you have stumbled upon a slowly evolving mediated space which is the next online evolution of the original neoscenes archive and network presence. it has subsumed the entire neoscenes travelog which began back in 1995. it rolled over to a frames-based site in 1999, and then to a php-based site in 2004, and now onto WordPress as of 2009. it is now extending the time span with images, audio, and video from the long-standing off-line neoscenes archive. what’s this 1961-1962 “50 years on” material? it is one dimension of the use of the (b)log as the accompaniment of the text of my Ph.D. thesis which touches on many of the topics surfaced here combined with my creative media practice. there is an evolving about page which contains more background on the whole project. contact: neo at neoscenes dot net.
******
NEW FROM THE ARCHIVE
slowly starting to upload documents of performances like Open Air Radio Barcelona and DEAF03 – Interfacing / Radiotopia / Keyworx. also in the process of figuring out how to add the thousands of scanned black&white negatives that cover a period of time from 1976 through 2000 when I quit wet darkroom work. (a few (84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95) of the 4000+ portraits that are slowly migrating to these pages). will be including many fragments like that over the next months to enrich the overall blog experience, so stay-tuned here for new announcements. of course, there are always new field recordings for the aporee maps project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

done, now to await the results from the examiners, that’ll be a couple months. no breath-holding for that time, as life moves on and it is now incumbent to do that moving on!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Howard’s new book is finally out, looks pretty interesting and pertinent, will have to order it at the library…

why so gaddammed serious, here.
when words should play at least some of the time
where words should play, or, less than least, fill leftover space
with sound, firing in head. both yours and mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

so fuckin’ what…?

NOI – Notice of Intent. Is this something you give when you are intending to do something? Like, a warning? I’m hearby giving you notice of intent to flatten that already pug nose on your smirking face…? Nah, just the thesis. Warning the university to get ready and in the words of E. Power Biggs, organist, “If you’re not ready to have a happening, MOVE BACK!” It’sa happening to be sure. A couple more weeks of clean-up, final-final draft in today for Norie to make a last read-through: what a way to spend a weekend, bless her soul! Of course the question of whether it passes by the examiners is moot at this point. (also at this point, ask me if I care!).

DOI – Intimately interlinked with the NOI. It’s a digital object identifier. As the days turn to years, research time is spent hunting for particular DOIs — one attached to each and every journal article out there in Internet-land. As soon as I submit, I am dis-enrolled at the uni and soon thereafter, I lose proxy access to a world full of online stuff — magazine, journal, newspaper archives, Oxford English Dictionary, Chicago Manual of Style, all that, dang!

raking the coals, blowing on the fire, adding judicious amounts of fuel. recall watching my old friend John, the blacksmith, as he stoked a warming house-fire, how he was able to coax a cold fire to flame up almost immediately with a few stabs of the poker. it’s a skill.

I had presumed that David Bohm and Martin Buber would have more of a presence in the final thesis text, but curiously, they are not dominant voices at all. I was wondering the other day about this, with a little feeling that I had lost those two threads. But in my own terms, it is an example of resonance — where the resonant energy of inspiring source is translated into, literally, any other form. Bohm, I think, has presented such a complete (and somewhat complex) mapping of reality that to invoke it would require explaining the whole thing — something of the problem I have faced from the beginning of this thesis process. Many (most!?) thesis works seem to be firmly planted on an established map of a known territory. What’s the point? The difficulty of trying to circumscribe a new territory has reduced academic pursuit to an incremental braille of minutiae. The absorbing of creative arts endeavors into DCA/DA/PhD programs at hundreds of universities (all outside the US) has precipitated a wide front for a process of rationalization of practices that are not of that nature.

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 this out. you are spot-on again!

to watch the movements of any body, while in mind is the recollection of an other one dying, and while snow falls heavy on the greenhouse glass outside, and the pipes rush with water somewhere in the house. it’s all too much.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each others cup but drink not from one cup. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. ― Kahlil Gibran

Between instances of ‘seeing’ someone, it is easy to believe that perhaps we have no ‘contact’ or influence, or other expression of presence on that Other. But this seems not at all true, and is only a perverse influence of a close-to-pure material culture. In the moments, hours, days between the face-to face encounter, I am, first off, already at the effect of our prior encounter. This has changed me, fundamentally. I am elsewise already, as I depart from your immediate presence. It’s not merely a question of persistence of this change: it is far more profound than merely the ‘propagation’ of something with in my Self, being elsewise means that I am change(d). As I draw away, the change persists in the now-transformed Self. This new Self moves along, it is engaging the flow of life in a way that is different than if it had not encountered the Other: you are there. Maybe this is only another framing of memory, but what, indeed, is memory but the persistence of the effects of encounter: an effect of the change that comes from open encounter. Still seems that this could simply be labeled as ‘presence’ as it is a persistent effect of presence, and that (Cartesian) proximity is irrelevant.

This whole scenario reminds of the multi-verse theory of reality, but one question would definitely be, what is the granularity of the splitting off of a new universe? How ‘often’ would it occur — it would have to be an any juncture of change, or so… Which would seem to be asymptotically close to infinite, which I suppose is what string theory suggests, etc., etc.

