posted
  • place: a small corner of the cosmos

love

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
…
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

King, Martin-Luther, Nobel Acceptance speech, December 1964

A good read on a day such as this one …

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification

Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):

The Regime of Amplification

Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!

*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

1493: Homogenocene

It looked an ice cream cone. But when I came closer, I realized that the boy was eating a raw sweet potato. His father had whittled at the top to expose the orange flesh, which the boy was licking; the unpeeled bottom of the sweet potato served as a handle.

This was at a farm about 300 miles northwest of Shanghai. Sweet potatoes are often eaten raw in rural China–a curiosity to Westerners like me. I didn’t realize that I had been staring until the boy ran to seek the protection of his father, who was hoeing a row of sweet potatoes. The father glared at me as I waved an apology. Because I don’t speak Chinese, I couldn’t tell him that I had been staring not at his son, but at the sweet potato in his hand. Nor could I say that I was staring because the sweet potato was an emblem of four hundred years of convulsive global change. more “1493: Homogenocene”

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shifting life-focus

it occurs to me, on the eve of shifting life-focus in a big way, that the blather of the politicos about conducting a war with only symbolic (socio-political) goals is absolute rubbish. the warring army which is imposing its highly organized (ordered) disorder/destruction on the enemy needs a concrete and vast energy source. if one result of the war is not a direct increase in the energy reserves of the warring army and its supporting social system, then conducting the war is not only fool-hardy, but doomed to failure from a simple thermo-dynamic point-of-view. to project an ordered system outwards and to impose that on another system takes energy. an army without unlimited resources will fail. and, in failing, if conducted short-sightedly, will empty the treasury. this seems to apply to the US military that has been used in numerous wars but many/most of those recent wars were not fought for explicit (and real!) resources that would feed it and the social system that spawned it. the wars were fought for ideological (socio-political) purposes espoused by the elites.

imagine the situation in Afghanistan if there had been no Iraq war? imagine if even a fraction of the natural resources of Afghanistan were left in the hands of US military-industrialists? Vietnam was the same. Korea, ditto.

the last major conflict that brought the US military-industrial complex huge resource/energy reserves was WWII, aside from minor conflicts in strategic locations (Panama, Kuwait, uh, where else?).

posted

Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics

• A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

• A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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Research is …

Research … is the exploration of the unknown. It is speculative, uncertain. It cannot be standardized. It succeeds, moreover, in virtually direct proportion to its freedom from performance controls, production pressures and traditional approaches … To be effective, new devices must be the responsibility of a group of enthusiasts whose attentions are undiluted by other conflicting responsibilities.”

Dr. Vannevar Bush’s Congressional testimony quoted in New Developments Division, War Department Special Staff, History of New Developments Division, War Department Special Staff, c. Apr 46, pp. 4-5. Manuscript in OCMH.

posted

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.

posted

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”

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Re: Satyr day, Sun ikon

*Those *were the days — as *they* say . . .

*Let’s go *back *in time . . .*
Those ideas about “time travel” are “miraculous”,
exemplary for their disembodied stupefaction.
*
*
I’ve been thinking about Black Elk and Sitting Bull
lately.
The ways of the ancestors, specifically beings living
in relation to the powers which do not feed on conflict.

(consumerISM in this city is dominant, hegemonic;
to the exclusion of anything not dependent on conflict
and competition.)

Have you finished the writing ?

A

posted

Veteran Fact Sheet

Veteran Statistics
— There are approximately 25 million veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces alive today (7.5 % are women).
— Some 7.2 million of those veterans are enrolled in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) system; approximately 5.5 million receive health care and 3.4 million receive benefits.
— Since October 2001, approximately 1.6 million members of the Armed Forces have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. As of December 31, 2007, more than 800,000 veterans of these conflicts were eligible for VA health care.
— There are about 37 million dependents (spouses and dependent children) of living veterans and survivors of deceased veterans. Together they represent 20% of the U.S. population.
— Most veterans living today served during times of war. The Vietnam Era veteran, about 7.9 million, is the largest segment of the veteran population.
— There are approximately (as of October 2007) 2,911,900 WWII veterans alive, but they are passing away at a rate of 1,000 per day (approx. total today 2,583,400)
— In 2007, the median age of all living veterans was 60 years old, 61 for men and 47 for women.
— Median ages by period of service: Gulf War, 37 years old; Vietnam War, 60; Korean War, 76; and WW II 84.
— The percentage of the veteran population over 65 is 39.1%.
— Sixty percent (60%) of the nation’s veterans live in urban areas and six states account for about 36% of the total vet population. They are California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, respectively.
— Veteran Population by Race: White 80.0%; Black 10.9%; Asian/Pacific Islander 1.4%; Hispanic 5.6%; American Indian/Alaska Natives 0.8%; Other 1.3%
— Approximately 150,000 of our nation’s veterans are homeless.

