Maebius Musing

It’s not often I find myself navel-gazing too closely when doing meditations. (see mirror-phobia)

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I found this little quiz through a new blog I’m reading, and thought I’d post the results.

As always, I encourage readers to view these statistics with a rather large bowl of salt (ie: a bunch of grains!) since many questions are phrased in a somewhat both/and way yet still require an Either/Or answer, so I had to pick one. A better more accurate representation of my thoughts would require essay-type questions and a real-life moderator picking through my results….even then it might be slanted due to moderator bias. *grin*

Here you go.

My Pagan Practice

Pagan Faith Practices Survey created by Otherworld Apothecary

I was actually somewhat surprised that the “New Age” correspondences scored slightly lower than my “Ceremonial” practices. I tend to think of myself as fairly distanced from Ceremonial types, which may have been due to some bad experiences in the past while still forming my proto-pagan spirituality. (Today, I could meet those types on much better footing.)

Still, the quiz was fun and gave me a chance to pause and reflect on a few things. I also got to look up and research my own musings on this topic.
(see here, or here.)

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This is generally a short musing for now, since I am recovering from a fun and guest-filled Easter weekend, and my co-worker is expecting his third child in about….now. (Actually, his wife has not given birth yet, but the due date is here and she’s starting feel initial contractions, so this week is expected to see me here alone at work)

However, my musing for the day is one I’d like to see comments and engage in a hearty discussion with someone on. Mostly for the somewhat belittling humor I initially felt when reading the linked article, and how it reflects my own archaeological paradigm.

Question: Given a set of data-points and artifacts which appear to deviate from the local norm, construct a reasoned hypothesis to explain their existence in relation to historically localized phenomena.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/104631-tunguska_meteorite-0

Putting aside my own “rational” thoughts on the Tunguska incident, the article linked above is quite interesting.

Not just because it seems highly implausible to my worldview and my own understanding of the reported ‘facts’, but in terms of the potential propaganda-slant this takes, and it’s ability to be read in terms of being myth.

On one hand, the article may be taking some unusual objects and applying a non-mainstream scientific viewpoint to explain it. If that is the case, it is simply a misguided attempt to delude the local population in the area.

However, what’s the harm in the story, if it is at least superficially plausable? Will the locals there sleep any worse thinking that instead of some random rock almost destroying their landscape, a sentient being helped save their landscape? Isn’t that the root of what religions do? Unite a culture with common mythology, in order to better the community? (controlling-the-community trends of organized religion aside).

Interesting thought….and one I’m going to ponder over the next day or so.

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Well, in case you needed to calculate it yourself…

((19*t+u-w-(u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w- (u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-z)mod7)-7*(t+11*(19*t+u-w(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+22*(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w-(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-g)mod7)+114)\31

Happy Easter!

also, for you non-anglo-christian inclined readers, if ye be reading:

Happy Purim (Jewish holiday)

Narouz (Persian New Year)

Eid Milad an Nabi, (Happy Birthday Prophet Muhammad)

Small Holi, (Hindu Festival of Colours)

Magha Puja ( Buddhist “Fourfold Assembly” day)

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In more muse-worthy discussion, spring is officially here in my neck of the woods..er… field?

Every year in March, I start fretting about our garden, and watching outside to see if the nearby farms are ready to start preemptive plowing. I feel like winter is going away, and we need to get outside and do stuff, plant stuff! Yet I know that in early (and late) March, there is still a good chance of snow, and late April is really when things get in the ground around here. In fact, as I type this, mere hours away from our big Weekend involving guests at the house, dining at a huge annual buffet, and egg-hunts, it is below freezing and snow is accumulating on the cars again. I’ll have to de-ice the doors before driving home from work!

I’ve attributed this early anxiety to my being raised farther south than where I live now, and the general climate being slightly ‘off-schedule‘, compared to my fondest childhood memories. (Perhaps my friend Nettle has similar experience, having migrated south to the Big City?) Where I grew up, it really was time to start serious browsing of seed catalogs, and the big amish farms started, if not full plowing, then getting the equipment hitched up and tightened. Within one or two weeks, things will be blooming down there. Around upstate New York now, the trees are only considering the possibility of budding out.

Lately though, in the past few years, started to drift away from specific date-centric celebrations of seasons (with the exception of solstices, equinoxes, and birthdays, etc). More and more, I am building a set of internal correspondences for general seasonality and celebration. The subtly spiritual side of being in-tune with the world around me has taken it’s cues from the local area, rather than the printed dates on my desk. Most notably felt was this past Imbolc, where the feeling of coming spring remained aloof and distant in the midst of our wintery weather.

As a timely example, I can say with authority (at least to my own heart) that spring has arrived. Not because this ball of rock oribting the sun has swung around to a certain point. Not because of the clock on my computer reading off dates similar to 03/21/xx. I know it is spring because of the geese.

