My Favorite Music of 2022

After spending a couple hours writing my annual year-end blog post about my favorite music, I decided to throw in the towel and just point you at the page with all the "new to me" music this year with my favorites shown in bold font.

If you're curious, it's pretty easy to Google the band and album and find their Bandcamp page or a YouTube video for some streaming samples (as opposed to steaming samples which is an entirely different thing). And you should, because some of these albums are really really good.

Here is my music of 2022 including favorites.

So you can infer from my attitude about blogging that it's time for this one to end.

And so it will.

My Favorite Books of 2022

Just like 2021, work from home and lack of business travel has decimated my leisure reading this year. Before the pandemic, I had 90 minutes during my daily commute for audio books and plenty of business travel to read dead-tree books on flights. On top of that, my brain is so scrambled from work that I can barely remember what I did read let alone which ones were my favorites.

While that sounds rather sad, there weren't any stinkers or DNFs (did not finish). So at least there's that.

Why am I bothering to write this post? I don't know.

Here's my full 2022 reading list for the morbidly curious.

The End of Gibberish

This will be my last post of gibberish on this blog. It used to be a weekly thing but the frequency has really fallen off in the past year or two. I'll probably do my usual posts at year's end about favorite books and music and that will be that.

And now onward with the gibberish.

Adam Hillman's arrangements of everyday objects remind me why I loved my kids' I Spy books.

"What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future." ~Huston Smith

I just love the look of this Aglio E Olio with Peas and Prosciutto from everyone's favorite sexy chef, Giada.

If you are a Spotify user (I am not) and love the feeling of frisson then this playlist created by a neuroscientist is for you.

I'm getting ahead of myself, but the release earlier this year of the 2018 remix of Pink Floyd's seminal album Animals will be on my list of favorite music of 2022. Here's a teaser. I hear the remix as being a bit brighter and more spacious than the original, kinda how I hear Steely Dan's Aja.

Here's the trailer for Marcel The Shell With Shoes On. It makes me want to see the film.

Hard seltzer made with hot dog water.

Let's get caught up with Zefrank: Damselfly and Beetle, The Platypus Conspiracy, True Facts: The Mosquito, True Facts: The Hummingbird Warrior, True Facts: Carnivorous Plants, True Facts: The Self-Sacrificing Amoeba, True Facts: Parasitic Birds. True Facts: Sea Cucumbers.

You ever wonder where the James Webb Space Telescope is? Just ask "Where is Webb?"

When approaching a task, just get started.

"A clock is a flow meter for entropy." Thanks, physics.

A fan of Miles Davis and vintage video games should enjoy Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit tribute to Davis' Kind of Blue.

CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on The Geometric Art of Sean Scully.

I suppose weird is subjective which explains this list of the 10 weirdest Genesis songs. But I know the list is flawed because it omits More Fool Me.

Here's a teaser for the album a Sense of Destiny by David Kollar & Arve Henriksen.

In what I consider to be a net loss for the DFW area, the Univ. of North Texas radio station KNTU changed formats from jazz to "indie." The jazz programming has been relegated to streaming. Given that KNTU's jazz studies program is a state if not national treasure, loss of jazz on the airwaves is dismaying. I hope to continue my annual purchase of the One O'clock Lab Band's CD.

This list of the NFL's GOATS at each position - like all "top" list articles - is designed to spark debate. But I am OK with all their selections. Jim Brown as running back isn't even debatable.

Some F-15 aviation pr0n.

ICYMI, the Air Race World Championship (successor to the Red Bull Air Race) has delayed its return to the skies until 2023.

Eyvind Earle is one of my favorite Disney artists.

Here's a teaser for O.R.k.'s new album Screamnasium.

I purchased the exhibit catalog but maybe you can visit the Walt Disney Family Museum and see The Jungle Book: Making of a Masterpiece.

Mary Obering, Winter, 1992. source

Here's a version of Philip Glass' phenomenal soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi performed on organ. Or how about a metal version?

As a former beer drinker, there are times when I miss the taste of a good IPA. When I saw this article in the WSJ about non-alcoholic hop waters, I had to give one a try. And the Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher is tasty.

One man's list of the best store-bought pickles. I actually like Vlasic pickles (his #8). Boar's Head is his #2 and I didn't even know they made pickles. 

For Travis: a restored XF-82 Twin Mustang.

Rumi is quoted as having said or written many wonderful things but this may be one of my favorites. "Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because those who love with their heart and soul there is no such thing as separation."

Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1977. Her works "are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down forms.” source

Science predicts the shape of nearly every protein - using AI.

