Shitty Semiotics

Above is an Anglo Saxon toilet bowl most readers of this blog should be familiar with. It's very centred isn't it?

Next is the French loo with it's rearward mechanic situated most closely to the flush pipe.

And finally above is the German toilet design, with a completely opposite forward-emphasis arrangement in comparison to the French version.

The visuals are the support material for the clip below. The first time I listened to Zizek deconstructing European toilets, I loved it and wanted to write it up as a post, but as somebody has generously uploaded a clip of his toilet-architecture rap I can include post it instead. It's hard to find any fault between his analysis of the Teutonic, French and Anglo Saxon toilet designs, and for those who haven't embarked on a tranhumanism voyage yet is fucking funny.

Geek-Group-Think & Digital Determinism

Anand Giriharadas of the New York Times, touches on some very valuable points in this talk about developing a digital philosophy. I particularly recognise his view that among geeks (and I consider myself on the geeky side) the propensity for group-think is such that it overtakes religion in its ability to stifle questions such as; is more technology always better, is it always the solution, and where it hasn't yet gone must it always go? These are important issues worth having a view about.

Time Theory Part II

80's Music from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

This is kind of weird but when I mentioned to Marcus that I really liked what he said, I got an email pointing towards this video he made about it when he was going through his rubber gloves period. It's a fun way of reducing my self indulgently long and pseudo intellectual post about drugs and quantum physics. Marcus has a nice little body of social media work if you go into his video channel over here.

We also grew up about 200 metres away from each other in Southampton, hung out in the same parks yet never knew each other. Which is a good thing because I would have probably not appreciated him so much and I know my record of keeping contact with people from my youth is not strong. This is the quid pro quo of an international jet set gypsy lifestyle. There's always a quid pro quo.