Isn't it a enjoy how everything is delivered just in time and in a neat little package to assuage the capitalists?
Wednesday 13 August 2014
meanwhile, back at the ranch
catagories: ๐ฒ๐ฝ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, ๐งฌ, environment, transportation
Tuesday 12 August 2014
slack and dune or totem and taboo
Most know the Dune franchise of Frank Herbert and son popularly from the 1984 cinematic adaptation (by David Lynch no less) and its political struggle to control the production of the spice melange by a cast of esoteric and archetypal characters. As memorable and hopefully piquing as this portrayal is, the battle for control of Arrakis—complete with intrigues that hint at the importance of the commodity and the safe-keeping of the controlling-cartel—the spectacle, I think, pushed the back-story further into the background and left the author's vision and prescience just out of reach. With fears of a robot-holocaust ravaging humanity popping up in the news lately—and from all different directions, it might be worth taking a look back at the saga that was penned in 1965 but tossed into the a far distant dystopia ten-thousand years from now.
Thinking-machines eventually came to see no value in human life, as if our creations once achieving genuine independence and sentience would revere us as gods—humans do not even do a good job at that, despite superstition and other frailties that cannot be programmed—and proceed to exterminate those that they cannot enslave, humans not built of valuable rare-earth metals. The revolt ended with the enduring dictum “Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind,” with many fascinating institutions developed over the eons to compensate for the loss of convenience that the prohibition and taboo brought about. Even if not so heavy-handed as the active destruction of humanity and more the sorrowful decline of creativity, faith and manners, I expect matters to acceleration much more quickly than anyone is prepared for—and certainly before mankind is about to explore the stars. What do you think? I am not sure why there is this sudden, apparent resurgence over the dangers of a robot take-over. Maybe it is due to insecurity over jobs or the imitation of thought that data-mining can execute. No matter how near or far Singularity is, such warnings go unheeded at our peril.
catagories: ๐ญ, ๐, Dune, religion, revolution, technology and innovation
Monday 11 August 2014
antecedent use
Remember when the US legislature united to re-flag French fries as Freedom Fries over the namesake's opposition to going to war with Iraq over pride and pretense? (Incidentally, frankfurters were re-branded as hot dogs for parallel reasons but that designation stuck.) All things European were demonised as malingerers and overly-forgiving bastions of terrorism and Europe itself was re-divided as Old and New—the novelty and perhaps naรฏvety being good things in the eyes of demagogues.
catagories: ๐, ๐, foreign policy, religion, revolution
lake district or mood indigo
The expanse of plain surrounding the metropolis of Leipzig—extending to the corner of Saxony-Anhalt, is known as the Neuseenland for the numerous artificial bodies of water created by the flooding of derelict mining operations. The process of reclamation takes decades as a lot of industrial pollutants have to be filtered away first so that people and Nature can enjoy these resources. The character is different, of course, from the marshy areas that once covered these plains before cities and farmland but the effect is stunning and attracting a new range of wildlife.
A surrendered mine-shaft, a former brown-coal (Braunkohl, lignite—the low-grade coal that comes from ancient peat-bogs found throughout Europe) extraction site, forms one very picturesque lake by the name of Runstedersee in the community of Braunsbedra that made a very nice venue for a party weekend. Deemed unsafe for bathing, however, it stands in the wake of the nearby Leuna Works and as a reminder that the area, though certain phases have passed and more care is taken concerning environmental impact, the area in general is not a post-industrial one. Originally built during the height of World War I by Robert Bosch for the synthesis of ammonia for the production of explosives, this huge chemical campus slowly diversified and the ammonia was used for the manufacture of fertilizer during the interbellum period. Moreover, with the loss of colonial-holdings, research into other means for obtaining rubber and fuel oil became vital for the reestablishment of civil and military prowess in Germany under the directorship of IG Farben (Interessen-Gemeinschaft… meaning syndicate of the dye-makers after their first commercial successes in creating artificial colouring agents).
