Rasta Johnny Hempseed

A fellow artist creates wigs for performances. I helped her document in exchange for pictures of me wearing it. Funny thing is, about forty years ago, this was pretty close to reality. Except I was a blonde.

Yes, I was beautiful once... for about two weeks in 1975. Now I just look like a goofy old guy wearing a wig.

From Scratch?

The cast glass is here! The cast glass is here! Things are going to start happening to me now!



I know preppers get a lot of shit with their doom-monger end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-is-a-coming reputations, but I can sympathize with them. A lot of them are just planning for emergencies. Considering retail stores carry only three days worth of food, it makes sense to prepare for a two to four week delay in the supply chain. Any longer than that seems pointless though. If conditions are such that you need a year's or a decade's worth of supplies, I figure that will be the least of your worries.

But I appreciate the just-in-case attitude. I myself am a prepper, but in a different way. Some people collect things, like wristwatches or Bugattis. Me, I collect skills. I figure that puts me way ahead of most preppers that are just stockpiling (but I'm guessing most also value survival skills). Me, I value not survival skills, which really for a generalist scavenger/predator such are ourselves is almost second nature and easy to pick up, but civilizational survival skills.

So, when uglyblackjohn mentioned that I make stuff... from scratch, well, that isn't exactly true, but it makes for a good exercise. What if I did want to make one of my bronze pieces literally from scratch? What would be the ground rules here?

Well, actually, in post-apocalyptic world, with all of our trashed stuff laying around, metals already smelted and purified, tools at hand, probably some fuel and generator and electricity available, well, that's just too easy. How about we eliminate the majority of conveniences that the modern web of technology places before us? I'm figuring setting the wayback machine to partly 1830 or so, with bits going back to, say, 5000BCE.

That means, here I am, 20 miles west of Chicago, with no tools, no metal, no coke or coal or oil or gas, no electricity, and I am to make a bronze critter. What do I got to do?

I'll need metal, for starters. A kiln or furnace. A smelter. Wax. Tools. Fuel. That's the minimum.

Let's start with metal. The bronze we use is Everdur, 94% copper, 4% silicon, 2% manganese, a marine bronze noted for it's resistance to corrosion. Aside from public works, it's also used for ship's propellors among many other things. I can't make that. I can probably make the old ancient bronze which is 60% copper, 40% tin. Where would I find. Here where I am, bedrock is a good hundred feet down underneath glacial till, clay and sand, and the bedrock that is there is limestone. Not much use even if I could get to it. The clay and sand I will take, as I will need that for my kiln and/or furnace.

Well, guess what, I don't know where there is a ready source. It would seem that knowing skills is not enough, knowing other people that do know this shit would be better. (So, where's Mister Dee Ray Metallica when you need him?)

It seems my do it yourself project has already evolved into a do it with others project. Funny that.

Well, actually, I do know the UP of Michigan has very nice veins of copper, parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota as well. I might have to google where I can find tin stone ore, but as it so happens, younger brother spent some time on Isle Royale in the middle of Lake Superior (he is fascinated with moose and wolves), and he told me there are both copper and tin mines on that island. Great!

Not so great! How the fuck am I going to get there? I could a raft out of logs, but, uh, hmm, ship building is not in my skill set. I can ride a horse, so that's gets me up to the shore of the lake at least in short amount of time, and let's haul shit without ruining my back. I just have to find a horse, and then find someone who can help with the boat.

Okay, let's assume somehow that all worked out and here I am back in Illinois with a couple dozen pounds of ore. (One the assumption that I only need about two pounds of bronze). Do I know how to smelt copper and tin? No. Shit. Better find someone who does. Let's assume I do.

I suppose I'm going to have help out making the smelter, which I would assume could be done in a sealed sagger in a wood fired kiln just like you make wootz steel. So, I can make charcoal. I can do that. I can build a kiln from sand and clay. Where do I get the tools?

Some tools I could make out of wood, but I would prefer metal. I don't have any metal. Perhaps a handaxe, or a stone chopper. I don't how to knap flint. I suppose I could learn it, but I'm told it's harder than it looks to get a good stone tool. Jesus, I've pushed my tech date back two million years, haven't I?

Alright, so let's say I got my stone axes, and sicles, and blades, and knives, and I've cut wood, and carved tools, and dug clay and heaped sand, and my connections have provided me with ingots of bronze, and I'm ready to go, right?

I need wax to shape for the lost wax process (which, thankfully, I know how to do using the Old Skool process still used in West Africa of dipping wax into a clay slurry and sprinkling with sand to make a stucco, dry, repeat, then fire out the wax). I currently use microcrystalline wax, which is a petroleum byproduct made by skimming off the solids from a vacuum distillation process. I got no petroleum. I got  no still. I got no engine to create a vacuum. I don't how to make any these, not easily. By trial and error, sure.

