I have a feeling that a few more sales this week would not only put us solidly in the top 100 in the first category, but could earn the book a space among some of the greats in the genre along with Kurt Vonnegut, Carl Hiaasen, Ray Bradbury, Bret Easton Ellis, Vladimir Nabokov, Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Umberto Eco!
If you haven’t purchased a copy yet, but want to help support our efforts to get the book out there, now is the time to take the plunge.
If you’re a Kindle Unlimited member, keep in mind that you can read the ebook for free! If you’re not a member, you can read it now by trying the Amazon Kindle Unlimited 30-Day Free Trial.
This afternoon on the Food Network, I saw this surprising and shocking commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HyH5v_WCj4
I was so surprised that I actually had to rewind and rewatch it to make sure I’d actually heard it correctly.
Given the casting and the bright cinematography reminiscent of a Saturday Night Live skit (particularly with the talented and heavily underrated Evan Arnold), I was hoping to have a nice little laugh, but I was stunned by the tag line at the end. And no, I’m not talking about the advertising agency’s designated tagline “Booyah!”, which cleverly buries the lede; I’m talking about the tagline they designed to be remembered and the one which threw me: “Bush’s Baked Beans: The Vegetable Kids Love.”
While technically correct in so many of the wrong ways based on the USDA’s definition of vegetables, this commercial and its definition of vegetable belies the spirit in which the vast majority of American viewers are going to view and understand it. (And I’ll freely admit that at any given time, I’ve got up to two quarts of cooked beans in my refrigerator and a massive 25 pound bag of dried beans in the larder.)
I’ll at least give them credit that the dish served in the commercial did feature chicken as the protein, which by the USDA guidelines then pushes the beans into the “vegetable” column rather than the protein column in this meal. And I’ll further credit them that the serving sizes are almost reasonable for children of this age, though I suspect that from a commercial production standpoint, the small servings were more a function of trying to better feature the beans on the plate. However, if this is a balanced dinner, I’m guessing that the children aren’t getting their USDA RDA for “true” vegetables and fruit and are drastically overdosing on protein.
Fortunately, this commercial isn’t as egregious as Cheetos suggesting that they’re part of the vegetable food group because they’re made out of corn byproduct (incidentally, they have a pitiful Overall Nutritional Quality Index of 4!), but it does leave us on the terribly slippery slope that probably isn’t helping the overall American diet.
Beans and peas are the mature forms of legumes. They include kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), split peas and lentils. They are available in dry, canned, and frozen forms. These foods are excellent sources of plant protein, and also provide other nutrients such as iron and zinc. They are similar to meats, poultry, and fish in their contribution of these nutrients. Therefore, they are considered part of the Protein Foods Group. Many people consider beans and peas as vegetarian alternatives for meat. However, they are also considered part of the Vegetable Group because they are excellent sources of dietary fiber and nutrients such as folate and potassium. These nutrients, which are often low in the diet of many Americans, are also found in other vegetables.
Because of their high nutrient content, consuming beans and peas is recommended for everyone, including people who also eat meat, poultry, and fish regularly. The USDA Food Patterns classify beans and peas as a subgroup of the Vegetable Group. The USDA Food Patterns also indicate that beans and peas may be counted as part of the Protein Foods Group. Individuals can count beans and peas as either a vegetable or a protein food.
Yesterday, along with my friend Henry James Korn, I attended the opening of the BC Space Gallery exhibition Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance, and it was fantastic! If you’ve got time to see it sometime in the next few weeks until it closes on May 20th, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. I don’t think I’ve experienced so much shock and amazement at an exhibition in a long time.
Sadly, Henry won’t be there doing a live reading of his new novel Amerikan Krazy every day for the next month, but you’ll be continually astounded for the entire time you’re there emoting over all of the work on display in an exhibition that is not only aptly named but touches on many aspects of the cultural zeitgeist.