Synthetic materials and the process for converting brown-coal into oil (Hydrierwerke) were pioneered at these factories. During World War II, the refineries suffered heavy damage from bombardment and the disruption to the supply-chain became a pivotal moment in the war. The complex was rebuilt during East Germany times and continues to operate as a fuel refinery and produces a wide range of chemicals and plastics. Hopefully, with better stewardship of a dirty business, Nature can reclaim this lake fully as well.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐งณ, environment, lifestyle, transportation
Sunday 10 August 2014
autarky or war of words
It is strange how words become ammunition in reporting:
catagories: ๐ท๐บ, ๐, ๐ฑ, foreign policy
Thursday 7 August 2014
creative-commons or infinite monkeys typing
Wikipedia is rebuffing the take-down requests of a nature photographer, who after leaving his camera disguised in the jungle to capture images of macaques of Indonesia discovered that the monkey had discovered the hidden device and took hundreds of selfies.
Since the images have gone viral, the photographer hoped to earn something in the form of royalties or at least recognition and became rather irked when the images became part of Wikipedia's open collection. Demands that the pictures be removed and relegated to the nature photographer were rejected by the public encyclopedia, reasoning that the monkeys were the authors of the collection and it would be their decision if the material remained in the public-domain or not. US statute, which Wikipedia cites and most editors agree with, states that non-human authors have no automatic expectation of attribution and so such material defaults to be released to public-domain. What do you think of this legal battle, this copy-fight? The photographer did go through a lot of trouble and expensive to set up this photo-booth but maybe the macaque also knew what he was creating.
catagories: ๐งณ, networking and blogging, ⓦ
Wednesday 6 August 2014
gentrification or the YUN ones
The Daily Beast featured recently a bitter-sweet and thought-provoking interview and profile of a blogger who is passionately documented the death-knells of a great metropolis. New York City is being summarily and quickly terraformed into a suburban-idyll, a playground acceptable to American Mid-Western standards and values and is being turned away from its eclectic identity.
catagories: lifestyle
wolfssegen oder an der grenze
Derived from the same Latin root as the Roman Limes—the border of the frontier and furthest reaches of the empire, a liminal being is one that is on the perimeter and stays back and forth between more comfortable and familiar categories, and defies easy classification. Limen—or liminal points—are the terms for the threshold of mental or physical sensation, those disappearingly small perceptions that are just on the edge of the senses or awareness and a gauge for dismissing what one may have just imagined. Such beings partake of two, usually opposed, states and are stock-characters of folklore and fantasy, from chimera and hybrid creatures, part human, part beast, to vampires, zombies and other ghouls, neither alive nor dead—even to cyborgs and thinking-machines and the uncanniness that surrounds them.
Equally curious is the repulsion and attraction that normal humans have to them, whether classic and reputable or new and novel. Wolfssegener, Wolf Charmers, are ancient professionals—probably dating back to prehistory—and were quite respected in villages, like the figure of a shaman or witch-doctor, for keeping themselves and livestock safe from wolf-raids. Once Europe was taken by the mania of witch-trials in the late Middle Ages, however, Wolf-Charmers were persecuted as werewolves themselves. Such hysteria is a cyclical occurrence and happens in all cultures, and for all the attention that this chapter has received, it may not even be the most wide-spread maker of monsters (NDSAP propagandists in 1930s and 1940s framed the historic witch-hunts as a conspiracy to destroy Aryan womanhood, and even the early and revival witch-trials differed significantly in character—the former more concerned with practitioners currying unfair advantage over their neighbours with magic and the latter having more to do with social-order and the anarchy caused by being in league with the Devil). As in Medieval Europe, coping with the stresses of societal change—those forces which push the limits of what we perceive as normal and normative, which included the dawn of the Age of Exploration, the Reformation and counter-movements, seem to compel populations to create, designate liminal status.
catagories: ๐, ๐ง , myth and monsters, religion, revolution