903.

The first moon landing was 46 years ago.

Now we are on Mars - well, a couple of robot explorers are.
Also, the lander Philae is riding a comet out there somewhere.
Our first ever landing on a comet

Comets were once considered omens, harbingers of news...

I still find it amazing to think:

We have exploration spacecraft wandering amongst the planets.
As well as Rosetta (Philae mothership),
we have the Mars Orbiter (Curiosity mothership) and Maven
Also Dawn which is orbiting Ceres
Cassini is exploring Saturn and its moons
New Horizons heading to Pluto and beyond .
And Voyager 1 & 2 which are already in the beyond...

Cassini anim using Gimp copyright NASA ?

Pictures from our very first flypast of Pluto will be here imminently.
Whilst New Horizons has been travelling,
Pluto was downgraded from Planet to dwarf planet
and upgraded to Planet again.

Whilst New Horizons has been travelling, we have seen the birth of Facebook and Twitter.

When New Horizons began its trek to Pluto, the International Space Station was not a thing.
Think about that for a moment.
The object orbiting the world with spacemen inside
Now such an everyday accepted fact,
was still in its infancy - the scheduled completion date was 2010.

In 2010, having passed Jupiter,
the New Horizons craft went into hibernation mode.
Finally, after a five year journey, it is awake again
Travelling at 32,000 mph (approximately)
We are mere days away from our first ever proper close-up sight of a world so small and so far away, that it was only discovered by its effects on other bodies.

We are closing in on the heavenly body formerly known as Planet X  (and almost named Percival )

What Pluto actually looks like will no longer be in the realms of Speculative Fiction.

So I'm quite excited...

Latest image  from Ceres showing a couple of bright spots...

P.S. Here is a link to lots of new NASA images
P.P.S. I have forgotten to mention Keppler in my rundown of explorercraft , for which I am sorry .
Keppler is drifting on a wobbly path having lost 2 of its 4 stabilisers.
It continues in its mission to detect potential habitable exoplanets in the 'goldilocks zone'.
It is now on a second mission, known as K2.

Intrepid Explorers...

I was recently researching the eradication of the dinosaurs, generally believed to be caused by a comet which struck the Earth,triggering a Hollywood style apocalypse of tsunamis, earthquakes and dust clouds obscuring the sun.
My research led me to realise that there have officially been five periods of extinction in our history, including one called 'The Great Dying' which I thought was a good name for such a sad event. Apparently in  the 'Great Dying' it was mostly bivalves and the like , so that's not too bad, is it ?
I mean , they're not really sentient beings are they ?
Just molluscs really.
Lower life forms are always harder to identify with...

Which brings me to wondering
Are we lower life forms ?

Is there superior life at large in our solar system ?

Yes, full on speculation here, given the ongoing strangeness that is Ceres -
Does anyone remember the bright spots in the craters of that strange little world ?

The spacecraft Dawn is now in orbit
and keeps teasing us with close up, but not quite detailed photographs.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

It's enough to make anyone reach for the tin - foil helmet.
Seriously though, are they just delaying the inevitable ?
Are they desperately trying to avoid showing us something ?
Personally I think it has the hallmarks of  'Oops, someone else beat us to it. '

Discarded heat shield of 'Opportunity' on Mars.

Perhaps Ceres has vast quantities of an as yet undiscovered rare metal, and we're seeing a mining colony.

Then there is the three mile high mountain.
It stands out because it is alone in its mountain-ness.
Leftover heaps of detritus from excavation ?

Mountain near top right

Better quality images of Ceres can be found here.


Leaving Ceres aside for a moment, what of Pluto ?
As we close in, it also gets stranger.
Apparently it has an atmosphere- and methane has been detected.
Another recent discovery, thanks to increasingly detailed images are the four equidistant blobs on Pluto , each one estimated to be some 300 miles in diameter.

Please forgive me as I lapse into pure speculation...

                

The definition is still too vague, but the sense of mystery is almost palpable.

It's only a matter of days before New Horizons does the flypast thing.
The first ever flypast of Pluto.
I'm excited for many reasons.

It almost makes me proud to wear a tin-foil helmet.
But now, sadly , it's time for splashdown...

return in a Soyuz capsule...

Pointless Remakes R US

I recently heard of an incoming remake of the film The Birds
The Alfred Hitchcock classic.
I remember it well.
It genuinely scared me.
I also recall that it was the first Hitchcock film I'd seen in colour.
At first the idea of deadly sparrows seemed ridiculous.
I remember wondering how I could be afraid of such a hokey premise.
But it was terrifying to me, at an age when I was too young to understand the skill of a great director..

I accept that age inevitably creates a misguided fondness and a rosy glow for the way things were.
So perhaps it is viewed through nostalgic rose - tinted glasses.
Even so -

Why another remake ?

Of course I am biased - I've always loved fantastic films, particularly well made, thought - provoking ones.
From the intensity of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the almost whimsical Incredible Shrinking Man.
From the warnings of dystopian fascism inherent in Brazil and Robocop to the dangers of deluded dictators in Forbidden Planet and The Wizard of Oz.