Suicide Rates
— Veterans are more than twice as likely as non-veterans to commit suicide and the “Katz Suicide Study,” dated February 21, 2008, found that suicide rates among veterans are approximately 3 times higher than in the general population.
— The VA’s own data indicate that an average of four to five veterans commit suicide each day.
— A document from the VA Inspector General’s Office, dated May 10, 2007, indicates that the suicide rate among individuals in the VA’s care may be as high as 7.5 times the national average.
— According to internal VA emails, there are approximately 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans seen in VA medical facilities.
— The VA has hired suicide prevention counselors at each of its 153 medical centers to help support the national suicide prevention hotline.

PTSD
— Approximately 300,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – nearly 20% of the returning forces – are likely to suffer from either PTSD or major depression, and these numbers continue to climb.
— An additional 320,000 of the returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan may have experienced traumatic brain injuries during deployment.
— By fiscal year 2005, the VA’s own statistics indicated that PTSD was the fourth most common service-related disability for service members receiving benefits.
— While there is no cure for PTSD, early identification and treatment of PTSD symptoms may lessen the severity of the condition and improve the overall quality of life for veterans suffering from this condition.

posted
  • place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts

Wednesday, 20 December, 1961

Sat in a mtg. to hear Fred Schweppe tell about his program for Max Likelihood Linearization of Trajectory Parameters.

Worked out a basis of procedures in the Ascension Island case:

1) Regard the -16 & TTR in combination as a single system.
2 a) Assumptions:

-16 objectives (To produce traffic data by missile contractor.)

TTR objectives (Expressed by list of items of processed data.)

X) Defensive
Y) Offensive
Z) Scientific

2 b) Objects non-conflicting & non-complimentary due to different radar characteristics

2 c) The -16/TTR combination should assist each to attain their respective objectives.

3) Device O&T procedures that will provide routine overall system checking daily and prior to live test.

4) From DOD level publish a set of common objectives to those at Site 12.

Sat in mtg to hear John Williams report on his conversations with BTL on Monday last re; the RDPV logic. It was inconclusive.

Overcast, ice

Rode with HS today.

Worked on Jeep in PM — removed left front seat and fixed it so it will slide. Also took some rust off the right side of the floor in front.

posted

The Longest (Small) War

Beyond Bin Laden – America and the Strategic Principles of Irregular Warfare

The special forces raid against Osama bin Laden in Abottabad will clearly become the textbook example of how to perfectly execute high-risk military operations in the post-9/11 world. In locating and killing Osama bin Laden on foreign soil America has again demonstrated its peerless capacity at the tactical and operational level. Nevertheless, as the supreme military thinker Sun Tsu taught, “tactics without strategy is simply the noise before defeat,” and it is my firm conviction that the last ten years of this conflict have lacked the strategic guidance that a threat of the magnitude of transnational and transcendentally-informed terrorism demands. — Sebastian L. v. Gorka (more)

posted

Energy for the Warfighter

In speaking about the US military, I’ve often used the simplified example that it has only six weeks of strategic petroleum reserves (of sweet and sour crude) that it can reliably deploy in the short-term. When that oil runs out the military machine largely grinds to a halt. I decided I needed to fill out the nuances of the situation by tapping into some CSIS briefings on Operational Energy Strategy looking at optimization, reduction of consumption, and implementation of systems that make the logistical problems of fuel access and dependence mission-neutral. There is a government site documenting some of the issues. And there is the DOD Energy Blog. These sources provide a number of in-depth explorations which illustrate the vulnerability of the overall techno-social system to energy deprivation and the current rising crisis which dominoes behind greater world energy demand.
more “Energy for the Warfighter”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Nordic Nazi recollections

Hitler’s worldview included copious referencing of Nordic creation mythologies (thus his love of Wagner!). One consequence of this obsession was the emergence of strong pro-Nazi movements leading up to, through, and most disturbingly, after WWII in all the Nordic/Scandic countries (Nordic countries comprise all the Scandinavian countries (Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark), plus Finland). Some Icelanders eagerly supported these Nazi ideologies — documented in black-and-white images of uniformed goose-stepping rubes on parade in downtown Reykjavík before the 1940 British occupation, and the refusal of Icelandic authorities to allow African-American soldiers into the country during the later US occupation. These warped sympathies have persisted right up to the present time: a fact that was brought to my attention by a sequence of articles published in Iceland’s main national newspaper, Morgunbladið, back in the early 1990’s when I had recently immigrated to Reykjavík to take up residence with my future ex-wife, an Icelandic psychologist who I had met in Germany a few years previous. The current events in Norway bring all this back to mind, again… more “Nordic Nazi recollections”