Maybe instead, I should use bees wax. That I'm sure I can find. Probably got stung a lot, but...

Okay now I'm set. Ready to melt metal and cast my piece. And all it took was a few years and either a lot of barter, or a lot of labor, probably far more labor than I had ever anticipated.

Modern society rules.

An Observation Continued

My brother has a dog, a Boston terrier, which is, I'm sure, convinced that I'm a total idiot. It's His sole purpose in life is to have fun playing catch. When I show up, it he approaches with a ratty old tennis ball in it's his mouth, which I refuse to take the clue. It He gets more and more frustrated and insistent until I finally give in and throw the ball. What took me so long? Clearly, I'm an idiot.

I'm sure cows must think the same thing. "Milk me, you idiot", they low to me. Similarly cats, chickens, pigeons, squirrels, and really almost any animal that has consistent contact with us must think that we are just as dumb as a box of rocks.

My surmise is, if or when hyperintelligent synthetic brains or computers are developed/spontaneously emerge, we humans will consider them fucking stupid as hell, complete dolts, clueless morons.

I'm sure the Roman plebes, the lower classes that worked for a living, must have felt the same towards the monied and propertied patricians. In the previous essay, on a revolt and secession of the laboring classes in Rome of the 5th century BCE, it was assumed that Gaius Menenius Agrippa's fable of the idle belly was about the patrician class. However, I have to ask the question if it was, or if the belly analogy was about the lower classes and an intestinal revolt?

Reason I ask that is Gaius seems to have a rather enlightened, clear-eyed, almost apologetic attitude toward his upper class compatriots, the idle rich, far too modern a view. My suspicion is the fable is a realization, an admission that the lower classes apparently serve a purpose within Roman society. Reason I say that is at the time, the patricians would have considered themselves the truly important portion of Roman society. They were, after all, the main military force used for defense of the homeland and expansion of the frontiers (Rome at the time relied upon private militias, and a standing army was far in the future), the priesthood and sole arbiter with the gods (propitiation of the gods took up an inordinately large amount of time in Roman society, and the aristocracy held all priestly positions, all ceremonial and auguring duties rested solely with them), a hereditary clientele/patronage system existed with the aristocrats calling the shots (job creators), and, of course, all publicly held lands were administered by the Senate (and obviously to promote the general welfare, all for the public good, right?). All in all, the plebs, the lower classes, were but mere scenery, the stage and sets upon which the real actors, the aristocracy performed. Part of the background to be ignored, and an absurdity that they should rebel at all, as if the very trees and rocks picked up and left! So, it must have seen exceedingly large-hearted and progressive in the extreme for Gaius to recognize the lowly proles might actually in some lazy fashion contribute to society after all.

At least that's my take, times being what they were.  Fast forward to the 17th century, and honestly, not much changed, did it? You still have the landed and monied class in a position of privilege, not really paying much attention to the sturdy yeoman farmers, laborers, and mechanics that naturally gave some form of support and sustainment to the Founding Fathers, granted, occasionally underfoot and annoyingly vocal, but useful, I suppose, in helping greater things to be accomplished. Say what you will about the efficacy of the Constitution, if is clearly a pre-industrial, medieval document written to assure and protect the rights and privileges of the American elites. Otherwise, why not support universal suffrage and egalitarianism - the voting rights of the property-less, the freeing of slaves, and granting of equal treatment to women and other undesirables? And that's all right there in the Constitution, right?

And that would, in turn, explain the fork in the road this nation took in 1857, when the twin competing stimulus packages (and visions) stood before Congress, of America as a slave empire, or America as an absorber of cheap peoples to run machines. It could have gone to the former. The South, for the first half of the 19th century, held all the cards in an America whose chief export - at least until 1914 - was agricultural produce. We forget that some of the richest people on the planet were Southern planters with enormous capital in land, produce, and slaves.

I've often wondered how that dark world would have played into the future, had the vision of slave empire come to pass. Would we as a nation still have a giant asshole on the twenty dollar bill? Or would he have moved up in denomination? I've no doubt America would be a banana republic, and certainly with a titled aristocracy. Would there now be foment and revolution and strife in our territories and dominions throughout the Western hemisphere? Or would that have happened in the 1920s? Or not all? Could it be that by now, as in Rome, some 40% of all American citizens would be slaves, with a market in nearly every town? Who can say? It's probably worth a book. But I can't see that world, despite all of our failings here, being better than our world.

 Of course, it was not meant to be. I've got to look to the Industrial Revolution for part of the change, although I've never bought into the economic argument that slavery was inefficient, considering modern statistics. I think the real kicker was the telegraph and the steam engine, which allowed modern bureaucracy and the corporate state.

