posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

to Björn Bjarnason

12 August 1995

To the Honorable Björn Bjarnason, Minister of Education and Culture

As I have noted that you have put up some home pages asking for input regarding education in Iceland, I am transmitting this formal letter to you via email. (I apologize for not writing in Icelandic, but I am not very good at it even though I have lived in Iceland for five years…)

I am writing this letter to urge your continued support of the Icelandic Academy of Art.

Following I will present some personal opinions concerning the future of the Academy as well as some concrete suggestions and proposals. These considerations are based in my experience in teaching at MHÍ for the past five years as well as numerous guest-teaching positions at other Universities and Academies in Scandinavia and the US. Currently I am serving as Chair of the US-Iceland Fulbright Educational Commission (until September 1995) and as (Founding) Director of the Electronic Media and Photography program at MHÍ. My opinions are not necessarily those of either MHÍ or the Fulbright Board.

I believe Iceland is at a crossroads where the choices, opportunities, and outcomes will be largely determined by how the issue of a national educational policy is developed. As the post of Minister of Education and Culture determines this policy, I believe it to be the most critical cabinet posting in the entire government.

It is important to the future of Iceland that attention be directed to the building-up of a competitive and well-considered program of education in the arts. The recent confirmation of intent as expressed by the Althingi and the government in support of the official formation of the Icelandic Academy must be followed up by concrete action concerning the financial, physical, and ideological future of the institution.
more “to Björn Bjarnason”

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

The Language of the Third Reich – Klemperer

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.

Klemperer, Victor, and Martin Brady. The Language of the Third Reich: LTI Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook. Bloomsbury Revelations edition. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
  • Weaponization of Language: Euphemisms and politicized terms are used to obscure truth or polarize discussions.
  • Power of Repetition: Repeated slogans and phrases reinforce ideologies, even when oversimplified or misleading.
  • Language of Division: Dehumanizing or exclusionary language fosters conflict and “us vs. them” mentalities.
  • Emotional Manipulation: Fear, pride, and resentment are evoked to sway opinions and shut down rational debate.
  • Media and Authority Vigilance: Pervasive bias and mistrust in institutions highlight the need for critical thinking and media literacy.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

now reading

Statistic: Voter turnout of national parliamentary elections in Sweden from 1970 to 2022

Statistic: Turnout rates among the voting-eligible population in United States presidential and midterm elections from 1789 to 2020

Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. [2nd. ed.], 1st issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, cop. 1992. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Cornaro, Luigi. Sure and Certain Methods of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life. London, UK: Daniel Midwinter, 1722.

Mattern, Shannon. “The Big Data of Ice, Rocks, Soils, and Sediments.” Places Journal, no. 2017 (November 7, 2017). https://placesjournal.org/article/the-big-data-of-ice-rocks-soils-and-sediments. (And several other extremely interesting articles and papers by Dr. Shannon on her site: https://wordsinspace.net/publications/)

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

Systems thinking and the narrative of climate change (excerpt)

The problem of climate change has become a part of the current global discussion, due to the Paris Accord. Current mainstream arguments focus on three specific components of the problem: (1) the disputability of global warming, (2) the relevance of anthropogenic contribution, and (3) the extent of the dangers associated to an increase of the global temperature. Key players appear to have difficulty moving the discussion past these three components of the problem, towards potential solutions. Instead, the discussion returns again and again to describing the problem, in greater and greater detail, with arguments stalling on various small pieces of the problem. Our inability to move past the problem to solutions is based in part on how the various critics frame the discussion. Critics on both sides of the issue are subject to a framing effect, where we house the problem mentally within the boundaries of the human economy. While opponents of climate change suffer from their own framing effect, this post focuses specifically on the proponents’ framing effect. Those who advocate for policies to limit climate change make four main assumptions that impact their thinking:

  • Those concerned about the climate place the environment either within the global human economy, as a subsystem, or externally, where it can be used at will, endlessly. As a corollary to this mindset, the problem of climate change is an anthropogenic problem caused by humans, with no real impact on our resource base, which is either external to the system and infinite, or internal and thus, not critical to our life support.
  • Because the human economy is more important than the environment, societal economic growth is an inviolate mandate for all countries. The assumption is that we can support economic growth while solving the problem of climate change.
  • Globally politicians have the will and options to create viable, effective actions that limit the temperature increase without harming economic growth.
  • We can use technology to find suitable solutions that will eventually handle, if not overcome, most of the problems. Moreover, added technology does not use added energy or environmental resources.

Unfortunately, these postulates are false.

Gonella, Francesco. “Systems Thinking and the Narrative of Climate Change – A Prosperous Way Down.” Blog. A Prosperous Way Down, July 23, 2017.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

As if radio…

As if radio… is a collaborative radio space—created between the folks @ Soundcamp and )acousticommons(— in response to the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021.

Based on ideas and practices of ecological radio and acts of listening, this long-form broadcast will bring together contributions by climate activists and artists, both those gathering around the Conference in Glasgow and those individuals and communities around the world seeking to bring their voices to the collective demands for climate justice. Situated in Glasgow for the duration, As if radio (Air) will provide a platform for the voices less often heard at such events, interweaving these with ecological sounds combining live coverage and commentary from the COP and widening the soundfield to areas out with the official event. We anticipate a rich listening experience combining environmental streams from the Acoustic Commons network with a mix of reportage, radiophonic works, critical perspectives and environmental sounds, sonic interventions and untold stories of the climate crisis. There will be an emphasis on live content wherever possible.

neoscenes participates with an older, but still very much apropos composition, water fills the hall.

