Stephen King - "On Writing"

Paperback. Fast read. Enjoyable enough for a few nuts 'n bolts, but nothing special. Not a book I'll quickly return to.

strange playlist: Floral Canary Sludge

http://8tracks.com/thelizardking/floral-canary-sludge

• The Grass Roots - "Let's Live for Today" - extremely flower power and yet I liked it. There was a haunting feeling to it
• Emily Wells - "Let Your Guard Down" - high wailed voice, but interesting. Sad. Should look her up.

Ctenoid

"Ctenoid” means “having an edge with projections like the teeth of a comb.” It could refer to rooster combs or the scales of certain fish.

Anosognosia

Anosognosia is a condition in which a person who suffers from a disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability

scotoma

scotoma, a blind spot in our field of vision that we are unaware of

Dunning-Kruger effect

our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence

If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/

Dunning:

The notion of unknown unknowns really does resonate with me, and perhaps the idea would resonate with other people if they knew that it originally came from the world of design and engineering rather than Rumsfeld.
If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance. 

To me, unknown unknowns enter at two different levels. The first is at the level of risk and problem. Many tasks in life contain uncertainties that are known — so-called “known unknowns.” These are potential problems for any venture, but they at least are problems that people can be vigilant about, prepare for, take insurance on, and often head off at the pass. Unknown unknown risks, on the other hand, are problems that people do not know they are vulnerable to.
Unknown unknowns also exist at the level of solutions. People often come up with answers to problems that are o.k., but are not the best solutions. The reason they don’t come up with those solutions is that they are simply not aware of them. Stefan Fatsis, in his book “Word Freak,” talks about this when comparing everyday Scrabble players to professional ones. As he says: “In a way, the living-room player is lucky . . . He has no idea how miserably he fails with almost every turn, how many possible words or optimal plays slip by unnoticed. The idea of Scrabble greatness doesn’t exist for him.” (p. 128)
Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge. The average detective does not realize the clues he or she neglects. The mediocre doctor is not aware of the diagnostic possibilities or treatments never considered. The run-of-the-mill lawyer fails to recognize the winning legal argument that is out there. People fail to reach their potential as professionals, lovers, parents and people simply because they are not aware of the possible. This is one of the reasons I often urge my student advisees to find out who the smart professors are, and to get themselves in front of those professors so they can see what smart looks like. 

 

Is an “unknown unknown” beyond anything I can imagine? Or am I confusing the “unknown unknowns” with the “unknowable unknowns?” Are we constituted in such a way that there are things we cannot know? Perhaps because we cannot even frame the questions we need to ask?

 

Hunter S. Thompson - "Hell's Angels - A strange and terrible saga"

"The girls stood quietly in a group, wearing tight slacks, kerchiefs and sleeveless blouses or sweaters, with boots and dark glasses, uplift bras, bright lipstick and the wary expressions of half- bright souls turned mean and nervous from too much bitter wisdom in too few years."

After just 30 pages it is already a wonderful read, clearly showing his markmanship. Yes, people will always remember him as a crazy dope fiend, but he had 100% journalist blood running through his veins. He disects the media circus and the events in a wonderful way.

"There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency."

"But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alientaion is likely to be very popular - especially among people young enough to shrug off the ugilt they're supposed to feel for devaiting from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place. Let the old people wallow in the shame of having failed. The laws they made to preserve a myth are no longer pertinent; the so-called American Way begins to seem like a dike made of cheap cement, with many more leaks than the law has fingers to plug. America has been breeding mass anomie since the ned of World War II. It is not a political thing, but the sence of new realities, of urgency, anger and sometimes desperation in a society where even the highest authorities seem to grasping at straws."

"But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right… and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely  see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it… howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica… letting off now, watching for cops, but onlyuntil the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge… The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The other - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions."

An amazing read, because the intensity of his voice works so well to power the story, to bring you the intensity of those moments that us citizens never get to experience. 

psych guitars

http://8tracks.com/james-holroyd/ride-the-highway

• Cian Nugent & The Cosmos - "Double Horse"
  reminds me of The Doors, the slow buildup, the hints of a melody percolating through

Chris Forsyth - "Paranoid Cat"

long spinning audioscapes based on guitar and moderate strings & rhythm.

Quite cool while coding.

http://familyvineyard.bandcamp.com/album/paranoid-cat

"Front street drone" is a bit screechy...

"Heavy Metal" (1981)

Crazy animated film consisted of four or five sequences in which the "ultimate evil" incarnated in a green sphere is showed. Lots of violence and sex, best enjoyed with a few good beers.

Jeanette Winterson - "The Daylight Gate"

Based on the true events of the most famous Lancaster Witch trials (August Assize) this short novel follows the noble woman Alice Nutter who was tried and hanged for witchcraft together with a group of poor women.

Though not so in her usual style, still captivating and beautiful. Less poetic? Still intense language. Short simple sentences with depth.