If used in numbers, atomic bombs not only can nullify any nation’s military effort, but can demolish its social and economic structure and prevent their re-establishment for long periods of time. With such weapons, especially if employed in conjunction with other weapons of mass destruction such as pathogenic bacteria, it is quite possible to depopulate vast areas of the earth’s surface, leaving only vestigal remnants of man’s material works. — Report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Operations Crossroads, 30 June 1947

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

With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group falls to the women and the infirm. — Thorstein Veblen

A man gets shot once in the face, and a second time to the head to ensure his demise. Other men are shot. A woman is shot. Why celebrate except in the instance of savagery, with an up-turned face, contorted with suppressed rage, making a vengeful grimace, and declaring the nation-state’s supremacy. An eye for an eye, the context lost on those who do not even know the content of the holy book coming from their own god. Instead, kill and be killed and kill and be killed. (more …)

Responding to Felipe’s thread on the bricolabs list:

Obviously, I’m not asking how serious lixoeletronico.org people are, because I’m one of them :P I meant the companies who say they are not using gold, coltan, tungsten etc any more.

Another Eisenhower warning in his address to Congress prior to his leaving office in 1961:

One of the deepest concerns of the framers of our Constitution was to make sure that no military group arose to challenge the civil authority, and that no segment of industry be allowed to develop which was permanently and exclusively concerned with building the weapons of war.

For a hundred and sixty years, our military posture was characterized by a very small regular establishment, quickly bolstered in time of emergency by large contingents of militia and reserves, and just as quickly reduced upon the return of peace. There was no armaments industry. The makers of plowshares could, when required, make swords as well. The Army which I joined in 1911 numbered 84,000 — one-tenth of its present strength.

For many reasons, this has all changed. A great and continuing threat to our security made it impossible for us to demobilize after the Korean War in the way we had previously done. Three-and-a-half million Americans continue to be directly and fully engaged in defense activities. In seven and a half years of nominal peace we have spent for defense a sum substantially greater than the cost of World War II, and our national security budget annually exceeds the net income before taxes of all United States corporations. And the direct result of this continued high level of defense expenditures has been to create a permanent armaments industry, of vast proportions, where none had existed before.

The conjunction of a large and permanent military establishment and a large and permanent arms industry is something totally new in American experience. No thinking citizen would deny the need for such a commitment in today’s perilous world; yet none can fail to read its grave implications. For this is power — tremendous economic and political power — with a specific and tangible interest in both national policy and national strategy. Billions of dollars in purchasing power and the livelihood of millions of people are directly involved. Its influence is felt in every city, in every state house, and by every responsible official in the Federal government. We can take comfort in the knowledge that none of our basic safeguards has given way. But let us take nothing for granted. We shall need all the organizing genius we possess to mesh the huge machinery of our defenses with our peace-oriented economy so that liberty and security are both well served. It requires constant vigilance, and a jealous precaution against any move which would weaken the control of civil authority over the military establishment. We must be especially careful to avoid measures which would enable any segment of this vast military-industrial complex to sharpen the focus of its own power at the expense of the sound balance which now prevails. The potential for disastrous abuse of power in this area is great. Let us watch it carefully. — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

“It’s tragic that this all begins with the apparent mistaking of a camera for a weapon,” said David A. Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University. “But it’s perfectly understandable with what we know now about context and vision. Take the same image and put it in a bathroom, and you swear it’s a hair dryer; put it in a workshop, and you swear it’s a power drill.”

NYT April 7, 2010

An engineer who has given us the entire…

Un-named engineers …

Engineer as a causative agent…

From Middle English engin < Old French engin (“skill”, “cleverness”, “war machine’”) < Latin ingenium (“innate or natural quality, nature, genius, a genius, an invention, in LL. a war-engine, battering-ram”) < ingenitum, past participle of ingignere (“to instil by birth, implant, produce in”); see ingenious. Engine originally meant ‘ingenuity, cunning’ which eventually developed into meaning ‘the product of ingenuity, a plot or snare’ and ‘tool, weapon’.

The platoon practices having their fixed machine-gun and observation emplacement attacked from a line of tamarisk bushes about 100 meters north towards the rail line and the interstate. Overhead, fighters prowl and engage. The heavy machine gun shakes the windows. The assault rifles sound like small fire-crackers in comparison.

