place: Prescott, Arizona

The Prototypical Amplifier

[ed: This text is excerpted from the first chapter of my dissertation, sketching a relatively technical picture of an amplifier, and its relation to energy flows. It sets the technological image of an amplification system, and for me, it’s not clear how a non-technical person copes with such a text! How else might the same information be communicated?]

Amplification is a fundamental process that is applied or applies to portions of the vast range of what may be understood as [electrical / electromagnetic / electrochemical] energy flows that are available to living organisms. An electrical energy flow or current is the movement of charged particles. Currents are essentially modulated by causal changes — they have certain measurable characteristics that change in time — and may consequently be called signals. A signal has characteristics that are described as a wave structure of a certain frequency and an amplitude corresponding to a certain strength. As a signal, a current also has a certain coherence that is an observed quality of (subjective) recognizability or usability. Amplification is an operation performed on an incoming flow of [any form of] energy or signal that generates an output signal with an increased total energy content (gain). more “The Prototypical Amplifier”

10 : October : 201430 : November : 2015

Economic Growth and Environmental Policy

We conclude that economic liberalization and other policies that promote gross national product growth are not substitutes for environmental policy. On the contrary, it may well be desirable that they are accompanied by stricter policy reforms. Of particular importance is the need for reforms that would improve the signals that are received by resource users. Environmental damages, including loss of ecological resilience, often occur abruptly. They are frequently not reversible. But abrupt changes can seldom be anticipated from systems of signals that are typically received by decision-makers in the world today. Moreover, the signals that do exist are often not observed, or are wrongly interpreted, or are not part of the incentive structure of societies. This is due to ignorance about the dynamic effects of changes in ecosystem variables (for example, thresholds, buffering capacity, and loss of resilience) and to the presence of institutional impediments, such as lack of well-defined property rights.

Arrow, K., Pimentel, D. & Costanza, R., 1995. Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment. Ecological Economics, 15(2), pp.91–95.

3 : July : 201418 : February : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

Window Weather

[ed: this is extracted from my dissertation, so some things are unexplained. However, I didn’t want to make large modifications, it’s more a teaser on a novel definition of ‘virtuality’ and the ‘virtual’. To illustrate the principle, and to suggest the relationship humans have with it, I use one particular manifestation of energized (matter): glass]

All organisms, humans included, evolve ways of modulating and attenuating the changing flows that are potentially harmful to them. Humans are exceptionally well-adapted to utilize and re-configure available flows to secure incrementally increased viability. In one instance they discovered that they could manipulate the most common forms of energized matter at the surface of the earth — silicon and oxygen, with bits of carbon, sodium, and calcium — to create a substance that was, at human scales, relatively impervious and that could constrict extant or generated flows in a variety of ways. more “Window Weather”

28 : April : 201314 : November : 2015

place: The Bubble, Colorado

Sapere Aude!

aka:

dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude, incipe

Otherwise,
go with the herd;
be carried along
by the waxing, etc.,
Euclidean wiles of texted thought.
Removed from meat-spaces, there is no mercy bound in heart or mind.

22 : March : 201320 : February : 2014

place: Bundoora, VIC, Australia

done, Done, DONE!

In absentia, the PhD is granted, finally. Call me Dr. Jay…

17 : March : 201329 : December : 2023

systems

The basic idea behind the systems approach is that all relevant interests or values should be served by the kinds of change we can institute in our society and in nature. — Churchman

general systems theory, systems analysis, operations analysis, systems theory: is it possible to take this, maybe re-member Bertalanffy’s holism, and make something useful to creative production … ? Or is humanistic fear of systems thinking justified? Given that many aspects of the techno-social milieu we are embedded within are constructed on, many concepts are predicated on, the super-structure of systems. Doesn’t this justify at least a close look at the role of systems in effecting change in our life-trajectories?

At least it’s one pathway among others. Efficacy to be determined by future outcomes. But then, no-one will remember what the hell the initial conditions were anyway!

7 : March : 201322 : December : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

energy and population

This paper will argue that populations exhibit a behaviour that could be described as punctuated equilibrium. That is, populations generally exhibit long-term homeostasis. During brief and rare periods in history, population pressures lead to the commercialisation of a new source of energy—particularly a higher quality energy source—which in turn will raise the population ceiling, or the number of people the earth can support. At this stage, populations will grow quickly to approach the newly raised ceiling, then growth will slow and a new homeostasis will develop.

The planet could not support the six billion people that exist today without first the commercialisation of coal, then of oil and gas. If these energy sources were necessary for the historically rare and unprecedented population growth that has occurred over the last three hundred years, then this growth might be correlated (and modelled), in some way, after the pattern of consumption of these energy sources.

[. . .]

Biomass Population

Until 1850, most of the world’s population was still supported by traditional renewables (wood, dung, etc.) and animal power (with minor amounts of wind and hydropower). Admittedly Britain was already heavily influenced by coal, but very few other populations were. In 1850, Britain was producing more coal than the rest of Europe combined. In the same year, when the population of the United States was already 23 million, 90% of its energy requirements were still met from wood. So until the mid-1800s, energy from biomass was the main energy contributor to population growth. (It still contributes to population growth. It is estimated that 10% of the world’s energy in the year 2000 is provided by biomass and there are an estimated two billion people that still have no access to electricity.) Wrigley describes this preindustrial era as the Organic Economy, and in England’s case, the Advanced Organic Economy. In this model, it is called Biomass Population.

Biomass Population growth fluctuated in waves of feast and famine; economic growth and population checks. If populations grew too quickly, living standards declined, local carrying capacities were exceeded and food became more expensive. Malthusian population checks ensued: later age at first marriage, decreases in life expectancy and higher mortality. Biomass Population had been growing at a slow, exponential rate with some slight ups and downs for thousands of years. In other words, it exhibited homeostatic behaviour. Population pressures in Europe were relieved through the safety valves of migration. Settlers expanded into sparsely populated regions of the world such as North and South America, Australia and many African and Asian colonies. This enabled small upward shifts in the global population ceiling, or the population equilibrium.