Jeff Gillete, Desert Debris Dismayland Castle
I walked through the gallery half a dozen times over four hours and was continually amazed by new things I’d run into that I somehow hadn’t seen on my first passes, or I’d experience new emotions in pieces I’d spent time studying after coming back to them after viewing others.
For those attending, I hope you’ll notice the experience begins almost as soon as you open the door, it continues even for those who visit the restrooms(!), and it doesn’t end until you’re dumbfounded even as you leave the gallery–in fact, I was so intrigued that I walked back up the stairs to leave a second time.
I was particularly enamored by many of the Glenn Brooks pieces, a fantastic video by Max Papeschi, and the haunting work of Tom Lamb, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the gallery.
Below is a small sampling of some snapshots I took (along with a few professional shots), but don’t let the poor quality of my photography detract from experiencing it more viscerally in person. (Click photos to enlarge and view slideshow.)
Jeff Gillete, Desert Debris Dismayland Castle
Max Papeschi, Friendly-fire
Max Papeschi, Just Married
Jorg Dubin, Corporate Clown
Glenn Brooks, Equal Justice
Lynn Kubacek, Conversations with My Mother (2004)
Glenn Brooks, Adding Human Costs (2004)
Straight jacket with hood
Henry Korn poses with a “Corporate Clown”
Sponsored Warfare
Here’s the original invitation from Mark Chamberlain and the BC Space Gallery in Laguna Beach:
Dear Friends of BC Space
…Here we go again, as go we must.
BC Space Gallery is proud to present Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance featuring the work of over twenty notable southland artists.
There will be an opening reception on Sunday, March 20, MMXVI, from 1-5 PM in celebration of the Vernal Equinox when our planet once again achieves balance between light and dark.
At the opening, from 2-4 PM, Henry James Korn will launch his new book Amerikan Krazy after which this show was named and thematically assembled. Henry’s comic masterpiece picks up where George Orwell, Jules Verne, and Edward Abbey left off, and turns political writing into art.
Henry Korn is the former director of the Art, Culture, and Heritage program at the Orange County Great Park. At the conclusion of his reading, there will be a discussion period on how the original grand dream for the transformation of the former Marine Corps air base has changed from a public serving project into a corporate theme park, sports complex, and housing development that mirrors the “Founding Father Land” depicted in Korn’s relentless satirical novel.
Amerikan Krazy: Life Out of Balance includes work by: Jorg Dubin, Joella March, Stephen Anderson, Jeff Gillette, F. Scott Hess, Tom Lamb, Douglas McCulloh, Haley Blatte, Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Ricardo Duffy, Jared Milar, Max Papeschi, Jessica DeStephano, Lynn Kubasek, Glenn Brooks, Ron English, Dustin Shuler, Clayton Spada, Jacques Garnier, Pat Spakuhl, and Dan Van Clapp.
This exhibition will be on display until May 20, 2016. Gallery hours are by arrangement. The opening reception is free to the public, but seating for the book launch is limited so reservations are encouraged.
For additional information please contact the gallery or Mark Chamberlain.
Can’t wait for Wednesday or want to read it before the book signing? You can buy the hardcover or e-book version on Amazon or wherever fine literature is sold.
So, I’m publishing my first book. Not a book I wrote, mind you, but a book for which I’m the actual publisher…
We’re throwing a party at Chevalier’s in Los Angeles to celebrate it. Henry James Korn, a brilliant writer—so good that I went to the trouble of publishing it myself rather than just selling it, as I’ve done so often in the past—will be doing a reading and signing on March 2nd. I hope you can all join us!
RSVP via Facebook or directly at <a href=”http://boffosockobooks.com/books/authors/henry-james-korn/amerikan-krazy/#appearances”” target=”_blank”>Boffo Socko Books.
If you have to miss the launch, you may be able to catch one of his other <a href=”http://boffosockobooks.com/books/authors/henry-james-korn/amerikan-krazy/#appearances”” target=”_blank”>upcoming book signings.