Another good quote, this one from the Tao Te Ching. "When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos." [emphasis mine]

The Power of Story shares 6 storytelling tips from the former chief creative at Dreamworks. They are worth reading. #3 Stories are about enabling change. The latter resonates because it's similar to another writing tip (for fiction) that says each character must want something.

Move over Top Gun, the most realistic portrayal of air combat in film is...

I grew up in Cleveland and never heard of a Polish Boy before. But now that I have, I really want to eat "This mouth-watering mashup of juicy kielbasa, mounds of coleslaw and fries, slathered with barbecue sauce — all in a bun!"

Gary Husband share his deep thoughts about Allan Holdsworth.

You know me and black & white animation.

"We have art in order to not die of the truth." ~Nietzsche 

Daniel Green teaches physics at U.C. San Diego but on his list of resources the advice for applying for a job you might find most useful.

If you like to see things rot, watch the trailer for Wrought.

Thanks for reading.

On Politics and Tweets

In this post I will rant about myself.

During this 5-day holiday weekend (thank you, Cadence) I looked at my recent tweets and was disappointed to say the least. The vast majority were political. This distressed me because for most of my life I had claimed to be apolitical. 

To be clear:

• I think Donald Trump is a compulsive habitual liar (easily proven, not debatable), a narcissist of the most extreme variety, and dumb as a bag of rocks.
• The Big Lie is just that: a lie.
• A lot of republicans in office or running for office (e.g. Marge, Lauren) also demonstrate stupidity, tell blatant lies, and spend more time claiming to believe the "right" things rather than acting upon them.
• The so-called "religious right" represents the gristle of Christian faith and are rapidly heading to a form of christofacism.
• Abortion is a medical procedure that shouldn't be demonized. Anyone who spends an hour reading and understanding medical ethics will realize that the concept of gradualism should be applied.
• Guns have been turned into a fetish object and need to be controlled. Other constitutional rights are limited (e.g. libel and slander laws).

Now that I've written this post I'll do my best to return my tweeting and facebooking to the things I really enjoy like music, art, literature, food, Disney, running, gardening, family, friends, mesh generation, computational fluid dynamics, and all things engineering software.

That doesn't mean I won't still share political stuff but that will be a smaller percentage of everything. 

This is the very perfection of a man...

The music...

• Documentary on the making of Genesis' landmark album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
• A Pink Floyd / Art of Noise mashup - Another Brick In the Wall + Legs
• Porcupine Tree on the break-up and reconciliation
• If you can get this in-browser Rhythm Controller iO-808 to work, you're better than me.
• Same for this Roland 50.
• Robert Fripp interviewed about the King Crimson documentary
• The TCU Percussion Ensemble playing Bill Bruford's Beelzebub
• The Aristocrats get the orchestral treatment courtesy of the Primuz Chamber Orchestra
• Listen to radio stations around the globe
• The Light Inside, the Dark Outside by ILUITEQ
• Vanishing Lands by Netherworld

Not music but sounds - in particular, endangered sounds.

This list is a couple of month's past peak but, Wordle variants.

• Worldle (geography)
• Nerdle (numbers)
• Heardle (music)
• Semantle (semantics)

A couple of Mark Rothko's from an overview of Ab Ex. 

Given that work now takes me to the Bay area often, I might be able to visit the Walt Disney Family Museum to see the current exhibit on The Jungle Book: Making a Masterpiece.

A bibliography for a history of animation.

How about a game that's Almost Pong?

On creativity:

• How Pixar does it.
• How pianist Bill Evans does it.

Joan Mitchell, Hemlock, 1956. source

And the art.

• Joan Mitchell, Hyperallergic's review of her retrospective. 
• Fields of Abstraction at the Israel Museum.

Gallery view of Fields of Abstraction. See link above.

And now for some science.

• A fossilized dinosaur hypothesized to have been killed by the Chicxulub asteroid.
• W Bosons need to go on a diet or they'll break the standard model of particle physics.
• Funny science in the form of True Facts about Sea Stars and The Hummingbird Warrior.
• Engineering the Commodore 64.
• Tonga volcano shock wave animation
• Time might not actually exist.

Medieval Meme (Memieval?) generator.

In this list of 103 bits of advice is this gem. "You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early."

Let's dial back the "definitive guide" bit but here's advice for healthy eating when you're over 50. For ex, minimize processed foods, veggies with each meal, drink water.

...to find out his own imperfections. ~St. Augustine

Circumstances do not make the man...

Is this really my first blog post of 2022? 

Just a reminder that the Air Race World Championship is coming back this year. Smoke on.

