Create “deeds” to individual square centimeter plots of the Imperial Palace grounds as a one-time-only special issuance from the Japanese Mint. The Emperor’s residence, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo is 7.41 square kilometers in size and would continue to function as-is, apart from the transfer of “ownership” to the deed-holders.

The Kobe earthquake cost about 10-trillion yen. To raise double that amount would involve selling each square centimeter for 270 yen (about $3.31).

Japanese citizens have a high saving rate and, my theory goes, would invest in these deeds.

Others around the world could purchase the square centimeters in solidarity.

The square centimeters would be randomly assigned to specific locations identifiable through GPS. You could visit the Imperial Palace and find your particular square centimeters. Perhaps traditions and rituals would build up around such visits.

Perhaps there would be a secondary market trading these deeds.

Perhaps deeds for noteworthy locations such as within the Imperial Palace itself, the Nijubashi Bridge or the residence of the Tokugawa shogun would become worth more in trading on this secondary market.

This sort of issuance would be less inflationary than printing more money or issuing bonds.

It may be the one-time-only way to raise $2.44 trillion dollars with the least negative impact on the Japanese economy.

Posted in Essaylettes, speculation
Tags: cost of earthquake, cost of tidal wave, financing japanese recovery, Japanese Earthquake, raising money for japanese recovery

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Like millions of other Americans, I sit next to my television with a camera, snapping pictures of the screen.

Posted in Photography
Tags: 2011, Obama, State of the Union

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Posted in Photo Remixes
Tags: art, bloomington, cold, collage, ice, indiana, landscape, photo remix, smedberg, winter

So it’s coming right up.
Kinda nearish on the horizon
Not today, but not a lot of tomorrows
And there’s a big context placed on things
as being in the last quarter
the last 30th
the last few minutes

Sorry you have to die

We all have to die
Just you have to do it soonishly

I did that a while ago myself and found it
no where near as stupidly blank
as you might expect

A bunch of swirling

a bunch of reunion
really great, glorious reunion
and fitting well

and a big grand “oh that’s so obvious”

so
stiff upper lip and all
it won’t be interesting
it won’t be fun, per se
but appreciate it
get into it
get it

Posted in Poetry
Tags: afterlife, angel, blank verse, death, poem, Poetry

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<crit>I see flowers — FLOWERS. And ruins. Important ancient worn stone RUINS. So, like one is life and the other is death — and there they are together.  That’s art for ya.

And, just like a lot of art – it’s kinda looks like a US flag! How about that. FLAG. So now we got life, death, flag. That is like meaningful expression or something. I don’t know what it means, but it’s powerful.

Just imagine it as a get well card. You pull this out of the envelope, and it opens with a printed message: Get Well Soon!</crit>

As a postscript I’d like to mention that I didn’t think any of that stuff when I made this piece.  I just made it. I made a thing that could accrue meaning later.

Posted in Photo Remixes
Tags: art, art criticism, flag, photo remix, photograph, photography, Sicily, syracusa

from Illustrations of the Logic of Science

. . . we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be. . . . The only effect that real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations that they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs. . . . Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions. . . . The feeling of believing is a more or less sure indication of their being established in our nature some habit that will determine our actions. . . . thought is excited by the irritation of doubt, and ceases when belief is attained; so that the production of belief is the sole function of thought. . . .

Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations. . . . And what, then, is belief? It is the demicadence that closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. We have seen that it has just three properties:

First, it is something that we are aware of;

second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and,

third, it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit.

As it appeases the irritation of doubt, which is the motive for thinking, thought relaxes, and comes to rest for a moment when belief is reached. But, since belief is a rule for action, the application of which involves further doubt and further thought, at the same time that it is a stopping place, it is also a new starting place for thought.

Posted in quote
Tags: belief, Charles Pierce, doubt, pierce, reality, thought

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It’s funny ’cause it’s true. This one was in Virginia Beach, VA in 2001. Notice the clean 50s-ish lines, the clear “nobody home” look.

Posted in Photography
Tags: abandoned building, gas station, virginia beach

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Since Duchamp drew a mustache on the Mona Lisa, the urge to deface great works of somebody else’s art has been a creative urge.

Tastefully, with the restraint of the middle class, Marcel and I chose to deface reproductions – unlike Laszlo Toth, who in 1972 went at Michaelangelo’s Pietà sculpture with a geologist’s hammer while shouting “I am Jesus Christ”

The Pietà is the only sculpture Michaelangelo ever signed.

Posted in Photo Remixes
Tags: abstract, jasper johns, Laszlo Toth, photo, photo remix, photograph, photography, velasquez

Launch the video and audio loop Sussing the Unseen Dog (26meg) in a new window.  Stare at it. Keep staring and listening.

—

Scientists have it tough. They rarely get to look directly at what they are studying.

When studying the movement of galaxies, they are looking at the change in color of galaxies. When studying thought processes in the brain they might look at the beat or frequency of electrical data. They are endlessly looking at mere shadows of activity they cannot directly see.

This video is a metaphor of scientific data and inquiry. We know, because of our familiarity with the components something about what is happening off camera – starting in the audio track and eventually becoming evident in the video.

So now imagine just having this video and trying to learn something about the dog – making science with the merest of clues. Thus the metaphor:

Dog / Video  =  Our understanding of the universe / Data we can get

Posted in Essaylettes, Video
Tags: dog, rocks, scientific method, stream, water

I can’t really tell you anything about the symposium because it’s still kinda secret. What I can tell you is that the security was pretty tight and all the normal and almost normal people had blue badges.

The symposium was pretty cool, but on one level I didn’t really learn anything that I hadn’t already dreamed.

Posted in Science Fiction
Tags: almost normal, Alpha Omicron Prime Multi-System Symposium on Flax Warrants, normal, Science Fiction, security badge, symposium