If Biomass Population growth from 800 to 1850 were extrapolated to the year 2000, the value would be 1.09 billion people. This may or may not be an indication of how many people the planet would now be supporting if coal, oil and gas were never commercialised, assuming there were still frontiers to expand into. — Graham Zabel, London School of Economics, Population and Energy, 2000

4 : January : 201314 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

quantitative living systems science

Living Systems Theory is a general theory about how all living systems “work,” about how they maintain themselves and how they develop and change.

By definition, living systems are open, self-organizing systems that have the special characteristics of life and interact with their environment. This takes place by means of information and material-energy exchanges.

Living systems can be as simple as a single cell or as complex as a supranational organization (such as the European Economic Community). Regardless of their complexity, they each depend upon the same essential twenty subsystems (or processes) in order to survive and to continue the propagation of their species or types beyond a single generation. more “quantitative living systems science”

25 : November : 201221 : November : 2019

place: Boulder, Colorado

Odum’s analog ecosystem circuits

The difficulties of managing nature and man can be stated in circuit terms. Let us first fantasy [sic] the nightmare of an electronics technician. After a week of exhausting tedium, soldering circuits and completing a large network of wires connecting thousands of tubes, transformers, and transistors, he goes to bed with the feeling of a design completed. Then with the veil of the dream the parts begin to breathe. Next he sees them grow and divide, making new parts. Then the wires become invisible. The new and old parts disconnect themselves and move into new patterns, reconnecting their inputs and outputs, replacing worn members, and together generating functions and forms not known before. What was neat and known becomes unknown. Soon the new system with its vast capabilities is growing, self-producing, and self-sustaining, drawing all the available electric power. Our hero awakens when he pulls the switch removing the energy source. To some visionary engineers the nightmare may seem a preview of a machine world. Our ecosystem, however, is already the nightmare. — Howard Odum, 1971

22 : November : 201225 : April : 2013

the social

So much of be-ing is a convergence (there was no divergence!) of the social and the natural — as if these two categories are indeed mutually exclusive and reciprocal reductions of the world. They aren’t, they can’t be. In a holistic worldview, it is clear that the social is a development of the human species which is a natural extension of life on the planet.

21 : November : 201214 : November : 2015

clade dynamics

Evolution may be dominated by biotic factors, as in the Red Queen model, or abiotic factors, as in the Court Jester model, or a mixture of both. The two models appear to operate predominantly over different geographic and temporal scales: Competition, predation, and other biotic factors shape ecosystems locally and over short time spans, but extrinsic factors such as climate and oceanographic and tectonic events shape larger-scale patterns regionally and globally, and through thousands and millions of years. Paleobiological studies suggest that species diversity is driven largely by abiotic factors such as climate, landscape, or food supply, and comparative phylogenetic approaches offer new insights into clade dynamics.

Benton, M.J., 2009. The Red Queen and the Court Jester: Species Diversity and the Role of Biotic and Abiotic Factors Through Time. Science, 323(5915), pp.728–732.

20 : November : 201211 : October : 2024

urban energy organization

Hypothesis I. The self-sufficiency of urban areas with respect to their source of emergy decreases with the urbanization process. During the urbanization process, the diversity of emergy sources driving urban systems increases at first, then decrease due to the heavy reliance on fossil fuel.

Hypothesis II. During the process of urban growth, urban productivity is greater than the energy consumed in emergy terms, and information flows of the product of urban structure and the input to support the urban life continue to increase. Due to the increase in the accumulation of urban structure, the efficiency of production decreases.

Hypothesis III. Cities have the highest empower density in the hierarchy of ecosystems. During the process of urban development, empower density and transformity of land uses increase. Owing to the reliance on imported goods and services, the emergy investment ratio of urban areas increases and emergy self-sufficiency decreases with increases in density.

Hypothesis IV. As urbanization increases, the circulation of money also increases, faster than the increase in emergy flows, decreasing the buying power of currency.

Hypothesis V. The organization of emergy flows in urban systems is arranged in a spatial hierarchy with the highest emergy use close to the urban center.

Hypothesis IV. The fragmentation of landscapes on the urban periphery that results from urbanization will affect the distribution of emergy flows.

Huang, S.-L. & Chen, C.-W., 2005. Theory of urban energetics and mechanisms of urban development. Ecological Modeling, 189, pp.49–71.

18 : November : 20128 : April : 2018

yadda-yadda-yadda

The Call of the Bureaucrat:

Dear John

The Australian Higher Education Graduate Statement (AHEGS) process is to be implemented at La Trobe University and will provide students with a complimentary transcript, information on the degree completed and information about La Trobe University upon completion of their degree.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) require a 100 word abstract to be printed on the AHEGS statement.

To ensure we are able to include all relevant information would you please provide a 100 word abstract of your thesis by return e-mail – immediately.

The above is required before we can complete your degree and recommend you to the next Academic Board meeting and therefore, be invited to undertake Graduation in 2013.

Please treat this as a matter of urgency.

The Reply (gah, yet another hoop to jump through! Their sense of urgency does not reflect on their own reciprocal level of activity: it’ll be almost a year from the time I submitted and the time the degree will be awarded next February — and only a month of that delay is remotely related to my procrastination):

This creative research PhD is an innovative exploration of a media arts practice and the energy-based world-view that the practice is sourced within. It elaborates on that energy-based approach while suggesting potential ways of addressing crucial issues facing human systems. Using the amplifier as a prototypical model, it explores energy flows across a wide range of systems to aid in understanding the complexities of sustainable creative processes and practices in our current techno-social world. The dissertation text and the integral multi-media (b)log space (https://neoscenes.net/blog/) that accompanies it critically examine the dynamic of human presence, encounter, and relationship, techno-social systems, and creative action.