Running as an open radio studio at Civic House, Glasgow, AIR is dedicated to experimenting with ideas and practices of ecological radio and acts of listening. It will feature contributions by artists and climate activists in Glasgow and around the world, together with live environmental sounds on the LocusSonus open microphone network, real-time feeds and commentary from around and beyond the COP.

The open call invites diverse audio contributions by artists, activists, ecologists and other sound workers that engage issues of climate and ecological crises in their broadest sense. These might include live streams, soundscapes, field recordings, readings, environmental sound and transmission works – including live material wherever possible. We are also looking for live projects, performances, local reports and interventions over the COP that involve sound or can be adapted for radio.

We imagine the AIR station as a public platform for sharing work, learning about making radio, bringing remote places into conversation, organising, experimentation and acoustic commoning. The show will stream to a server at our broadcast partner, Wave Farm in Acra, New York, from where it will be available for other broadcasters to pick up.

We invite you to join us on-line or in the open studio at Civic House to find out more about ecological radio, for a streambox building workshop, performance or to join a broadcast.

posted

Amurikan freedoms

I used to make this statement in the midst of discussions with my European students, when the subject of neoliberal geopolitics and personal freedoms surfaced:

  • to be gunned down in the streets
  • to be lonely
  • to shop

Has anything changed? eah.

posted

War is an ugly thing

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

Mill, J. S. (1862). The Contest in America. Fraser’s Magazine.

posted

The meaning of the refugee crisis

End of Enlightenment

Ever since 1989, interpreted as the definitive end of the Enlightenment project, it is deemed impossible to deploy a moral criticism of politics, such criticism held in our anti-philosophical, romantic-reactionary cultures to be horribly Kantian and Marxist. The assertion of crude self-interest is sufficient to justify the evil legislation (making immigration a crime) and the state of exception (Notstand, état d’urgence) declared by the Hungarian government. (This is ably described by Kim Lane Scheppele in Politico.) Denying the human rights of refugees — this contravenes Hungarian and international law, but no matter — fencing off the Serbian and Romanian (and possibly the Croatian) border, corrupting the court system by forcing it to issue automatic rejection writs of asylum requests on a conveyor belt, denying explicitly the right of the petitioners to have these decisions translated in any language from the Hungarian has elicited some protests, chiefly from liberal lawyers and a handful of social scientists, but the bulk of public opinion is silent. There is some commiseration for the poor refugees and their small children, but almost nobody is prepared to welcome any of them amongst us.

The justified and reasonable indignation of the Serbian and Romanian governments – far more tolerant and democratic than the richer Central Europeans, the so-called Visegrád countries – is ridiculed or, at best, ignored. World-famous luminaries such as Imre Kertész and György Konrád are more or less cautiously supporting the fake anti-Islamic hysteria whipped up by the Right. So do other respected pillars of society. The anti-Semitic and the philo-Semitic Right will finally be able to announce solemnly a merger. The moral atmosphere is irremediably polluted.

One is reminded of the beautiful summer days of 1944, when tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly marched to their deaths through the streets of Budapest – and the cinemas were playing musical comedies, theatres staged merry operettas, good, clean fun was had in cabarets and night clubs and people turned to the sports pages, bored with war news. Music wafted from the open-air restaurants and cafés on the [shores] of the Danube, just like now. Men are admiring pretty young women in their scanty summer dresses and short shorts, there are poetry readings in fashionably run-down beer gardens.

Tamás, G. M., 2015. The meaning of the refugee crisis. Open Democracy. [Accessed October 31, 2015].

posted

Mumford…

… the city owed its existence, and even more its enlargement, to concentrated attempts at mastering other men and dominating, with collective force, the whole environment. Thus the city became a power-trapping utility, designed by royal agents gathering the dispersed energies of little communities into a mighty reservoir, collectively regulating their accumulation and flow, and directing them into new channels — now favoring the smaller units by beneficently re-molding the landscape, but eventually hurling its energies outward in destructive assaults against other cities. Release and enslavement, freedom and compulsion, have been present from the beginning in urban culture.

Out of this inner tension some of the creative expressions of urban life have come forth: yet only in scattered and occasional instances do we discover political power well distributed in small communities, as in seventeenth-century Holland or Switzerland, or the ideals of life constantly regulating the eccentric manifestations of power. Our present civilization is a gigantic motor car moving_ along a one-way road at an ever- accelerating speed. Unfortunately as now constructed the car lacks both steering wheel and brakes, and the only form of control the driver exercises consists in making the car go faster, though in his fascination with the machine itself and his commitment to achieving the highest speed possible, he has quite forgotten the purpose of the journey. This state of helpless submission to the economic and technological mechanisms modern man has created is curiously disguised as progress, freedom, and the mastery of man over nature. As a result, every permission has become a morbid compulsion. Modern man has mastered every creature above the level of the viruses and bacteria-except himself.

Mumford, L. (2009). The city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. San Diego, Calif, Harcourt.

posted

what is happening? how is this happening?

• Our analysis finds that at the end of 2010 the Top 50 private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1 trillion in cross-­‐border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts and foundations. This is up from $5.4 trillion in 2005, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16%.

• The three private banks handling the most assets offshore on behalf of the global super-­rich are UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. The top ten banks alone commanded over half the top fifty’s asset total – an increased share since 2005.