Ever seen the nerves in primitive animals like the squid giant axon? The nerves are that big because they are not insulated, the leak electricity down the message path. Along come the glial cells, almost like some aliens from another planet, and encase the stodgy nerves in an amazing support system. Interestingly, the glial cells in our nervous system out number neurons about ten to one, about the same as plebs to aristos in ancient Rome, or common citizens to Revolutionary aristocrats statesmen. I'd like to make that my number, Kurman's number, like Dunbar's number, were it not so far off from present day's number of, what, 99 to 1?

An Observation

The founding fathers admired and emulated Rome - a republic that lasted, more or less, some 500 years before it devolved permanently into empire. This is not to say that the Roman republic had it's periods of suppression and despotism (and by modern standards, the whole of it's history was one long sordid affair).

Nevertheless, the trend in Rome, for a time, was increased democratization and the promotion of egalitarian sympathies.

Sometime in perhaps the fifth century BCE, a remarkable speech was given by a certain Gaius Menenius Agrippa, a member of the aristocracy, though of moderate views, and the speech went like this:

"Once upon a time, the members of the human body did not agree together,as they do now, but each had its own thoughts and words to express itself. All the various parts resented the fact that they should have the worry and trouble and sheer hard work of providing everything for the belly, which remained idly among them, with nothing to do except enjoy the pleasant things they gave it. The discontented members plotted together that the hand should carry no food to the mouth, that the mouth should accept nothing that was offered it and the teeth should refuse to chew anything. Because of their anger they tried to subdue the belly by starvation only to find that they all and the entire body wasted away. From this it was that clear that the belly did indeed have a useful purpose to perform. Yes, it receives food, but, by the same token, it nourishes other members and gives back to every part of the body, through its veins, the blood it made by the process of digestion. On this blood we live and thrive".

Now, what is this fable about? Is Gaius referring to the idle rich as the belly? Or the poor?

To put it in context, the republic had suffered a series of military setbacks that resulted in economic stagnation. The lower classes and laborers - the farmers and artisans, peasants, the poor and disadvantaged, suffering under crushing debt and other restrictions imposed upon them by the aristocrats, boycotted Rome. They literally abandoned the city, offering no violence or provocations, they went on strike, and left the upper classes to their own devices.

So, within the context, it is clearly the ruling elite that is the soft belly of Rome.

Would that speech be interpreted differently today, here in America, where the cultivated attitude towards the poor would seem to suggest that they sit idly by, living off of government largesse? And if so, how would this fable be received today?

Busy Little Creature

The glass is ordered, ships out Friday. Bullseye gave me a discount on the order. Very nice.

I have three plaster/silica glass molds ready to fill and fire. I just completed the wax for a fourth today.

This one I've been calling "Mushroomtron". Don't have a proper Linnaean binomial classification for it yet. I'll work on that. Here's another view of the wax:

Kind of reminds me of fossil crinoids.

I'll get the glass mold poured tomorrow and start on the wax for number five. With any luck, I'll be casting glass end of next week!

Mechanicules and Machinerettes

This essay might skirt dangerously close to an artist's statement. Within the fictional construction/rationalization of creating all these little critters was the idea that they acted together as a community or consortium that in turn created a metabolism or quasi-stable non-equilibrial flux control system that allows fantasy machines to survive and thrive. Not having any expertise in biology or systems thinking or graph theory or networks pretty much guarantees that I will be fascinated by all that - but without having to do any of the heavy lifting. However, I do note that the trends in thinking about technology are shifting towards the worldview of living systems (see Kevin Kelly's thoughts about The Technium, or the fact that industry trend journals now regularly speak of technological ecosystems).

This makes sense as 1) technology is created by living systems, and 2) once tools get sophisticated enough, they enter the realm of behaviors inhabited by living systems. (I've talked about this before. Want to see what the Technological Singularity looks like? Study microbiology).

So, when I thought of making these little suckers, it was always in the sense of a community of things rather than individuals. And source topics would have to be the gut and its inhabitants (our Second Brain), or the neurovascular system of our brain and (all those weird - almost alien - glial cells that suffuse/support/supplement those stodgy neurons of ours). And it was always in the sense of a community of things that think (not individually, but collectively). So what are they thinking about, and what are they doing? I DON'T KNOW!



So, when I was making each of these things, either unconsciously, consciously but unwittingly, or wittingly but unintentionally, I was thinking of them as a group. And it kind of shows, what with each having either a tentacle or a grabber, or a handle of some type, or some way for them to be embedded together. And perhaps that's where I should go with them, just make a shitload and pile together in some kind of techno-biolfilm, a siliceous/mucilaginous layer of commensal sophistication.

