place: Bundoora, NSW, Australia

A passing FYI: un-embargoed dissertation

I get an email awhile back:

Dear Dr Hopkins

Congratulations, your thesis record is now available via La Trobe University’s Research Online.

Access to the full text is embargoed/restricted until April 2016. [ed: that’s three years since official matriculation}

The permanent handle/URL to your thesis record in the repository is https://hdl.handle.net/1959.9/323047

Regards
Rozana

CRICOS Provider 00115M

[aspire-signature]
Please kindly consider your environment before printing this e-mail

Warning to recipients:
This email and any attachments are confidential and subject to copyright. If you are not the intended recipient any use, disclosure or copying is unauthorised. If you have received this email in error please advise us immediately by reply email and delete all copies. It is your responsibility to examine this email and any attachments for viruses. Any personal information in this email must be handled in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2000 (Vic).

9 : May : 201513 : June : 2024

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.

18 : October : 20145 : April : 2023

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”

8 : July : 201429 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

life feels raw

It feels terrifically raw in the moment: precarious, transitory, the inverse of epic, bound by tiny details.

Remember to breathe while gaping at the encroaching Void. Want to feel alive? Stare it down. To give force to this act, it must arise in acquiescence to all forms of resistance. Give way.

It doesn’t matter, recall is gone, mental decay leads to be-ing in the present only.

There are the ongoing international conversations that are happening, most notably on the empyre list where I have a forum to surface a number of ideas around The Regime of Amplification. But the issue comes up about whether I should simply send out copies of the dissertation (or my post-submission working copy that I play with on occasion). Traditionally, a PhD would take the dissertation text and ‘turn it into’ a book published on some university press. Given the content, style, and subject, and my distinct lack of time and ability to chase a publisher, this in not likely to happen. So, why not just distribute for free and distribute widely? I’ve rarely stuck with ‘tradition’ anyway, although the thought of somebody out there ‘stealing’ my ideas is … disturbing.

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”

11 : November : 201321 : October : 2014

place: Prescott, Arizona

kickstart :: The Campaign

The KickStarter Campaign Begins, 10 November - 12 December 2013

The campaign is OPEN. From today until 12 December 2013 (32 days) to raise USD 10K (KickStarter takes a slice, 5%; and Amazon (as the banking entity) takes a slice 4-5%). So. That’s how it works.

A Return to Roots: From Photographic Vision Back to Print

Been working on it for the last 3-4 weeks, the last week in high gear, getting a video done, and the whole thing out to a few folks for review, responding to those reviews, (always too much, too long. I need an editor, just as with the dissertation). But it’s done, released to the world. We shall see what happens!

A Return to Roots: From Photographic Vision Back to Print -- Kicktraq Mini

10 : June : 201314 : December : 2019

place: Bremen, Germany

dissertations

Four hours or so going through Martin’s dissertation with him last night. Quite interesting, especially with the line following Max Bense whose writings do not exist much in English translation. I’ll have to research that! Frieder knew and worked with Bense awhile back.

Tonight I’ll be visiting their (Martin’s reading group along with Frieder to discuss my dissertation and some of the contents contained therein. It should be a good challenge in a friendly atmosphere. I want to record it, but doubt that the others will assent to that. We’ll see.

8 : June : 201326 : February : 2024

place: Bremen, Germany

coupling

Thinking back: Walnut Cafe South in the Table Mesa Center, meet Chris for one of our weekly Boulder breakfast get-togethers.

Subject of resonance comes up. and the term coupling which I did not include in the dissertation discussion on resonance. Coupling is where two circuits designed to resonate actually transmit electromagnetic energy from one (the transmitting coil) to the other (receiving coil). This is used to do wireless power transmission. The two coils have to be in relatively close proximity otherwise there is significant power loss:

By designing electromagnetic resonators that suffer minimal loss due to radiation and absorption and have a near field with mid-range extent (namely a few times the resonator size), mid-range efficient wireless energy-transfer is possible. The reason is that, if two such resonant circuits tuned to the same frequency are within a fraction of a wavelength, their near fields (consisting of ‘evanescent waves’) couple by means of evanescent wave coupling. Oscillating waves develop between the inductors, which can allow the energy to transfer from one object to the other within times much shorter than all loss times, which were designed to be long, and thus with the maximum possible energy-transfer efficiency. Since the resonant wavelength is much larger than the resonators, the field can circumvent extraneous objects in the vicinity and thus this mid-range energy-transfer scheme does not require line-of-sight. By utilizing the magnetic field to achieve the coupling, this method can be safe, since magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms.