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

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

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

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

In the sonic realm, this part of the western desert (the spatial extent defined by precipitation at least) seems, at first, quiet. Stepping out of the car after a bruising day of fighting the wheel, ah, only the susurration of blood pumping in the ears. But, despite this initial impression, human intrusion in the western desert is never silent. The ambient pre-human sonic domain is defined by a few animals making occasional signals “I am here.” Ravens and coyotes are perhaps the noisiest, with others following in a rapidly declining decibel range. Wind is mostly, literally, in the ear of the beholder as a register of turbulent flow around the aural orifice but occasionally one is in a place where the wind makes some secondary sound (in a riparian regime, in seasonal leaves, or whistling around a certain rock formation, but these are rare and difficult to record without exceptional and expensive equipment). Otherwise, then, there is only the human incursion. This incursion is typically related to the movement of those intrusive humans through the domain as few have the desire to stop and actually hear silence. The few who volunteer or are forced to stop for a longer time are not necessarily prone to sonic disturbances, though that group, as a whole, are dominated by willing or unwilling participants in the military-industrial machine. The balance, a small remainder, are likely seeking the silence. The members of the machine make plenty of noise via everything from weapon systems testing to mining to toxic waste incineration, but access to these secretive sonic sources are for the select, not the transitory rabble.

Those engaged in field recording are left with the experience of tangential contact. That is, functioning as a stationary point, recording the arrival and departure of a nearby transport vector — trains, planes, and cars. Given the proper conditions, especially the lack of wind, these can make interesting (and startling) recordings. Trucks may be heard many miles away and render an impossibly slow Doppler shifting that is also modulated by differential density and velocity metrics of the intervening air. Planes are often more difficult as the most dramatic contact is with the low-flying fighter aircraft which will show up practically without warning and are so loud that recording is impossible. The db peak of that tangential contact pegs the meter. Before the air-to-ground missiles are launched at you, the target, and field incursions become moot.

So, what to do? Muddle along. Hit the casinos. Though I’ve been tossed out of those in the distant past for making photographs, the H4 Zoom looks suspicious, so I think it also will attract attention from security for sure. Ach.

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even “secret” — pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel.

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

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

And on the power of the (Icelandic) Presidency:

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
(more …)

got to weigh in on health care. so sick(!) of the toxic blather going on within the US, although it might just be that it is a spent nation-state, in the throes of becoming less relevant in the world. clearly it is becoming less functional internally which eventually (already) will have an effect on external relations. morally it is tearing itself apart by those who, strangely call themselves Christian but who seem to have zero compassion and limitless zeal for defending against the stranger and killing preemptively when that stranger seems strange. period. I have some understanding of the fear of governmental authority. the media in the US has certainly inculcated so many other nation-states with the blight of the dictator and illustrated that to the US citizens, a situation that reinforces some traditional/historical fear of the government. fine. but why is there almost zero fear of the corporation? how can this be? (a belief that the government will effectively control the corporation?? or what?) it is irrational. but then again, fear usually is, especially the fear exuding from an under-class which is very poorly educated (a result of a very stratified anti-Federal education situation, but that’s another whole story). This under-class seems not to understand the dynamics of power as it happens to be expressed in the particular system they live under — global capitalism — despite being locked into that servile under-class by those same dynamics of power. a dynamics that is expressed in the same way as it is expressed in any other system of power — the elite rule that under-class. whether it is elite politicians-for-life (the Senate) or corporate boards or whatever arrangement of power, it’s all Machiavellian in both intention and execution. doh!

I have had wide experience in numerous socialist (gasp!) countries and with some of their medical systems. I have also had several encounters with fragments of the US system. in different situations I have been either uninsured or insured. I am alive/walking today because of the quality of the US system, a system that took care of me after an accident when I was in an uninsured gap in time. the system (which really isn’t a system, but more a hodge-podge of competing, conflicting, and discontinuous sub-systems), without any paperwork, without even a ID (I’m white), the local hospital ER took me in and diagnosed my severe injury — a shattered vertebra and sent me on for major surgery and hospitalization at a top neurological center a couple hours away in Phoenix, Arizona. a week in post-op ICU and I was sent home (to my sister’s place where she cared for me for some weeks until I could be moderately ambulatory). later, after three months of heavy physical therapy and a deep focus on my part, I am once again healthy and mobile. without that level of technology and expertise I would be either a paraplegic or simply dead.

this particular experience doesn’t preclude any of the criticisms of the overall system which is bleeding people for far more cash than is necessary even when factoring in bureaucratic inefficiencies that might be introduced by governmental oversight.

I didn’t have insurance at that time because it was prohibitively expensive for me as an individual free-lance educator to underwrite, an entrepreneur. surely many potential and practicing entrepreneurs are faced with problem, to what extent does this impede them? I took the calculated risk when visiting the US that nothing would happen to me. I was insured (by the State) when teaching in Finland and in Iceland and that insurance extended by reciprocity to any European state. I would have been covered anywhere in Europe had that same accident occurred there. The ultimate level of care may not have been the same in many less developed Euro-states, but in Scandinavia and most of the states I operated in, the intervention and care would have equaled or exceeded what I got in Arizona.