…[T]he last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view, that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting, imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it['s] roots [are] in the body as a whole and also in the extended environment where the organism finds itself.

- Francisco Varela, Cosmos Web Forum letter 12e (1998?)

The pleroma is both beginning and end of the created beings. It pervadeth them, as the light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air. Although the pleroma prevadeth altogether, yet hath created being no share thereof, just as wholly transparent body becometh neither light nor dark through the light nor dark through the light which pervadeth it. We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and the infinite. — C.G. Jung

Jung, C.G. & Jaffé, A., 1965. The Seven Sermons to the Dead. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life. Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces. — Georg Simmel

Simmel, G., 1950. The Metropolis & Mental Life. In The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York, NY: Free Press.

Now attempting the abstract which should have been in last week for the formal Notification of Intention (to submit). Words are reified by applied meanings (to their largely abstract sounds); yet words can be made to have other meanings. Where on this Occam’s razor is the sitting more comfortable? Or is it time to just jump off and risk coming into contact with the blade in the process, but otherwise escaping the challenge of making meaning so ‘simple’ that is ‘acceptable.’ I like to think that I say what I mean, and it just happens sometimes that the meaning is not so common, so I bear mis-understanding as a price for this act of saying. This is a prime example of the lossyness of mediatory carriers. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) has been a constant companion since I realized I had free (university) access to it. I like the Old English and Norsk usage examples which are given for some words going back to the 8th Century or earlier. Thanks to knowing Icelandic! Best of all are the full etymologies which trace the lineage of shifting meaning as attached to these bits of symbolic chicken-scratch. ‘Commonsensical’ meanings are nothing more than the dominant understanding (or lack thereof) of the shifting sands of language. For example, the OED definition of ‘common sense,’ see below, m’gosh!
(more …)

What people are contemplating on their word-processor screens is the operation of their own brains. It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch it operating like a video-game. All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected – far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord. But we should not worry too much about this: it is all much less scientific, less functional than is ordinarily thought. All that fascinates us is the spectacle of the brain and its workings. What we are wanting here is to see our thoughts unfolding before us – and this itself is a superstition.

Hence, the academic grappling with his computer, ceaselessly correcting, reworking, and complexifying, turning the exercise into a kind of interminable psychoanalysis, memorizing everything in an effort to escape the final outcome, to delay the day of reckoning of death, and that other—fatal—moment of reckoning that is writing, by forming an endless feed-back loop with the machine. This is a marvelous instrument of exoteric magic. In fact all these interactions come down in the end to endless exchanges with a machine. Just look at the child sitting in front of his computer at school; do you think he has been made interactive, opened up to the world? Child and machine have merely been joined together in an integrated circuit. As for the intellectual, he has at last found the equivalent of what the teenager gets from his stereo and his walkman: a spectacular desublimation of thought, his concepts as images on a screen. — Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard, J., 2000. America, London, England: Verso.

What is being destroyed more quickly than the ozone layer is the subtle layer of irony that protects us from the radiation of stupidity. But, conversely, we may also say that the subtle film of stupidity, which protects us from the lethal radiation of intelligence, is also disappearing. We are secreting information at such a rate that it is polluting the higher layers of the mental atmosphere with its non-degradable waste, gradually destroying the kind of atmospheric girdle which protects us from our secrets being totally dispersed into artificial intelligence the way molecules are protected from totally dispersing into space. — Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard, J., 1996. Cool Memories II, 1987-1990, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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

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

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

Merry New Year, folks! All the best for 2012. The last year of planet Earth, rumor has it…

ai, the scope of life contracts to a point. to a pointed head. while the Chinook blows a gale down from the Flatirons.

Following on to examine the trend in cosmology and unified field theories, Chalmers speculates that conscious experience may be a fundamental feature cosmologically:

“If the existence of consciousness cannot be derived from physical laws, a theory of physics is not a true theory of everything. So a final theory must contain an additional fundamental component. Toward this end, I propose that conscious experience be considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to anything more basic.”

This perception of the central nature of consciousness to the cosmological description is more acute than an academic or philosophical matter. Although the scientific description is based exclusively on the objective physical universe, our contact with reality is entirely sine qua non through our subjective conscious experience. From birth to death, we experience only a stream of consciousness through which all our experience of the physical world is gained. All scientific experiments performed on the physical world ultimately become validated by the subjective conscious experience of the experimenters, and the subsequent witnesses to the phenomena and conclusions. — Chris King

King, C., 2006. Quantum Cosmology and the Hard Problem of the Conscious Brain. In J. Tuszynski, ed. The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. New York, NY: Springer.

Descanse em paz. We shared the same birthday…

People treat modern communication media as if they were human, so established principles of interpersonal communication also predict human responses to computers and television. The media equation (media = real life) is an unconscious, automatic response that occurs because our slow-to-evolve brains don’t distinguish between mediated and real life experience. — E. M. Griffin

no time here to do anything but thrash through The Text. first big round of edits done, but a major second round to re-shuffle material, collect thoughts, delete extraneous threads will be arduous.

. . . 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. — Machiavelli

Power may be defined, for every society, as resulting from the need to struggle against the entropy that threatens it with disorder. — Georges Balandier