posted

The Value of Nothing

Consider this example: My cell phone company gives me a free handset, bristling with features, so I become a regular contract subscriber or buyer of pay-as-you-go minutes. I am pleased, not least because I can now navigate through the city without having to remember where I am, and I have the pleasure of palming the latest little gadget. In order for those features to work, I’ll have to pay a little bit more, to buy either an app or bandwidth. Clearly, many people think it’s worth it. Indeed, there’s a cell phone arms race, in which increasingly swanky phones become socially necessary. These new phones come with new applications and uses that, again, become socially indispensable for the user, and the permanent sources of revenue for the provider. In the United States in 2007, cell phone expenditure per customer reached six hundred dollars per year (surpassing that of a landline for the first time). That’s a lot of cash, which gets divided out fairly unevenly. more “The Value of Nothing”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

conflict

Tapas notes about the Wisconsin pro/anti-union conflict and the Egyptian shift,

Simply unbelievable. I never even suspected that Tahrir Square could echo in the USA.

I reply, sotto voce:

I don’t think it is echoing, except as a media construct, but, really, it’s at least a bit offensive to characterize a whole country as full of fat sleeping slobs, although there are those who are precisely that here (and elsewhere in the corpulent world vs the thin world). There are conscious people here now and in the past. There have been multi-million-person marches in the streets, police rounding up tens of thousands of protesters in JFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, tear gas, shootings, bombings, and so on. While, yes, many in the present population are anesthetized by over-consumption and economic ruin, there remain those who will march and confront the despots in power. It may not be so long before you witness a scale of internecine violence in the US that makes satrap rulers and their suppression of impoverished populations look like a walk in the park. I’d explore the history of this Empire if I were you (or simply reference Tacitus’ “Annals of Imperial Rome” for a start.) This present Empire is fraught with any and all of the possible irruptions known to any comparably-scaled nation-state unit. It was only three generations ago that three percent of the population died in a major internecine war.

Empire does not mimic the provinces, it corrodes from the center out…

posted
  • place: Whanganui, New Zealand

waka – Day 6 – eNZed

learning Maori numbers, Whanganui, New Zealand, December 2010

Up early again, before all the girls are off to school, the morning routines are quite entertaining to witness. Compared to similarly-aged kids in other places (the US!), all the kids I’ve met here seem quite relaxed. Is it the culture here, or? There is a laid-back quality, but I haven’t been here long enough to see how it suffuses through the society. There have to be substantial social issues, with colonialism having left such an influence on things. The stack of histories of NZ that Kerry loaned me before traveling told of savage open conflict until around the time of the US Civil War which is quite recent. Though no longer in direct living memory, it is still quite close. It’s is obvious, from the clear-cut timbering alone, seen from the air, that there is an ongoing and deep conflict over land-use, with powerful development and/or exploitation forces. On the other hand, there are definitely strong voices for nurturing the environment (and human lives on the island) back to something more sustainable.

We take a visit to the waka (canoe) boathouse to check on things — there is a crew of young gals who are practicing waka racing for the national championship. A group of absolutely charming young women.

Mike, our main Maori host comes by, what a expansive and powerful spirit he has! Julian has really cultivated some amazing connections with people here. Everyone met so far has been friendly, open, welcoming, relaxed, ready with a smile, along with some challenging/enLightening conversations.

Hardly time to make any entries now that the road has come up to meet my feet, so to say. Prepping mentally for the symposium coming up in a few days. But there is still so much indeterminacy that I will really have to improvise, and simply go with the available and auspicious energies of the moment. Many stories are already told about energy and informatics.

Towards sunset, an impromptu picnic on river turns out to be a neighborhood gathering, yet another example of a relaxed bunch of folks. Such a (WELCOME!) contrast to Sydney!

posted
  • author: Eric Kluitenberg
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

ElectroSmog and the quest for a sustainable immobility

The ElectroSmog festival for sustainable immobility, staged in March 2010 [1], was both an exploration of this grand promise of tele-presence and a radical attempt to create a new form of public meeting across the globe in real-time. ElectroSmog tried to break with traditional conventions of staging international public festivals and conferences through a set of simple rules: No presenter was allowed to travel across their own regional boundaries to join in any of the public events of the festival, while each event should always be organized in two or more locations at the same time. To enable the traditional functions of a public festival, conversation, encounter, and performance, physical meetings across geographical divides therefore had to be replaced by mediated encounters.

The festival was organized at a moment when internet-based techniques of tele-connection, video-telephony, visual multi-user on-line environments, live streams, and various forms of real-time text interfaces had become available for the general public, virtually around the globe. No longer an object of futurology ElectroSmog tried to establish the new critical uses that could be developed with these every day life technologies, especially the new breeds of real-time technologies. The main question here was if a new form of public assembly could emerge from the new distributed space-time configurations that had been the object of heated debates already for so many years?
more “Distance versus Desire :: Clearing the ElectroSmog”

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

this and that

Yeno (Hui-neng, 638-713) writes:

The Bodhi* is not like the tree;
The mirror bright is nowhere shining:
As there is nothing from the first,
Where does the dust itself collect?