another prior encounter with the US system, because of a running injury during a period where I was first uninsured then insured saw mis-diagnosis for fractured sesamoid bones in my left foot. on five occasions over a four-year period I had x-rays and a variety of examinations in the US, none of which identified the problem correctly. after I moved to Iceland, my first encounter with that socialist (gasp!) system (never mind the stupid insurance company ploy of pre-existing conditions in the US), the (Swedish-trained) doctor did a focused exam of the foot and without even an x-ray, diagnosed the injury correctly, and scheduled a surgical intervention shortly thereafter. I had several other encounters with the system up there including the complicated birth of my son which was taken care of completely, my wife staying comfortably in the hospital for ten days (and having the option to take off either six months at full pay or one year at half pay from her job for maternity leave; I got to take off the second year at half-pay too). a number of emergency interventions were expertly taken care of as well. all for free. my cumulative tax rate as a university educator there was the same as I paid in the US when you added up all the local, state, and federal rates.

in Finland I had some minor encounters with the system which were expert and professional. and free.

now here in Australia, I paid all of USD 270 per annum for private (state regulated) insurance. I have not tested it out yet, but do plan to explore it for some minor chronic issues.

once, in a meeting with some executives from Ericsson in Stockholm some years back, the conversation turned to health care and I heard them agree that the high taxes that they paid as members of the upper-middle-class were worth it to have a stable society where all were cared for. uff, that sounds like (gasp!) socialism! curses! never mind what the Bible says about the sin of empathy.

although my eating habits are a bit skewed in the direction of consuming too many carbos and dairy than I should, I exercise at a level that most people my age think is extreme. six or seven days a week, I engage in some combination of cardio, strength, or centering exercises for a couple hours. swimming, cycling, yoga, tai chi, weight lifting, resistance exercise, and such. I walk stairs rather than take elevators or escalators. I am walking after that accident partly because I was in better-than-average condition to begin with and I don’t intend that to change radically.

with universal health care in the US I can see one argument against it — who wants to pay the bill via taxes for the HUGE number of morbidly obese over-consuming Amurikans, many who are the same thought-less, compassion-less christian folks righteously ‘defending the constitution’ and their fat slice of pie with weapons? gah.

there you have it! Al needed a haircut. so I drive him down to Bob’s where he has been going since 1984, to Bob. it’s next door to the recently-moved Merry Maids dispatch office. across from three 1950′s travel trailers on blocks, squeezed close enough that the doors had only a little leeway in what was at some point a single family home, carved up into a couple creaky multi-room business spaces. the first magazine in the plywood rack is a civilian aviation magazine surprisingly packed front-to-back-covers with military stories and profiles of military aircraft. with a nostalgia looking back to WWI and WWII planes as well as contemporary (deployed) weapons systems. at the barber’s shop. one could claim an ‘interest’ in such issues, reading everything pertinent to the topic — the efficacy of an ‘augmented’ human — but is it necessary? (to be interested? to kill? or is it merely a religion? the religion of the State?) talk at the barber’s moves through several spaces, all critical of the incoming regime. buying ammunition, lots of extra ammunition, and weapons before Tuesday next…

oh, and this from John as well…

sheesh. waiting life away whilst attacking the TM09 issues — networks, people, and subjects.

John passes this one along, charting yet another step in the march of the Military-Industrial machine that began during WWII. and with the Christian Right quite comfortable with the prognostications of their arm-chair prophets about the impending Armageddon in the Middle East, no problem, Amurika will get the job DONE! along with lots of warm and fuzzies…