The website of musician Gary Husband.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969. This work on paper is one of several featured in the exhibition Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away. "It also shows the power of white and its tremendous impact in his painting.”

What can your farts tell you about your health? "Scientists have recently found a connection between mental health and gas production." Then I must be a psychopath.

Why is poo brown?

Concept art of the Navy's Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Fighter, the F/A-XX.

The music:

• Broken Masses by Gary Mundy and Eraldo Bernocchi
• Deconstructing Brian Eno's Music for Airports
• Saturday Night in San Francisco by Di Meola, McLaughlin, and De Lucia.
• The Turning Year by Roger Eno
• Charged by Kondo, Bernocchi, and Laswell
• Brilliant Trees by David Sylvian, filming inside the studio during recording
• Outland by Ian Boddy and Markus Reuter
• The Allan Holdsworth Quartet in Montreal in 1993
• Smallcreep's Day by Mike Rutherford (reissue)
• Claudio Scolari 
• Violet Light by Eraldo Bernocchi
• A memorial concert for Jon Hassell.

Did you know you can donate your old LEGOs and they'll be cleaned-up and gifted to another child?

What is the coolest museum in each state? I first validated by ensuring that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was the coolest in Ohio. Then I checked Texas to find the Bullock Texas State Museum.

Generate some alien planet landscapes.

The Pantone color of the year for 2022 is Very Peri.

Wayne Thiebaud, Boulder Ridge, 2013. Not a cake.

Dali + Disney = Destino, set to the music of Pink Floyd. I feel like a little wacky weed would allow me to fully enjoy this.

Best website this week: crouton.net.

Followed closely by Doughnut Kitten.

Yes, it has been a long time since I posted. source

If you have kids, you can animate their drawings.

Lights at Sea is a really cool interactive map of the world's lighthouses.

Norman Lewis, Exodus, 1972. From The Transcendent Power of Black in Norman Lewis' Paintings. I'm fairly certain this is one of Lewis' paintings I saw a few years back in a retrospective of his work and my friends and I were happily stunned by his work that none of us prior to that time had been familiar with.  

Tom Peters is never at a loss for words, or in this case quotes. In particular, one quote for each of the 43 years that have passed since In Search of Excellence was published. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

In case you haven't been keeping track, in 2020 the mass of all man-made stuff exceeded the planet's total biomass for the first time.

Most good management concepts can be illustrated in a 4-quadrant chart and Seth Godin's control/responsibility matrix is no different. Are you a victim, martyr, whiner, or leader?

Another quad chart: the productivity matrix. (I'm definitely most productive on the "calm" left side of that chart.)

Five of the greatest physics lectures of all time.

Always funny - Ze Frank's True Facts: Proboscis Monkey.

You don't even have to read the article, but the best sugar cereal is Lucky Charms.

The TV show Ghosts has a fan wiki.

Of these 25 best sci-fi movies of the last 15 years I've seen... eight.

The story of The Yes Album and Fragile.

...they reveal him. ~James Allen

My Favorite Music of 2021

It's time for the annual blog post no one asks for: my favorites of all the new (to me) music I bought this year.

But I'm exhausted and lack the energy to spend a lot of time on this - despite the fact that I really enjoy and appreciate virtually all of the sixty-six albums I got.

In no particular order...

Fractal Guitar 2 and Fractal Guitar 2 Remixes by Stephan Thelen.

In the Electric Universe by Mahogany Frog.

Naurora by Dewa Budjana.

Mutual Isolation by Burnt Belief

Apophenian Bliss by Red Kite

Music is Our Friend by King Crimson

But this list omits a lot of really enjoyable music.

• Fish's farewell album Weltschmerz
• FREEZE! Live in Europe 2020 by The Aristocrats
• Adam Holzman's live album Brave New World
• Anchor and Burden, the lead-in to a five album arc by Markus Reuter
• Saturday Night in San Francisco (pre-order)

And of course I need to credit the two record labels that create and share some of my favorite music.

• RareNoise Records
• Moonjune Records

Looking forward to 2022.

P.S. In hindsight, this blog post is horribly written. I blame fatigue.

Music in the soul...

Alan Watts on finding meaning in meaninglessness. 

Victor Frankl wrote "between stimulus and response there a space." That space is where we find freedom and growth.

Still trying to find time to drive to Dallas and see Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia at the DMA. We have until 10 Jul 2022. Here's a write-up of the exhibit from the local NBC affiliate.

Miles Davis' iconic Kind of Blue covered in Seinfeld style: Sein of Blue.

The impossible typeface, inspired by Escher.