This was written in answer to a stanza composed by another Zen monk who claimed to have understood the faith in its purity. His lines run thus:

This body is the Bodhi-tree;
The soul is like the mirror bright;
Take heed to keep it always clean,
And let no dust collect upon it.

A nice example of the conflict between knowledge and knowing of a logical sort, and the wisdom of be-ing which Zen produces in a practitioner. The latter is business-as-usual, mega-churches, and MacDonalds; the former is living, spirit-in-motion, and sustenance.

* True Wisdom

posted

From The Regime of Amplification to The Road

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”

posted

CLUI: Day Twenty-Two — battalion-strength

Army exercises, Wendover Air Base, Wendover, Utah, April 2010

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

(in) no time

Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …

that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!
more “(in) no time”

posted
  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

health care

got to weigh in on health care. so sick(!) of the toxic blather going on within the US, although it might just be that it is a spent nation-state, in the throes of becoming less relevant in the world. clearly it is becoming less functional internally which eventually (already) will have an effect on external relations. morally it is tearing itself apart by those who, strangely call themselves Christian but who seem to have zero compassion and limitless zeal for defending against the stranger and killing preemptively when that stranger seems strange. period. I have some understanding of the fear of governmental authority. the media in the US has certainly inculcated so many other nation-states with the blight of the dictator and illustrated that to the US citizens, a situation that reinforces some traditional/historical fear of the government. fine. more “health care”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

[ED: This text is essentially an extremely preliminary draft—written in Berlin, Germany in 2007-08—of my dissertation The Regime of Amplification.]

I decided to release this text in advance of any hard-copy publication, with another chapter nearing its final stages, and several intermediate chapters forming more concretely. The following is the original ‘final’ text, although there will be a significantly improved one in the years to come.

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) — a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples — the radio and the military — are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

This essay is built on the subject of one chapter in a book-in-progress titled “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which explores in greater depth many of the issues that are danced only Lightly around here.

KEY TERMS

TSS (techno-social system), Regime of Amplification, energy, amplification, attenuation, flow, continuum of relation, life-energy, life-time, evolutionary development, natural selection, self-organizing, radio, military systems, resonance, social energy bank, life-time=energy=life; attention=life-energy=life-time, feed-forward system, biochemical amplification, concentration, rarefaction, command-and-control … (to be continued)
more “The Regime of Amplification: A Primer”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

migrating reality

Miga asked if I would participate in these two projects, in the first as redactor, in the second as a presenter and as a performance artist. should be interesting. especially as it is occurring at the same time as the conference in Savannah. of necessity, I will appear in Savannah virtually, and in person here in Berlin. that’s the easiest option!

we meet down at the Galerie der Künste to scope out the situation.

Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.

The “Migrating Reality Project” organized between 04-05 April 2008 at the Galerie der Künste (Berlin), Potsdamer Str. 93, is a live platform to discuss the mixing and remixing of art forms and digital data flows within the context of the current worldwide reality of migration.

From 01 March in cooperation with the online ‘zine balsas.cc for media and technology we are initiating a focused look at the migration between reality, media, technologies, art, spaces, disciplines, politics, and networks. Migration interests us in cultural and technological aspects as well as in aspects of the movement of different objects and subjects. Balsas.cc has been publishing online in Lithuanian and English from Vilnius, Lithuania since 2005. Every fourth month it announces a new topic and as of now “Migrating Reality” is open for your interpretation.

We invite the submission of texts, sounds, and visuals (photo, video, etc) which will help us to delve deeper into the subject during the Berlin project. Balsas.cc is stimulating interest in the generation and publishing of ideas online — the most important of which will be published in the printed catalog at the end of 2008. We are looking for not only pure texts but also in migrating formats, interdisciplinary discussions, interviews, and the meetings of artists and theoreticians. Please submit texts in English, German, and Lithuanian to balsas@vilma.cc. The rolling submission and publication period is from 01 March to 01 June.

Editorial Board: Vytautas Michelkevicius, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, and John Hopkins

Migrating Reality

The conference and exhibition Migrating Reality is organised by >top – Verein zur Förderung kultureller Praxis e.V. in Berlin and KHM – Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln. It is also generously supported by the Embassy of Lithuania in Germany within the framework of the German-Baltic Year 2008.

The event focuses on the Baltic nation of Lithuania. In the last fifteen years, more than ten percent of Lithuania’s population has emigrated, among them numerous individuals engaged in the cultural sector. Others, while still living in Lithuania, are deeply engaged with the subject of migration. Selected individuals from both these groups will present their work at the conference and exhibition.

Migrating Reality deals specifically with the realities of migration and migrating realities that are independent of global structural changes and economic or cultural processes and are opening unique opportunities for creative exchange.

