A Rose by Any Other Name... Could be as Deadly...

Greetings.
I just heard a spiel on N.P.R. regarding an apparently lauded-as-genius modification of E. coli to include pleasant wintergreen and bannana smells (the latter to serve as a cue that the colony growth cycle has been completed. Over the course of the superficial interview, the experimenters acknowledge that, to their knowledge, these smells have never been associated with these organisms. A bunch of carnival music later, and the story is over.
I make no secret that my enthusiasm for genetic manipulation is only in very specific pursuit areas. I have also openly acknowledged that N.P.R. treatments are often hopelessly superficial to the point of making commentary unacceptable. That having been said, I'd like to make the following points anyway:
1. The response the "scientists" who were asked about their impression of their own work was that they don't feel omnipotent but see themselves as "engineers".
2. The "scientists" don't seem to care about the awesome responsibility of keeping under-wraps a sweet-smelling E. coli strain. A huge implicit reason mammals come equiped with sniffers is to undo and avoid the presence of bacterial strains... what now?
3. Manipulation for the sake of manipulation or cleverness is (continues to be) a pretty hateful stroke in the face of a dividing line that is keeping patients away from stem-cell research. Is anybody even watching the $#%%%# movie? These flippant tasks make those concerned about scientific morality and ethics circle their wagons.
In short, after all the pointlessly glowing bunnies and the pointless articles attempting to justify the existence of glowing bunnies, and the reality that all these high-profile hijinks are using what essentially constitutes ancient methodologies (in the molecular scheme of things) by the point of these gimmicky actions (and thus are pointlessly pointless in terms of anything but the ramifications of what could come if the experimental organisms aren't kept under lock and key), nothing has changed. I hope somebody got a masters project out of the stale methodology recap., but I'm not impressed. Should I be?

Thundercrackers and Page Turners...

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/529442 is a link to my friend, Dizzy Dean's readings checklist. I like the layout and manageability of those pages - the kind of clean that only comes with focused service - but like MYSPACEFACEBOOK, I don't like having to have an account to see full content, etc. Sharp nonetheless. It's the kind of thing LeRoy should do with himself... as the expanse of books he's read is getting a might hefty.

I'm currently all about Lovecraft, and am dealing with a fine short story anthology punctuated by THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS that I picked up from the library... of course when my new DEE arrives, I'll drop everything and probably finish the first book I've started since THE FENCING MASTER (Arturo Perez Reverte). So many good books, so little time...

K

A Pencil by Another Name...

Ready for a bizarre post?

Although getting considerable attention for their "liquid pencil" technology (and resulting "ever-sharp" leads), I wanted to toot about the SYNTECH product (JAKKS PACIFIC). Metal barrels, .7mm lead, cool colors, excellent heft (for me anyway), soft grip, point protector (another big plus for me), and CHEAP (~2.70 @ evil Wal-Mart). VERY cool.

For pens, I'm a HUGE fan of ZIG archival pens - excellent flo rate and footprint and simply one of the best freeform line drawing pens I've ever had the pleasure using... and about the same price at evil Wal-Mart!!!???

While I'm on the rant, is it just me, or is the pressure from Target (pronounced, Tar sjey') and Costco actually affecting what evil Wal-Mart puts on the shelves? I'm starting to see duplicated focus on the products I buy for the first time in well over 6 years. Its a facinating conundrum: were I not poor, I would not buy things from Wal-Mart (and no- its not because they employ so many people). ;)

Target and Costco get props for the kind of suggested sale old-concept department stores used to give (from my dim recollection). They actually put smarter products in front of you and say "wouldn't this work better, and wouldn't it actually save you some time/money in the long haul?" I'll actually browse some items in those stores and think "that's a cool idea, but doesn't make sense for me" or something like that. Not since my last visit to Wal-Mart have I thought they were actually trying to sell something that wasn't crappy... making it the first time in over 5 years. Did I mention I saw some items made in the US?

There Will Be Blood...

Greetings, Blogtastic Ones...

I've yet to see the thrilling account adapted from Upton Sinclare's "Oil" (by P. T. Anderson as "There Will Be Blood"). So many things are going down, it is a little hard to track even important "signal events" like this one.

And yet... the general timbre has enough volition to give me pause and re-evaluate my own dramatic work on (working title) The Wooden Mask, as well as several other "shelved" creative efforts.

I'm not really sure why this is up, beyond being really cool, but here is a workup from P3 Design for the cover.

Klypus wuz here...

Best Mysteries List...

Okey Doke... after my disappointment at the hands of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007), I thought I should prepare some sound offs of note. My general philosophy on film is that it is much more subjective than, say, asynchronous media like written stories, so discrepancies abound. Also note that I try to hold to relativity: for example, in my fave sci-fi & period mysteries of all time, you won't see The Name of the Rose rank as high as this list might suggest, as in such categorization, experimental efforts are much more important to me.

These represent my FAVORITE MYSTERIES OF ALL TIME:

1. The Big Sleep (1946)

2. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

3. L.A. Confidential (1997)

4. Murder by Decree (1979)

5. Thunderheart (1992)

6. Castle in the Desert (1942)

7. The Name of the Rose (1986)

8. Rear Window (1954)

9. The Big Fix (1978)

10. Brick (2005)

Incidentally, BRICK gets on this list by innovation alone (but is also a decent mystery film). MVP/Honorable mentions include (but are not necessarily limited to): THE MALTESE FALCON (which suffers for replayability IMHO), ANGEL HEART, BLADE RUNNER, THE NINTH GATE, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.

New Judge Dee!

I'm very pleased that a new adventure/whodunnit/period mystery with my favorite sleuth is (and apparently has been) on the shelves!

Zhu Xiao Di has penned a well-recieved homage to the great Tang (reads as Ming) period shamus and judge. The pleasure I've had reading these novels has no less caused me to draft my own plot outlines (though more than that hasn't taken shape). Very good!

Yay... Re presentation underway...

Greetings, Tru-Believers!

My job is now semi-solid (being made of gellatin), and as a result, I will be re-presenting and re-compositing the origin JEB: SPACEPILOT story. This will take some time, but updates should begin appearing here shortly. I'll post a synopsis at some point, but suffice to say, it is a vehicle for surrealisymmetry and free-form art (and digital manipulations), but there are some traditional comic styles that show up from time to time.

In other news, The Iron Man movie has a fun, but possibly listless trailer out on Apple's Quicktime trailer listing (they still don't have "There Will Be Blood" on their rotation on last check). I'd run a link, but it will be dead all too soon... I'm a big George Tuska fan (and Iron Man junkie from the 70 - 80's). I basically "made the connection" to comics with #100 (feat. the Mandarin). Just another property that should have never been allowed to rot out... Artists of note include Johnny Craig (no relation?), George Tuska, Bob Layton, MD Bright (who saved the series), Dwayne Turner, and of course Jack King Kirby.