11 : November : 201229 : December : 2023

place: Golden, Colorado

evolving spaces

An example of the sliding-scale metaphor I use often in teaching — that whatever dialectically opposed concepts (i.e., networks vs hierarchies) the actuality of the situation is that neither exist in a pure form, but instead exist always in hybrid collision of dynamic evolution — in this case, a net/archy. Another instance (see this):

Smooth space and striated space — nomad space and sedentary space — the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus — are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. In the first case, one organizes even the desert; in the second, the desert gains and grows; and the two can happen simultaneously.

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. & Massumi, B., 1988. A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press. p 475.

6 : November : 20126 : November : 2012

next considerations

How to deal with the finished, formal text? Distribute as-is, as a locked pdf; wait until the entire thing is re-worked into a more formal & well-designed book that includes images and such. Begin to iterate the text as per desired and simply slide it all out there? Copyright? Copyleft? Creative Commons? hmmmm.

22 : October : 201230 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado to Melbourne, VIC, Australia

philosophiae doctor

PhD, (doctor of philosophy), roll awkwardly off the tongue. even “Dr. Jay.” eah, probably best to ignore the whole thing and only use it when absolutely necessary. like, job-hunting.

whatever you want to call it. being sent for final binding remotely, shortly.

gah, where’s that Herradura?

2 : October : 201214 : November : 2015

place: Bowldah, Colorado

one final step closer: passed the last committtee & panel [!]

The Chair of the Higher Degrees Committee (Research) has considered the recommendation of the Faculty Higher Degree Advisory Panel of this thesis together with the reports of the examiners and has decided that the thesis be classed as PASSED subject to:

1. the candidate amending the thesis in accordance with the recommendation of the Faculty Higher Degree Advisory Panel (see Attachment A), under the guidance of you as the supervisor;

2. when these changes have been completed to your satisfaction, written advice from the candidate, detailing the amendments that have been made is to be provided to the Higher Degrees Committee (Research), together with a statement from you and the Head of School confirming that the required amendments have been undertaken. The candidate is required to make the amendments within 6 months of this memorandum.

The Faculty Higher Degree Advisory Panel determined that Examiner A’s award of “Deferred” was unwarranted and represents a misreading of the thesis purpose. The transdisciplinary nature of the thesis, and its novel assemblage are missed by Examiner A. Expert advice from the Panel was that Examiner A comments be disregarded, and minor amendments, outlined below, be undertaken.

With a few minor corrections to be made in the next couple weeks or so. The panel had made this recommendation back on 20 August, but totally failed to notify me of the results, and only last week was I notified by Norie by chance as she’s been out of town! Incredible! And the Grad School made no attempt to email me anything. The La Trobe institutional communications paradigm is really dysfunctional. When I have paper in hand, I do plan a letter to the head of the graduate school about the numerous screw-ups in communications that have occurred in the process.

16 : August : 201214 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

creativity waning

It is well known that a child learns to walk to talk, and to know his way around the world just by trying something out and seeing what happens, then modifying what happens, then modifying what he does (or thinks) in accordance with what has actually happened. In this way, he spends his first few years in a wonderfully creative way, discovering all sorts of things that are new to him, and this leads people to look back on childhood as a kind of lost paradise. As the child grows older, however, learning takes on narrower meaning. In school, he learns by repetition to accumulate knowledge, so as to please the teacher and pass examinations. At work, he learns in a similar way, so as to make a living, or for some other utilitarian purpose, and not mainly for the love of the action of learning itself. So his ability to see something new and original gradually dies away. And without it there is evidently no ground from which anything can grow.

Bohm, D., 2004. On Creativity. Abingdon: Routledge.

14 : August : 201214 : November : 2015

nature of knowledge

The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. . . . Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements,

Lyotard, J.-F., 1999. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

13 : August : 201229 : December : 2023

technological mediation

There are different degrees in which our experience of the world is not technologically mediated, at least at the center of our perceptual and bodily experience of that world. For example, even though clothed and inside some “machine for living,” as the functionalists have termed buildings, the normally sighted and hearing person simply hears and sees what is immediate. In contrast, anyone using corrective lenses or a hearing aid clearly has sight and hearing mediated through a technology. At the level of touch, first in a surface dimension, we always can become specifically aware of the bodily surrounding immediacy of what we touch. In short, our sensory life, even if at close range or enclosed, retains that sense of direct perceivability and of bodily motility in the immediate environment. How this bodily actional and perceivable experience differs from more specifically technologically mediated experience will play an essential role in the initial difference I am trying to isolate for this analysis.

Once having located this central core of perceptual, bodily experience of an environment, it is possible to point to both its constancy and its pervasiveness. As long as I experience at all, I do so in bodily perceptual ways, and this is the case inside any technologies I may occupy. In a cold environment, I could tactilely experience the wind and chill; but if I have “chosen” to mediate that cold by wearing down clothing, I now substitute feeling the wind for feeling the warmth of what I am wearing. In this case, the “environment” is simply brought close and itself has the texture of one of the many cocoons humans employ in all non-Garden situations. The technology (clothing), however, transforms this immediately experienced environment; and it is that transformation which must be investigated. Direct bodily-perceptual contact with an environment counts as one side of the non-technologically /technologically mediated human experience that forms the focus of an entry into the analysis of human-technology relations.

Ihde, D., 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld : from garden to earth, Bloomington [etc.]: Indiana University Press.

9 : August : 201229 : December : 2023

womb of the military

The computer in its modern form was born from the womb of the military…. It is probably a fair guess, although no one could possibly know, that a very considerable fraction of computers devoted to a single purpose today are still those dedicated to cheaper, more nearly certain ways to kill ever larger numbers of human beings.

What then can we expect from this strange fruit of human genius? We can expect the kind of euphoric forecasting and assessment with which the popular and some of the scientific literature is filled. This has nothing to do with computers per se….