• The number of the global super‐rich who have amassed a $21 trillion offshore fortune is fewer than 10 million people. Of these, less than 100,000 people worldwide own $9.8 trillion of wealth held offshore.

• If this unreported $21-32 trillion, conservatively estimated, earned a modest rate of return of just 3%, and that income was taxed at just 30%, this would have generated income tax revenues of between $190-­‐280 bn – roughly twice the amount OECD countries spend on all overseas development assistance around the world. Inheritance, capital gains and other taxes would boost this figure considerably.

• For our focus subgroup of 139 mostly low-middle income countries, traditional data shows aggregate external debts of $4.1 tn at the end of 2010. But take their foreign reserves and unrecorded offshore private wealth into account, and the picture reverses: they had aggregate net debts of minus US$10.1-13.1 tn. In other words, these countries are big net creditors, not debtors. Unfortunately, their assets are held by a few wealthy individuals, while their debts are shouldered by their ordinary people through their governments.

Tax Justice Network

posted

the social algorithm and social engineering

This, an extract from an introduction to the Facebook-run study appearing in the current edition of the journal Science. It reminds us of the positive answer to the question of whether the communicative protocol that is deployed by a social institution (in this case, Facebook) affects the qualities of the communications itself. YES IT DOES! Hello folks! In this case that effect is to the social (fiscal) benefit of the social institution. more “the social algorithm and social engineering”

posted

To Be Governed

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

Proudhon, P.-J., 2004 (1923). General idea of the revolution in the nineteenth century, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

coup d’état

inequality, poverty, corruption; The General; The President; The Presidential Palace; Parliament; the State TV; the international airport; the Army HQ; the Army garrison; the Place de la Nation; The Opposition; protestors, power vacuum, executions, head of state, transitional government, curfew, democracy, constitution, elections.

rinse and repeat… (with the soap of Western media, and the bleach of Western political invervention)

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

basic facts

One of the most basic facts about North Korea is that this country seems to be unstable in the long run. In spite of some economic improvements of the recent decade, it still remains very poor if compared to all its neighbours, and this gap keeps growing. The Kim family regime can maintain the stability for long time, but the information about the success of other countries — above all, South Korea — is filtering in, and gradually ferments discontent. — Andrei Lankov, AlJazeera

This is a simple statement of situation: where the question of stability directly relates to the amount of energy available to the system. All systems have a certain instability directly related to the size of their energy sources. Food, hydrocarbons, and other resources are not easily available to the Regime, causing upward tending instability. Hierarchic control exerted from the ‘seat’ of power (where resource energy flows are dictated) projects flow protocols downward, but when that projection of power has itself a diminishing source, control structures destabilize.

Both the projection ‘structure’ and the actual energy needed to ‘project’ power are never sufficient to maintain control of the population indefinitely. Nor, in reciprocal, are those factors sufficient to ‘motivate’ the population to give unreservedly of its own energy in support of the Regime. Any Regime must maintain in deep and aware consciousness that its primary source of power is, at base, the embodied energy of its people. In more recent times, technological concentrations of power allow this fact to be distorted significantly, but in the end, no Regime will survive a collective turning away of its vassal citizen’s energy and attention. The technological factor, if effectively wielded by a Regime, will allow profound imbalances to build up, imbalances that will inevitably cause catastrophic re-balancing. The nuclear ambitions of North Korea are likely the major contributing factor to the imbalance within the technological factor. Between that and the large standing army, energies that could possibly go to support the ‘regular’ citizen are shunted off to support the rigid command-and-control structures necessary to develop and deploy the nuclear deterrent and the armed forces.

Resistance is futile when a system is returning to dynamic equilibrium. Only another profound energy source will enable a return to a subsequent form of temporary stability. Otherwise, disorder at many levels ensues.

All these concepts apply to any nation-state, and to any system.

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

Friday, 22 November, 1963

Rec’d call from Dr. Pippert C-230 for wt, β, and CoA on Mk 6 & Mk II decoys about 1:30 PM when I was working on it. As I tried to get AvCo, it wasn’t possible due to the load on the phone lines caused by the shooting of the President.

The Laboratory was closed about 3:15 PM.

Checked out the transit from John Paddleford, and a T-square from Gp22 Drafting Room.

40˚F
Foggy

Called Ed Poore to see if he 1) has the keys to the Echo organ chamber — no, but would see me tonight & 2) has a sheet of 1/8″ hard-tempered Masonite I can use for a drawing board.

death In trying to get through to AvCo at 1:50 PM I couldn’t get an outside trunk line, and then the telephone operator in trying to get a line out said she didn’t think she could “with the news.” “What news do you have?” “Kennedy has been shot!” He was shot as his car passed an underpass, as was the Governor of Texas; a Secret Service man was killed. This must be the work of a twisted mind.

Checked out a transit from John Paddleford — Gp75 to use at PSC tomorrow. Also checked out a T-square from the Gp22 Drafting Room.

Dr. Ockenga’s prayer mtg has changed to a Memorial Service, but he had a chap from Dutch Guiana who took 1/2-hour instead of 10 minutes. Met w/ Ken O., J. A. Cheever, who asked questions that showed he hadn’t looked at the block diagram.

posted

essay-grading software

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html

Brian Holmes, who runs “Continental Drift” responded to that article on AI grading of college essays as follows:

> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
> written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution

[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes…]

LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) — just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue … (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to ‘facilitating open encounter and engagement’…

The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We are so “free” that power is walking all over us. The capitalist democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation’s sake. The university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for the human-capital needs of corporations. That’s endgame, because without a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we’re all reduced to a cinder. Isn’t that kinda obvious now? What’s the next step?

