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new work: actor-network + transhumanism

Got a new article up at h+.  “N00bz & the Actor-Network: Transhumanist Traductions.”

Take a look, raise some Cain, whatever.

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/n00bz-actor-network-transhumanist-traductions

“Nothing surprises us; fat, wall-eyed robots clothing themselves in glandular carpets, wishy-washy sexualities, ears on mice… artificial life.  We do now live in “the future”, no matter how much we winge about the fact that jetpacks weren’t waiting when we got here.  So it behooves us, before we’re washed out to drift forever in cynicism and jadedness, to look at the foundations for some of this transhumanism business.  Not the leeward and courseward zig-zag of discoveries and engineering so much, but the ideologies that allow for an understanding of what this stuff is all about.

As it turns out, transhumanism is an embodiment of a popular (or at least buzzy at the time) idea from the social sciences of the 1980s: Actor-Network Theory.  Actor-Network Theory (ANT), suggesting that all nodes within a social network are social actors — whether human, animal, or machine — is a ready tool for finding peace with cyborgs and other less tidy things, and giving them room to grow in our 21st Century cultures.”

Posted in info-sci, research, writing.

runic sudoku

Following on from the Enochian Sudoku (see earlier post), here’s another variation on “nine symbol sudoku” — the Runic.  My nine runes are the most vowelly ones from the elder futhark:

runic sudoku futhark

Thanks to Omniglot!

Posted in 080, info-sci, research.

2 news weird

Odd thing noticed — Fox posted a “news” story about Related Companies being part-owned by Saudi interests.  Why?  I thought they were, like, real okay with Saudi interests.  But the story has: “Related Cos. also has ties to the Saudi Arabian royal family and to financiers based in Dubai” & “The Saudi Arabian royal family, which the U.S. considers its ally in the war on terror, has been accused of bankrolling the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”  No attribution, no suggestion at all, of who did the “accusing” there.

So the story is framed pretty simply: Related Companies (due to Saudi sullying) = bad (all of the sudden*).  The barely mentioned “good guy” in the frame is Durst Organization.

News Corp (Fox’s parent, you know) has some history in a Related Companies development — the Hudson Rail Yards.  Related wanted News Corp to be some kind of ‘media anchor’ in the development (see story at Sun from 2007)… Durst was competing with Related to develop that space…

So what gives?  Did Related renege on the Hudson Rail deal and burn Murdoch?  Seymour Durst, incidentally, went to the same high school (years before) as Murdoch’s son — Horace Mann School (link to notable alumni).   So is this a connection based on Durst / Murdoch friendliness, or Murdoch / Ross grudges, or what the hell?

But despite the backstory (quick & dirty NY real estate deals? — not my world & don’t give a damn), it just piles on more evidence that “Fox News Network, LLC” is a tool of moneyed men, and not a bright light of journalistic integrity… nothing new there.

* Don’t forget all our other connections to the Saudi Royal Family, please.  Dig deeper here, for a start:

http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/saudi.htm

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE4BG6QN20081217

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/14/lol.10.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/31/september11.usa4

http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/03/12/unger_2/

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/02/09/opinion/doc4b70ebb097853325026342.txt

And while we’re on the subject of the World Trade Center site, what did Silverstein mean about Building 7 being “pulled”?

===

UPDATE.  Wait a minute.  Fox News highlights Related’s Saudi ties, when 7% of News Corp is owned by a Saudi prince? (link).  It just keeps getting weirder…

Posted in geopol, research.

dickens & rae redux

Charles Dickens was way outta line to criticize the means by which John Rae came to his conclusions that the Franklin party came to cannibalism.  Just want to say that straight up.  It epitomizes the lean toward armchair scholarship (armchair geography, anthropology.. even armchair journalism) that plagued the worst of the clean-suited anglo-americans of the 19th century.

Rae was out there doing it, finding the grisly, reporting the truth, slogging in the icy muck and slapping mosquitoes.  Dickens?  Dickens was writing (in this case) as an aide to Lady Franklin and to provide some copy-as-digestif to fortify the reading public of Great Britain.  Maybe there was a legitimate and honorable use for that, but certainly Dickens would have found more honor by acknowledging the disingenuity of his removed position and leaving the criticism of Rae to men better than himself.