We can also expect that the very intellectuals to whom we might reasonably look for lucid analysis and understanding of the impact of the computer on our world, the computer scientists and other scholars who claim to have made themselves authorities in this area, will, on the whole, see the emperor’s new clothes more vividly than anybody else.

Joseph Weizenbaum, 1980, as quoted in Forester, T (ed.) (1980) The Microelectronic Revolution, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

27 : July : 201221 : October : 2014

more thesis indigestion

trying to settle into the coming 10 months of lease-bondedness in a shared residence in North Boulder whilst house-sitting for others. and while dealing with dregs of dissertation: examiners, two of three gave essentially stellar reviews; the third a polar opposite. it’s that polarizing effect! all-or-nothing. now a panel convenes to make a judgement. I plead my case, but am judged to be carping by other participants in the process [sigh]. this ain’t a defense, so gotta mellow out. there is some re-writing/addenda in the future, uff.

20 : July : 201214 : November : 2015

equilibrium, not!

This equilibrium, however, like the equilibrium of the price system, is a moving equilibrium in that it is constantly being changed by change in the parameters of the system, either through genetic mutation, by producing new species or changing old ones, or through changes in the physical parameters of the system through soil erosion or formation (climate changes, ice ages, etc.). This change in parameters, of course, is evolution. It is a disequilibrium system. Equilibrium, indeed, is unknown in the real world in any strict sense, although temporary and partial equilibria are necessary for our system of perception. If our perceptions were sharp enough we would be incapable of taxonomy. Every second the whole world would look different (in fact, it is). All taxonomy, indeed, is a product of the inadequacies of human perception. How very fortunate these inadequacies are!

Boulding, K.E., 2009. Systems Research and the Hierarchy of World Systems: General Systems in Special Chaos. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 26(4), pp.505–509.

8 : July : 201214 : December : 2019

episodic memory

Our capacity to remember episodes in our lives provides a profound and highly valued aspect to our existence, allowing us the capacity to relive events in our lives. We value the ability to relive a proud moment such as a graduation or the birth of a child. We expect and in many cases require that we will remember a meeting with a coworker or a visit to a family member. We start to question our mental capacities if we forget an episode, and we question the capabilities of others if they forget an episode that we remember. Thus, the memory for episodes is an essential component of human behavior.

Hasselmo, M.E., 2012. How We Remember: Brain Mechanisms of Episodic Memory, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wewsh, high density, clinical neuro-physiology/biology or so. But the typological divisions of memory among episodic, procedural, and semantic seem an approach that reveals how we are. And the neural construction of spatio-temporal trajectory (episodic trajectory) is fascinating. Overall, it feels like the science is still in the process of sub-dividing ever more the energetic processes of be-ing.

22 : June : 201221 : October : 2014

place: Prescott, Arizona

Empire? so what!

Yeah, waning Empire, waxing Empire. Who cares? What if we could suddenly subtract the military from the equation of the Great American Experiment? Where would that leave the world? Where would it leave us? It’s not like militarism or the military is a cancer or anything, so I’m not talking excision of an Evil, or the elimination of warring from the human psyche. Just the simple idea of taking that particular feature of the social fabric away.

Obviously this would interest the next guys on the heap. wha? The US set aside ALL of its weapons? Turned it all into a big pile of rather useless plows? pshaw… I don’t believe it.

Actually the thought experiment can’t proceed in this direction because the practicality of the destruction of what several generations hath wrought would occasion several generations effort yet to unravel. It’s gotta be an explicitly theoretical experiment. True, it’s possible to renovate old missile silos for funky bachelor pads, but this doesn’t account for the millions of pieces of hardware floating around, the millions of acres of spilled on, bombed out, concreted-over land that was requisitioned over the years for maneuvers, vacation spaces of ranking officers, taxi-ways, and parking lots for the rolling stock. not to mention all the bunkers, the munitions, the warheads, and the entire industrial production stream that coalesced around the spigot of Federal funding to develop the entire system.

ach, too complicated a mental stretch to carry this image to a conclusion. Ever since I finished the dissertation, my head isn’t into coagulating piles of words in order to point out some obscure structural feature of the complex system that we are a part of…

12 : April : 201221 : November : 2019

now the wait

Not that I’m holding my breath, as I am more in the Richard “I-don’t-give-a-fuck” Pryor mode at this point. Docs made it to the Head of School’s desk yesterday, on from there today. Out to examiners via snail-mail (argh, it is 2012, what’s with that?!). Jan really carried the ball in my physical absence from Oz, but the uni needs chastising (righteous prodding) for not mandating electronic submission as is standard elsewhere.

Adding portraits and other snippets: settled on the strategy of adding them to the current stream of postings, then after a week or two, demoting them to their proper chronological position. Daunting how many there are yet to add, along with other content.

Traffic has doubled in the last three months, and I hope this continues, although fresh content addition is still sucking up enormous amounts of time. There is no real limit in terms of what is available from the archive (video is just scratching the surface, and there is the whole analog archive in storage to be digitized! help!)

Heading West shortly for higher and more isolated regimes to wander and look and simply be for a time. to allow thought and thinking to settle, dis-band, and perhaps re-form in a new neuronal configuration. That’s always sure to happen when searching moonless skies for a spiral galaxy or two: Andromeda (M-31) for starters. So, need to sift through back-country gear to make sure with a 2-week hiatus from civilization that I’ll survive intact. The ancient vehicle is the biggest worry, but it should hold out for this adventure (fingers crossed).

10 : April : 201214 : November : 2015

instagram, yadda yadda yadda

Insipid: this posting over @ the New Yorker is just too friggin kind to the whole concept. Retro is so … empty …

Susan Sontag is not empty and to use her full words to do anything but obliterate the whole inane concept of instagram is a travesty.

It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. An ugly or grotesque subject may be moving because it has been dignified by the attention of the photographer. A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are momento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. — Susan Sontag

9 : April : 201222 : September : 2024

A Matter of Scale

An ultimately readable and thought-provoking book by one Kenneth Farnish available online for free (at the Internet Archive) that examines where we are, how we got here, and what may lie ahead.