This past week, I have seen flocks of waterfowl across the sky in growing numbers. It’s hard to picture, but perhaps even more geese than crows are visible on my evening drives home. Yesterday, I looked out at our pond to see four Branta Canadensis floating around! To me, that is a stronger sign than any easter-themed flowers, eggs, and chocolate.

Going solely on the calendar, especially in terms of Easter celebrations, which tend to fluctuate all across the month of April, seems a tad bit silly as a measuring stick. For the rest of the country, and probably a more useful truism in the European climate which helped create the iconic imagery for these festivals, this time of year is reflected in the return of nature’s growth.

Perhaps this observation is a result of being more in-tune with the place. I’ve lived here, going on a decade now. (Wow, has it really been that long?!!) I’m starting to get used to the changing seasons in a way that is meaningful to my innermost mind. Logically, I still cling to the habitual time-frames I grew up with, and habits die hard. Beyond that though, I think that the semi-conscious thought of marking local signs like our pond-dwellers to the seasons is my brain’s way of re-connecting without having to break up those old habits.

For whatever reason, it’s working, so I won’t dig too deeply into the reasons, other than to acknowledge the observation and enjoy it. Spring is here. The geese came home.

What a great worm moon!

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While I have more than a passing interest in the current cultural and societal future, in regards to Hubbert Peak, and it’s affects on oil and pretty much our entire economic/technological infrastructure, there is another Peak which has been crossed, and have not found any good references to help explain it.

I’m talking about my self-referenced “The SpongeBob Artistry Phenomenon”, and how it relates to the animation industry. In essence, I think that while computer generated imagery continues to make huge improvements over time, the classic animation styles are suffering for it.

There is a really, really good article regarding the decline of “Saturday Morning Cartoons” which highlights a different facet of this troublesome situation. Perhaps the cheapness to produce lower-quality shows is the result of the more general inclination of today’s internet-enabled kids to not be sitting at home watching TV much, and the resulting budget constraints. But my musing here is specifically related to the quality of animation, which is only the partial story in that article.

This situation is also not directly related to the phasing out of hand-drawn Cel-based animation where artists penciled and painted on transparent sheets which were photographed in sequence. Digital ink and paint has now replaced pencils and pigmented liquids, but still maintains the procedural style of this type of traditional animation.

(side note, Princess Mononoke (1997) was one of the last feature-films to incorporate largely hand-drawn cel-colored techniques! Disney has been using digital methods since 1989. [source=wikipedia])

A few years ago, Disney closed one of it’s larger hand-drawn animation studios. Back in around 2003 or so, they even made an announcement to the effect that they would stop all 2D animation projects and concentrate more fully with Pixar and the 3D CGI market. Luckily, they have recanted that and are doing a decent mix of 2D and 3D styles now. I found a decent blog write-up to this shift (though it’s not specifically about Disney).

I also can not argue that today’s CGI-enabled effects are becoming more and more realistic. This is nothing to complain about, as long as movies don’t get stuck in the Uncanny Valley. The movie “Jurassic Park” made headlines for their use of believable CGI ‘actors’, and a no less honorable effort was made with the memorabe Jar-Jar Binks in the Star Wars films.

The issue I take is with the current popular 2D cartoon styles. Why do fingers need to be blocky? Why does every single thing on Saturday mornings either have to be manga-themed, or else so squared-off, unproportional and hyper-accented? Spongebob is debatable, since he is not based of any sort of real person-shaped figure, but do so many other shows and movies have to follow that style?

Take for example, some getting-outdated movies and current shows, as examples of this bothersome trend. Atlantis: the Lost empire, the 1999 adaptation of Tarzan, The Emperors New Groove (and the current Saturday cartoon “Emperor’s New School“, Kim Possible (which is actually a quality show), The Replacements, and Chaotic. All of these I have seen on TV in the past month with the exception of Tarzan, which can go hide in a cave for all that I enjoyed it.

I may be a bit nostalgic, or even more than a bit perhaps, but I remember while the plots of my favorite shows are potentially just as vapid and predictable as these new shows, at least the animation style looked a bit more polished and clean. People looked more like people. Cartoon animals were allowed to look more impressionistic.

Hanna-Barbera was king in my youth, and is a great example of the quality I am talking about. Likewise, if you ignore the cheesy 80’s references, Jem and the Holograms, Dungeons & Dragons, and G.I. Joe had characters that looked (to me) more like real people than today’s current fare. (Though both G.I.Joe Sigma Six, and the newest “He-man: Masters of the Universe are strikingly more manga in their newest incarnations, which isn’t bad.)

So I wonder, are my eyes just stuck in the past in terms of popular style, or is this trend more symptomatic of more/faster/cheaper cartoons in today’s financially competitive market?

And if this trend is due to slacking style on the part of the animators (likely due to cost constraints) are there any ways to recover? Or have we passed the peak of cartoon coolness?

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