Just saying.

Posted in geopol, research.

aglooka

Worth remembering Aglooka (John Rae).  Had the bad luck to have to report some unpopular news about the Franklin expedition in 1853… Charles Dickens xxxxxxx lightly scolded (?) him for it.

(Dickens found “no fault with Dr. Rae, and that we thoroughly acquit him of any trace of blame”… but goes on to essay about how “Dr. Rae” came to make a very dreadful mistake…)

Rae’s Strait

Franklin Expedition

Rae Report / Dickens Response

Posted in geopol, research.

twitter non

Nope, still not my medium.

Posted in meta.

benjamin rowe matters

Wow — Some seven years ago I wrote a (pretty bad) paper in grad school about John Dee and Enochian letters.  I remember reading some of Benjamin Rowe’s work, the little I could understand, with a lot of wonder.  Who was this guy?  Why did he work this hard?  How did he come to take this subject so seriously?

I didn’t know it, but he was already dead.

Just found his obituary at Open Buddha:

http://www.openbuddha.com/2002/06/25/ben-rowes-obituary/

That’s a guy I would have liked very much to have had a drink with.  I wonder how his mind worked, why he got interested in the first place, and how he remained so intent about the Work.

How strange and wonderful.

Links (from obit):

http://hermetic.com/browe/index.html

http://www.hermetics.org/library/Library_Rowe.html

Something here somewhere?

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=40E2AD7974DB3EE4

Posted in research, writing. Tagged with .

Enochian Matters

My “enochian sudoku” post has been one of the most popular on this site — most people find it, seems, by way of an image search for “enochian”, “enoch”, or even “eno” (my own searches for “eno” just shows a ton of Brian Eno post-Roxy Music…)

So here’s a little more and a link roundup.

Technically I think of this as Nine Symbol Sudoku, because any set of nine symbols could be used (numbers, letters, even colors).

“This is a variation of sudoku that uses nine non-number symbols.  Same rules apply: only one instance of each symbol in every row, column, and 3×3 block.  But the symbols can be any consistent set of nine — the first nine Enochian letters, hexagrams from the I Ching, runes, or even colors (light, med, dark blue; light, med, dark orange; light, med, dark green).  Might be used with scripts in other language to learn new characters (kanji, Arabic, or cyrillic for ex.)

See “Enochian Sudoku” for example. (IMPORTANT NOTE: seems I’m not the original inventor! I’m seeing lots of waypaths to my sudoku variations thru google searches for ’symbol sudoku’, etc., and those lead to other examples of this idea by other folks.  So, I can’t claim any credit for being the first to come up with this idea, but it did occur to me independently.  In any case, go create your own symbol variations!)”

It’s a bit of fun, but I used some Enochian letters because I like John Dee and I think his work on Angelic contact is really mysterious and interesting — I don’t begin to understand it, but do dig it.

See also:

http://rosicrucian-vault.blogspot.com/2010/04/enochian-sudoku.html

http://xaara.dreamwidth.org/2010/03/02/

And don’t forget Benjamin Rowe (a serious student of Enochian Chess):

http://hermetic.com/browe/

Posted in meta, research. Tagged with .

twitter positions

Why not?  I’ll do 140x here for a bit: https://twitter.com/woodyevans

Posted in info-sci, research.

on fb

It’s no secret to folks who know me — I don’t go much for the Facebook.  I think it’s silly.  Some people use it well, and it helps them in their lives; but I’m not one of those people.

Wearing my librarian hat, I think there’s a bunch of serious problems with it from an info management / info professional point of view.  (I talk about that tomorrow @ the Innovation for Libraries in the 21st Century webinar.)  Facebook ain’t where we ought to spend our energies as 21st Century information pros.  Real life reference service is.

So spoof it.  Prank it, crank it, trick it.  If Facebook’s going to trade your info, your connections, your likes, your activities, your fav music & books, your political status, relationships etc. like we’re all collectable trading cards to Fusion Centers and marketing firms… why shoot straight with Facebook?

Does it deserve your honest self identifications?

Posted in info-sci, research, writing.