Yes, you are part of the system; but you are far more important than the people higher up in the web: you are the engine, the energy source, the reason for its continuation. You are the system. Without your cooperation, without your faith, the system would have no energy and then it would cease to exist.

I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel good.

In so many words, a chunk of my dissertation makes the same point — the embeddedness of our be-ing here, now. Farnish just makes it all extremely readable as a journalist should. I happened to make it darker, and definitely more dense. oh well.

Farnish, Kenneth. A Matter of Scale, 2011. https://archive.org/details/AMatterOfScale.

2 : April : 201211 : November : 2013

place: Arvada, Colorado

done

Done with writing, re-writing, reading, re-reading, editing, copy-editing, fixing formatting glitches in OpenOffice, jumping through hoops, ticking boxes on long paper forms, faxing signatures. Now to await the results from the examiners, that’ll be a few months. No breath-holding for that time, as life moves on and it is now incumbent to do that moving on!

30 : March : 201221 : October : 2014

place: Arvada, Colorado

FYI – thesis stats

Words 62396
Unique Words 7990
Characters 389373
Characters In Words 311542
Sentences 3469
Average Word Length 5.0
Average Sentence Length 89.8
Average Words Per Sentence 18.0
Long Words (7 or more characters) 18833
Short Words (3 or fewer characters) 25362
Syllables 107416
Monosyllabic Words 33568
Polysyllabic Words (3 or more syllables) 13738

Automated Readability Index 11.1
Coleman Index 12.0
Coleman-Liau Index 13.6
Dale Chall Readability Index 10.4
Dale Chall Readability Grade Level 16
Degrees Of Reading Power (DRP) 72
Degrees Of Reading Power Grade Level Greater than 12
Fang Easy Listening Formula 13
Fang Easy Listening Interpretation Standard
Farr-Jenkins-Patterson Score 36
Farr-Jenkins-Patterson Reading Ease Difficult
Flesch Reading Ease Score 43
Flesch Reading Ease Difficult
Flesch Reading Ease Grade Level 13 to 16 (College)
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 11.7
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Age 16.7
Fry Readability Grade Level 14
Fry Readability Reading Age 19
FORCAST Grade Level 11.9
FORCAST Reading Age 16.9
Gunning Fog Index (FOG) 16.0
Gunning Fog Reading Age 21.0
Henshall formula 533.8
Johnson Readability 46.2
Johnson Grade Level 8 or higher
Lexical Density 12.8
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Index 48.0
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Readability Difficult
Laesbarhedsindex (LIX) Grade Level 9
Linsear Write Readability 13.0
McAlpine EFLAW© Test 25.3
McAlpine EFLAW© Readability Very Easy
Miyazaki EFL Readability Index 36.6
Power-Sumner-Kearl Grade Level 7.0
Power-Sumner-Kearl Reading Age 12.0
Rate Index (RIX) 5.4
Rate Index (RIX) Grade Level 11
Raygor Readability Grade Level College
SMOG Score 14.5
SMOG Index 14.0
SMOG Reading Age 19.0
Spache Readability Index (Original) 4.3
Spache Readability Index (Revised) 3.7
Wheeler Smith Index 52.2
Wheeler Smith Grade Level Greater than 4

30 : March : 201227 : July : 2020

doggedness (after madness)

Is a ‘dogged determination’ always bad? It could be — as a rigid sticking to a desired (theoretical) goal or outcome. Arrival at a goal is possible from an infinite variety of trajectories, so, why stick to one? Perhaps that’s just part of the territory of sticking to a goal — that the end-point then defines the trajectory instead of keeping the whole thing wide open. Lacking (denying, avoiding, purging) a goal then cracks open an entirely different set of possibilities, trajectories, and, of course, outcomes.

29 : March : 201229 : March : 2012

place: Boulder, Colorado

maddening

Absolutely maddening, life slipping by, and yet being stuck to this text. One day more, two days more? Can’t stand it. Have been cycling through old haunts at least once a day, getting plenty of solar radiation with empty head, and wondering how it is that I have no possibilities to live in Boulder again. It’s too damn exclusive. What to do next?

26 : March : 201229 : December : 2023

for college students

A piece of advice: seek out the best profs. Once you land at your school, ask around, look over any “outstanding teaching award” lists, online for advice, look around to see what students are producing interesting work (find out their teachers). ~~good teaching /~~ great teaching will push you into the indeterminate space of being-here-now. it is at that moment you are open to the Unknown and that openness is a state to cultivate no matter how maddeningly intense it might feel.

granted, I know this is a boot-strapping situation. knowing a good prof when you encounter one: what’s that mean?

hmm. well. listen to small interior voices. I say small in that they are not the loudest, usually, except in a transitory way — you might wake up with a particularly boisterous one on a particular day, it’s probably good to give some passing attention to it. but what I call ‘voices’ here are not linguistically-defined, they are the resonances of intuition which are not reductive abstractions as language or protocol are, they are pre-linguistic. so, technically, they are not ‘voices’ at all. or even aural/sonic. they are merely ‘vibrashuns.’ got it? it’s where you find yer mojo. with yer mojo operating properly (as a transmission-reception mode), you will be able to suss out the best profs, eh?

stay tuned (who stay’s tuned anyway, these days?) for more. [noting, sadly, the redundancy of this mode of writing anyway]

24 : March : 201221 : October : 2014

salutations

closing in. final copy editing. a few mistakes, but not many. posting signatures (posting?) This is 2012, but no digital dissertation submission at LTU. argh! Sending molecules instead of bits. Annoying, along with a bound copy for the library. (and an extra one for the Australian National Library…). Such a waste of effort. Otherwise I’d be done with it!

spend the day cycling around Boulder, visit with Mia at her shop Two Hands Paperie on the Mall, then called up Jeff and Leslee who happened to be home, hung out with them for the afternoon. gorgeous weather. (more like late April, a bit worrisome, with the potential for fire season to be a problem, March is usually the wettest month of the year in Colorado).