At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of ‘use less’ (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated über-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph.

That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression.

This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times.

posted
  • place: Boulder (aka, in the Bubble), Colorado

what’s next?

On a side-note — I usually don’t care much to explore local politics, but the President of the University of Colorado seems to relish his reactionary stance on some things (recreational drug use) and his proactive stance on others (football funding, yeah!). He is a meat-eater. I note that one senior faculty member told me how he got an angry response for even calling the Office of the President to have a word with El Jefe.

Sheesh, uptight folks. Invoking ID, security, and police checks, roadblocks, and other tactics of control-by-intimidation. Congregations of people hanging out is the bane of the State (of Order). It’s a bit similar to what happened during the LA Olympics — there were many veiled ‘threats’ in memos circulated by ‘management’ regarding behavior of underlings during the Olympics there. Not to mention the jeeps on the freeways with .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the back — National Guard — what do they call those in Mogadishu, technicals. I believe. Fire-power in the streets, now to be augmented by fire-power from on high, from the heavens above, when those in control can call down Hell-Fire(s) at will. Etc. Has Rand Paul got something regarding the potential abuses of power in the security state. Of course, potentials abound, but it would seem that the populace is mostly unconcerned and quite happy to oblige.

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

Thursday, 17 January, 1963

The Yellow Fever shot did not have any after effects.

Clear
+10˚

Had lunch with Rabun Wood. He is also seriously considering returning to the government svc. I gave him a copy of Jerry Klutz’s letters of October 9 & December 4 containing info on the proposed pay scales.

Went home about 2 PM so LCH could go in to her class.

Took CR over to the Lexington High School to an AFS weekend function.

DCH showed me a French II quiz with a grade of 85; it is either fortuitous or he is trying to do better work.

The President’s budget is for $98 billion with a $12 billion deficit; this seems to me to border on financial irresponsibility. It seems to me to be well to taper off on the foreign aid.

Rec’d a form letter from Dr. Ockenga calling a meeting of the joint boards relative to a question of his ministry at PSC for 18 January at 8:45 PM. I suspect it is a problem of his pay rate and the hiring of a consultant.

posted
  • place: en route South Acton, Massachusetts - Rochester, New York

Sunday, 16 December, 1962

Drove to Rochester NY from home in 7 hours — 394 miles, arriving at 8:15 PM.

2″ snow

Went in, after removing snow from the front of garage. Finally found the preamp in the radio room; Dave & Paul had removed it! And so I put it back, and apologized to the foreman who had been there since quite early!

I spoke w/ John Cheever & Ken Olsen to the effect that I intend to shift my pledge from missions to the Trustees account. In my opinion, the use of the income from the Endowment Fund is comparable to the manipulation that has resulted in the low US gold reserves, our No. 1 national problem.

posted

The antidemocratic makeover of the cultural scene in Hungary

This from Janos in Hungary — in the continuing saga of right-wing

Share and publicize!

Recent legislative steps in Hungary point towards the authoritarian transformation of the institutional structures and funding system of cultural life, by giving an ultra conservative artist group close to the right-wing government, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, an unassailable position of power. As a result of these decisions, the government has endangered the long term autonomy, professionalism and democratic procedures of Hungarian contemporary art. The government established the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA) as the preeminent authority in the field of arts through the new constitution or Fundamental Law, which came into force on 1 January, 2012. The Academy, which was originally founded as a private association in 1992, is made up of artists strongly loyal towards the government.
more “The antidemocratic makeover of the cultural scene in Hungary”

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

Monday, 10 December, 1962

Worked on the equipment list for ELE most of the day — had to make a number of phone calls — 8 or 10 to get this information.

Overcast

Some ice on the road today.

CR spoke of a TV program yesterday that focussed on corruption in Massachusetts. He doesn’t realize that there is a correlation between the extent of concentration of the Roman Church and poor & corrupt government, and the extent of genuine popular democracy. I’ll have to cite this to him. Like most 19-year-olds, he is a bit naive.

JAH sick in the PM.

Worked up notes on discussion w/ Mr. Hussey and sent them around the neighborhood.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

well, the next step

hmm, well, another election. or so. Boulder voting 71% for Barack, and legalized pot. Amendment 64.

having fun with my students, they are struggling and coming up with what they can, the bar is high, the class can be harsh on presentation crits…

anyway, researching some Virtual Reality papers to pass on:

The modern notion of space is a compound metaphor that embodies all our concepts and experiences of separation, distinction, articulation, isolation, delimitation, division, differentiation and identity. The laws of perspective and of geometry for us are a codified summary of our normal experience of alienation, unique identity, and un-relatedness. It has all been abstracted, externalized, and synthesized into the cold, empty void we call space. This metaphor of space is our modern mechanism for avoiding the experience of oneness, of the chaos, of the ultimate state of unity to which the mystic seers and philosophers of all ages have referred.

Jones, R.S., 1982. Physics as metaphor, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

posted

past prime

I don’t usually pull main-stream media into this venue, but I thought the words of Andrew Marr of the BBC seem achingly spot:

This is a great country which is losing its economic dominance and has not found any kind of consensus about how it might be recovered. Politicians have loaded the country with debt, much of it now owned by China.