It's not a spoiler that Rolling Stones' list of the 50 greatest progressive rock albums is topped by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. I have 20 of them, including 9 of the top 10.

I don't recall why I bookmarked this page of free, open-source healthcare icons but here they are in case you need to use one.

Along those same lines, here's a page with 4000 web badges, those little rectangles that proclaim some affilition.

Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain novel and the 1971 film by Robert Wise are both absolute favorites of mine. Meaning I could reread or rewatch at any time with full enjoyment. Here's a look at production of the film. If nothing else, click through and watch the original movie trailer.

Visualizing all the world's languages.

Science has found some of the universe's missing matter, "confirming that 80–90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies."

Yes, the Crystal Bridges Museum is off the beaten path. And yet it's architecturally beautiful (soon to be 50% larger) and the collection is top-notch. Read Alice Walton's thoughts (of Walmart fame) about what she created in Bentonville.

Like most lists, the compulsion is to see where you fit. In the list of most educated cities in the U.S., the Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington metroplex comes in at a disappointing 73rd place. Madison, WI comes in 5th place which is ahead of 6th place Boston, Cambridge, Newton. 

Austin has been named the #1 place for post-college life in the U.S. Fort Worth is #5.

Prehistoric. Giant. Swimming. Head.

From the Things I Didn't Know Could Be Fossilized, here's some dino skin.

An exhibit of Helen Frankenthaler's work promises to "reveal just how accomplished Frankenthaler was in modulating control and spontaneity in her art.

Often in the discussion of Fort Worth's art museums, one gets left out. There's The Modern and The Kimbell, but don't forgot about the Amon Carter.

You've heard about NUKEMAP, the online tool for computing the effects of a nuclear blast. Here's Earth Impact Effects Program (not nearly as snappy of a name) for computing the effects of a meteor impact.

Speaking of meteor impacts, the legend of Sodom may be based in fact.

Early today I tweeted that Mutual Isolation, the new album from the duo of Colin Edwin and Jon Durant, is probably my favorite of all their albums (under the name Burnt Belief). Here's a preview.

Music for the eyes.

"all marks on a flat surface are abstractions" writes David Hockney in Abstraction In Art Has Run Its Course which is interesting but I didn't reach the same conclusion he has.

I won't make it to the San Francisco MoMA before 17 January, so hopefully someone else will checkout the Joan Mitchell retrospective.

The richest man in Jerusalem probably sat on this throne.

What would a nuclear weapon with a yield of 1,000 Mt be like?

A Bulgarian Air Force SU-25 and accessories in a Tetris Challenge. 

A Tardigrade has been found fossilized in amber. Cue theme music for a tiny Jurassic Park.

Get your groove on with Tycho's Red Rocks DJ set.

Long story - Phil Collins and Johnny Rotten.

Never miss an episode of Ze Frank's True Facts. Here are two: The Mosquito and Lurking in the Deep.

Tom Peters reminds us that hard is soft and soft is hard. I had this conversion with our interns over the summer. 

Only a poor artist blames their instrument. So enjoy art made from checkboxes.

I just became aware of (and ordered) John Coltrane's A Love Supreme - Live in Seattle. There's a preview at the site worth listening to.

Speaking of live music, here's Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians performed live in Paris in 1976.

There are many reasons why The Aviationist is on my list of must-read blogs when it comes up in my RSS feed. Here's one of those reasons - a fabulous slo-mo video of the F-22. I could watch this for hours.

Regrets of the dying might seem a little morbid but they do offer life lessons. #3 I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

CTO Pradeep Dass calls his hypersonic aircraft "Sexbomb." Send bombs and vagene?

There are many candidates for the best animated short film Oscar. The one that stands out to me for its wonderful geometric animation is Any Instant Whatever by Michelle Brand. 

What do you need to know about quantum physics? #3 Many things will be discrete versus continuous.

I believe the $17 million paid for Agnes Martin's Untitled #44 is a record for the artist.

...can be heard in the universe. ~Lao Tzu (incorrectly attributed)

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words...

This guy doesn't like Uber.

And here are the tunes.

• Weigh Anchor will be the first album from a new band formed by Markus Reuter. Here's video of the track Knot 1. (Will buy this as soon as it becomes available.)
• Phantasmagoria, Or A Different Kind of Journey by the Eivind Aarset 4-tet. (Ordered.) Some excerpts.
• California Guitar Trio opened for King Crimson when we saw them on tour recently (see below) so it was a no-brainer to get Live in Scottsdale on Tour With King Crimson. For a video version of some of what's on the album, see this.
• Giacomo Puccini: The Complete Piano Works and Selected Opera Transcriptions 
• Signals, the latest from Marconi Union coming this November.