For me one of the last straws was the proposed sequel to Bladerunner.
I'm sorry, but no.
No.

Not in my world.

I've pretty much stopped going to the cinema as a result of sequelitis coupled with remake-itis, and I'm not alone.

There was a brief flurry of interesting leftfield stuff that made me hopeful.
And then nothing.

I understand the bigger picture with global austerity meaning less risky film - making, and with brand identification, sequels are a safe bet - at least until the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

These days, though, it's almost an epidemic.
Remake everything seems to be the new affliction.

After all, they didn't have HD or 4K in those days - and it would be unfair to expect todays precious little snowflakes to put up with old - fashioned quality.
Spoiled by a lifetime of crash bang wallop on huge plasma screens floor to ceiling with 5:1 surround sound.

Thank God they didn't remake Laurel and Hardy.
Yet.

Case in point - no-one could imitate or ever hope to equal them onscreen.

Let their films remain as they are-  black and white, scratchy, some silent.

They are (im)perfect documents of their time.


I know that I must be sounding like a purist or a Luddite who doesn't want change, but I remember a similar feeling when I learned of the remake of King Kong.




I felt that my childhood memory of that strange old black and white film with its stop motion monsters would be sullied forever.
In the end, I relented and saw the Peter Jackson version in the cinema.
It was okay.
But l-o-o-o-n-g, and ultimately boring.
Which is another thing.
So many new films are l-o-o-o-n-g.
As though longer films are a sign of quality.

Puh - lease !

For me, this began with the Lord of The Rings trilogy (still looking at you Mr Jackson)
...and continued with the pointless extending of The Hobbit .

Yet, the bombastic visual and aural assault of many new films is more in line with trying to hold the attention of a hyperactive child.
Is that what we are now ?
Hyperactive children who must be held down and spoon - fed visual spectacle ?

The current ADHD - lack of attention span approach to relentless onscreen action is tiring and tiresome.
Case in point-
Transformers.

I remember Transformers as a poorly dubbed / animated cartoon connected to a series of products.
I always thought it was crudely rendered in a style I didn't like,
and along with He-Man / She-Ra, I just didn't see the attraction.

Perhaps I was just too old.

So, my apologies to those who grew up with the tales of the Decepticons etc...

King Kong was a re-telling of Beauty and The Beast...

From such an obvious beginning as a tie-in, I failed to see the further attraction of bombastic films.
Don't get me wrong - by all means Toy Story. 
It is a timeless tale.

But not Transformers.

Still, Michael Bay.

Directing the remake of The Birds.

Why can't he just film He-Man Masters of the Universe ?

At least I can ignore that.

But The Birds will be hard.

I'll have to add it to the ever-increasing list of films whose existence I don't acknowledge :

The remakes of  The Ladykillers, Psycho, The Wicker Man, The Planet of the Apes, Get Carter, Godzilla, The Thing, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie, Nightmare on Elm Street...

And those are just my personal bugbears.

...then there are the endless Hollywood versions of perfectly good European films -

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Let The Right One In, etc

...for what reason ?

Unimaginative, unoriginal and unnecessary.









this is a redux of the original post . thank you

p.s. my first introduction to the work of Peter Jackson was the gross-out film Bad Taste, in which part of the heros brain is eaten by a seagull.
So there is a (tenuous) link between Peter Jackson and ' The Birds'.

Symbiotic Souls

I told myself  I'd resist covering the copyright theft stuff , but here we go, it's rife !

Arabelle Sicardi with Tayler Smith

So the 'Jezebel' piece name - checks the usual suspects , well Richard Prince anyways.
It's a well written piece, and a very emotive subject, obviously.
By the way, if you or anyone you know is involved in creativity and have encountered issues, there is a very active group on Facebook who are worth hooking up with, link here.

Personally, my jury is still out on the whole wider issue, and I take it on a case by case level. Certainly with regard to the recent furore over Mr Prince, I feel that people -  sorry - 'creators', are rightly aggrieved - but in the opaque world of publicity and dubious patronage (Suicide Girls), it all gets rather murky in a sea of symbiotic souls...

'Adolf,  the superman who turns gold into tin'

Long ago in my younger daze , I admired the works of Dadaists and surrealists, including John Heartfield, one of the first photomontage satirists, who  re-appropriated photographic images but with a clear message added.
During WWII , his powerful images were used as propaganda against the Nazis.

Radical reworking or lazy theft ?

In the case of the above photo theft, I would argue that there is no clear 'message' or otherwise, and the final piece is all too obviously derived from the original image.

Arctander retitled the piece 'Cheek', and certainly in the u.k. it is more than a little 'cheeky' to blatantly modify work and call it your own, but I don't think the title was intended ironically.

Forgive me being an Art philistine and all, but I would argue that it comes across as the work of someone who thought that applying splashes of colour and random bits of tape was enough to elevate a piece from the workaday to the realms of Art.
I would argue that more interesting permutations would result if the original photographer had perhaps used 'cut and paste' on original negatives or contact prints - but where Mr Arctander has been restricted to only using the finished piece, the limitations are very obvious.
I'd go so far as to say he's not even trying.

