Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

It is high time to recognize that we humans are far better at doing than understanding, and better at tinkering than inventing. But we don’t know it. We truly live under the illusion of order believing that planning and forecasting are possible. We are scared of the random, yet we live from its fruits. We are so scared of the random that we create disciplines that try to make sense of the past–but we ultimately fail to understand it, just as we fail to see the future. (Full Article)

I’m beginning to think I don’t recognize often enough the role randomness plays in our universe. But randomness is unsettling, it makes me uncomfortable, it feels so out of control somehow.

The Black Swan: Quotes & Warnings that the Imbeciles Chose to Ignore

"My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know...." (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race).

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/imbeciles.htm

Shattering the Bell Curve
The power law rules.

Mr. Taleb is fascinated by the rare but pivotal events that characterize life in the power-law world. He calls them Black Swans, after the philosopher Karl Popper's observation that only a single black swan is required to falsify the theory that "all swans are white" even when there are thousands of white swans in evidence. Provocatively, Mr. Taleb defines Black Swans as events (such as the rise of the Internet or the fall of LTCM) that are not only rare and consequential but also predictable only in retrospect. We never see them coming, but we have no trouble concocting post hoc explanations for why they should have been obvious. Surely, Mr. Taleb taunts, we won't get fooled again. But of course we will.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009979

Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again? Have we no choice but to play the phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America –burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again.

Are we doomed to do it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?

“Among things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the. future”
Kurt Vonnegut

mtmynd wrote:i wonder why all comics are called 'comics' when there is very little comical about so many of their stories? funny.

Foul Play!
The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics!

When originally published, E.C. Comics titles like Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and Weird Science became best-selling titles, embraced by readers for their macabre wit and stunning illustration. Eventually, E.C. Comics ran afoul of a full Senate Subcommittee investigating (but never proving!) the link between comic books and juvenile delinquency, but not before winning a legion of fans that still treasure E.C.'s output. Foul Play! demonstrates -- in glorious, gory detail -- exactly why these are among the most beloved comics stories ever published.

one of those jerks wrote:I still remember one comic book episode from the fifties.

A fireman wraps his arms and legs around the pole in a fire house and slides down. His enemy seeking revenge has put a razor edge into the pole. I forgot the gory details, maybe there was a picture showing his amputated limbs.

Have you noticed how many TV shows these days have autopsy scenes?