Ooh. Eek! But still, not really all creepy, right? Or is it? maybe I'm unconsciously making plastic gyre trash.

In any case, that's probably what I should end up doing with the cast glass prepared slides. The bronzes seem to be trophies, stand alone dead representations of the mechanical creatures, but the cast glass slides, I'm thinking now, should be in vitro/vivo/situ community snapshots. Messy. Colorful. Alive. Populated.

Refractory mold waiting for the glass

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Post-Mortem

I've talked about Bose-Einstein condensates before, and actually, kind of salivated over them, thinking that some Next Big Thing will result from them. And I think I've mentioned fermionic condensates as well. But I'd have to google myself on that topic, and I just don't have the time. So, at the risk of repeating myself, I think fermionic condensates might be big shit as well. (And fermionic condensates (FCs) would be like a degenerate electron gas, supercooled and paired up to behave themselves, but they can't unify the way a BEC does due to the Pauli exclusion principle. With me? Good).

Well, it occurs to be that, as long as you have your electrons all stacked in the available energy states, as in a supercooled example, then you get your FC. Of course, what's really required is that the electrons be stacked relative to each other. In other words, they don't need to be supercooled temperature-wise, they just have to be supercooled relative to each other's energy states. And, in fact, there is now a way to do that with tunable short-pulse beam of electrons that are moving at close to the speed of light. These "cool" relativistic beams of ultrashort pulses, done with a fucking really nice tight tuning mechanism, should produce relativistic fermionic condensates. And that, dearies, should make for some really awesome applications, like superconducting charges without the materials, I'm guessing. But then, if I thought of it, I sure others much, much smarter have as well. Stellar tectonics, anyone?

Okay, okay, time to cover my Kickstarter post-mortem. It was a success, but also a failure. It was failure in the sense that kickstarter is about strangers giving you monies for your project. That didn't happen with me. Friends, family, and acquaintances made up the vast majority of contributors. So, it was my failure to adequately plan out the campaign. Not that I didn't read up and do research. We Kurmans are notorious for advance preparation when it comes to a new endeavor that interests us. Why, I've known my brother to practically put in expert hours (10,000 plus) in book-learning prior to tackling a new thing that he gets hooked on. Almost overnight. I kind of do the same thing, but I notice I have a particular blind-spot. I will do all of the research, examining and planning for all of the aspects, drilling down on every facet, covering every base - except one. And in that sub-category, I will make a beginner's mistake. Quite simply because, well, I don't know. What I do know is it must have something to do with my fascination in overall systems thinking and analysis, but not quite being fascinated with one boring detail.

So, in the kickstarter project, I think I did well on prepping the material rewards, not so well on presentation and marketing my target group.

Bill Hicks on Marketing:



You would think, as an artist, and having said many times that presentation is 90% of the whole deal, that I would have spent more time on polishing the videos. But honestly, I just wanted to get past that, and get the product vision out there. I could have done a much better job, but felt that, given pretty much everyone and his uncle is now kickstarter, that I better get something out NOW.

And I really, really didn't do a good job on identifying my demographic. What is my demographic? Well, the creepy-crawlie/Charles Adams/Edward Gorey/H.R. Giger/maybe-kinda Carlos Huante fan base out there. Instead, I had people telling me they liked my steampunk robot animals.

Steampunk? WTF? Well, steampunkish, in the sense that I used bronze, mistaken as brass, but honestly, do you see any goggles, any 19th-century design, any zeppelins and high-pressure steam engine shit in these things? I don't. And maybe that's my blind spot. But I'm going for the ultra-violet biomechanical crowd, the mutant metal creepy crawlie crowd, the Prometheus crowd.

Steam powered?

Degenerate fermionic condensate, Cooper-paired neutron fusion, matter/antimatter powered, bitches! With cigarettes and booze!

Okay, so, given that the Intertubes today are powered by photos, I really screwed the pooch by not targeting the tumblers, snapchats, and twits. I did do a half-hearted tweet campaign, but I just couldn't go fishing for those paramecia. ( Speaking of which, there were some nasty and infantile comments on reddit, and to be honest, twenty years ago I'd have engaged in a two-week-long flamewar with those losers, but, uh, fuck 'em. I notice it's becoming easier and easier to ignore over-priveleged, pretentiously pompous, pampered, undertalented, simpering little buttholes and not react to them).

And as far as social networks are concerned, my anecdotal experience is that the facebook and google+ and living social and all the rest aren't quite the Kevin Bacon dissipators we are all led to beleive. My guess is, I got to two degree of separation before the whole message drowned in noise.

My thoughts, anyway. And unlikely it is I will do another campaign, maybe not much an analysis.

Oh, yeah, pictures of machinerettes (which are little versions of mechanicules):

In Color...

...and in Black and White