Many readers often ask me for resources for delving into the basics of information theory. I hadn’t posted it before, but the Santa Fe Institute recently had an online course Introduction to Information Theory through their Complexity Explorer, which has some other excellent offerings. It included videos, fora, and other resources and was taught by the esteemed physicist and professor Seth Lloyd. There are a number of currently active students still learning and posting there.
Introduction to Information Theory
About the Tutorial:
This tutorial introduces fundamental concepts in information theory. Information theory has made considerable impact in complex systems, and has in part co-evolved with complexity science. Research areas ranging from ecology and biology to aerospace and information technology have all seen benefits from the growth of information theory.
In this tutorial, students will follow the development of information theory from bits to modern application in computing and communication. Along the way Seth Lloyd introduces valuable topics in information theory such as mutual information, boolean logic, channel capacity, and the natural relationship between information and entropy.
Lloyd coherently covers a substantial amount of material while limiting discussion of the mathematics involved. When formulas or derivations are considered, Lloyd describes the mathematics such that less advanced math students will find the tutorial accessible. Prerequisites for this tutorial are an understanding of logarithms, and at least a year of high-school algebra.
About the Instructor(s):
Professor Seth Lloyd is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1982, the Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (Part III) and an M. Phil. in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University in 1983 and 1984 under a Marshall Fellowship, and a Ph.D. in Physics in 1988 from Rockefeller University under the supervision of Professor Heinz Pagels.
From 1988 to 1991, Professor Lloyd was a postdoctoral fellow in the High Energy Physics Department at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked with Professor Murray Gell-Mann on applications of information to quantum-mechanical systems. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked at the Center for Nonlinear Systems on quantum computation. In 1994, he joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Since 1988, Professor Lloyd has also been an adjunct faculty member at the Sante Fe Institute.
Professor Lloyd has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation and quantum communications, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon’s noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction.
Professor Lloyd is a member of the American Physical Society and the Amercian Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Tutorial Team:
Yoav Kallus is an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His research at the boundary of statistical physics and geometry looks at how and when simple interactions lead to the formation of complex order in materials and when preferred local order leads to system-wide disorder. Yoav holds a B.Sc. in physics from Rice University and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. Before joining the Santa Fe Institute, Yoav was a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science in Princeton University.
Yesterday I ran across this nice little video explaining some recent research on global language networks. It’s not only interesting in its own right, but is a fantastic example of science communication as well.
I’m interested in some of the information theoretic aspects of this as well as the relation of this to the area of corpus linguistics. I’m also curious if one could build worthwhile datasets like this for the ancient world (cross reference some of the sources I touch on in relation to the Dickinson College Commentaries within Latin Pedagogy and the Digital Humanities) to see what influences different language cultures have had on each other. Perhaps the historical record could help to validate some of the predictions made in relation to the future?
The paper “Global distribution and drivers of language extinction risk” indicates that of all the variables tested, economic growth was most strongly linked to language loss.
Finally, I can also only think about how this research may help to temper some of the xenophobic discussion that occurs in American political life with respect to fears relating to Mexican immigration issues as well as the position of China in the world economy.
Those intrigued by the video may find the website set up by the researchers very interesting. It contains links to the full paper as well as visualizations and links to the data used.
Abstract
Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces. However, beyond simple measures of population and economic power, there has been no rigorous quantitative way to define the global influence of languages. Here we use the structure of the networks connecting multilingual speakers and translated texts, as expressed in book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, to provide a concept of language importance that goes beyond simple economic or demographic measures. We find that the structure of these three global language networks (GLNs) is centered on English as a global hub and around a handful of intermediate hub languages, which include Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese. We validate the measure of a language’s centrality in the three GLNs by showing that it exhibits a strong correlation with two independent measures of the number of famous people born in the countries associated with that language. These results suggest that the position of a language in the GLN contributes to the visibility of its speakers and the global popularity of the cultural content they produce.
“A language like Dutch — spoken by 27 million people — can be a disproportionately large conduit, compared with a language like Arabic, which has a whopping 530 million native and second-language speakers,” Science reports. “This is because the Dutch are very multilingual and very online.”