(written in Wikipedia-English!)

Is there any way to explore if this occurs on some scale between organisms? Transmitters, receivers? Coupling? Would seem to be an obvious model for interactivity between any organisms — the question being what is the nature of the embodied resonant circuits? Can an organism or a part of one be modeled ‘properly’ as such a circuit? Or is it too complex — the electromagnetic ‘field’ of a body as a mass of overlapping radiations and flows — such that there is no comprehensible order? Nah, of course there is a ‘sensible’ order — that may be expressed as the general sensuality of ‘presence’ that a living organism exudes. (This presence signified by the dynamic of interaction that any single organism exhibits with other organisms — as defined by evolutionarily-developed interdependence.) For example predator/prey interactions would suggest that there are highly developed coupling mechanisms such that the predator can identify with a high degree of precision a potential prey.

22 : April : 201321 : October : 2014

good karma, bad karma: dee-oh-enn-eee! d’oh!

I was sent a DHL tracking number on March 25, whereupon the package sat for days before finally leaving Melbourne on the 04 April. 05 April, it ends up in Cincinnati where it sits for more than two weeks before I finally start blasting emails out to the La Trobe Graduate School for yet another communications failure on their part.

Every piece of mission-critical communications from them had a major glitch associated with it (admissions letter preceded by word that I was NOT accepted; scholarship letter accompanied by email that I had not been given a scholarship; dissertation revision notification never sent to me, only my supervisor; final acceptance of dissertation notification not mailed until 6 weeks after the fact, making matriculation impossible last November, and then this DHL fiasco).

I called DHL and so did the Graduate School, and finally, last Saturday, the package was ‘found’ in the ‘unclaimed’ box, whatever that means. Delivered this morning in the middle of yet another spring blizzard.

This delivery is, of course, my diploma, at long last. 1369 days after I started at UTS in Sydney, and 387 days after submitting the dissertation itself. 982 days in the actual research process, and 132 days of hard-core writing.

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.

10 : November : 201226 : February : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

coupling

Down to the Walnut Cafe South to meet Chris for our weekly breakfast.

Conversation drifts through resonance. And into the concept of coupling which I did not explore in my dissertation when talking about resonance.

While somehow, the LaTeX functionality of the WordPress plug-in isn’t so developed (what’s with the black border? destroys any elegance that the equation might hold.

[latex]\omega_0 = {1 \over \sqrt{LC}}[/latex]

25 : October : 201230 : November : 2015

place: Boulder, Colorado

mid-term exam

Mid-term exam in MiT went down yesterday. Unfortunately without my local presence. After a foray to Denver to catch a special “Faculty Night” preview of the latest show at the MCA-Denver, I met Marisa for a bit and then headed home for some final tweaks to the exam. The structure of the exam evolved at least partly from my distaste for ‘standardized assessment’ in the learning context, but also from how the social dynamic of the class is naturally progressing. Technically the course is a ‘lecture’ course — meaning that the prof prepares and presents (highly organized!) packages of material along with readings and other material that the students have to digest. Some time may be designated for ‘discussion,’ but what quality of discussion can one have with 40 people? As this was easily the largest class group I’ve ever had in the last 25 years of teaching, I definitely was in for some troubles. Preparing a set of power-points that amply illustrate my take — the trajectory that I am mapping though the territory — would have taken weeks. Joel gave me all his which are very polished and content-rich, but I just couldn’t use them as it would have been a very unnatural scenario, delivering someone else’s view.

At any rate, the class as a group, led by a good number of individuals seems to have taken to self-directing the latter half of the semester. Group presentations every day until December. The idea of local knowledge-generation seems especially important in this age. So, the exam structure that I ended up coalescing around was group-work-based. Six groups of six, and one of three. The groups were composed of the same groupings that are scheduled for topical presenter/respondents. So, each group of six is composed of two smaller groups of three: the groups of three each have to run an entire class session on a particular topic in the next weeks, with the other group of three as their questioners (and note-takers). I created seven google-docs with 12 questions each, some of the questions the same across the different groups, mostly not, though.

