This is George in Down Factor and From Hell. (Second from right - next to Paul Bostaph from Slayer.) I had the good fortune to know George, wow, over 15 years ago through a series of coincidences. He's a really good guy and a huge part of the East Bay metal scene. (Here's Walking Dead off Ascent From Hell.)
Listen you idiots down in Oz, I saw these guys at the Whisky in LA, and then the rest of the world has been using them since then (e.g. Russia). Go to the show. If you're smart you won't give me a problem.
I'm in the middle of my interview cycle right now for psychiatry residencies, and one of my interviewers pointed me to the article that the movie KPAX was based on. You may remember this as the one where Kevin Spacey is a delusional patient who thinks he's an alien...or is he?
The movie actually annoyed me because (spoiler alert) they kept it neatly ambiguous, which I think is the lazy way out. More interesting is the true story that inspired the movie, The Jet Propelled Couch, a case study of a delusional patient which appeared in Harper's in 1954. (Since the 70s people have debated whether the anonymized patient in the article was actually science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith, and they have a decent case.) The psychiatrist who was treating the patient was himself a science fiction fan, and found himself eagerly awaiting installments from the patient's delusion. Ultimately the patient was cured of his delusion in exactly this way, when the psychiatrist found repeated internal contradictions in the material the patient was providing - for instance, in the distances of star systems from each other - but instead of saying to the patient "Aha! You have been caught and must now admit this is all nonsense!" the psychiatrist would suggest ways that the inconsistencies could be corrected - maybe the navigators who made the maps were using different units, and request that the patient correct the information for the next session. After enough of this, the patient finally realized he was making it all up.
This approach intrigued me because it works as a rhetorical approach with not-fully-delusional ideologues. Try this sometime. Instead of immediately pushing back against the declared beliefs, take them seriously, and follow their direct implications "out loud" for the benefit of the ideologue. This usually leads to glaring contradictions pretty quickly. This is a tough one for the ideologue, unless they're willing to come out and say "I demand you stop taking my ideas seriously!"
Many of us science fiction types enjoy learning the details of worlds and histories that don't exist, not to mention inventing our own. Scratch a science fiction fan and you may find a reluctant world-builder. But world-building doesn't require us to be delusional. (Articles on non-delusional world-building here.) I've met some frighteningly devoted Trekkies, but not a single one who thinks that Klingons existed. Then again, as a kid I did have the following odd experience: at about 14 years old, I had created a future universe where humans encountered the Ptranians, or the "space rats" as they were not undeservingly called, for their ferocity and hardiness. These unpleasant fellows evolved on a large moon of a gas giant orbiting Algedi, a place with violent, toxic geology and worse weather, and subsequently were very difficult to kill. Physically they were bipedal, covered with green and blue scales, with no hair but rather thick bristles that ran in a long mohawk-strip from their heads to their tails. In 2691 an Earth colony at 61 Cygni - to which we were only connected by light-speed transmissions - went silent, and then in 2712, the rats were here, attacking Earth. Anyway...one day, in the height of my fevered imaginings, I thought to myself "well if somehow NASA were to point some new state-of-the-art telescope at Algedi, they wouldn't see this planet and all the Ptranian ships right? They're not really there, right?" And I realized that for a few seconds I couldn't fully convince myself - didn't want to convince myself - that no, if there was anything at all orbiting Algedi, it wasn't space rats. It was a bizarre feeling of my thoughts about this being blocked. That scared the hell out of me. Fortunately my mind today is unclouded by delusional thoughts, which is important for someone as powerful, brilliant and handsome as myself.
All this does beg some questions about the linguistic problem of reference with respect to fiction - how can you say Yoda isn't 6 feet tall? He doesn't exist, he isn't any feet tall! - which seems (boringly) solved by recognizing that what we're really doing is interpreting inconsistent marks on a page that cause images in people's heads, which are extended according to assumed rules. Sometimes these rules are broken by enterprising writers (e.g. unreliable narrators) but somehow the contradictions and paradoxes thereby engendered do not cause the universe to implode in a pile of contradictions.