23 : March : 201215 : April : 2013

place: Boulder, Colorado

cutting room floor

Within any life system there exists a deep and continuous tension between change and stasis. A system tends to be conservative and traditional for two reasons, possibly more: 1) that optimization is strictly about the conservation of energy in the process of producing and maintaining a set of pathways and, 2) it functions under the restriction that newer and possibly innovative pathways are most often constructed on the infrastructure of preceding pathways. With individuals as for large social structures, there is a certain inertia where pre-existing pathways are easier to use again. This recalls Hebb’s postulate regarding neuroplasticity: on the wider social scale, tradition: things are done this way because this is how they have always been done. The entire Regime, as the coherent expression of its predetermined pathways is directly threatened by processes of true innovation: change threatens The Regime.

21 : March : 201228 : December : 2023

cutting room floor

The cumulative fabric of the social system evolves through a constantly shifting, hybrid, and continuous field of change, affected by all flows: we might call it simply a net/archy. The differences arise largely as an effect of the varying degrees of freedom that available or potential protocols apply to the nodal/human relations. The sourcing and dynamic evolution of the protocols that govern energy-flow pathways between participants are crucial metrics of the evolving qualities of relation. This field of change is expressed simultaneously as a participatory site of tension, simmering conflict, dynamic encounter, and the vital renewal that is necessary for any viable system.[1] Control vies with autonomy at all scales from the deeply embodied to the global.

[1] As an example, Václav Havel’s well-known essay “The Power of the Powerless” contains a profound exploration of the nature of power in an extremely hierarchically-controlled social system near the end of its existence. It is a system that “for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures” (1985). It is the application of power via protocol which exerts the control and eliminates (as that exertion becomes more and more intense) any spaces for autonomy to exist. But these systems reach a saturation point where the control (and feedback) system, a necessary structural part of it, begins to absorb all the energy available to the system overall—destroying it from the ‘inside.’

Havel, V., 1985. The Power of the Powerless: citizens against the state in central-eastern Europe, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

17 : March : 201227 : July : 2020

more cutting room floor

I think of you often.

If fundamental presence is so ever-present, immersive, why would we want or need more than that? Indeed, is there anything more than gradations of changing presence through which the Self and the Other engage, given the limitations imposed by embodiment? Perhaps not. It may be that this is the ground-state that Buber posits as the source of reality: shared presence. We have this pervasive base condition of flowing presence, but we do seem to desire more. We sporadically, haltingly, seek to optimize the conditions of inspiring encounter through the focused direction of our creative energies: more and better, higher and deeper, electric be-ing expressed and re-expressed. We seek to have those expressions subsequently received, reciprocated, reflected, refined, absorbed, by the Other: this process measured by the evinced substantiation of embodied change within them. Does this desire for more arise from the experiential affirmation that deeper and more attentive presence somehow brings more Life into our lives? Or is it simply a reaction to deep-seated fears of the unknown and of loss that arise as we experience the changing flows that constitute our lives? Or is it that we merely need confirmation of the shared experience of being alive in all its joy, madness, ecstasy, beauty, and terror? Is it primal memory of the immersive, enveloping flux of womb?

16 : March : 201214 : November : 2015

resources

Middle French, French ressource, ressourse help, aid (c1175 in Old French as resorse, subsequently from 15th cent.), possibility of aid or assistance, action or strategy which may be resorted to in a difficulty or emergency (1422), re-establishment, restoration (late 15th cent.), stock or reserve of money (1558; chiefly in plural), physical ability to make a new effort after failures (1588), personal attribute and capability regarded as able to help or sustain a person in adverse circumstances (1687; chiefly in plural) < Old French sors, *surs, *sours (masculine), and surse, sourse, source feminine, substantival uses of the past participle of sourdre: to rise or spring < Latin surgĕre: to rise. (OED)

16 : March : 201222 : August : 2015

more cutting room floor

Why do you act that way?

Whatever the drives are to first experience and later, to understand the presence of the Other, we also spend much effort in establishing the character of our own presence within the limited sphere of our life and our imaginings. We try to optimize and to control our expressions: the extensible flow of our presence. We hunt for available pathways that allow us the sensation of inspired expression. We look for Others who will share these pathways with us. We seek a means to send out energies across that perturbed space, infinite and infinitesimal, that separates our Self from that Other.

What are the means for accentuating, for refining, expression and reception; what are its principles? To deal with these important issues we will have to make a closer look at this gap and how we bridge it.

15 : March : 201214 : November : 2015

source of power

For most of the time that humans have inhabited the earth, their prime source of power has been their own muscle power. . . . Early additional sources of power included human slaves and domesticated animals. The hunting/gathering societies were helped when an extra food gatherer or hunter could join in the task of securing food. Likewise, the labor intensiveness of primitive agriculture increased both the need for and the usefulness of slave and animal labor. . . . A slave or extra hunter, of course, would have to be fed. However, two hunters could kill more than twice as much game as a single hunter could kill alone. In this way, additional labor provided a greater return in energy than the energy input required for its maintenance. (Pimentel & Pimentel, 2008, p.68)

15 : March : 201222 : August : 2015

more cutting room floor

You are so distant.

And absence, what of that? Is it simply a corresponding dialectic as cold is to heat? Is it merely the empty reciprocal of the Vedic tapas—the “internal warmth, creative heat” that is “an inherent characteristic of ultimate reality.” (Kaelber, 1989) Or is it as attenuation is to amplification—where absence is simply the qualitative or quantitative lack of presence? Where absence may occur even when embodied presence is proximal, bodies touching. Then there comes the strange absence in the eyes, with no outward flow, no enlivened presence, body is not enough. Present body, absent mind, absent soul: the indifferent lack of presence. It is as though a switch has been thrown, a switch that cuts off life from expression. Within absence is the terror of death, where energy is withdrawn, a blockage formed, gradually or in haste, separating the Self from the once-lively Other.