This is a beautiful photo of aerodynamics at work. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the aircraft was travelling supersonically. source

If you don't recognize the name Tacit Blue, you won't want to watch this video interview with a former program manager. 

A time crystal can provide coherence within a quantum computer which can make them much more practical. Google may have create them.

Not to be outdone, physicists discovered a new particle, the tetraquark, which is an exotic exotic hadron because it has two charm quarks and and up and a down antiquark. And if those explanations mean anything to you, let me know.

We saw King Crimson perform in Fort Worth recently. Here's what Tony Levin had to say about that show. Here's a more in-depth interview with Tony.

What's the world's oldest animal look like in fossil form? Those wiggles on the left.

Speaking of fossils, when a human-sized turtle lays an egg that never hatches, you can learn a lot.

Can a brain become fossilized? And I'm not referring to Republicans. Seems so.

A periodic table of the elements sized by relative abundance. source

How about a 3D periodic table?

If you can figure out exactly what to do with Trassel, let me know.

And there's nothing to do with Flying Toasters.

...so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu

Only fools...

If you've got 17 minutes, this is a nice video showing how the Tate museum restored a vandalized Rothko.

runDisney is back. And by that I mean they're selling registrations for in-person runs. And we're hoping that Covid-19 Delta doesn't mess that up. (Thanks, unvaccinated.)

I'm a GIMP man when it comes to image editing (and my skill set is very lean). But I'm interested in Photopea, an online photo editor.

Even more interesting is Ojoy for scaling up images while improving its quality. (Because usually when you scale up an image the quality goes in the toilet.)

Dan Flavin, Untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim). Sometimes you just want minimalism. source

Brian Eno launched a radio station, Lighthouse, on Sonos Radio. I really like Eno's music but I can't generate enough interest to listen to online radio.

But I will paraphrase one of Eno's quotes. "The great benefit of computers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement."

Music I'm thinking about.

• Observer Effect by John Sellekaers on Glacial Movements
• Solar Flash by Asaf Sirkis (purchased)
• Aufbruch by J. Peter Schwalm and Markus Reuter (official video)
• Shasta Road, a track from NOWNESS by Jerry Granelli & Jamie Saft
• (a) period by AES Dana
• The Ice Bridge by Yes from their new album The Quest
• (m)OPRH Artist Series remix

And in case you've ever wondered about how influential the Blade Runner score was on electronic music, here's Do Androids Dream of Electric Beats.

A brief interview with the artist about Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas.

It might not seem like much, but M SALT's mix of salt, pepper, and garlic salt is pretty good and versatile. 

The XB-70's cockpit.

Kurasowa's 100 favorite movies is probably worth taking a look at. Those that I've seen include It's a Wonderful Life, A Streetcar Named Desire, Gojira, Lawrence of Arabia, The Birds, The Day of the Jackal, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Killing Fields. Which is probably more than either you or I thought.

Need sound effects? The BBC has 'em.

...don't contradict themselves. ~Andre Gide

When you realize nothing is lacking...

Just a reminder that the World Championship Air Race is set to return in 2022.

This is 100% true and if you're a fan of abstract painting I urge you to seek out Norman Lewis, a Neglected Gem of Abstract Expressionism.

Bacteria unknown to science were found on the International Space Station. (Cue sci-fi movie intro music.)

Continuing on the theme of things new to science, a study of 2,000 year old fossilized human feces indicates a) we have a much less diverse gut biome these days and b) we used to have things in our gut that are totally new to modern humans.

Continuing with the butt theme, breathing through their rectums saved oxygen-deprived mice.

And back to poop: new species of beetle discovered in 230 million year old fossilized poop.

Ellsworth Kelly, Colors for a Large Wall, 1951. source

You can now create a custom t-shirt featuring Josef Albers' Homage to the Square.

The one immediate problem I have with the article 6 Famous Abstract Expressionists Who Boldly Defined the Movement is use of the word "famous." 

Markus Reuter's "Living the Dream" podcast continues with an interview with Leonardo "MoonJune" Pavkovic, owner of MoonJune Records of which I am a happy subscriber.

Markus Reuter also interviews Trey Gunn, currently on part 4 of 10.

From a list of 99 bits of unsolicited advice, "If you meet a jerk, overlook them. If you meet jerks everywhere everyday, look deeper into yourself."

More maps: draw all the roads in a city.

A map of the U.S. scaled by the states' populations.