Martin MGM-1 Matador :: General Dynamics (Convair) RIM-2 Terrier :: Western Electric MIM-3 Nike Ajax :: Hughes AIM-4 Falcon :: JPL/Firestone MGM-5 Corporal :: Vought RGM-6 Regulus :: Raytheon AIM/RIM-7 Sparrow :: Bendix RIM-8 Talos :: Raytheon (Philco/G.E.) AIM-9 Sidewinder :: Boeing CIM-10 Bomarc :: Chrysler PGM-11 Redstone :: Martin AGM-12 Bullpup :: Martin MGM/CGM-13 Mace :: Western Electric MIM-14 Nike Hercules :: Vought RGM-15 Regulus II :: General Dynamics (Convair) CGM/HGM-16 Atlas :: Douglas PGM-17 Thor :: Martin MGM-18 Lacrosse :: Chrysler PGM-19 Jupiter :: McDonnell ADM-20 Quail :: Nord MGM-21 :: Aérospatiale (Nord) AGM-22 :: Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk :: General Dynamics (Convair) RIM-24 Tartar :: Martin HGM/LGM-25 Titan :: Hughes AIM-26 Falcon :: Lockheed UGM-27 Polaris :: North American AGM-28 Hound Dog :: JPL/Sperry MGM-29 Sergeant :: Boeing LGM-30 Minuteman :: Martin Marietta MGM-31 Pershing :: Aérospatiale (Nord) MGM-32 Entac :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-33 :: Teledyne Ryan AQM/BQM/MQM/BGM-34 Firebee :: Northrop (Radioplane) AQM-35 :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-36 Shelduck :: Beech AQM-37 :: Northrop (Radioplane) AQM-38 :: Beech MQM-39 :: Globe MQM-40 Firefly :: Fairchild AQM-41 Petrel :: North American MQM-42 Redhead/Roadrunner :: General Dynamics FIM-43 Redeye :: Goodyear UUM-44 Subroc :: Texas Instruments AGM-45 Shrike :: General Dynamics MIM-46 Mauler :: Hughes AIM-47 Falcon :: Douglas AGM-48 Skybolt :: Western Electric/McDonnell Douglas LIM-49 Nike Zeus/Spartan :: Bendix RIM-50 Typhon LR :: Ford MGM-51 Shillelagh :: LTV MGM-52 Lance :: Rockwell AGM-53 Condor :: Raytheon (Hughes) AIM-54 Phoenix :: Bendix RIM-55 Typhon MR :: Nord/Bell PQM-56 :: Northrop (Radioplane) MQM-57 Falconer :: Aerojet General MQM-58 Overseer :: APL RGM-59 Taurus :: Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher :: Beech MQM-61 Cardinal :: Martin Marietta AGM-62 Walleye :: AGM-63 :: Rockwell (North American) AGM-64 Hornet :: Raytheon (Hughes) AGM-65 Maverick :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-66 Standard MR :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-67 Standard ER :: Air Force Weapons Lab AIM-68 Big Q :: Boeing AGM-69 SRAM :: Boeing LEM-70 Minuteman ERCS :: Raytheon (Hughes) BGM-71 TOW :: Ford MIM-72 Chaparral :: Lockheed UGM-73 Poseidon :: Northrop MQM/BQM-74 Chukar :: BGM-75 AICBM :: Hughes AGM-76 Falcon :: McDonnell Douglas FGM-77 Dragon :: General Dynamics AGM-78 Standard ARM :: Martin Marietta AGM-79 Blue Eye :: Chrysler AGM-80 Viper :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-81 Firebolt :: AIM-82 :: Texas Instruments AGM-83 Bulldog :: Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) AGM/RGM/UGM-84 Harpoon :: RIM-85 :: Boeing AGM-86 ALCM :: General Electric AGM-87 Focus :: Raytheon (Texas Instruments) AGM-88 HARM :: UGM-89 Perseus / STAM :: BQM-90 :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-91 Firefly :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) FIM-92 Stinger :: E-Systems GQM-93 :: Boeing GQM-94 B-Gull :: Hughes AIM-95 Agile :: Lockheed UGM-96 Trident I :: General Dynamics AIM-97 Seekbat :: Teledyne Ryan GQM-98 R-Tern :: LIM-99 :: LIM-100 :: RIM-101 :: General Dynamics/Sperry PQM-102 Delta Dagger :: Teledyne Ryan AQM-103 :: Raytheon MIM-104 Patriot :: Lockheed MQM-105 Aquila :: USAF FDL BQM-106 Teleplane :: Raytheon (Beech) MQM-107 Streaker :: NWC BQM-108 :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) BGM/RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk :: LTV BGM-110 :: Teledyne Ryan BQM-111 Firebrand :: Rockwell AGM-112 :: RIM-113 :: Boeing/Lockheed Martin (Rockwell/Martin Marietta) AGM-114 Hellfire :: Euromissile/Hughes/Boeing MIM-115 Roland :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) RIM-116 RAM :: RS Systems FQM-117 RCMAT :: Martin Marietta LGM-118 Peacekeeper :: Kongsberg AGM-119 Penguin :: Raytheon (Hughes) AIM-120 AMRAAM :: Boeing CQM/CGM-121 Pave Tiger/Seek Spinner :: Motorola AGM-122 Sidearm :: Emerson Electric AGM-123 Skipper II :: Hughes AGM-124 Wasp :: Boeing RUM/UUM-125 Sea Lance :: Beech BQM-126 :: Martin Marietta AQM-127 SLAT :: AQM-128 :: Raytheon (General Dynamics) AGM-129 ACM :: Boeing (Rockwell) AGM-130 :: Boeing AGM-131 SRAM II :: MBDA (BAe Dynamics/Matra) AIM-132 ASRAAM :: Lockheed Martin UGM-133 Trident II :: Martin Marietta MGM-134 Midgetman :: Vought ASM-135 ASAT :: Northrop AGM/BGM-136 Tacit Rainbow :: Northrop AGM/MGM-137 TSSAM :: Boeing CEM-138 Pave Cricket :: Lockheed Martin (Loral) RUM-139 VL-Asroc :: Lockheed Martin (LTV) MGM-140 ATACMS :: IMI (Brunswick) ADM-141 TALD :: Rafael/Lockheed Martin AGM-142 Have Nap :: Continental RPVs MQM-143 RPVT :: ADM-144 :: Teledyne Ryan BQM-145 Peregrine :: Oerlikon/Lockheed Martin MIM-146 ADATS :: BAI Aerosystems BQM-147 Exdrone :: Raytheon/Lockheed Martin FGM-148 Javelin :: PQM-149 UAV-SR / McDonnell Douglas Sky Owl :: PQM-150 UAV-SR :: AeroVironment FQM-151 Pointer :: AIM-152 AAAM :: AGM-153 :: Raytheon (Texas Instruments) AGM-154 JSOW :: Northrop Grumman (TRW/IAI) BQM-155 Hunter :: Raytheon RIM-156 Standard SM-2ER Block IV :: Raytheon MGM-157 EFOGM :: Lockheed Martin AGM-158 JASSM :: Boeing (McDonnell Douglas) AGM-159 JASSM :: Northrop Grumman (Teledyne Ryan) ADM-160 MALD :: Raytheon RIM-161 Standard SM-3 :: Raytheon RIM-162 ESSM :: Orbital Sciences GQM-163 Coyote :: Lockheed Martin MGM-164 ATACMS II :: Raytheon RGM-165 LASM :: Lockheed Martin MGM-166 LOSAT/KEM :: Composite Engineering BQM-167 Skeeter :: Lockheed Martin MGM-168 ATACMS Block IVA :: Lockheed Martin AGM-169 JCM :: Griffon Aerospace MQM-170 Outlaw :: Griffon Aerospace MQM-171 Broadsword :: Lockheed Martin FGM-172 SRAW :: Alliant Techsystems GQM-173 MSST :: Raytheon RIM-174 ERAM (SM-6) :: :: Douglas MGR-1 Honest John :: Douglas AIR-2 Genie :: Emerson Electric MGR-3 Little John :: NOTS RUR-4 Weapon Alpha :: Honeywell RUR-5 Asroc :: Ford MER-6 Blue Scout ERCS :: Raytheon ADR-7 :: Revere (Tracor) ADR-8 :: Tracor ADR-9 :: Raytheon ADR-10 :: ADR-11 :: ADR-12 :: USAMICOM MQR-13 BMTS :: Martin Marietta AGR-14 ZAP :: USAMICOM MTR-15 BATS :: Atlantic Research MQR-16 Gunrunner :: General Dynamics FGR-17 Viper :: NWC GTR-18 Smokey Sam :: :: JPL PWN-1 Loki-Dart :: Aerojet General PWN-2 Aerobee-Hi :: University of Michigan/NACA PWN-3 Nike-Cajun :: University of Michigan PWN-4 Exos :: Cooper Development PWN-5 Rocksonde 200 :: Atlantic Research PWN-6 Kitty :: Atlantic Research PWN-7 Rooster :: Space Data PWN-8 Loki Datasonde :: Aerojet/UTC PWN-9 Kangaroo :: Space Data PWN-10 Super Loki Datasonde :: Space Data PWN-11 Super Loki Datasonde :: Space Data PWN-12 Super Loki ROBIN