It is somewhere between presence and absence that we find ourselves oscillating on a momentary basis. Neither ends of the sliding scale between the two are possible, so we occupy the relative and changing regions in between.

14 : March : 201211 : September : 2024

more cutting room floor

Both the road and the vehicle traveling on it are incarnate protocols intimately related to the prosecution of war and the consequent maintenance or demise of the warring state. Of course, militarization proceeds on the sea, in the air, and even in space, but it is still the marching boots-on-the-ground that is the final proof of control of a territory. Regardless of the precise protocol that directs the warring State’s energies, those energies flow along a pathway, guided by some protocol. And these days, there are still boots pressing the brakes or accelerator in some sort of engined, engineered, vehicle, eyes squinting through the blast-proof polycarbonate windshield.

13 : March : 201211 : September : 2024

place: Arvada, Colorado

wie Luft behandeln

Why so gaddammed serious, here.
When words should play at least some of the time
Where words should play, or, less than least, fill leftover space with bright sounds, firing in head. Both yours and mine.

12 : March : 201229 : December : 2023

more cutting room floor

In the continuity of all phenomena that are sensed, a deep interdependence is a fundamental characteristic. Recalling that deployments of amplification systems exist at all scalar levels, a particular TSS may be modeled as a synergy of constituent sub-systems. However, each interdependent social system will approach the process of expressed presence somewhat differently, relative to that interdependence and to historical precedent (pre-existing pathway dependence). Globalization may be seen as essentially the wide-scaled synchronization and standardization of (some of) these differing sub-systems into widely harmonized and ordered pathways—usually to the (energy) detriment of smaller-scaled or more localized systems.

The contemporary globalized Regime stands on a (centralized) system of production and consumption [1] of amplified signals that forcefully promotes the standardization process. The originary signals are still human-to-human as in all systems, but extensive and globally-refined amplification pathways are present in many of these encounters—either by structural chance or by determined choice. In fact this is nothing new for a TSS of smaller size, but the sheer scale of construction of the necessary global infrastructures for collecting and redistributing the flows, as well as the directed flows of amplified energies themselves, is unprecedented in human history. Globalization of the Regime, as a particular scalar culmination of the once-localized system, affects every individual on the planet. more “more cutting room floor”

8 : March : 20123 : May : 2018

Model assumptions: Dynamic Energy Budgets

There are two state variables: structural body volume and energy reserve density.
There are six energy fluxes: assimilation; somatic maintenance; somatic growth; maturation; maintenance of the state of maturity; and reproduction. These energy fluxes are irreversible.
There are maximally three life stages: embryo’s, which neither feed nor reproduce; juveniles, which may feed but do not reproduce; and adults, which may feed and reproduce.
The rate of food uptake is proportional to the surface area of an organism, and is a hyperbolic function of the food density.
Energy assimilated from food becomes part of the reserves. The dynamics of the energy reserve density are first order, with a rate that is inversely proportional to the length of an organism.
A fixed fraction of the energy flowing out of the reserves is used by somatic tissue (somatic maintenance and growth), and the remainder is used for maturity maintenance, and maturation or reproduction (stored until reproductive event); maintenance demands have priority. This partitioning of energy cancels when somatic maintenance needs cannot be fulfilled; then somatic maintenance demands have priority.
The chemical compositions of structure and reserves are constant. Thus, the following are constant:
- the conversion efficiency of food into energy;
- the cost to maintain a unit of structure;
- the cost to form a unit of structure;
- the cost to maintain the acquired state of maturity;
- the cost to mature a unit of structure;
- the cost to form a unit of reproductive matter.
Life stage transitions occur when the cumulative amount of energy that is spent on maturation exceeds a threshold. An embryo initially has a negligible amount of structure. With eggs, the energy reserve density of the embryo at hatching equals that of its mother during egg formation. A foetus develops at a rate that is independent of the reserve density of the mother; at birth, its energy reserve density equals that of the mother. Micro-organisms divide into daughter cells a constant interval after the initiation of DNA replication; replication starts at a threshold size.
There is one state variable for each toxic compound: the density of that toxicant in the aqueous fraction of structure.
There is one independent compartment: the aqueous fraction of structure. The density of toxicant in the aqueous fraction of structure is always in equilibrium with the toxicant density in other parts of the body (dry fraction of structure, reserves and stored resources for reproduction). Toxicants are exchanged with the ambient through the aqueous fraction of structure.
Toxicants in ingested food are assimilated with a constant efficiency. Other toxicants in the environment are taken up at a rate that is proportional to the surface area of an organism and the ambient toxicant concentration.
The rate of toxicant removal (excluding the release of reproductive matter) is proportional to the surface area of an organism and the toxicant density in the aqueous fraction of structure.
Toxicants do not affect energy budgets when their density in the aqueous fraction of structure is below a fixed value, the no-effect concentration (NEC). At higher levels, the effective toxicant concentration is proportional to the density in the aqueous fraction of structure corrected for the NEC.
The flow of energy declines as a hyperbolic function of the effective toxicant density. Demand driven fluxes (maintenance demands) are compensated such that the net commitment to maintenance increases linearly with the effective toxicant concentration.
Toxicants act on different energy fluxes with equal strength.

Nisbet, R.M., Effects of Metal Toxicants on the Energy Budgets of Marine Organisms: A Modeling Approach. Available at: https://www.coastalresearchcenter.ucsb.edu/scei/Metaltox.html.