I’m sure there will be some hiccups and problems in the transition, but I hope to get these ironed out shortly. If you notice something bothersome, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note.
Prior to the holidays Sean wrote a blogpost that contains a full overview table of contents, which will give everyone a stronger idea of its contents. For convenience I’ll excerpt it below.
Labels! Labels! It’s working with the Americans that’s given you this obsession with labels and brand names.
Msr. Charles Bonnet, painter, art forger, conman
counter-scolding his daughter who has called him a fraud
in How to Steal a Million (1966)
Then, just a bit later in the film:
We live in a crass commercial world with no faith or trust!
Msr. Charles Bonnet, painter, art forger, conman
ironically speaking to his daughter after forging and selling several major artworks
in How to Steal a Million (1966)
Many of you may have already heard, but I’m publishing books under the Boffo Socko Books imprint and our first release, a satirical novel entitled Amerikan Krazy written by Henry James Korn, is being put out on February 22, 2016, just in time to “celebrate” the race for the Presidential Election of 2016.
For a limited time, we’re giving away five free signed copies of the advanced reader edition before the official launch of the book. Along with major book review outlets, you’ll be able to have and read a copy weeks before the official launch.
You can sign up for the giveaway by January 15, 2016 at GoodReads.com.
Entrants will be notified on Jan 15, 2016 if they win.
We hope our friends will take a moment to register for a free GoodReads account and spend a moment to indicate that they “want to read” the book, and “follow Henry” there as an author.
If you have a moment, and feel so inclined, feel free to share a link to this post on your favorite social media outlet. Your help in spreading the word is greatly appreciated.
As it was published, I had read Kevin Hartnett’s article and interview with Christoph Adami The Information Theory of Life in Quanta Magazine. I recently revisited it and read through the commentary and stumbled upon an interesting quote relating to the history of information in biology:
Polymath Adami has ‘looked at so many fields of science’ and has correctly indicated the underlying importance of information theory, to which he has made important contributions. However, perhaps because the interview was concerned with the origin of life and was edited and condensed, many readers may get the impression that IT is only a few decades old. However, information ideas in biology can be traced back to at least 19th century sources. In the 1870s Ewald Hering in Prague and Samuel Butler in London laid the foundations. Butler’s work was later taken up by Richard Semon in Munich, whose writings inspired the young Erwin Schrodinger in the early decades of the 20th century. The emergence of his text – “What is Life” – from Dublin in the 1940s, inspired those who gave us DNA structure and the associated information concepts in “the classic period” of molecular biology. For more please see: Forsdyke, D. R. (2015) History of Psychiatry 26 (3), 270-287.
For those interested in reading more on this historical tidbit, I’ve dug up a copy of the primary Forsdyke reference which first appeared on arXiv (prior to its ultimate publication in History of Psychiatry [.pdf]):
Abstract: Today’s ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) concept is rooted in the distinction of nineteenth century philosopher William Clifford between ‘objects’ that can be directly perceived, and ‘ejects,’ such as the mind of another person, which are inferred from one’s subjective knowledge of one’s own mind. A founder, with Charles Darwin, of the discipline of comparative psychology, George Romanes considered the minds of animals as ejects, an idea that could be generalized to ‘society as eject’ and, ultimately, ‘the world as an eject’ – mind in the universe. Yet, Romanes and Clifford only vaguely connected mind with the abstraction we call ‘information,’ which needs ‘a vehicle of symbols’ – a material transporting medium. However, Samuel Butler was able to address, in informational terms depleted of theological trappings, both organic evolution and mind in the universe. This view harmonizes with insights arising from modern DNA research, the relative immortality of ‘selfish’ genes, and some startling recent developments in brain research.
Comments: Accepted for publication in History of Psychiatry. 31 pages including 3 footnotes. Based on a lecture given at Santa Clara University, February 28th 2014, at a Bannan Institute Symposium on ‘Science and Seeking: Rethinking the God Question in the Lab, Cosmos, and Classroom.’