Electronic and digital cultures generate completely new forms of migration. In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from traditional forms to hybrid digital forms. Analogue products are being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are re-mixed and fused into new data sets.

The emergent processes of migration generate temporary autonomous zones where socio-political actions occur without the interference of formal control mechanisms. These zones and enclaves appear in physical space as well as in virtual space. By integrating these into available structures and temporarily interconnecting them, new trajectories and ideas are created.

Migration is reality and reality is migrating. This dialectic, appearing as a banal topic in everyday politico-economic debate, includes inarticulate issues which, by their fragmented nature have to be dealt with through creative multidisciplinary means. Only occasionally do components of the migrating global situation surface in the mass media, within individual mediums of expression, or in exhibitions as documentation and artwork. This is likely because dealing with the realities of migration in an explicitly European context means accepting the potential for conflict.

This trans-cultural German-Lithuanian event will take on the risk in highlighting certain fragments of the discourse. Participants will be invited to piece together aspects of this inexorable global mobility on the one hand and of retrograde power relations on the other.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

no man’s land

my network friend, Varsha Nair, invited me to join this project, you can see my contribution either on my site or with the rest of the official exhibition site.

The project, No Man’s Land invited 65 participants from diverse locations and backgrounds to utilize cyber-space as the primary platform to present works addressing the territorially imagined line of the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. Borders also define our sense of nationalism, giving rise to a sense of belonging or not-belonging and informing historical and current cultural practices that influence our senses of nation-hood and ownership.

Participating artists: Yoshiko Shimada, Barbara Lattanzi, Renata Poljak, Tejal Shah, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Terry Berkowitz, Kai Kaljo, Dragana Zarevac, Roland Bergere, Manit Sriwanichpom, Susanne Ahner, Pisithpong Siraphisut, Patricia Reed, Mella Jaarsma, Mideo Cruz, Mona Burr, Manu Luksch/Ambient TV, Karla Sachse, Martin Zet, Wen Yau, Traci Tullius, Tintin Cooper, Jerome Ming, Estelle Cohenny-Vallier, Katherine Olston, Pinaree Sanpitak, Sutee Kunavichayananda, Lawan Jirasuradej, Sara Haq, Karen Demavivas, Nigel Helyer, Nilofar Akmut, Andrew Burrell, Pamela Lofts, Beatriz Albuquerque, Kirsten Justesen, Maryrose Mendoza, Hsu Su-Chen, Michael Bielicky, thingsmatter, Arahmaiani, Kate Stannard, Judy Freya Sibayan, Chaw Ei Thein, John Hopkins, Farida Batool, Baiju Parthan, Liliane Zumkemi, Noor Effendy Ibrahim, Tamara Moyzes, Ana Bilankov, Chakkrit Chimnok, Suzann Victor, Marketa Bankova, Sue Hajdu, Jim Previtt, Keiko Sei, Suvita Charanwong, Noraset Vaisayakul, Konrad, Reiko Kammer, Silvia Pastore, Felipe, Chitra Ganesh, Varsha Nair.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

no man’s land

Finally starting to gather work for no man’s land, a collaborative online project organized by Varsha Nair and Katherine Olston of womanifesto international art exchange based in Bangkok, Thailand. (photo by Manit Sriwanichpoom)

Consider this territorially imagined line — the border, its powers of inclusion and exclusion, and its ability to simultaneously promote both unity and conflict. Borders also contain/define/give rise to our sense of nationalism, and related historical and current cultural practices and narratives that are perpetuated in a variety of ways help to define ones sense of nation-hood and ownership.

Consider, also, the ‘no man’s land’ itself; it is at once, the in-between space of the border, the border-less scape of cyber space, and the place within us that cannot so easily be explained by the nationality on our passport. The no man’s land, in all its diversity is a relevant space that is the reality of many in the globalized world of today.

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The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

mapping transitions

almost a month later. in the middle of a conference. mapping transitions. academic discourse. so. stream notes. what do pictues want? god is an artist. reductions (models, models, models, built on each other, intertwined. biocybernetics. science/technology making bio-sciences possible. cloning and computers. extended sense. political economy that runs the world. world of computer station, tangled wires. cybernetics: the steersman. kybernaut. writing as control system. not law, but the actual technologic/semiotic (phonetic) tools. (code writers). conflict of visual orgy and at the time of triumph of the digital (logos). analogical arguments. (dominant). terminator of liquid metal. ultimate simulator. academicians desperately searching for a label. an interpretive system to decode what the hell is going on. building a new model with old embedded pieces which have no inherent difference in structural predicate. sa-mo, sa-mo. formative paradigms are old. 1) copy original 2) artist and work (subject:object) 3) temporality (remember Virilio, huh?) 4) time of gain. uniqueness. copy has more aura than original.