over for a visit with Sara. and her sister, Cecilia drops by — she was Loki’s art and design teacher last year.

big news here are the armed marines guarding the HMS Exeter docked in the main harbor, here for a conference on the Arctic Convoys (from WWII). police do not carry weapons on a regular basis in Iceland and the country basks in a peaceful idyll interrupted only by the influx of immigrants which are routinely tabbed with a variety of crimes.

Just back from the Jüdisches Gemeindezentrum and the memorial service for Joseph Weizenbaum. Frieder was one of the speakers and had told me a couple days ago about the service and he would try to see if I could attend. Then I read in a Dallas newspaper that is was open to the public. So, an hour before it was scheduled to start I decided it would be something not to miss. Made it in good time — not by bicycle, though. What to say. More than half of the service was in German; his American ex-wife (of 46 years), and his youngest daughter Naomi spoke in English, and there were a couple letters read by his son-in-law from colleagues in the US — Joel Moses of MIT mentioned the presenting of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Norbert Wiener Award for Professional and Social Responsibility with a tribute by Terry Winograd. I’ll get an audio remix up at some point.

Q: Do you think that the computer is creating a technical elite, reinforcing old power structures, or remaking American society?

A: I think the computer has from the beginning been a fundamentally conservative force. It has made possible the saving of institutions pretty much as they were, which otherwise might have had to be changed. For example, banking. Superficially, it looks as if banking has been revolutionized by the computer. But only very superficially. Consider that, say 20, 25 years ago, the banks were faced with the fact that the population was growing at a very rapid rate, many more checks would be written than before, and so on. Their response was to bring in the computer. By the way, I helped design the first computer banking system in the United States, for the Bank of America 25 years ago.

Now if it had not been for the computer, if the computer had not been invented, what would the banks have had to do? They might have had to decentralize, or they might have had to regionalize in some way. In other words, it might have been necessary to introduce a social invention, as opposed to the technical invention.

What the coming of the computer did, “just in time,” was to make it unnecessary to create social inventions, to change the system in any way. So in that sense, the computer has acted as fundamentally a conservative force, a force which kept power or even solidified power where is already existed. — Joseph Weizenbaum

and this:

We now have the power to alter the state of the world fundamentally and in a way conducive to life.