Leave it to the folks at Pantone to come up with a color chart letting you know whether you're peeing frequently enough. (Just like mom used to say, have two pale urinations a day.)

Just a nice interactive period table.

Music that's on my mind.

• Debut album from Trifecta (Nick Beggs, Adam Holzman, Craig Blundell). 
• Leviathan by The Grid/Fripp - purchased
• Don't forget that Robert Fripp released on YouTube over the course of a year a 52-part Music for Quiet Moments series.
• Doom Jazz by Swami Lateplate (aka Bobby Previte and Jamie Saft) - ordered 
• Gratitude, Vol. 2 by Markus Reuter - purchased
• Blues and Doped Flowers from Twenty Three Years After Eschaton by Sigillum S | Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte - purchased
• Sound Visions, a video mini-documentary of Michael Manring's recording of last year's album Small Moments, one of my favorites of 2020.
• Crossings by Jon Durant and Stephan Thelen - purchased
• Tensegrity Vol. 3 by TXT Recordings - waiting for CD release
• The Things I See: Interpretations of the Music of Allan Holdsworth by Gary Husband - purchased
• Eraldo Bernocchi's rework of All Around You
• Cosmology by Claudio Scolari Project
• Noise in the City: Live in Tokyo, 1986 by Art of Noise - ordered
• The Loss of Wilderness by ILUITEQ - ordered
• Jamie Saft Plays Joe Morris by Jamie Saft - purchased
• Liberation Time by John McLaughlin

ICYMI, Jason Matthews, author of the Red Sparrow trilogy, has died. That trilogy got me more excited about espionage thrillers than anything since Clancy.

This set of paintings "Black Windows" emerged from Sean Scully's time in Covid lockdown. One of them is currently in the exhibition at The Modern in Fort Worth.

Another map that lets you follow a raindrop along all the rivers in America: River Runner.

An interactive map of lighthouses.

The A-10 is basically a flying 30mm cannon. This video shows how it works.

Couldn't visit The Walt Disney Studios and World War II at the Walt Disney Family Museum but I could get the exhibition catalog (which I enjoyed reading).

Food and art. I know where I'll be eating next time I visit MFAH.

For you historians, a trove of Apollo-era documents.

JMW Turner coming to the Kimbell this fall.

Need some background noise and/or ambience? 

True Facts: Wild Pigs.

How to restore a vandalized Rothko.

I would never have guessed this painting was by Helen Frankenthaler (Barometer, 1992). Which is a reminder (to me) to not pigeonhole artists. source.

Hours of pleasure. And cookies. Oreoreo.

Popcat. Because.

OK then, REMOJI. 

...the whole world belongs to you. ~Lao Tzu

Precision, Machinery, War, Destruction, Beauty, and Art

A couple years ago I saw the exhibit Cult of the Machine: Precisionism in American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. In addition to seeing a startlingly beautiful and unique Georgia O'Keeffe, the exhibit left me with such a positive impression that I used a quote from the curator in a presentation I gave at a CFD conference shortly thereafter. After all, precisionism was a movement that depicted in art the glory and power of technological and architectural development and in America in the 1920s and 1930s. And CFD is nothing if not precision.

Through a recent article in the WSJ on the exhibit Ralston Crawford: Air + Space + War, I found a fork in the Precisionist road. Crawford's work matured during WWII when he had access to a variety of aircraft settings (flights, factories) and post-war nuclear testing - including being in the U.S. Army. That exposure to death and destruction greatly influenced his work, retaining the flatness and precision of Precisionism while introducing an element of chaos that heightens the work's emotional appeal. 

Certainly my initial attraction was the usual juxtaposition of several of my interests (painting, aircraft, nuclear weapons development). But upon reading the exhibition catalog and learning about the development of Crawford's work and how it fits with his contemporaries (the chapter on aviation art was really interesting) I found myself loving his painting solely on its own merits - the shift of perspective, the rough edges, the colors.

So if you're in Pennsylvania, I recommend heading over to the Brandywine River Museum of Art before the exhibition closes on 19 Sept. For everyone else, here's a video walkthrough that deserves more than 72 views. 

On Vaccination

At what point do we just throw our hands up and say to the anti-vax (or the white-washed "vaccine-hesitant") people, "Fine. Don't get vaccinated. Get sick and die."

Because I've gotten to feeling that way more and more often.

Well, the simple answer is you don't. You go back to protecting the public health.

Because C-19 vaccination is at best only half about personal health.

Remember that COVID-19 (which should've been called SARS-2) is a pandemic and a national emergency. Which is why the other half of vaccination's importance is public health.