enhancements of amplification (reproduction): are they qualitative improvements? reproductive cloning — an improvement?

actual and mediated. (electronic media is given a certain status of unprecedented power.) “new media.” participates in “massaged” production. mechanistic view. the aesthetics of digital media? (what about defining what the hell “digital media” is? (instead of defining it’s “fit” into the hegemonic/dominant worldview). hybrid aesthetics? why not just toss it out…? simulation. materialistic presence. current, seeking closure in the circuit. remix, unlocking input and output authenticity. (digital images and digital culture and rituals of new media). new vs traditional: imitations. virtuality. ontological status. proper character. procedural, conceptual (don’t fit…). anti-materialist. (medium is not the point). thesis-antithesis. we’re not allowed to make progress? hierarchies of form. perfection of expression. useful ways to talk about objects. (and subject experience). taste. rational cultivation. descriptive systems assume static forms of … aesthetics of change. mechanistic production. potential literature. procedural methods. with certain sensibilities. floods of wards. static bodies in space. reading texts. monolithic and reified forms of presentation. (any tweaking of of meta shakes the whole tree, gimme a chain saw). key forms of reference — generative: Pannini, Turing, Babbage, procedural, Stockhausen, and so on. iterative. new objects. rethink premises of knowledge production. aesthetics is about awareness. (iterative), step beyond — in flux. two feet in the mechanistic…

swarming

taking quantum to its conclusion — points to a movement from product to process to practice — (Saskia Sassen — the “meaning” of the activities in the digital sphere is the total accumulation of all practices that take place in that space … MAKE THE LEAP…

anthropological centrism. mapping transitions. (remembering the new world order is a limited access, top of a hierarchical high). indigenous technology. Inuit Broadcast Corporation. media-maintenance. next5minutes comes up, tactical media. good topic.

reproduction (gathering and redistribution of original energized event creates a pseudo-powerful illusion, but this is purely illusion based on the hegemonic (and static) position of the “reproducer” within an implied “global” order … the photograph in the world order (re-radiated Light from the self.) … some forms of hypertext with image are nice, but. just ’cause it’s horizontal?

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. — Plato’s Cave

caves, CAVES, and caves. technocracy. aristocracy of technology. networks of expensive, institution-oriented situations, (isolated from the Light, Light re-amplified, reflected, refracted, energized). “gotta have content.” flippant sycophant, mouthpiece of the complex. access. high-end polarity. slick-packaged technological. famous last words. manipulation and collaborative interaction. glib passing over any moral embeddedness of the power structure. fair use. attitudes of use.

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  • place: Helsinki, Finland

mind-trekked

moments. wind rattling windows. a monotone voice forms opinions and reveals information on nature. but is the language natural? back to burnished sleepy skin. as the Finnish chapter rapidly comes to a close. sleeping and waking up, and the connected-disconnectedness. after jazz.

this week’s workshop in Media Lab, in the fourth day, seems to bring different energies into play, following in the steps of the explosive catalysis of last week, where students are now taking their education into their own hands, resisting the command-and-control structures and rules of the school in Tampere. last week’s workshop was the most difficult I have ever done, and, in a way, the most successful, traveling through conflict arising from the polar clash of distributed structures and hierarchical structures: resolution and dialogue brings an incredible energy source streaming.

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  • place: Helsinki, Finland

Circus: Reflections on Presence and Dialogue as a basis for Open Process Practice

three days done of the stimulating CIRCUS meetings. and the last gasps of net.culture class for this year. and about to head to Joensuu, another adventure in teaching in another place. after the short visit last fall, I am wondering what will happen now. that it is spring, or, even, summer, will make concentration on the situation difficult for the students.

the talk/discussion:

(stereo audio, 126.8 mb)

it was a shaky debacle leading to an interesting discussion both at the time and in the ensuing duration of the Helsinki CIRCUS meeting.

my notes for the talk: more “Circus: Reflections on Presence and Dialogue as a basis for Open Process Practice”

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  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

dessication

how to take theory, words, and too many conflicting and binding thoughts and synthesize a better path of active, applied, and fulfilling presence. impossible to describe the mechanics of failure.

short-timing. again. trying to figure out the next time I can get together with Loki again. looks like it will be a long spring again, unless I get the disposable income to fly him to Helsinki for a week. lunch with Freyr, who is now working at DeCode Genetics managing Data Mining development activities.

fading dayLight follows the wind, but the wind doesn’t seem to drain from the heavens. it creates itself again and again in each moment and in each place, varying itself in the chaos of becoming to fill space with an overall directed movement, whoosh! to be a cloud.

and darkness arrives, stilling the wind for awhile, but not for ever. rain begins, adds to the intrigue. making the wind work for carrying the extra burden. and wetting everything more or less.

such a contrast with the wind and rain in the desert. where nothing gets wet, the dryness adsorbs everything except the flash-flood down-pouring where everything is awash. and the wind only insults the skin by reminding one that dessication is the ultimate death. dry and lonesome. no moldering, just dynastic mummification, leathering skin, a gradual process that actually begins before the soul departs the body, long before. while blood still throbs along. the anti-humidity sucking life through every pore. Osiris osmosis.

