plsj field notes

"I want to cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:10:33 -0500

“I want to cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, until you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports … When you are old I want you to recall those few hours. I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.”

- Gustave Flaubert, Letter to Louise Colet, August 14-15, 1846

"Designers thus define actors with specific tastes, competencies, motives, aspirations, political..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:18:44 -0500

“Designers thus define actors with specific tastes, competencies, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and the rest, and they assume that morality, technology, science, and economy will evolve in particular ways. A large part of the work of innovators is that of “inscribing” this vision of (or prediction about) the world in the technical content of the new object.”

- Madeleine Akrich, “The de-scription of technical objects” (in Bijker & Law, 1992, Shaping Technology / Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change)

(via benkraal)

Most U.S. youths unfit to serve, data show

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:44:51 -0500

Most U.S. youths unfit to serve, data show:

Whoa.

Apparently 75% of Americans aged 17-24 are ineligible for military service because they’re too fat/too unfit, too stoned, too stupid, have too many kids or have spent too much time in jail.

The Harvest

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:17:01 -0500

The Harvest

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) “The world began without...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:12:00 -0500

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)

“The world began without the human race and will certainly end without it. What else has man done except blithely break down billions of structures and reduce them to a state in which they are no longer capable of integration?”

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques (1955)

“Hardly a month passes in France without a major article in some serious literary journal, or an important public lecture, extolling or attacking the ideas and influence of Lévi-Strauss.”

- Susan Sontag (1963)

Tristes tropiques “While the work’s opening...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:48:00 -0500

Tristes tropiques

“While the work’s opening sentence — ‘I hate voyages and explorers’ — was hardly designed to win the approval of his scientific peers, lovers of literature considered it a triumph…” (Reuters)

One of anthropology’s great masterpieces.

French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:42:00 -0500

French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100 :

“He was down to earth. A skilled handyman who believed in the virtues of manual labor and outdoor life, he was also an ardent music-lover who once said he would have liked to have been a composer had he not become an ethnologist.”

Another icon lost.

Richter City Roller Derby w00t! My new home team! More on their...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:02:00 -0500

Richter City Roller Derby

w00t! My new home team!

More on their website and an interview with Ginger Tonyx on PPP.

The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:41:00 -0500

The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal:

Thx for the pointer Matt! I’ll post my thoughts to my blog.

Urban Informatics Speech Title Generator

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:31:00 -0500

Urban Informatics Speech Title Generator:

LMAO. Well done Molly!

Yoga pose of the day: Lion Pose

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:04:05 -0500

Yoga pose of the day: Lion Pose:

“You can roar two or three times.”

The Ruins of Fordlândia

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:21:13 -0500

The Ruins of Fordlândia:

“Henry Ford’s miniature America in the jungle attracted a slew of workers. Local laborers were offered a wage of thirty-seven cents a day to work on the fields of Fordlândia, which was about double the normal rate for that line of work. But Ford’s effort to transplant America– what he called “the healthy lifestyle”– was not limited to American buildings, but also included mandatory “American” lifestyle and values. The plantation’s cafeterias were self-serve, which was not the local custom, and they provided only American fare such as hamburgers. Workers had to live in American-style houses, and they were each assigned a number which they had to wear on a badge– the cost of which was deducted from their first paycheck. Brazilian laborers were also required to attend squeaky-clean American festivities on weekends, such as poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs. One of the more jarring cultural differences was Henry Ford’s mini-prohibition. Alcohol was strictly forbidden inside Fordlândia, even within the workers’ homes, on pain of immediate termination. This led some industrious locals to establish businesses-of-ill-repute beyond the outskirts of town, allowing workers to exchange their generous pay for the comforts of rum and women.”

Ford was such a freak.

Also: “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City”

Scrivener by Keith Thompson “Invaluable to the theurgical...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:12:25 -0500

Scrivener by Keith Thompson

“Invaluable to the theurgical community, the scriveners rotate their pelvises to give each pair of legs resting time during their relentless task of producing the reams of glyphs and charted incantations demanded of them.”

Leviathan - The Grand Map by Keith Thompson I’m off to get...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:11:00 -0500

Leviathan - The Grand Map by Keith Thompson

I’m off to get Scott Westerfeld and Keith Thompson to sign my copy of Leviathan on Thursday night.

Cherie Priest's Boneshaker

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:08:05 -0500

Cherie Priest's Boneshaker:

Steampunk and zombies FTW.

Steampunk: What it is, why I came to like it, and why I think it’ll stick around

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:50:00 -0500

Steampunk: What it is, why I came to like it, and why I think it’ll stick around:

“Steampunk: An aesthetic movement based around the science fiction of a future that never happened.”

Hmm. Just realised that Firefly is steampunk. I love Firefly.

Negativland - Christianity is Stupid (from the excellent Escape...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:34:00 -0400

Negativland - Christianity is Stupid (from the excellent Escape from Noise, 1987)

I can’t believe I never get tired of this song.

LAIBACH FTW!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:28:00 -0400

I listened to a lot of Laibach when I was in high school. Still totally brilliant, and if I lived in London I’d be at their show in December.

Life is Life (from Opus Dei, 1987)

Get Back and Across the Universe (from Let it Be, 1988)

Sympathy for the Devil (from Sympathy for the Devil, 1988)

The Rolling Stones - Wild Horses I love watching their faces as...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:33:35 -0400

The Rolling Stones - Wild Horses

I love watching their faces as they listen to their music. Plus, they’re wearing some truly awesome trousers.

In Praise of the Spanish Siesta

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:23:00 -0400

In Praise of the Spanish Siesta :

“At a time when productivity is the world’s largest religion, the siesta tradition lives on. In Spain, work operates under the command of life, instead of the other way around. No task is so critical that it can’t wait a couple of hours while you attend to more important matters like eating, relaxing, or catching up on sleep from a night on the town … Taking a long break in the middle of the day is not only healthier than the conventional lunch; it’s apparently more natural. Sleep researchers have found that the Spanish biorhythm may be tuned more closely to our biological clocks. Studies suggest that humans are ‘biphasic’ creatures, requiring days broken up by two periods of sleep instead of one up-till-you-drop ‘monophasic’ shift.”

Having grown up in Catholic, siesta-based cultures, I find the Protestant work ethic and capitalist-efficiency ethos of North America to be entirely oppressive. I nap as often as possible.