Joe Nolan's Insomnia » science

Back to the Future

Joe Nolan — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 04:11:49 +0000

When my Dad was reading OMNI magazine back in the 1980′s I was just a little kid. I didn’t know that it was published by Bob Guccione or that OMNI was a visionary science magazine that hit a sweet spot between inspired scientific speculation, imaginative short science fiction, and the cutting edge of technology and research to create a publication that always felt like it had been published the day after tomorrow. OMNI has had a strange and somewhat troubled life online, but fans of the magazine now have some reason to celebrate. Here’s The Verge with the skinny…

Omni Magazine was an enormously influential publication that ran from 1978 to 1995. Created by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione and wife Kathy Keeton, it featured interviews with scientists such as Freeman Dyson, art from the likes of H.R. Giger and Chris Foss, and original fiction from established science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov and newcomers like William Gibson. The original magazine went digital in 1995, but shuttered in 1998. In 2013, Jerrick Media resurrected the magazine in an online format called Omni Reboot.

Until recently, back issues of Omni Magazine were stored on the Internet Archive, for readers to page through at no cost. The collection of issues was taken down a couple of years ago, but it’s now back online on Amazon.com.

Click through The Verge link to access the magazine on Amazon. In the meantime here’s a mind blowing playlist featuring “Inside the OMNI Vault” — a series of portraits highlighting the mind expanding visual artists who brought OMNI‘s features, interviews and essays to life…

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Truly Hallucinating

Joe Nolan — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 05:44:49 +0000

Yesterday I posted about chimpanzees in Guinea who may be displaying certain worship behaviors involving ritualistic rock throwing and building little cairns out of stone all next to one particular tree. If you haven’t seen the post check it out and watch the video. The chimps might be in the throes of some mystical ecstasy, but the odd behaviors make them seem kind of stoned. Of course, readers of this illuminated tablet will know that Terence McKenna’s so-called “Stoned-Ape” theory suggests that our early ancestors experimented with psychedelic mushrooms which improved visual acuity, increased sexual drive and encouraged communal social structures which made our stoned descendants better hunters, more successful at mating and more successful at organizing at a high level, and, ultimately, more likely to survive, thrive and evolve.

Some would say McKenna spins fun yarns, but they’re not science. I say who needs science when you have a fun yarn? What about some cool visuals to go along with it? Here’s a rad little film that collects from lots of audio and visual sources to explore the events that McKenna related in his book True Hallucinations.

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Galileo: Science and Sorcery

Joe Nolan — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:06:48 +0000

Getting started on the blog a day late this week. Spent the day yesterday driving back to Nashville from a visit to Asheville, NC. We had a gloomy, but pretty-in-a-melancholy-way drive through the Smokies on Friday, but yesterday low temps and rain made it a pretty slow, tense drive, and didn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. By the time we got back we opted for tacos and margaritas and pretended it was Sunday.

This week we celebrate the birthday of Galileo Galilei on February 15, 1642. Galileo was a telescope pioneer persecuted by the Catholic Church for affirming Copernican notions of a heliocentric universe. In Galileo’s time science, magic and religion were divided by porous, shifting lines that make it hard for us to look back and separate the sorcerers from the scientists.

Here’s a two-part documentary that illuminates the magical roots of science, giving us a glimpse at Galileo and his world…

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Flatliners at 25

Joe Nolan — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 03:37:40 +0000

Twenty five years ago a group of second wave brat packers starred as young doctors in what amounts to a Frankenstein story in reverse, where the living attempt to explore the realm of the dead without losing their lease on life. Of course, I’m talking about Flatliners. The film is sort of a cult classic for Generation Xers who remember this supernatural thriller starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon in a tale that explores life and death, and the limits of science. It’s a classic genre theme that’s handled with a lot of fun here. This would make a great double bill with Sutherland’s other great horror flick of the era, The Lost Boys. I couldn’t find that one on YouTube…

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Science + Art = Symmetry

Joe Nolan — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 04:51:42 +0000

We often think of science and art as opposites that might never meet. In truth, the two have always had much in common and this new meeting of opera and particle physics demonstrates that we humans are at our best when our intellects and our imaginations combine and cooperate. The site for the new Symmetry film has the info…

Symmetry is a dance & opera film, in which Cern researcher Lukas is thrown off balance, while working on the theory of everything and the smallest particle. The film takes place in Cern’s large hadron collider. Through Claron’s singing he rediscovers love, in an endless landscape. She takes him back to the moment before the big bang, when time didn’t exist; a love with no end…

Check out this trailer for Symmetry…

SYMMETRY – dance & opera film inside CERN from TRUTH.IO on Vimeo.

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Stoned Science with Neil Degrasse Tyson

Joe Nolan — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:03:35 +0000

Scanning the news cycle this week, I’m mostly finding stories about marijuana legalization and science. As the national debate about liberating weed continues in states and communities around the country, I’m also discovering lots of fan and critic reviews about Neil Degrasse Tyson’s reboot of the Cosmos television series.

The internet — Oh great crucible! — has combined these two phenomena into this hilarious video of the Cosmos host slowed-down just enough to make it appear like he’s live streaming from a long weekend in Boulder.

Yay, science!

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Aaron Diaz’ The Silmarillion

Joe Nolan — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 05:15:34 +0000

Artist Aaron Diaz’ Dresden Codak comic offers-up stories filled with science, philosophy and psychology that have won him the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards for Outstanding Use of Color and Outstanding Use of The Medium. The Dresden Codak site has been down all day, but the Diaz’ latest tweets assure his followers that he’s getting the bug sorted. There’s a good chance that the address is simply being overwhelmed due to a post at io9 that’s garnering the artist a lot of attention.

It seems Diaz is also a fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien universe and his interpretations of chapters, characters and creatures from the author’s The Silmarillion — a dizzying, mythopoetic compilation of Middle Earth legends, stories and histories — is something to behold.

Here’s i09‘s take:

While Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle Earth may be the dominant one right now, artists have long put their own spin on J.R.R. Tolkien’s world. Dresden Codak cartoonist Aaron Diaz shares his own visual interpretation of Tolkien by illustrating each character of The Silmarillion, as well the book’s characters and creatures.

Diaz explains on The Silmarillion Project blog that he decided to undertake this illustration project in part because, lovely as they are, Jackson’s movies have so overwhelmed the popular vision of Middle Earth and Diaz wants to encourage a diversity of artistic interpretations…

Check these out…

Find out more at Diaz’ The Silmarillion Project blog.

Here’s the AMC folks on YouTube talking about The Silmarillion and the likelihood of another Peter Jackson trilogy:

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