It is a prosaic truth that none of the weapon systems which today threaten murder on a genocidal scale, and whose design, manufacture and sale condemns countless people, especially children, to poverty and starvation, that none of these devices could be developed without the earnest, even enthusiastic cooperation of computer professionals. It cannot go on without us! Without us the arms race, especially the qualitative arms race, could not advance another step.

Does this plain, simple and obvious fact say anything to us as computer professionals? I think so.

…Those among us who, perhaps without being aware of it, exercise our talents in the service of death rather than that of life have little right to curse politicians, statesmen and women for not bringing us peace. Without our devoted help they could no longer endanger the peoples of our earth. All of us must therefore consider whether our daily work contributes to the insanity of further armament or to genuine possibilities for peace. — Joseph Weizenbaum

I heavily edited the original English translation of the manifesto for Roman and Alexei back in November, and so, here it is, as unveiled at Transmediale 08…

Electroboutique: Media Art 2.0

Today, when any critical artistic statement is drained of its power within the rigid frameworks of the unilateral capitalist world, a critical artist can no longer create while contemptuously looking down at commercial art and design that is governed exclusively by market laws.

At the same time as it becomes smarter and more refined, capitalism intrudes into most revolutionary, autonomous, and secluded areas of human activity. This is not to suggest that avant-garde art creation always stood in opposition to capitalism. The modernists, taking part in the evolution of design, worked in factories developing furniture and fabrics in order to bring art to the masses. Parallel to the evolution of Dada, the ready-made, and later, pop art, the theory and philosophy of art and culture contemplated the balance between the poles of capitalism and art, unique and mass-produced objects, high and low culture, professional and amateur, practical and dysfunctional. As the newest weapon of capitalism, information technologies dictate new social and cultural contexts and within these, uncover new challenges.

Our answer to the dilemma: Media Art 2.0

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the limits of new media art

New media art today consists overwhelmingly of one-of-a-kind works presented by the authors themselves at festivals and specialized exhibitions. As a rule, such pieces are high-maintenance and complex in configuration — and thus are destined to remain in a media art ghetto. We propose all-in-one plug-and-play solutions. Media Art 2.0 presents art objects as technological products that are ready to be consumed here and now by anyone.

Media Art 2.0 is market-friendly art

We produce a limited number of copies (like Ferrari) and sell them at affordable prices (like Sony). This is possible because we develop our own reliable electronic devices and thus do not depend on overly complex multi-functional digital systems. Each piece has a unique edition number and the authentic signatures of its authors. We also offer limited lifetime warranties for our products.

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the know-how of IT corporations

These corporations are not capable of transcending the pragmatism of their products. While attempting to enrich their products with artistic qualities, corporate designers follow the path of banal adornment — decoration with gold, Swarowski crystals, and diamonds — which raises the price and renders the products “exclusive.” Such an approach does not make a mobile phone or an MP3 player a work of art. Limited lifetime of electronics contradicts the apparently “eternal” value of the decorative materials.

Media Art 2.0 is the answer to the stagnation of the art market

It proposes a solution when the art market acquiesces to the demands of traditional art forms and is incapable of digesting truly contemporary artistic ideas. Our products harmoniously combine actual art, up-to-date techno-culture, design, and media art. We return to the roots of the avant-garde and occupy our own niche in the system of capitalist production and consumption. We address advanced consumers who are not satisfied by mass products — whether cool design gadgets or the endlessly reproduced traditional art forms.

Media Art 2.0 is the avant-garde of today

We return to art the things that design borrowed from art at the beginning of the 20th century: the search for new form and content; the artistic experiment as play; and the joy of everyday life. We live in a world of visual interfaces. Televisions, print advertisements, politics, shop-windows, show-business, internet services, bank systems are primarily interfaces whose task is to shape the process of information transfer and the translation of ideas. Working with visual interfaces, we make them visible and tangible. We uncover the structures of today’s world. This approach fills our products with a critical charge. In answering the challenges of today, we flush clean the media channels and establish new standards. By infiltrating public spaces and private homes, we bring art and alternative aesthetics into people’s everyday lives.

– Aristarkh Chernyshev, Roman Minaev, Alexei Shulgin.
Moscow, June-September 2007

Ready to vacate the camp ground: the omens and portents are not good.

Bbbbbrrrrrrrraaaaaaapapapapapapapapa, brapppapapapapapaaaaaaa.