8 : March : 201231 : December : 2023

more cutting room floor

I’ll help you meet the unknown. I rather enjoy the unknown. At least some of it. Not all of it. Maybe later I’ll tell you about what specific unknowns I cannot deal with. Every life-form has a threshold limit for dealing with the unknown. It is much easier to meet the unknown in the company of someone who finds a particular unknown not to be unknown. Overlapping knowledge-sets are very helpful in dealing with the unknown. It’s about standing back-to-back or side-by-side sometimes. No one knows everything about everything, everyone knows something about something. And anyone who professes to know more than half about everything will not make a good traveling companion. Likewise, someone who claims they know nothing will likely end up being tedious and disagreeable in the ensuing intimate run of a road-trip. Those who presume knowledge to be a fluid condition, changeable, and in need of constant refinement are the best traveling companions.

The capacity to tolerate indeterminate or unknown situations largely rests on prior experience. But somewhere, deep within the reptilian brain is a realization that to gain the requisite rewards that life offers (are they any more than simply the continuance of life?), one has to move outwards, somehow, outwards, through, across, into the world. Riding differential gradients from less to more or more to less, you never know. This movement presumes exposure to changing fields of external flows. It means sampling those flows, carefully or with great abandon. more “more cutting room floor”

7 : March : 201223 : June : 2014

systems awareness

It would seem that a key characteristic of an awareness of any particular ‘system’ has to include a sense of the ‘setting’ of that abstracted system. That is, reflecting the idea of scalar independence as a thread of systems thinking. This connects to the concept of the meta-structures that are impinging elements from other levels of nested systems. For example, the learning facilitator can focus a critical eye on the physical system of the classroom—arranging the furniture, opening/closing the shades, assigning seats, etc—to effect changes in the efficacy of the learning experience. The facilitator might also focus on individual students and their ‘body-system’—do they seem to have proper nutrition, sleep, are their parents engaged in the process, what is their mental state, etc. At the same time, an awareness of the impact of the state-wide system mandated regulations on the educational program—legal remit, funding, distributed infrastructure, administrative policies, how funding relates to the wider population, and so on—will allow, among other choices, strategic decisions to be made in relation to the classroom process. The point being 1) no matter what system one is talking about there are other levels of nested/embedded systems that should not/cannot be left out of general consideration and 2) the effects of an other level (‘higher’ or ‘lower’ both) may completely overwhelm (negate, support) the effects of one level being examined.

6 : March : 201214 : November : 2015

organum sensus communis

Every efficient cause acts through its own power, which it exercises on the adjacent matter, as the Light (lux) of the sun exercises its power on the air (which power is Light [lumen] diffused through the whole world from the solar Light [lux]). And this power is called ‘likeness,’ ‘image,’ and ‘species,’ and is designed by many other names, and it is produced both by substance and by accident, spiritual and corporeal . . . This species produces every action in the world, for it acts on sense, on the intellect, and on all matter of the world for the generation of things. — Roger Bacon, Opus maius

4 : March : 201229 : August : 2014

place: Arvada, Colorado

outsider trading

so bumps in the road expand into mole-hills into fuckin’ Everests. ready to chuck the whole thing.

with all my travels, and participating in systems that are localized I have noted how the local participants consider that their (social institutional) system–whatever it might be—is correct, transparent, and functional (and, is optimal/optimized). In every conversation I have had with foreign graduate students in Australia’s “tertiary education” (aka – “higher ed”) system, the chief topic of conversation is how black-box the system actually is, and how locals are able to function in it much easier, setting up knowledge-tracks to quick success. Prior knowledge and simply being in the system over time (or ‘from the beginning’) is a tremendous advantage in such localized systems. Entering in the system as I have done, an outside outsider is a distinct disadvantage, and at this point, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. A ‘semester abroad’ to UNSW or such might be good fun, but otherwise I’ve not seen much to recommend pursuing a graduate degree. I have heard in engineering as well as humanities courses that there are so many foreign students with poor ESL skills, that there is no real possibility for classroom dialogue of any but the most basic level. This wasn’t a problem in the two courses I’ve taught, though I can understand it is definitely possible, given that 18% of all tertiary students are coming from overseas. That’s 375K students as of 2005! Four years on, the number is 629K as there has been a major push by the government to expand this lucrative source of foreign exchange. It’s the third largest ‘export’ industry, generating AUD 18 billion in 2009. (See this report and this one for reference.)

I was told that there would be no more ‘casual’ teaching positions available for me until at least 2013, at which point I wouldn’t be in the country anyway. The significant contraction comes on the heels of the expansion: “a combination of factors in the past 18 months has put the international education sector under pressure. . . . Preliminary evidence suggests that the entire sector could see a decline in enrolments of between 15 to 30% in the near future.” This would cause a loss of tens of thousands of FTE (Full-time Equivalent) teaching positions (according to the rough correlation of every 2 overseas students supports one FTE). Tough times coming for tertiary ed in Oz!

Though this is only a side-show as far as I am concerned. Actually I don’t care a rap about it! The primary issue is the interpretation gap between what I pick up (from what I am told) and what is considered ‘correct’ or ‘acceptable’ within that tertiary education system in Australia as I (perhaps) continue my pursuit of the Ph.D. The gap seems to have expanded to consume my entire thesis which is shocking. Or maybe not — the meta-structural issues that I alluded to above are no surprise at all. They are the rule rather than the exception everywhere that I’ve participated in a process deeply enough to touch them. Most people are local. That’s ‘normal.’ Sure, they travel, but not to the extent where they run into these issues. And to locals, the problems are completely invisible: it’s the fish and water syndrome. Surfacing any critique usually causes some affront — even a passing note as to “how it’s done elsewhere.” (Being a ‘Yank’ in Australia is to be even more acutely suspect of an ulterior motive with any observation — I noticed that right off during several awkward instances.)

The only times I’ve really been ‘local’ myself are during the occasional sojourns in Colorado over the years — ten years resident over the past 35. Though the residencies have been mostly brief themselves, and all the locals I know here expect me to be around only temporarily.

Local versus distal provenance is a strong determinant in social power structures. Close connection to the sources of system-wide protocols enhances access to energy sources and consequently, enhances survivability.