Tough choices have been avoided. As Sachs pointed out, a thicket of dense, semi-corrupt relationships between big money and politics has overgrown Washington.

Meanwhile, increasingly, Americans live in their own separate liberal and conservative worlds, listening to different media, barely conversing. Instead of steering the ship, the crew are throwing punches.

It would have required some kind of saviour to turn all that around.

Obama is a clever and likeable man. But he is not the Messiah.

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

Monday, 01 October, 1962

Rec’d tickets & $50 travel advance from Travel Office.

Clear

The ammeter on the Willys shows a short, or rather discharges when running. I’ll have to go over it again. It acts (AM) like the battery is connected the wrong way, although the starter operates correctly.

Rioting and tear gas used at U. of Miss last night. Just after JFK finished his 9 minute talk, the Governor of Miss was on some stations to say that he capitulated due to superior force and that he invoked the “help of God” in his stand in upholding segregation. How hypocritical can one get? Two were killed and 75 injured.

Turned battery around and the car operated correctly.

posted

Macdonough’s Song

Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth-
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept school men are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.

Whether The People be led by the Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote –
These are the things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.

Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King –
Or Holy People’s Will –
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!

— Rudyard Kipling, With the Night Mail

as noted in the London Sound Survey.

posted
  • place: University of Colorado-Boulder, Colorado

M of IT – Day 2 – 29 August

Back in the saddle. Large class, 40+ students, still not in the system yet, so, completely hobbled by lack of login, office, at the same time as struggling mightily to conceptualize a trajectory for the class. Studying other syllabi, course requirements, PowerPoints, texts, and beginning to wrap head around what needs to transgress, what should transgress, and what cannot transgress.

I did decide to approach the ubiquitous open-laptop issue by assigning three note-takers per session — using a shared Google doc, they will create a collaborative document that is shared with the whole class (later), so that the rest of the class can be more present (and take only paper notes).

week 1:

29 august – day 2 – Looking backwards / forwards: potentials
link to notes
link to note-taker suggestions

readings to be FINISHED for today:

Bush, V., 1945. As We May Think. The Atlantic, (July).
Rheingold, H., 2000. Tools for Thought: the history and future of mind-expanding technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapters 1 & 2

assignment: establish/activate blog platform (on d2l, google(blogger) or elsewhere — email me the address); generate at least 3 questions from each of the two readings (post questions to blog before class); the 3 assigned note-takers need to show up with note-taking devices, we will use google docs initially for this daily process. also, look over the keyword list at the top of the syllabus page and begin to get a sense of what you are familiar with and what you are not.

asides: The Republican and Democratic Conventions are taking place this week and next. and of course, the whole election process, so we will definitely keep one eye on the effects of IT on politics, governance, civil society, and the flows of power during this election cycle. This, among other contingencies will require that the syllabus represent only one possible trajectory through the territory that we need to cover: it may become a map of where we have been rather than where we are going.

posted

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
  • place: South Acton and Boston, Massachusetts

Sunday, 01 July, 1962

Went by the L2 Wood Street entrance; there was a line of pickets.

Rain – cooler

I was too tired to sleep last night.

Took family to SS & church. HJO had a hard-hitting sermon on the effects of Monday’s Supreme Court decision. I hope an amendment to the Constitution is passed.

Removed heater from Willys.

posted
  • place: Glade Park, Colorado

power is energy is power is order

Watching Adam Curtis’ fascinating series Pandora’s Box, subtitled A Fable from the Age of Science. It’s a six part 1992 BBC documentary television series which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. Felipe on bricolabs pointed it out a few weeks ago. It’s a doco of unique style and content (filled with brilliant fragments of BBC archival material). The general subject is the rise of the technocratic society globally — the systems men of the Cold War, colonial technocracies, and so on. The episodes deal, in order, with communism in the Soviet Union; systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War; economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s; the insecticide DDT; Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s; and the history of nuclear power.

Curtis illustrates with great subtlety the connections between politics, economics, technology, and power, not to mention pointing out the obvious causes of much human misery: greed.

Part 5 “Black Power” explores the relationship between development in Ghana, colonial conceits, corporate and general human greed, as it suggests the deep connections between the distortions introduced by large-scale development and the fabric of a human system. Yet another example of the scalar independence of the distortions that organismic life imposes on its surrounds.

The retro feel from Curtis’ exclusive use of archive material always feels relevant rather than stylistic although the opening sequence is a bit annoying. Overall, though, an edifying and profound point of view on the contemporary developed world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlJ6gNMvrfc
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finance sector