Nothing like the amplified throb of hydrocarbon explosion to go to sleep by and to wake up by. Camping in a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) OHV (Off-Highway Vehicle) area. The premise is simple, the social system has generated devices, machines, both two-wheeled and four that allow a single driver to mount somewhat like a horse, and to ride at speed on rugged and steep terrain. For entertainment. (Note: three-wheeled machines were banned from production 25 years ago because of the vast toll of injuries and deaths which ensued as a fault of the basic design). The word entertainment is key. It is absolutely true, straddling one of these machines, with hydro-carbon explosions vibrating the body, landscape rushing by a high speed. The body transforms itself into the body of a god (or goddess). (more …)

Man’s comparative advantage in energy production has been greatly reduced in most situations — to the point where he is no longer a significant source of power in our economy. He has been supplanted also in performing many relatively simple and repetitive eye-brain-hand sequences. He has retained his greatest comparative advantage in: (1) the use of his brain as a flexible general-purpose problem-solving device, (2) the flexible use of his sensory organs and hands, and (3) the use of his legs, on rough terrain as well as smooth, to make this general-purpose sensing-thinking-manipulating system available wherever it is needed. — Herbert Simon

this is a clear statement of the resultant state of the human-technological system (though it does not consider the relationship between the repetitive motions of the machine (technology) and the social system that surrounds both the human and the machine which supplants the human). and it is precisely this relationship that generates the comparative advantage in favor of the machine. the human (to be supplanted) is a participant in the social infrastructure that generates the machine. this social infrastructure comes about as an emergent system as humans come together. any participant in the system gives their lived bio-energy into the system. the system, as an organized entity, needs this influx of energy to maintain its structure. when enough of this energy comes in, a degree of organization that can produce, for example, a moon landing, is formed. the relative state of advance in a technological product is directly related to the ability and efficiency of the social system to gather energy from its constituent individuals. each specific technology is the product of a equivalent state of social order.

Numbers (1) and (2) above are separable, but it is critical to note that the relationship of the two factors are in the material(object) versus its cognate. [cognate meaning the abstracted (linguistic) re-presentation of that object necessitated through the cognitive problem-solving process that the brain undertakes versus the very real interactions of the body with the surrounding techno-social system. it is not necessary to separate (2) and (3) in this case, as they both relate to the expenditure of applied bio-energy.]

more notes on the time:money:energy issue — a quick read-through of Adam Smith on the subject, the topic of VALUE pops out. where value is the process of tagging (or relating) the object to its cognate in the re-presentative system (this being the system of international finance — where value must be negotiated dynamically in consideration of a plethora of factors — all of which are rooted in material measure and its cognate representative in dualistic relation. (i.e., weapons & politics). this dualistic relationship is “acted out” whenever a consumer consumes — trading money (a multifold cognate for a range of objects) for material(s). however, this act is always preceded by the consumer being a producer — or, more precisely, one who gives in lived bio-energy into the social system in order that there is an organized production mechanism to create the objects to be consumed).

streets will fill with people starting in early afternoon, tens of thousands ready to party, partying. students with their graduation hats which will not be white by morning. when May Day arrives. while naval and military exercises take place within sight and earshot. large rounds, heavy machine guns, Light weapons, naval vessels painted with dull, jagged edged black-greenish-brown camo park in the harbor, come and go at any time and in any direction. one is the newest addition to the small Finnish Navy, the fast-attack “Hamina-class” aluminum-and-composite hulled vessel equipped with South African guided-missiles. fetish culture of technology. another drags a set of large floating targets in from the open sea south of the island. rumbling, grumbling, rattling concussions. all day.

preparations for a war that will not come in the near future. does assumption of future war come from historical precedence, or does it come from a desiring well-spring inside certain beings?

through the only open window, raucous party voices begin to drift, along with the rumbling noise of the city beneath, propping up the fun. if there was only pure silence as a backdrop for the party, things would fall into the void, lack reflection, and draw all energy into itself. making the party fail to become the relief that it is.

measured sentences today marked the passing of time, I quit writing real sentences because. now frequently I see reflections of other frames of reference (deja vu — such a weak word, unable to pull itself into English, and yet these instances dog me daily now). meta-verse, meta-contact. always mediation always the insurgency (no rapt attention) injecting. only little hopes (we shall overcome). shouting at cloud riots straddling a bicycle seat talking to the wind and wishing I had watched the sunrise without sound background of house news noise. silence would have been the direction to flow into. words built up the day, words scattering across the way, words and looking at what there could have been behind them. in a position of leading life and following life, there is always the element of confusion that greets each successive moment. to be able to have possibility and nothing more than the fullness of it. Dar-es-Saalam comes up in conversation today, so does John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk (his birthday), and Guattari, the Thousand Plateaus, (more …)

Loki is up early because he is sleeping on the bed in the kitchen and there are only Light curtains on the windows. I have something of a rare hangover (timburmann, I think, in Icelandic, for wood-head). Shortly after breakfast we head down to the swimming pool with Rebecca Rún, Loki’s island playmate who lives next door. The pool doesn’t open until an hour later because the electricity is off somewhere. Friends Hoffí and Kristín arrive on the 1330 ferry, so MB goes to meet them. I stay swimming with the kids. Late in the evening, around midnight, after a big dinner of leg-of-lamb I head to the north end of the island on a too-small borrowed mountain bike that I know will give me sore thighs tomorrow. There is a dirt road all the way to the Light house that stands on the highest point of the island about two-thirds of the way north.