The original arXiv article also referenced two lectures which are appended below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3yNbTUCPd4
[Original Draft of this was written on December 14, 2015.]
References
[1]
D. Forsdyke R., “‘A vehicle of symbols and nothing more’. George Romanes, theory of mind, information, and Samuel Butler,” History of Psychiatry, vol. 26, no. 3, Aug. 2015 [Online]. Available: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0957154X14562755
Over the past several months, I’ve been helping to set up an affinity group for the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association to bring together alumni who work in areas related to the entertainment industry.
For the past several weeks, we’ve been making plans for our first official event to be held in conjunction with a week long Intersession course being offered by the Film and Media Studies Program at Hopkins. We’re happy to announce the details for this event on January 7th and hope everyone can join us. There will be a panel discussion as well as ample time to chat with a variety of fellow alumni, current students, and faculty.
Are you a member of the Arts, Entertainment, Media, or Entrepreneurship communities in Los Angeles?
Join us as we welcome Linda DeLibero, Director of the Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program, and current Film majors from the Film and Media Studies Intersession Course for a diverse and dynamic panel discussion featuring creative and successful Hopkins alumni working in the industry. Learn relevant information, make connections with fellow LA area alumni and talk with the current students.
A number of students from Hopkins will be in attendance at the event as part of an Intersession course being offered by the department. The listing for the course follows:
This week-long course in Los Angeles gives students inside access to the entertainment industry through daily meetings and workshops with key figures in film, television, new media, and music, many of them JHU alums: directors, producers, screenwriters, studio executives, agents, exhibitors and more. We will visit studios, major agencies and production companies, and will end the week with a JHU networking event and panel discussion with alumni who work in film and television.The course runs from January 4 -8. Open to all Film and Media Studies majors and minors, with preference given to seniors. Students outside FMS may apply if slots remain open after all FMS students have registered.
The event was a wonderful success. I wanted to share a few of the photos I took during the panel discussion:
Students, alumni, and faculty look on at the Johns Hopkins Arts, Entertainment, Media, and Entrepreneurship Panel Discussion
Johns Hopkins Arts, Entertainment, Media, and Entrepreneurship Panel Discussion featuring Dalia Ganz, Mark Swift, Jason Sommerville, and Sunny Boling.
Here’s just a few of the many alumni who came out to the LA meetup at Omelet! It was a pleasure to see so many graduates interested in helping the current students and young alumni break into the film industry. — with Amelia Voos, Lydia Youngman, Dael Norwitz, Cole Spivak, Juliana Veracka, Taylor Veracka, Errol Koenig, Elena Thompson, Chris Aldrich, Howie Mandel, Evelyn Jerome Alexander, Josh Siegel, Don Kurz, Grant Lease, Linda DeLibero, Kathryn Alsman, Mark Swift, Brian J. McConnell, Will Mason, Josh Raphaelson, Caitlin Duffy and Jess Ambrosetti at Omelet.
As I delve further into the ancient history of mnemonics and mnemotechnics, I strongly suspect that attributes in paintings (like those frequently seen in depictions of Christian saints) originally stem from memory techniques that date from Simonides of Ceos (Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος; c. 556 – 468 BCE) and potentially earlier by means of the oral tradition.
The National Gallery has a short little primer on paintings of saints and recognizing them by means of their attributes. As an example, in the painting below Saint Genevieve of Paris holds the candle which she miraculously relit. On the brooch at her neck are the alpha and omega signs. Saint Apollonia of Alexandria’s brooch shows pincers: she was tortured by having her teeth extracted.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472 – 1553 Saints Genevieve and Apollonia (1506) Oil on lime, 120.5 x 63 cm Bought, 1987; NG6511.1 This painting is part of the group: ‘The St Catherine Altarpiece: Reverses of Shutters’ (NG6511.1-NG6511.2) http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6511.1