52 Finance and Insurance
521 Monetary Authorities – Central Bank
5211 Monetary Authorities – Central Bank
52111 Monetary Authorities – Central Bank
521110 Monetary Authorities – Central Bank
522 Credit Intermediation and Related Activities
5221 Depository Credit Intermediation
52211 Commercial Banking
522110 Commercial Banking
52212 Savings Institutions
522120 Savings Institutions
52213 Credit Unions
522130 Credit Unions
52219 Other Depository Credit Intermediation
522190 Other Depository Credit Intermediation
5222 Nondepository Credit Intermediation
52221 Credit Card Issuing
522210 Credit Card Issuing
52222 Sales Financing
522220 Sales Financing
52229 Other Nondepository Credit Intermediation
522291 Consumer Lending
522292 Real Estate Credit
522293 International Trade Financing
522294 Secondary Market Financing
522298 All Other Nondepository Credit Intermediation
5223 Activities Related to Credit Intermediation
52231 Mortgage and Nonmortgage Loan Brokers
522310 Mortgage and Nonmortgage Loan Brokers
52232 Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities
522320 Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities
52239 Other Activities Related to Credit Intermediation
522390 Other Activities Related to Credit Intermediation
523 Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities
5231 Securities and Commodity Contracts Intermediation and Brokerage
52311 Investment Banking and Securities Dealing
523110 Investment Banking and Securities Dealing
52312 Securities Brokerage
523120 Securities Brokerage
52313 Commodity Contracts Dealing
523130 Commodity Contracts Dealing
52314 Commodity Contracts Brokerage
523140 Commodity Contracts Brokerage
5232 Securities and Commodity Exchanges
52321 Securities and Commodity Exchanges
523210 Securities and Commodity Exchanges
5239 Other Financial Investment Activities
52391 Miscellaneous Intermediation
523910 Miscellaneous Intermediation
52392 Portfolio Management
523920 Portfolio Management
52393 Investment Advice
523930 Investment Advice
52399 All Other Financial Investment Activities
523991 Trust, Fiduciary, and Custody Activities
523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities
524 Insurance Carriers and Related Activities
5241 Insurance Carriers
52411 Direct Life, Health, and Medical Insurance Carriers
524113 Direct Life Insurance Carriers
524114 Direct Health and Medical Insurance Carriers
52412 Direct Insurance (except Life, Health, and Medical) Carriers
524126 Direct Property and Casualty Insurance Carriers
524127 Direct Title Insurance Carriers
524128 Other Direct Insurance (except Life, Health, and Medical) Carriers
52413 Reinsurance Carriers
524130 Reinsurance Carriers
5242 Agencies, Brokerages, and Other Insurance Related Activities
52421 Insurance Agencies and Brokerages
524210 Insurance Agencies and Brokerages
52429 Other Insurance Related Activities
524291 Claims Adjusting
524292 Third Party Administration of Insurance and Pension Funds
524298 All Other Insurance Related Activities
525 Funds, Trusts, and Other Financial Vehicles
5251 Insurance and Employee Benefit Funds
52511 Pension Funds
525110 Pension Funds
52512 Health and Welfare Funds
525120 Health and Welfare Funds
52519 Other Insurance Funds
525190 Other Insurance Funds
5259 Other Investment Pools and Funds
52591 Open-End Investment Funds
525910 Open-End Investment Funds
52592 Trusts, Estates, and Agency Accounts
525920 Trusts, Estates, and Agency Accounts
52593 Real Estate Investment Trusts
525930 Real Estate Investment Trusts
52599 Other Financial Vehicles
525990 Other Financial Vehicles

NAICS code

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

Energy and Economic Growth

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

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

weaponized Keynesian

Paul Krugman, in Bombs, Bridges, and Jobs points out a crucial paradox in left/right political economy in the US. The Right has no problem with maintaining, or even increasing defense spending, even in the face of a recessionary economic situation. Military spending is government spending. This paradigm was firmly established during the post-WWII era of the military-industrial complex. It arises from a fundamental fear of life, a fear of living in the world, a fear of death. This is ‘natural’ in an evolutionary sense — the animal need to survive, life’s need to project itself into the future; but quite ‘un-natural’ from a psycho-spiritual pov — ultimate transcendence is beyond death. Examined from a Western ‘Christian’ stance, whilst “turning the other cheek” why do we need weapons? Their only use is to kill; but “thou shalt not kill”! Ah, well, I never said that religion, politics, human ‘reason’, operated within any rationale…

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

Thursday, 05 October, 1961

Ref’d unclassified documents U40976A & U40977A to the Doc Room; they are the IBM Base Study for TAC.

Worked on Berman’s Principles of Astronautics.

Clear! cool

Rode in with HS.

Took off the two front Jeep wheels and removed the brake adj. cams so I can go over them with a tap & die; Also put the left front window in.

It is getting cooler.

Gromyko — UN Russian rep. — talks with JFK today — Maybe a solution on Berlin can be worked out.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

grim Shaw

THE DEVIL: And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man’s wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady’s bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man’s industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvelous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating ME. What is his law? An excuse for hanging YOU. What is his morality? Gentility! an excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting. I spent an evening lately in a certain celebrated legislature, and heard the pot lecturing the kettle for its blackness, and ministers answering questions. When I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery saying –“Ask no questions and you will be told no lies.” — George Bernard Shaw, The Devil speaking in “Don Juan in Hell,” Act III of “Man and Superman,” 1902

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

Monday, 24 April, 1961

In discussing with VAN the work of LL on the Penetration Aids Project, he gave me a rough history, and then said they need people with an operational background; Simplex is fully manned, and a reallocation of resources is needed. Borrowed DOR 508 to read, as he had to go to a 0900 meeting. He also said that the Lab has been authorized a 15/20% staff increase to handle this work which comes from ARPA, and DOD/Air Force; it has been brewing for some time. I suppose a great deal of it is highly classified, so the entries herein will be small indeed.

Went in to Park Street to hear the 11 A Panel on Communism. Back to the Lab on the 1 PM shuttle.

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: Prescott, Arizona

at the edges of the envelope of power projection

When approaching the edge of a protocol-driven projection of power, the first thing noted is that the edge is in flux, constantly. Depending on the metric flow of the power, and the metric flow(s) of the countervailing chaos, the edge will shift at any temporal and spatial scale. The juxtaposition of controlled and un-controlled situations represents a more-or-less steep gradient from directed to random (or directed to countervailing directed) flows. A good example to consider is the two polarized and hegemonic forces of the Cold War compared to highly ordered (Imperial) military systems being projected into poorly organized social systems.