Did someone read up on the Richard Prince controversy and see a guaranteed method of garnering publicity ?

Part of the difficulty is that Art is such a nebulous thing now that it has no visible boundaries or definition.
It has passed through so many classifications , definitions and 'Movements' that it can be anything.
On that basis then, the original photograph is Art.
And so is the end result.

Personally, I would question whether the original image was 'Art' as opposed to merely a quirky photograph of the subject .

I'm not going to add to the controversy, I'm just an observer, after all.
But tell that to Shrödingers cat.

And is my flimsy piece of opinion valid at all, or just another 'symbiotic' layer ?

In this world of rehashing, reworking and reposting...perhaps this is art.

Are we guilty of arguing over how fine The Emperors New Clothes look ?

I'll just leave that thought.

Konspiracy Korner!

Today I noticed two old photos, rebranded as new outrages , doing the rounds on social media and garnering the expected shock horror responses as they did so.
What really saddened me was the ease with which it could be discovered that the photos in question were actually old .
People seemed to prefer to be outraged and ill-informed.
I know that in this era of online mobs wielding virtual pitchforks , all announcements on social media must be taken with a pinch of salt .
It's almost too easy to be swept up in righteous indignation , so online fact-checking should always begin with the date of a post.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit A:

It's a couple of days after an apparently quiet and well attended Midsummer Solstice at Stonehenge.
Suddenly, on Facebook:

Instant outrage. 

Cries of 'Ill-mannered scum, litterbugs, 'etc.

That particular thread descended into classist rants about overprivileged rich kids, blah blah.

The photo in question actually dates from 2012.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I present Exhibit B:

 Who is holding the old ladies arms?

Apparently a retired nurse who was arrested and taken to Paddington Green following the Anti-Austerity demo on Saturday 20th June 2015.
It's actually a photo from Feb 2012 of a protesting retired teacher (who was escorted to the pavement).

This kind of badly Photoshopped misinformation is surely damaging to the credibility of anyone who is against the current regime...so is it the product of a misguided activist attempting to raise the ire of the people ?
Or is this a double bluff designed to undermine the credibility of protestors ?

You see how easy it is to drift into the realms of the fabled  'Tin-Foil Helmet ' ?

Someone posted a lengthy piece on how spies spread misinformation online too - perhaps to reinforce a point: after all, it's hardly likely that our friends in GCHQ (or the NSA if you're Stateside) would actually tell us what they're doing, and how they do it
I mean, seriously...

I know this is a brief post, but I'm just going to put it out there before it is too late, and they surpress my wanton reality checks !
As if

Musical Meanderings

This was originally part of a longer ramble on the subject of music.
The rest of the ramble has been removed temporarily, as it needs a bit of maintenance.

In the modern world of  You Tube, almost all musical things, styles and poses have been uploaded and are available at our collective fingertips at the press of a button .

Hurrah then, for technology - this makes everything and musical style seem to exist simultaneously , which is confusing, but great as it allows freedom of preference, and all that.

I could never even dream of access to the  rarities now on You Tube - or if I did , I might have saved shoe leather and lots of money.
And possibly saved myself from immoral ways...

Hah ! All those days spent wandering rough back alleys looking for proper ' indie' record shops...from the mean streets of Leicester to the vinyl emporiums of London...

Millenia spent flicking through endless racks of album covers...sigh - kids of today (rolls eyes to ceiling)

"- Don't know they're born!" - sings a 'Barber shop' chorus of tattooed youths .

You get the picture ?

Anyway, it was a different world.

But it's not hopeless.

There are new sounds out there.

Please note that I am reverting to a parochial UK view...

WARNING:
If easily offended or in a workplace do not click the following word 'anarchy'...you are warned !
               (actually you would have to click twice to hear the sweary words)

I didn't touch on the whole Anti - Folk movement , which gives an injection of anarchy into the hey nonny world of folk, and in some cases is more remniscent of Patrik Fitzgerald or Van the Man on billy, if you get my drift.
Oops - Sir Van the Man,  if you don't mind...
Anti - Folk has been around for some time now and lurks just beneath the everyday - best found in public house gatherings.

I didn't mention The Mountain Of Love , whose dub heavy groove is always worthy of a shimmy, or Wales' finest The Moonbirds, coming soon to an earlobe near you!

What I'm saying is there is good stuff out there, and it needs your support to thrive !
All this stuff is grassroots, join in or just buy a download or a bloody t-shirt !
Feel good about having fun !

 There's also the current upsurge in people going to strange public places to watch - gasp - films !

Shh! Tell No-one

Secret Cinema have scored highly with their inventive screenings and settings of films in strange places - for the more esoterically inclined, and London-centric there's Exploding Cinema with its eclectic roster of oddities .
I've included two separate links as the Exploding cinema are now two groups, please don't get them confused, as there could be unpleasantness - especially if you are an Avant - Gardist, in which case, don't go to the first group.
 Splitters.....

...and that's the most upbeat I'll ever be.
Good Day, I say !