It's funny, and somewhat unfortunate that I keep choosing two different topics to cover in a single day's post. Perhaps this type of indecision is the reason behind the stagnant state of my wordpress blog, which tend to demand a bit more quality and coherent thought compared to my livejournal? 

I've been watching some Hunter S. Thompson biography materials on the net for the last few days, including a biography tv show on Hulu. An interesting person who gave birth to the style of writing we now refer to as gonzo... Basically a subjective, free form exercise in journalism unrestrained by traditional format. While some might cringe of subjective journalism but then what journalism is truly objective? When you get right down to it the difference is in the language used, and gonzo style journalism never makes any pretense towards their own objectivity. The technique of allowing the reader to gain a first person account of the experience in question was revolutionary in its time and it permeates throughout all sorts of different medium today, starting from the faux-reporting seen in Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan series, where the whole of the comic was more or less written through the eyes of Spider Jerusalem who was probably modeled after Hunter S. Thompson.

Compared to all the psychos and sickos out there Thompson certainly maintained certain method to his madness until the very end. It would have been really interesting to see what kind of things such character can do given the technological tools of the future/transhumanism. Maybe he might have ended up blowing his head off all the same due to psychological burdens?

I've been having some rekindled interest in Lovecraftian writing recently, mostly due to my little toy project of making a python based program that churns out random, endless stories drawn from expressions in its database. I call it the Monkeyshaker 1000, from an acquaintance's suggestion that 1000 monkeys typing randomly into a typewriter might really end up producing a Shakespear. I've been thinking of all sorts of different things for the program to draw upon and create, and the answer's one of the two.

1)Scientific literature that draws on official (meaning verified, unlike the heap of steaming #$%! we call wikipedia) databases on the net to produce comprehensive reports on rather meaningless, machine dictated topics.
2)Creator of cheap knockoff novella, the kind of stories people commonly refer to as the dime store novel. Such generic novels for entertainment (paperbashing?) usually follow such vapid structure and vocabulary that I don't see much difficulty in making a program to churn out (albeit rather peculiar) pieces of short writing.

I think I'm going with number two. It is decidedly much easier than the first approach, and I already have a cool database to draw upon. The license-free works of Lovecraft. I just wonder what kind of peculiar roman the computer program will be able to come up with using a database full of antediluvian references. Maybe I can title the resulting piece as a result of gonzo journalism in an Lovecraftian universe written by some haywired android.

On the lighter note, there's a science competition going on over at the spacegeneration aimed at anyone under age of 33. You are supposed to come up with a novel method for stopping possible asteroid strike of the Earth using currently available technology or the kind of technology that can be reasonably developed in the future. Novel meaning ingenious. Not another crappy knock off of 'building a superweapon' or 'nuke it' or 'shoot a linear canon nuke' crap that every other one billion and one people proposed already with detailed drawings and technical requirements. Something really new and scientifically feasible. The contest is obviously aimed at students just starting off their interests in space engineering and astronomical sciences, so they might be willing to overlook some of the more incredible ideas, but they are still looking for something worth presenting at the science congress they are having in Korea later this year. 

Maybe I should stop by Korea in autumn, see how the whole event goes. Sounds interesting.