Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel.  Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.

"Sea of Green"

Drug cultures--which in my mind includes the people that made 'em, sell 'em, do 'em, and bust 'em--generate so many interesting slang words and phrases. The need for euphemism on the one side and punchy PR on the other necessitate this, I suppose. While reading my daily emailed Sonoma Sheriff News Update, I encountered a phrase I hadn't heard before: "Task Force agents located two indoor growing rooms containing a total of 90 growing marijuana plants. The plants ranged from 6 inches to 4 feet in heighth, in various stages of growth. This style of operation is described as a 'Sea of Green' operation. Meaning the operation makes it possible to continually harvest marijuana on a regular production cycle." sic, sic

Sea of Green. It has the ring of a vacation brochure hawking paradise, doesn’t' it? Having done some poking around, it looks like the phrase "Sea of Green" originated with growers, but what I really like is to imagine a burly sheriff saying, "Yup yup. What we've got here is yer standard Sea Of Green operation. Book 'em, boys."

This Salon article by Tom McNichol includes some hilarious if unreal drug vocabulary, as does this fascinating dictionary of slang, compiled by my friend Mark Frey, who teaches high school here in Oakland.

I started subscribing to the Sonoma Sheriff news on the recommendation of my wonderful friend Colin Berry, who lives in Sonoma County. I also wrote a description of this wonderfully bizarre region of Northern California in my Live Journal.

Thanks, Colin B!

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posted by Jenn Shreve at 10:49:49 AM | permalink

My HMO adventure!

Dramatic reenactment of actual conversation this morning:
Jenn Yes, hello. I'm trying to make an emergency appointment with a dermatologist.
Receptionist Dr. Whosiwhats doesn't have an opening until, hmmmm, it looks like, next month.
Jenn If I have flesh-eating bacteria, I will be dead by next month. Are you sure there isn't anything sooner?
Receptionist Maybe you should try another doctor.
Jenn Click.

Ever since reading a harrowing up-all-night description of Necrotising Fasciitis (a.k.a. flesh-eating bacteria) in Atul Gawande's excellent read, "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science," I've longed for an opportunity to invoke its name. Today that moment came. (Incidentally, I do not suspect I have the virus, but have learned that being hysterical often results in getting rapid appointments with otherwise intransigent HMO doctors. While I may not be dead in a month, I'm sure as hell not going to play with a rash for that length of time. In fact, I'm off to my appointment now. Huzzah!)

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posted by Jenn Shreve at 10:44:18 AM | permalink

Art on the Scale of the Pyramids

I can't imagine that many young artists today--who seem preoccupied with the more ephemeral aspects of our technology- and media-saturated society--will dream up something as big as James Turrell's Roden Crater, none-the-less find the stamina and means to carry through with it. During a recent lecture in the Bay Area, Turrell stated (and I paraphrase) that more artists need to be thinking on the scale of the Egyptian Pyramids. Turrell practices what he preaches. According to the Web site, Roden Crater is "a natural cinder volcano situated on the southwestern edge of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona. Since 1972, with grants from Dia Art Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, James Turrell has been planning to transform the crater into a large-scale artwork, that relates, through the medium of light, to the universe of the surrounding sky, land, and culture." It's due to open to the public in 2005; the wait is bloody torture.

Aside from permanence and scale, what appeals about Turrell's work is it cannot just be looked at; it has to be experienced--preferably alone and over a relatively long period of time (similar to the Lightning Field described in an earlier post). His piece, Gasworks, which I viewed several years ago in Scottsdale, Arizona, requires that one visitor at a time be inserted into an ball (which looks part medical and part alien) and be subjected to flashes of light for at least 10 minutes (please forgive: my memory of the actual time is fuzzy). Isolated within this orb, the viewer loses all depth perception, while the imagination creates patterns and shapes that simply aren't there. Every experience of the piece is unique and nearly impossible to convey. In another piece, you enter a dark room where you sit in a meditative state for a set period of time (again, about 10 minutes). A sliver of gray light visible in the back of the darkened space immediately grabs your attention and toys with your imagination for the entirety of the piece. Is it there, or did you create it? You're never quite sure. When in the crater of the volcano, the shape of the sky is said to change. In other words, you or, more accurately, your perception determines something so seemingly permanent as the shape of a sky. This revelation isn't projected at the person viewing the artwork, it naturally arises out of his or her experience of it.

Turrell uses scientific research and applications to create experiences that are deeply personal, organic, and even religious. I study his work to inform my fiction writing, which aspires to have a similar effect on readers (and boy am I a long ways away from succeeding). This weekend I'll be viewing a Turrell exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, on the campus of the University of Washington, where I went to college. I'm so excited!

Discuss

Thanks, Alan!

posted by Jenn Shreve at 10:39:13 AM | permalink

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