Each unvaccinated person is a walking petri dish for the virus and an enabler of its transmission and mutation. As long as the virus transmits, the unvaccinated will get sick and die. If that isn't bad enough, these walking virus hosts will give SARS-CoV-2 the opportunity to mutate. Mutations happen all the time and most are benign but there's always the possibility of something worse than the delta variant, worse in the sense of it being immune to the current vaccines. Which would put us all back at square one.

Not feeling compassion for your fellow citizens? How about the sheer economic cost of closed businesses, the strain on hospitals, the federal expense? Can you be motivated by your wallet?

Sadly, everything about preventing SARS-2 applies to the flu. Get vaccinated, stay home when you're sick, wash your hands. If we all followed those guidelines for the flu, the annual gains in productivity (or decrease in lost productivity) would be enormous. Nothing about remediating SARS-2 is new. It just highlights so many shortcomings in society. (One of which is the abject failure of public education to impart a basic understanding of virology and statistics with which we probably would be in an entirely different situation today.)

Do you have the right to refuse to be vaccinated? Sure. But that doesn't mean society has to accommodate your personal choice. Kids gotta be vaccinated (and prove as much) to attend school. Why should you not have to do the same to return to work or public events? You have freedom of choice but all choices come with consequences.

It's as though half the country is waiting to see World War Z outside their front door before they'll even consider driving over to CVS for a jab. FOR FREE.

To say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement. Surprised? Not so much.

Get vaccinated.

There is no way to happiness.

Drumming but visualized as bouncing balls.

Free pictures of monkeys.

Here's a Houston Chronicle article about the renovated Rothko Chapel. If the real thing is even close to the photo at the top of the article with the improved natural lighting, it'll be like a whole new experience - in a great way.

If you like the Vim text editor, you may like browsing the web with vimium, a Chrome extension.

In the beginning, there was a perfect fluid (aka quark-gluon plasma).

Clyfford Still, PH-1394, 1979.

A couple of years ago, I got to see fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were on tour as a museum exhibit. Just recently, new fragments have been discovered.

Speaking of discoveries, a secret Cold War project in Greenland drilled some ice cores and then forgot about them in storage. When rediscovered, they were found to contain fossilized plants.

To celebrate Tony Levin's 70th birthday, Unquiet Music compile and released Prog Noir (Unquiet Remix with TLEV Collage) which is available for free (or name your price).

Sam Gilliam, The Color of Music, 1967-1973 (source). Lush, rippling with understated energy, with a nearly hidden lyrical line. 

How about a wee bit of King Crimson in the form of a "remnant" from the recording of THRAK: Did We Make the Album?

Yet another reminder that the World Championship Air Race (nee Red Bull Air Race) is coming back in 2022.

If you're a fan of the band Stick Men (Markus Reuter, Pat Mastelotto, Tony Levin) you can enjoy recorded web event with the band and fans talking about the history.

ICYMI, Kansas (yes, the band) has a new live album, Point of Know Return.

Excellent 4-part series of articles on which color scale to use when visualizing data. 

Gluons glue together quarks to form protons and neutrons. The odd thing (pun intended) about gluons is that odd numbers of them don't like to be together; only even numbers of gluons are typically found. Well, science has proven the existence of odderons (a clump of an odd number of gluons) by smashing together protons at high speed.

From Futility Closet: "Walt Disney World draws its power from a pylon surmounted by a circular steel tube and two elliptical rings."

The taste of chocolate comes, in part, from fermentation. I did not know that.

The notional F-36 Kingsnake is a fighter aircraft to replace the F-16. It is compared to a Nissan 300ZX and because I'm not a car guy I have no idea what that means.

Yes. It's time for True Facts: The Bats! and Trap Jaw Ants.

A long article on how the music industry is strangling economically the musicians from whom they make their money.

Enjoy Hypersonic from the new Liquid Tension Experiment album.

Baby born with 3 penises makes history. Because 2 penises was a snoozer, apparently.

A beginner's guide to ambient music.

Based on imagery from the JAXA Kaguya Orbiter, enjoy Earthrise in 4k UHD.

It'll be interesting to see how closely this bit of concept art matches the actual configuration of the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter (i.e. the F-22 replacement).

Give a listen to a preview track called The Giant Nothing from Supervoid.

What happens when scientists write haiku?

Yummy sandwiches.

Opening 20 June at The Modern is Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas.

Feels. It's like Where's Waldo but with emojis.

Said to be a classic and a very approachable introduction to the subject, Thompson's Calculus Made Easy (1910) is now available in an online HTML version and a PDF version.

