THE FLASHMOB IS BACK

Yes, flashmobs are back…

"LONDON, England (CNN) -- Thousands of dancers jammed a major London train station in a Facebook-driven "flashmob" mimicking an advertisement for a phone company. And the event last Friday evening was so successful that another is planned for next Friday in Trafalgar Square in central London. Plus, a group has been set up to organize another one at Liverpool Street Station a week later. Videos posted on the social-networking site showed Liverpool Street Station completely filled with people, counting down the seconds until the clock showed 7 p.m., then dancing to music on their mp3 players as the hour struck. The sheer scale of the event came as a complete surprise to the organizer, a 22-year-old Facebook user who identified himself only as Crazzy Eve." (Click here to read the rest, but the whole deal seems to be fairly dance-party inane.)

I remember when, some four or five years ago, the flashmobs first appeared, I expressed a certian fascination and noted how “if we’d had that kind of technology back in the radical 1960/70s, we might have conquered the world.” Or maybe not, but it does surprise me that the technique has not – to my current knowledge – been used as a means of mass political protest. And it isn’t just a matter of creating an instant angry mob. It could just as easily be a coordinated flashshout, an updated version of the venerable Howard Beale concept of going to the window and yelling your disproval. We should try a test sometime.

The secret words are Mad As Hell

“There’s a story going round that, on September 18th 2008, the entire global economy was a gnat-hair away from total collapse and the end of capitalism. I mean, darling, where would we be without capitalism? It gave me this car, this coat, this brassiere, and this lollipop.”

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

MONDAY IS DEATH STAR DAY

The post is titled “The Physics Of The Death Star”. and I love this stuff. So much education applied to so much trivia for amusement of the so very disturbed.

“Now let's say you wanted to take apart the earth. Yes, the whole thing. You want to grab each bit of dirt and pull it out of the earth's gravity and move it out to deep space. How much energy in total would it take? There's some practical reasons for wanting to know. The engineers who built the Death Star would need for their superlaser to deliver at least that much energy. And what could be more practical than that? But figuring out exactly how much energy requires some finesse - figure out how much energy it takes to remove a kilogram worth of earth, and suddenly the earth has one fewer kilogram worth of gravity. So the next kilogram won't take quite as much energy to remove, and so on. We're going to have to do some thinking about how to get around this. We'll start with the equation that tells you the potential energy of an object in the gravitational field of a uniform spherical mass.” Click here if you want to read the whole thing. Some of the comments are quite amazing.

And here, for a change of pace, is a reprise of Eddie Izzard’s “Death Star Canteen”

The secret word is Force

The brilliant steam punk Death Star image is lifted from Eric Poulson.

AND WHILE WE'RE IN THE REALM OF SCI FI

Our good friend Valerie sent this story from Boing Boing…

"Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shustershowcases rare and recently discovered erotic artwork by the most seminalartist in comics, Joe Shuster. Created in the early 1950s when Shuster wasdown on his luck after suing his publisher, DC Comics, over the copyrightfor Superman, he illustrated these images for an obscure series of magazinescalled Nights of Horror, published under the counter until they were bannedby the U.S. Senate. Juvenile delinquency, Dr. Fredric Wertham, and theBrooklyn Thrill Killers gang all figure into this sensational story."

MEANWHILE, DOWN ON THE FARM...

Pic lifted from Science Patrol

THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN (Part tx997)

In which Marilyn boosts the amperage of her wide-eyed, innocent, attentive charm to its highest and most deceptive level. Such behavior was always expected of from the Incredibly Powerful Man Who Never Cared To Give His Name, and she always gave him what he expected. He believed that she was nothing more than inane and decorative, and it was an error that betrayed the weakness of his deeply rooted stupidity. The Incredibly Powerful Man Who Never Cared To Give His Name could move armies on a whim, control continents if he so desired, and vaporize cities with a single order. He would sit in his shirtsleeves in his bizarre bunker, deep beneath the megacity, with its incongruously bourgeois décor and its steel and concrete, lead-lined walls, holding one of his offensive books on warfare, and talk glibly of particle beam weapons, and kill ratios, of mass drivers, and megatons, smart bombs and collateral damage, acceptable loses and multiple reentry, but he was totally unable to recognize a goddess when he saw one. It was this lack of perception and even the most fundamental intellect that had stiffened Marilyn’s resolve to nullify his authority. The plan was watertight in its simplicity. In a few hours, the Kali-worshippers would come for him with their knives and silk ropes. They would descend the compromised airshaft, enter the bunker, and, after little more on his part than a strangled gasp, the Incredibly Powerful Man Who Never Cared To Give His Name would be removed from power. Permanently.

(THE ADVENTURES OF MARILYN NOW HAS IT’S OWN PAGE SO THE WHOLE THING CAN BE READ WITHOUT SCROLLING. CLICK HERE)

Picture lifted from Tom Sutpen.

And needless to say we at Doc40 are highly delighted that The Adventures of Marilyn received an approving mention on the blog Science Patrol by Yanos Solong, the Reality Architect...

“Blogger Doc40 has been appearing on my radar for some time, chronicling the unique sub-history of his own little sector of timespace, but it's this series of posts chronicling the adventures of the late, great Marilyn Monroe that have really caught my eye. Taking as a starting point an intriguing photo featuring our fair heroine, each episode delightfully remixes Barbarella, Burrough's Martian Barsoom stories, and the peculiar situations that Marilyn often found herself in, to exceptional effect.”

MASS PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION

The standard institution/government waiting room plastic chair is designed in a way to make it impossible to sleep or even sit comfortably for any length of time.

The secret word is Plot