At the start of the exam time, I release the google doc to each group and let them do whatever, however, for the 75 minutes.

The only hitch was that in the middle of the night before, I woke up really sick. Got up at 0600, and promptly started vomiting. I knew there was no way I could even cycle up to the university, I could barely keep my head without passing out. Argh! So, from bed, I got everything ready, and sent out an email to the class telling them what was going on. And, at 0900, released the docs, watched for a few minutes, passed out, woke up and it was 1000, and a couple students had emailed me that they hadn’t gotten access to the docs (fortunately, they did a work-around). After 15 minutes, I shut down the docs and collapsed back into bed for the next 24 hours. Some nasty bug, not sure really what it was, but a nasty headache, disorientation. Somewhat like a migraine, but not. Feeling somewhat better after 24 hours, but will have to stay in bed longer.

I’ll do a de-brief on Monday to see how it went. I am quite disappointed that I couldn’t have been there to see the activity, that was an important objective for me, although I do have the results in hand. Haven’t felt good enough to look at them yet. And have to get the last copy scan of the dissertation done so I can send it to Jan to get bound and over to the library. So that chapter will be DONE.

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.

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.

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

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).

8 : February : 201211 : June : 2023

how many?

How many days have I been doing this? gah. Not sure it’s sustainable much longer. Although I am scheduled to finish well before the 3.5-year study limit (actually just approaching the 2.5-year marker since it all started in Sydney in ’09), it seems like a friggin’ eternity of sitting in front of the screen. and I think I’m goin’ to hell, thoughtlessly: righteous thanks George, for pointing the following out. you are spot-on again! (though I am certain that the truths contained in the dissertation are veiled by a cloak of passivity, argh!)

A petty bureaucrat writes to his superior: “The lighting must be better protected than now. Lights could be eliminated, since they apparently are never used. However, it has been observed that when the doors are shut, the load always presses hard against them as soon as darkness sets in, which makes closing the door difficult. Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed. It would therefore be useful to light the lamp before and during the first moments of the operation.” The bureaucrat was the ironically named “Mr. Just,” his organization the SS, the year 1942.

What Mr. Just did not write–what he would have written, had he been taking full responsibility for his own prose–is: “To more easily kill the Jews, leave the lights on.” But writing this would have forced him to admit what he was up to. To avoid writing this, what did he have to do? Disown his prose. Pretend his prose was not him. He may have written a more honest version, and tore it up. He may have intuitively, self-protectively, skipped directly to this dishonest, passive-voice version. Either way, he accepted an inauthentic relation to his own prose, and thereby doomed himself to hell.

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). If we learn what a truthful sentence looks like, a little flag goes up at a false one. False prose can mark an attempt to evade responsibility, or something more diabolical; the process of improving our prose disciplines the mind, hones the logic, and most importantly, tells us what we really think.

Saunders, G., 2007. The Braindead Megaphone: essays, New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

12 : October : 201030 : January : 2025

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”

30 : November : 200812 : December : 2015

thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics

12 : June : 200811 : October : 2024

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”

7 : May : 199628 : December : 2023

place: Pori, Finland

stupid thought

Kaisu made an appointment for me to use an Internet terminal at the Pori municipal library for an hour in the afternoon where I was at least able to check email. The situation with PC vs MAC is causing me some trouble — there are so very few public venues that are using Macs. I would like to be able to easily use Eudora between the two platforms — just to keep my mail in some kind of order. No such luck. I look out the kitchen window here, the sun is finally shining, although the air is still very brisk. The neighbor’s two black Labradors are wrestling in the back yard. Kaisu is off teaching photography at a local night school, and Jim is at her studio drawing. I write. Talked to Visa on the phone, but don’t get in contact with Tapio or Anders first off. (and fight the fear for the future) … I do finally talk to Tapio, and we will meet next week when I get to Helsinki. He’s been busy working on a series of essays and a dissertation, and so, hasn’t been around MUU Media at all lately, and is off until August.

is everybody in the same boat?
at what time does wisdom cry out in the streets?
are smiles sexy? — Robert Filliou, from Ample Food for Stupid Thought