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  • place: Riga, Latvia

Xavier’s image

hanging at the bus station for a bit, pick up the return ticket to Tallinn for Friday, then going on to the Occupation Museum this afternoon. end up spending several hours there, trying to understand the history of the Nazi and Soviet presence. borders shuffling around, people treated like so many animals. herded around from place to place. with an absolute minimum of care for their survival. pogrom, gulag, concentration camp, resettlement, and the barbarity of the regimes. a little bitterness towards the West, also, with the understanding that the three Baltic Republics weren’t big or important enough for the West to confront the Soviets over. now the issue is how the large Russian minority is to be dealt with. there is a language law coming on the books which declares Latvian as the national language, but I think this will come into something of a conflict with EU directives on minority rights within (potential) member states. the Welsh people, the Sami, and other groups have benefited from the EU mandate to support minority cultures already, so the precedence is not in favor of the Latvians who, by only 4 percentage points, are a majority in their own land. presumably, this will be a major issue, and treated specially within the EU framework. I am staying with friends of Rasa and Raitis, Karl and Kristin, in their roommate, Xavier’s, room. he just left for an extended visit to Mexico, his homeland, Vera Cruz. Karl is Swedish, Kristin is Latvian. on the wall next to the bed is a detailed map of Latvia which I can study abstractly while lying in bed, and hanging over it, obscuring half of it at least, is a big black sombrero with white and silver piping. opposite on the other wall is a big black and white silver print of a woman wearing a swimsuit standing on the sea shore, on a rocky beach, child next to her on hands and feet looking at the ground. the woman is facing the sea. about 10 meters offshore from her, lopsided and partially submerged, is a war bunker with gaping windows and a broken staircase leading down into the water. a man is looking out of the second floor window casing. the woman has her hands on her hips, something of a bouffant hair style from the 50’s and, from a distance, the tone of the swimsuit top makes her look topless. there is no horizon. she is day-dreaming, and that day-dream is my reality. every sensual impression that I have ever experienced she created in the fleeting fraction of a second when that image was made. even when I say to myself (preparing fragments for my public lecture on Thursday): I am a be-ing of energy. it is only because she dreamed it, the energy of her dream has become me. I am that energy. passing through a series of scenarios as disjointed and mute as some dreams can be. giving nothing, taking only the form of the present vessel of place, for the moments of occupation, then immediate, complete dissolution, moving on to the next phase condition. altered state, alter ego. much beyond all that, to the next condition of be-ing. energy-in-motion IS creativity. but how to peg that to the social and cultural conditions of the time. that gap, I cannot bridge with my own abilities at language and the primarily visual tools available to me. which begs the question, what tools would be optimal, what would allow me that full expression of embodied energy? would massive capital of digital power do it? would big photographic prints do it (I have always thought so, thinking that better this or that physical solution would be sufficient to put the whole effort over the edge into electric saturation). joke. making images in silver seemed to be a way of going, but that process, one which I was immersed in for 20 years seems difficult to access lately. it is hidden within the inner topology that has evolved in the last years. hibernating, forgotten. senseless?

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  • place: Bergen, Norway

over the volcano

already some place different. two flights yesterday, one from Reykjavík to Oslo over lovely Hekla, who decided with moment’s notice to erupt on Saturday evening. the second flight ends in a heavy Vestfjordene cross-wind and the pilot almost sliding off the runway, just two or three meters from the edge with the leeward wheels. and a hard double bounce with a sharp list in between. not a nice feeling that time. but back in Bergen. rain, and another workshop. interesting situation. complex groupings of beings. needing to continue extending the research into the dynamics of group interactions. chafing at the cafe9.net morass. the conflict between whatever and whatever. in the invisible arena of remote presence. ah, f**ked-up.

room, Bergen, Norway, February 2000

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  • place: Helsinki, Finland

TempLab

day after the Temp Lab presentation on Balkania. again, I don’t make so many notes about anything these days, so full of busy-ness everything is. but last night somebody made the statement, something like “art after artifact, art as communications.” which somehow, despite its obviousness to me, jolted a resonant cord (spinal or astral) inside that had not been directly stimulated before. the conflict between the two areas (matter vs [energy] flow) is apparent but is not surfaced much in the space of discourse that I circulate through. but so little discourse occurs anyway in the Academy, it could happen that by spending too much time in that ideological space, internal sources are bled away completely. and awarenesses diminish to the normative social pre-tension.