The edges of hegemonic Cold War projections of power were often located in social spaces of great chaos. But these points-of-contact generally did not impinge on the monumental and rigid structures (enabling ideological rigidity) at the core of Empire. Empire shielded itself with layers of decreasingly ordered spaces. The borders as projected closest to the two primary centers of power were defined by rigidly controlled edges across which there were few incursions or expressions of chaos. Natural borders represent a special case of intervening ‘natural’ chaotic systems which provide a temporary or long-term barrier to impingement. However, a power nexus has to deal with that chaotic border itself to maintain reasonable order there for its own population.

The space containing a vacuum of power is quickly filled whenever there is a localized energy source of a great enough magnitude to fill that space. It is more slowly filled when there is no localized concentrations of power. Again, the maintenance of an ‘edge’ is really about the maintenance of a gradient of order with a certain steepness.

An Imperial power will be more strongly be drawn into vacuums merely by the steep gradient between its highly organized (military) system and that vacuum.

The protocols of nation-statehood (currently) define geographic boundaries of power projections. However, it is clear that these boundaries and the protocols themselves are constantly in flux and themselves are finally defined by balances of power-projection on both sides. (Consider a con-federation versus a republic.) The border on chaos is a border that is under the greatest threat of alteration (because of that steep gradient mentioned previously).

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Freedom in the Cloud

Freedom in the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing

Absolutely brilliant talk by Eben Moglen — Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, and founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center — at an Internet Society – New York Chapter event back in February of this year.

In these two videos he presents an image of what exactly happened in terms of the internet infrastructure, completely outside the purview of political or wide social awareness which presents extreme danger to the fundamentals of our civil society. Explicit, clear, concise insights into the situation presented by corporate ‘log aggregators’ like Google and Facebook as well as the issues underlying how they threaten YOUR freedom.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Momentum

The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. — Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Momentum. It’s easier to (continue to) follow a prepared pathway, or a pathway that has allowed, formerly, the development of a certain velocity and quality of transit. Shifting pathways requires adjustments in … everything, not just velocity. And change … is … difficult. But why? Is it a force of instinct that keeps track of optimized behavior, keeping one from engaging in potentially non-optimized or energy-intensive experimentation, or is it merely the threat of social dissonance, or dis-position?

Looking for a path to follow. Which one. Well trodden, worn, abandoned, crowded, one-way, two-way, or simply not there.

Make one.

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them. — Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”

Make change? Nah, change is simply allowed as all is change anyway. The Prince guarantees his incremental redundancy by not embracing all the evidences and actualities of change that he may possibly comprehend.

In the Book of Changes a distinction is made between three kinds of change: nonchange, cyclic change (recurrence), and sequent change (non-recurrence). Nonchange is the background, as it were, against which change is possible. For in regard to any change there must be some fixed point to which the change can be referred; otherwise there can be no definite order and everything is dissolved in chaotic movement. The point of reference must be established, and this always requires a choice and decision. It makes possible a system of coordinates into which everything else is fitted. Consequently at the beginning of the world, as at the beginning of thought, there is the decision, the fixing of the point of reference. … The ultimate frame of reference for all that changes is the unchanging.

The question of change is an incremental valuation. All cannot change all the time. Where change can occur and where it may occur and how it will occur is constantly in flux. Social systems seek to attenuate flows of change that are too powerful, and to amplify those which are insufficient, as judged by the momentary contingencies and needs of the system. The task of scaling an appropriate response to the evolving conditions provides for the auspicious outcome.

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The Science of Disorder

I’ll retroactively begin to add bibliographic resource links with short reviews or notes on books that come to my attention. This one arrived via the usual intentional browsing. It represents several that begin to connect the dots between thermodynamics, techno-social systems, and the affect of human presence on the planet. It suggests that the movement away from a scientific approach to a technological approach is critical to the loss of our way to understanding the messy phenomena of human intervention in our world. Technological subjects are often taught without any grounding in philosophic principles of any sort. My own education at the School of Mines required only four three-credit-hour courses of (very general and poorly taught!) humanities for the entire undergraduate degree in geophysical engineering. And those courses in no way influenced the approach or the execution of any of the hard-core engineering courses. Instead they were frequently the object of derision as juxtaposed to the tough and demanding engineering classes — an implicit gendered polarity — wussy classes versus the rough and tough get-your-hands-dirty and only-the-toughest-survive macho applied-engineering classes. Things have changed somewhat in many engineering curricula (as evidenced by the fact that I do rather often have engineering students in my seminars and workshops), but there is the overt assumption that technology is above the messy fray of soft human affairs to which it brings only ordered progress, material wealth, and sustainable harmony. The former two are evidenced when examining closed (and limited) systems, the latter, nothing could be further from the truth.

Well-researched with both scientific and popular/media references, The Science of Disorder is readable, explicit, and provocative. (I’ll be expanding these reviews as I can manage: there is a huge backlog of rolling all previous bibliographic references to this style.)

The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World, Hokikian, J., Los Feliz Publishing, Los Angeles, 2002.
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conduct: opinions and sentiments

Men’s opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blamable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason — at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. . . . Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority. Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics. — John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”

Yes, definitely, opinion is affected by the directions of the wind. And add to the multifarious causes the role that contemporary media plays in opinion-forming. Counter-pointed by the influence that the controlling figures in those social media structures have — all as a result of the face-time, the attention spent by individuals on those channels of ‘information.’ It is precisely this passivity, or servility, as Mill calls it that forms the kernel of power in every regime or social organization.