Goldeneye 007 for N64 is worth a lot of money today.

This could be very handy: Ojoy, upscale an image while improving its quality.

Do you like Lava Lamps?

Ze Frank's True Facts is at it again: Deception in the Rainforest and Dangerous Little Ticks.

Science discovered that pigs can breathe through their butts. Doctors wondered whether this gave them an option when treating human patients with lung problems. I think you see where this is going.

Speaking of butts, ever wonder how they evolved?

Happiness is the way. ~Buddha

The Tao is near and...

A recording of Harold Budd speaking at USC in 1985.

I'm afraid to use Readable on one of my blog posts. I'm afraid because one of the statements on their home page is "+83% The increase in the number of people who will finish reading your content if its readability is improved [emphasis mine] from grade 12 to grade 5." Maybe we can improve the average reader from grade 5 to grade 12."

What is the first principle of product management? Maximize impact to the mission. You'll have to click through to read the second.

Emily Mason, Ancient Incense, 1981. source

"Music and sleep are the two most natural ways to escape from everything and when they combine it truly becomes a dream. Let us take you there with our artists’ sublime music curated especially for you by The Ambient Zone." That's the introduction to the digital album Sleep 001.

A four-hour, real-time video of the moon from the Kaguya Orbiter.

Restored 16mm film of Magic Kingdom from 1970.

A live performance from 2008 by the Five Peace Band (Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Christian McBride, Kenny Garrett, and Vinnie Colaiuta). 

Amazon has 14 leadership principles (aka core values) which is a lot and I'm curious how many employees can remember them all. There are so many I'm having a hard time choosing one to show here. "Leaders are right a lot." 

On this list of low maintenance house plants, I'd like to try the sansevieria starfish.

It's kinda pretty - a black hole eating a star from the inside out.

The Super Mario game's soundtrack has been restored.

In the mid 1960s an experiment was run to see whether three physics PhDs could build a nuclear bomb. Their final report is classified so it's uncertain whether they succeeded or not.

"The record is a triumph of atmosphere..." is part of this brief article about one of my absolute favorite albums of all time, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne.

"Lockdown Throwdown" is an unfinished performance by Gary Husband and the late Chick Corea. Enjoy and marvel at what is and what might have been.

"Poop" and "knife" are two words not usually found together but here you go: you can buy a poop knife for dicing dooky (slicing scat, carving crap) so it fits down the flush.

You may have heard that the Rothko Chapel has been remodeled. If you can't get to Houston soon for a visit, this new book is a pretty good substitute - Rothko Chapel: An Oasis for Reflection.

Looks yummy. Recipe here.

When you gotta cut loose but you're around genteel folks try these alternative (alternate?) swear words. For example, nerts, for the love of pete, and gee willikers.

Just another reminder that the World Championship Air Race is coming back in 2022.

If you've lost your shark, you can track it in real time online with the Shark Tracker.

Unsuck It is a way to deprogram business jargon.

This nice lady from Fort Worth who recently passed away collected a lot of art that's now up for auction at Sotheby's. Check out the collection of Mrs. John L. Marion. 

Stephan Thelen's Fractal Guitar 2 is definitely on my list of favorite albums of 2021.

Blobmixer. Just try it.

Here's a track from the new Liquid Tension Experiment album. You've ordered it, haven't you?

Ze Frank, the man, the legend, the True Facts: Deception in the Rainforest.

Mahogany Frog's new album is In The Electric Universe. 

Several people have recommended the Netflix documentary Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art.

Piet Mondrian, Gray Tree, 1911. From an article about how Mondrian's abstractions became a new way to see the world. Gray Tree is stunning and in it I see all his mature works. They're all there.

Where on Mars is Perseverance?

Fancy a BBC recording of Pink Floyd performing live in 1971?

Wonderful animated film: Cupcake Quarantine.

This had better not be a joke before I drive around trying to find it. Arby's Meat Mountain sandwich.

Coming later this year to the Dallas Museum of Art is Expressive Abstractions: A New Look at Postwar Art.

Roger Waters recorded a new version of The Gunner's Dream from The Final Cut and its everything you'd want in such a remake.  Hearing it motivated to pull the CD off the shelf for this weekend's listening.

You can watch several Oscar-qualified animated short films online. Minor Accident of War has some fantastic texture to it. And more films are here.

Here's a concert video of The Beatles from 1964.

I love this hand-drawn animated film - THE STROKE.

Spend an hour getting a FA-18 walkaround from a former Blue Angel pilot.

...people seek it far away. ~Mencius