The north half of the island is private property, but MB called earlier in the day and got permission for me to ride to the end.

In general, visitors are discouraged, but this is mainly to protect the vast number of breeding birds. The island has the largest single breeding population of arctic terns in Europe. These are incredibly fascinating and beautiful birds. I’m not an ornithologist or avian freak, but I can watch the terns for hours. It is unbelievable that they fly all the way from South African and Antarctic waters or so, each spring — although, watching them, you understand immediately that they represent a rare peak of efficiency and grace-in-motion. The entire ride I am accompanied by terns and other birds who swirl up from the heather and grass to run relay with me for one reason or another, all making their own characteristic sounds. I was wishing I had brought fresh batteries for my tape deck … The sounds are varied and mostly piercing, and in the case of the tern, they can actually presage a physical attack from the birds, whose sharply tapered beaks are potent weapons. Other birds on the island are Oystercatchers, Whimbrels, Curlews, Snipes (yes there is such a thing!), Woodcocks, Ptarmigans, Godwits, and Skuas. Birds comprise the vast majority of living things in Iceland, I both ignore them and concentrate on them. Although I don’t startle any Eiders, there are plenty of them on the island — usually seen segregated in the coastal waters — the brown females with a passel of chicks, and the black and white males swimming in a group. I recall once on Hrísey, out hiking on the east side of the island, I saw one of the score or so known White-Tailed eagles in the country doing some serious aerial acrobatics as it was being attacked by a group of terns. I was last at the north end of the island four years ago, in the very spot with Nick

Chris

Debra, Stefan, and MB, who was, at that time, almost eight months pregnant with Loki. On that night it was rather clear, or at least we got to see the sun make its transit, grazing the surface of the ocean direct to the north of us. Tonight, there is a gray pall hanging over the ocean, actually touching it just a few kilometers off shore, so the sun is not seen, except indirectly in the constant shifting of the Light omnipresent. I stay at the end of the island for a couple hours, enjoying the solitude, knowing this will be as far as I get to isolation in the coming months. The Solstice has taken on special psychic meaning for me since I moved to Iceland, and the Summer Solstice is actually a heavy time in that it is the moment when the days begin to contract until they vanish into the blue-blackness of the Arctic winter which is a complete immersion. Total immersion in a substance that is anti-Light, a Light that pulls one deeply into the earth from the other hemisphere, the one that is facing the Light … Somehow, although the landscape here is apparently vast and constantly receding from the eye, there is another aspect to it, that of closeness. When the wind dies down, and often wind still is characteristic of the midsummer sunsets, the surrounding space contracts until it appears as a room, a geometrically bounded space converging on the eye. It is knowable in a Cartesian way, within the span of the body. This is exactly what happens where I am restlessly pacing. The edge of the cliff 200 feet down to the ocean appears as clear as the corner of a room. The grassy hummock behind me is etched with a clarity that makes it sensually two dimensional. The sky is just … there. Waterfalls, where streams fall down the cliffs that line the outer few kilometers of the fjord, can be heard clearly though they are at least 6 kilometers away. They are … there. Distance is relative or just doesn’t seem to factor in perception.

Well, let’s see. Long day today. Started out at the Breaking Eyes show at the new space Fargfabriken. Tapio Mäkela of MUU Media and Jeremy Welsh were curators of the show which included works by Andy Best & Merja Pustinen, Mats Hjelm, Simo Alitalo, Marita Liulia, and Palle Torsson among the eleven works by fourteen artists. They had a PC connected to the internet, so I was, finally, able to at least check my mail, and fortunately there was nothing of great importance… I also took a detour to Galleri Index which had a small show of photographic works by Larry Clark, Collier Schorr, and Søren Martinsen. Clark’s work was from the Teenage Lust in Tulsa (is that the right title?) era, while the two other photographers were showing recent works. On the way back through the Old Town, I took a detour down along the docks where there were a number of warships docked. One, the HMS Gävle, was open for the public viewing, so I made the circuit of the deck, looking at the weaponry of the King, and wondering why these objects of war still draw me to their clean functional forms. Is it a mute feeling of satisfaction that the horrors of war have not sullied the tidiness of technology?

I then walked up to Galerie Roger Björkholmen, where there is an exhibition of work by Olof Glemme (the other half of the photo department faculty at Konstfack), I happened to run in to Mats Bróden, one of the founders of ArtNode (finally!). We made arrangements to meet tomorrow in the afternoon at their office. I also gave Bettina Pehrsson at Gallerie Nordenhake a call to see if there was anything else I should check out in Stockholm before I was to leave on Sunday. She suggested that we meet at the Royal Academy tomorrow evening for a performance by the students of German performance artist, Ulli (I have to update his name, sorry), who was in Stockholm at the Academy leading a ten-day performance class. Okay. and Annika Eriksson at Galleri Andréhn-Schiptjenko has a video installation of a performance by the Telecom Brass Orchestra.