The real-life Hari Seldon is Peter Turchin, a man who aims to find the patterns in history. One of the requirements for Seldon's psychohistory was that the populations under observation didn't know of the predictions; in the same vein, can we apply patterns from the pre-industrial age to the modern world, or are all bets now off? Full article here at my socioeconomic blog The Late Enlightenment.
The late Christopher Hitchens said that everyone has a novel inside them, and in most cases that's where it should stay. In fictions of ideas, what's more common than rotten-to-the-core ideas is ideas that are kind of cool but might not merit a full development. The Idea Bird is a new tumbler specializing in bookless book blurbs. My favorite so far:
A scientist uses atomic decay detectors to build an insane quantity of random word generators, then speaks a question out loud. An insane quantity of software filters finds the generators which randomly give the most relevant answers. Bad generators are weeded out as "unlucky" and replaced. This goes on at computer speeds as long as it takes until there is one random generator that answers reliably 99.9% percent of the time. Since the spoken questions have no effect on random words pulled from atomic decay, the scientist announces the generator is indistinguishable from a sentient being, perhaps even God.
And while I'm at it, check out the DarkStar library and gaming club at UCSD, which is a central hub for all things awesome i.e. geeky on campus. Not surprisingly it's in the same building as frequent hosters of metal Che Cafe.
All these geeky groups in San Diego are getting too hard to keep track of (listed here earlier). Pretty soon we'll run the surfers and stoners out of town and people in San Francisco will start telling us to relax and read less.
If you want smart metal criticism and reccomendations, along with a healthy dose of discussion about the Singularity, von Neumann probes, thr Fermi paradox and the simulation argiment, you're in the right place. Don't believe me goddammit? Scroll down. By the time you realize what you're in for it will be TOO LATE!
It's actually called Nerd Metal. I mean how can it not be great just from that name. Saturdays 8-10pm on KUCI 88.9 FM. Last night they had some interviews with Orange County metal bands Cerebellion and Sorizon, along with playing some Devin Townsend, Synchestra, and other firm meaty chunks. Here's the show's website.
Check out Nomad 927, a San Diego experimental band. If you think of a very well thought-out Pelican with vocals, you'd be close. As cannot be pointed out enough, metal is awesome, and science fiction is awesome, and the song below has a famous insane computer in it at one point. What more do you need you idiot?!?! Their debut live performance (the anti blackout show) is tomorrow (today really), Tuesday, October 4 at 7:00pm at the Park Gallery in University Heights, San Diego. Click the little play button to hear their song Choke.
...and below is where to meet them. Moving here from San Francisco 2 years ago, I've often complained that San Diego culture isn't nearly geeky enough. Slowly but surely over the past few months I've discovered the nerdy corners and nooks of this place. There are lots of interesting, smart, fun, strange people here. In the interest of making San Diego a nerdier place, and to save you the trouble of digging, I highly recommend the following organizations to meet your fellow oddballs, science geeks, metalheads, and deviants:
The San Diego New Atheists and Agnostics - a predominantly social organization that continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Atheist groups are always great places to meet interesting folks. General secular group events (including this one's) are listed centrally at SDCoR's calendar (the San Diego Coalition of Reason).
3RDspace is a cool venue in Normal Heights that hosts groups, art shows, you name it. Look at their calendar to see what's coming up.
Lesswrong - whether or not you're in San Diego, this rationality blog lists meetups for cities around the world, and some have been in San Diego and Irvine.
Sifter - gathers interesting folks and often focuses on exercise and outdoors stuff.
Should you decide to go to any of their events, feel free to say it was Mike and his awesome blog Speculative Nonfiction that steered you there. This will gain you immediate credibility.
True confession, not only did I actually not mind Creed but I performed covers (singing Scott Stapp's part) with current Cast Iron Crow bassist Joseph Evans on guitar. (Next show, September 17th at the Englander in San Leandro.)
I just realized I'm the Ron McGovney of Cast Iron Crow.
Like Entombed Grand Magus has some very American-hard-rock-sounding elements, although moreso than Entombed they come across at times like a NWOSDM-infused version of Skid Row (the good elements of Skid Row). Mountains Be My Throne is another good one.
With others, they'll be on a panel called "Is the Singularity Possible?", a popular topic on this blog (a few relevant posts here, here and here). 10pm Saturday in Austin; schedule here.