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  • place: en route Helsinki, Finland - Hamburg - Kiel, Germany

languages

alien nation. night train really isn’t. leaving the flat at 1745 by taxi. leaving Tornio by bus at 1810. leaving Kemi at 2000, trudging in Light to the South, but noticeable dimming within the roaring grinding cabin, high whine of air movers, both the two bunks too slim for two, but two forced to be in one because of need. needs of fate, needs of whatever. I do not know, needs of time, beautiful in sleep, beautiful upon waking, stretching away, and the shyness that for me is an inscrutable hidden in language and culture difference and herself. her silence given to searching for words, and that thing I know well of Babylon — the excretory hubris to attain God after the language leaves. maybe this can never become anything other than what it is. and for that I am thankful, for it to be what it is in the moment of when it is enough. the word romantic surfaces, but this is only a poor shake of letters not touching on the actuality. romantic movements are gritty-eyed, skin-burnishing events. hallucinogenic Light flashing through the trees when the shades are opened in the morning, well, at the 0500 hour because sleep is not possible for me. last car in the train. yeah, the language difference, something I am too familiar with, and the limits of expression. can we substitute one form of expression purely for another? the example being the susseration of skin-to-skin, a touch-language (this has been thought of for years: and acted upon more than once), instead of this ancient way of going that would never be now — constructs of letters making sound, making sense and dissonance. the shaping and imprinting, wanting to remember the feeling (do we ever have memories of feeling?) hand moves back and forth, pressing the body-wall of Other, never knowing what it is to be. the conflict of sensory feeding and sensory survival and sensory overload and sensory subjugation and sensory purpose. goodbye is goodbye when the first meeting is only days in the past. saying goodbye is unspeakable. the way one looks at the Other. the eye as receptor (not transmitter like history gazing on itself) nor ear as receptor, only a transmitter of attention. The body and the voice as transmitter (touch, the receiver and transmitter.) Light emissions. (voices move) through the containing ether. shaping the words to trace an outline of being on the vacated space of that body once known or thought to be known or thought to be anticipated (memory of loss. and loss of memory.) anticipating that I would. or just anticipating what it was. shoulder, arm, wrist, finger. ring.

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  • place: Golden, Colorado

word-lines

House-sitting. for Rick and Sally. They are in Costa Rica for awhile with the kids. Loki is with me now. Sleeping upstairs as I try to stay awake in pain, but needing to write and feel some progress with things that I need to work on. Snow comes down tonight. Hot-tub pump whines away. Hard-drive spins. Meet with Gene for lunch a couple days ago. MB is come and gone, on to my family’s place in Arizona, sorta. Life has taken such a hectic dimension that I catch myself anticipating free time on the road that is looming up ahead in January. Needing to work with Mark, Rebecca, Jim, and others, things to be done, people to be visited. Well, at least, when I am not teaching. But that is minimal worry. The worry is about the solidity of the spine (spine-less, broken back, lame) to endure the intensity of things. Construction of word-lines that sustain. I find life-line mixed into threads. the thoughts that I am completely wasting my life, compared to much of what I have been taught (conflict), so-called knowledge, the thoughts that I am blessed with friends, a beautiful boy, job offers, the thoughts that the world might very well continue on the way it has to the moment, or it might end at any moment, the thoughts that there is not a day to be wasted, it must always be full, full of life, and that life must grow, thoughts of divine internals that might operate outside the skin wall and bring energy to others, thoughts of transcen-dances, thoughts of quietness and being, thoughts of nothing.

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  • place: Tornio, Finland

red noise

I make it no further in that diatribe, forcing me to realize that it was not soul-full, only a cover of verbiage to the rather removed state of energies that is my presence here. I am seduced into symbiotic relationship with a machine, a network, and technology in general. In my head then, two forces press, push at each other, brain matter being heaved, grabbed at, hacked, pocketed, consumed, stolen, wired. The forces are not at war, that is, if you consider that our presence here, now, is a peaceful idyll of simple pleasures following one after another from birth to death. We are in the midst of a savage conflict whose outcome is the dispensation of the soul. Melodrama. I have to laugh, I see silly tinges of Gothic and English drama in my words, and I have to drop the seriousness because of the absurdity of the movement — words in the face of the wholeness being, pressing the senses without remission. Like the pumping heart, that does not stop in Life. Maybe that throbbing is sole reminder of who we are, that streaming rush through tympanum that gives the ear a base of red noise — it is behind all we hear, like the pulsing seen when eyesight drifts to a non-focused state against the sky, the granularity of Seeing. The skin-over-skin of touch, un-melding with the touched, shielded from simultaneous being. And smell and taste, how they are pushed hard into the flesh, yet can hardly be found at times. Didn’t take me nowhere. Still the outside is there. Window, the ever-present silicon dioxide shield. Today keeping chill wind out. South wind, some from the east, too. Only a two days hard-pushed travel by foot to Mother Russia. Over there, things are different.