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Brainslur
Looking for some free publicity,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whitecrow0? :)
Brainslur is a musical project, the work ofwhitecrow0's husband. It's very good music, and very hard to place in a particular genre - there are elements of rock and electronica, and influences from classical and other genres entirely. Interested because, well, it's good music.
Cities as Creatures
An area of science, or an aspect of science, that I like, is something like an applied analogy. "What if we assume that economies are like ecosystems?", and the like. One of these assumes that cities are lifeforms. If you take the rough definition of something that reacts to stimuli, reproduces, consumes and excretes, cities can definitely be considered alive.
However, it's the next step in the thinking that's good for me - if a city is alive, then it has health, and organs. So you can consider the new shopping centre in Dundrum, for instance, as an organ that enables a flow of necessities in the city, taking in one kind of good and putting out others. The DART and Luas lines become blood vessels, ambulances, fire brigades and wrecking crews are white cells, building contractors are like bone marrow (or cancer cells, in other cases) and so on. You can actually arrive at useful conclusions a lot faster this way - for instance, considering it thus, it's rather more essential that blood clots and cholesterol (traffic jams) be prevented, because they impede the health of the city on an ongoing basis, and can lead to heart attacks (sudden decay of urban areas, or massive emigration to the suburbs).
eBay
eBay fascinates me in much the same way as all virtual communities do. It's the first proper global marketplace - we have global shops, and have had for years, but that's not a marketplace. Marketplaces have stalls, not shop windows, and stallholders you can talk to. You've a better chance of finding a real bargain - and a better chance of being swindled as well. And there are whole subcultures within eBay - folk who scour junk shops and markets in real space in order to resell goods online, and an even more refined breed who scan eBay itself for goods going at under the normal price in order to resell, or sell on different, more specialised sites.
There's almost nothing you can't get on eBay, if you have the cash, and possibly a US postal address.
Otters
I was told I had an otter totem, many years ago, by a guy who claimed to be an Ottowa shaman, in the town of Mystic, which is in either Rhode Isalnd or Massachusetts. While the cynicism of later knowledge leads me to doubt his Ottowa-ness, let alone his shamanism, the otter is still a good totem, representative animal, or spirit guide for me, and I've grown into the habit of it by now.
Besides, otters are incredibly cool animals anyway - there are a few in Dublin Zoo who I could happily spend all day watching.
Oneiromancy
Oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams. Dream interpretation fascinates me, because it's one area that I can't look at and apply a bullshit filter. I don't think you can predict the future from dreams, but since they're coming from the subconscious, you can probably work out things from them that you haven't consciously realised. Except that there's no pattern, no reliable mode of interpretation - there isn't even a set of archetypal characteristics to riff off, as there is in rune reading, astrology, tarot, or the like. So they're this huge, floating set of differing interpretations, Jungian and Freudian material, folklore, superstition, and then the edges of science, with REM sleep monitoring and so on.
Looking for some free publicity,
whitecrow0? :) Brainslur is a musical project, the work of
whitecrow0's husband. It's very good music, and very hard to place in a particular genre - there are elements of rock and electronica, and influences from classical and other genres entirely. Interested because, well, it's good music.Cities as Creatures
An area of science, or an aspect of science, that I like, is something like an applied analogy. "What if we assume that economies are like ecosystems?", and the like. One of these assumes that cities are lifeforms. If you take the rough definition of something that reacts to stimuli, reproduces, consumes and excretes, cities can definitely be considered alive.
However, it's the next step in the thinking that's good for me - if a city is alive, then it has health, and organs. So you can consider the new shopping centre in Dundrum, for instance, as an organ that enables a flow of necessities in the city, taking in one kind of good and putting out others. The DART and Luas lines become blood vessels, ambulances, fire brigades and wrecking crews are white cells, building contractors are like bone marrow (or cancer cells, in other cases) and so on. You can actually arrive at useful conclusions a lot faster this way - for instance, considering it thus, it's rather more essential that blood clots and cholesterol (traffic jams) be prevented, because they impede the health of the city on an ongoing basis, and can lead to heart attacks (sudden decay of urban areas, or massive emigration to the suburbs).
eBay
eBay fascinates me in much the same way as all virtual communities do. It's the first proper global marketplace - we have global shops, and have had for years, but that's not a marketplace. Marketplaces have stalls, not shop windows, and stallholders you can talk to. You've a better chance of finding a real bargain - and a better chance of being swindled as well. And there are whole subcultures within eBay - folk who scour junk shops and markets in real space in order to resell goods online, and an even more refined breed who scan eBay itself for goods going at under the normal price in order to resell, or sell on different, more specialised sites.
There's almost nothing you can't get on eBay, if you have the cash, and possibly a US postal address.
Otters
I was told I had an otter totem, many years ago, by a guy who claimed to be an Ottowa shaman, in the town of Mystic, which is in either Rhode Isalnd or Massachusetts. While the cynicism of later knowledge leads me to doubt his Ottowa-ness, let alone his shamanism, the otter is still a good totem, representative animal, or spirit guide for me, and I've grown into the habit of it by now.
Besides, otters are incredibly cool animals anyway - there are a few in Dublin Zoo who I could happily spend all day watching.
Oneiromancy
Oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams. Dream interpretation fascinates me, because it's one area that I can't look at and apply a bullshit filter. I don't think you can predict the future from dreams, but since they're coming from the subconscious, you can probably work out things from them that you haven't consciously realised. Except that there's no pattern, no reliable mode of interpretation - there isn't even a set of archetypal characteristics to riff off, as there is in rune reading, astrology, tarot, or the like. So they're this huge, floating set of differing interpretations, Jungian and Freudian material, folklore, superstition, and then the edges of science, with REM sleep monitoring and so on.