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on the IceSave debacle

A quick response on Alda’s Icelandic Weather Report posting concerning the veto by the Icelandic President of the IceSave agreement.

sotto voce: Strategic positioning relates to local, regional and global power flows and offensive/defensive weapon systems (among other factors). The US military left Iceland because it no longer represented a strategic advantage to be there (precisely because of weapon systems like submarine-launched ICBM’s, not to mention the very real shifts of global power that have come about since the Cold War ended). During WWII, because of the limits on aircraft range, Iceland was crucial to the Allied (US-supported) efforts in Europe. But gradually, again, with changing weapon systems and different constellations of global power, Iceland is no longer ‘strategic.’ Might be hard for some folks to swallow, pride-wise, not being ‘important’ in some global scheme, but that’s the way things go — they change. Iceland has few if any unique marketable/strategic resources as measured in the present world order. And on the other hand, they have liabilities according to globalist interests (for example, a quaint nationalism which is completely redundant in global market systems, no longer strategic travel/transport location (no need for Keflavík re-fueling!), no significant energy resources that are fiscally develop-able to the scale necessary for global competition, an education system that includes 100% literacy but is, on its own, entrenched and lacking innovative threads (and reinforcing the same naivete that gave rise to the recent disastrous foray into the global market system) … and so on…

And on the power of the (Icelandic) Presidency:

sotto voce: Presumably, though, the powers of the office of the president are circumscribed in the constitution, and, as such, are available to the person occupying the office. As happened in the US during the Bush regime, massive powers not explicitly outlined in the constitution were gathered by that regime, strengthening the office of president dramatically (powers that Obama has not relinquished at all — those at the top love extra power)… Any government or national political power structure goes through fluid shifts in concentration & location of power almost constantly, but some more precipitous than others. I’d suggest a close reading of The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, for a good outline on shifting power structures in a nation-state.

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Rousseau?

On Durkheim’s exploration of Rousseau and Montesquieu: the immediate impression is that Rousseau, when stripped of the colloquialisms of the time, has a greater precision in circumscribing the social order than Montesquieu. More on that later. But given the situation that Obama is currently mulling over: Afghanistan, a bit of Rousseau would probably have eliminated the entire issue in the years earlier, had the enormous hubris not entirely blinded those in power at the time:

Just as an architect, before putting up a tall building, studies and tests the ground to see whether it can bear the weight, so the wise organizer does not begin by drafting laws which are good in themselves, but first tries to determine whether the people for whom they are intended are able to submit to them.

The Social Contract, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1987c[1762]) On The Social Contract in The Basic Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Donald A. Cress (trans. and ed.), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.

What a lesson to learn! Completely counter to the previous US regime’s goal of bringing Democracy (with a Big Dee) to those places that they think need it, with no awareness of the actual suitability of that particular (theoretical no less!) social framework for the localized human situation. One needs to consider all prior flows extant in a social system in order to ascertain whether the system can stand a modification of those flows that are likely to be imposed by external forces. Oracle, prophesy, the I Ching, mixed with Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. And recognizing that variability is a human trait.

With a close-to-infinite availability of energy, an external power can accomplish any finite changes in an arbitrarily limited system in a finite time. Imagine a squad of high-tech equipped Special Forces for every household in Afghanistan, staying for two or three generations. That would do. It would cast iron-order on the country, and re-educate any young people to the Amurikan way. Of course, you would need one Amurikan teacher for every five children for that entire time as well. Fundamentalist elders would also have to be eliminated.

Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology, Durkheim, Emile (1960[1893]), Georges Davy (trans.), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960.

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technological affectation

If film can do this:

Film serves to train human beings in the practice of those apperceptions and reactions required by the frequentation of an apparatus whose role in their daily life ever increases. To make this whole enormous technological apparatus of our time into the object of human interiorization and appropriation [innervation] — that is the historic task in whose service film has its true meaning. — Walter Benjamin

Then is there any reason to doubt a connection between the declining power and influence of the (technocratic mediocracy of the) United States and the implementation of the Internet as-it-is today? Is there any connection between the tendencies of its population to spend their (limited) life-time in tele-communication (and tele-consumption!) and the demise of civil society? People seemingly now avoid confronting the (unknown) Other and rather cluster as mirrored-Selves, with a cumulative effect of breakdown of a (diverse) cultural fabric into a checker-board of self-interest groupings which spend time defending the borders of their squares from the surrounding Evil unknown.

this conclusion proposed in the sense that if film can have that profundity of affectation on human nervous systems (the primary interface with the world-as-mediated-by-body; or the primary EM antenna-structures), then what of all the wide press of technological development seeping into all parts and orifices of perception and reaction?

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

4th of July

make it to the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at the Congregational church for once. have a chat with a native Arizonan originally from Winslow now living in Chino. we talked about water. then there is a chance meeting with John McCain before the parade starts. he’s there every year, it’s a tradition, especially this year, a re-election year in the Senate coming up. he looked old and tired. he was with a squad of Young Republicans. they did not appear to know what they were doing, but were doing that enthusiastically. or so. very glad that he is not president now. otherwise, this largely conservative town shows its patriotic and political fervor on a hot and sunny desert highland day.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.

all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.

keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.

Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys