反映

In this city in Southern China, I read a poorly edited book of modern Chinese fiction, Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused. I correct the text with a pen, out of stringent habit. Maybe, the writers did not permit their text to be edited. Some of these stories have been turned into films, such as Raise the Red Lantern. 

The first time I heard the name Herodotus was in a song written by These New Puritans, a UK group. Listening to music by a group called Wall, now. Anyway, Herodotus was a historian and storyteller. The responses to his work in his life typically encompass other recorded comments that range from disbelief to incredulousness. 

I think about how anacoluthons are stylish in contemporary writing. Briefly, Goldblatt on Chinese literature's eras, "'scar literature' gave way in the late 1970s and early 1980s to 'introspective writing' and 'root-seeking literature,' both of which would have fit nicely into Mao's plans to keep the socialist pot boiling" (7). Goldblatt engages with speculation on the likes and dislikes of Mao. The sound of fireworks erupts on the streets. 

It is always cloudy here, like I imagine in Seattle or like the Bay Area. The difference, I'm supposing, is that the clouds do not burn off like the smog in San Francisco. Near bus stops, no cruciverbalists, but people play card games and a game with pieces similar to Dominos™. Here, mobile phones are used by a smaller portion of the populace. There are carts selling everything from handwarmers to pears larger than American ones. Classicists drink Coke™ at bars and mention tradition. 

Topically, that's the city.

The Mailer-Daemon Is Sad

I'm also sorry my reply wasn't sent.

Alas, the Mailer-Daemon sassed about my unsent mail and proceeded to snark.

Watch out, Mailer-Daemon. That's my Grandma you're talking about.

10ish Summer Beauty Item Watch

Above: A not-so-frightening cedar bag.

1. Ask anyone who has ever been to a summer music festival without sunscreen. You sit for long hours sifting between stages and baking under the sun. Since not everyone has or wants to tan indoors before attending, nor do they have the foresight to apply gooey sunblock juice. Products for treating sun-kissed skin include aloe, cocoa butter, Brazil Nut Body Butter (The Body Shop ®]).

2. A solid notebook. Pantone ®, Moleskinnes ®.

3. A budget. Grab the aforementioned nice notebook and pencil out the figures. Draw lines through 7s. After a summer of restraint, you'll thank yourself in the cold of winter.

4. Cedar bags. These dissuade errant moths from fluttering into your closets. The bags protect delicate wools from being eating by the spindly creatures. Avoid a latent-health-scare-sized moth panic altogether with the bags.

5. A beer that's a little weird. A friend and I recently debated about one particular Michigan brand, Short's Brew. He said that all the lines were a little weird. Though this blog doesn't normally highlight it, weird is good. To say something is only weird is easy enough when one is not familiar with their conversational partner and struggles to find a common language.

Weird is the kind of word that people attribute to items they can't unilaterally classify. It suggests a block in the mind, a lack of openness to literary definition or refinement. Weird and the refinement of the weird, the quirky, gives you edge. Edge, here, applied to liquidation. My beer of summer has peppercorn in it: a spicy, orange-y blend. 

6. Lady-like clothing. Something white, something nautical, and something straw for the summer fashion season. BCBG stripes, loose Free People shorts or dresses.

7. Vintage paperbacks about bawdy people in New England. If you can't route up any of those, then read The Awakening for a quick beach trip. Or, tread through some Proust if you have a long journey. One of the sectionals of in Remembrance of Times Past. Both of these novels feature passages about people vacationing in harbor towns. Candice Bushnell covers it topically in Four Blondes.

8. Shell necklaces, sunglasses, items that remind one of the Earth manifested.

9. Tonic water and toner. An icepack.

10. Shoes. Mint green shoes or Fly London wedges. Something with a little heel without looking like the former Spice Girls.

GASLAND: The Dangers of Hydraulic Fracking Footage

GASLAND: The Dangers of Hydraulic Fracking Footage

By Jennifer Sussex

The gas industry has often played an active role in American consumer consciousness, whether it is from documentaries like GASLAND or popular culture items like Hydraulic brand jeans. Names associated with gas-related practices are beginning to show up in the consumer industries. Levis and the image of the miner have been put on the backburner in lieu of a heated environmental debate. Since viewers at the Sundance festival left the first screening of GASLAND, a large portion of the country has been enveloped over the debate about hydraulic fracturing.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of injecting fluid into the ground to shake up deposits of shale rocks. Traditional fracking typically occurs when an oil well begins drying up and more extreme techniques are used to retrieve materials. Breaking up rocks below the surface releases the gas, but the chemicals used in fracking solutions are hazardous. Fracking chemicals turn into industrial waste and much of it stays in the ground, but some could pollute groundwater.

The complicated drilling process came under critique when corporations tried to make lucrative deals with farmers in Pennsylvania.  The corporations have their workers extract valuable mineral deposits from the land through the complex drilling process. While the locals enjoyed the prosperity of out-of-town executives visiting their lands, GASLAND filmmaker Josh Fox and others began researching fracking. Fox examined the actions of the companies when they offered his family about $4,750 to drill on their land. Many towns cited problems with their water after the companies had drilled on the property.

Further evidence revealed that methane and other heavy metals were kicked back into the water systems. In general, the individuals in these towns realized that there were widespread issues with their water; the water became highly flammable and unleashed carcinogens. The government should have established programs to the side effects of this problem before the companies were allowed to draft the related legal agreements. As of 2010 and as a result of Fox as well as other environmentally aware groups, the government has decided to conduct testing on the consequences of fracking.

From a public health perspective, this is one of the largest battles that the environmentally conscious must face into today’s age. Fracking is frightening because there was a lack of available resources on the problem. Few geologists had researched the practice. At the whims of corporations, the method was established in many states before it was properly tested. This created a dissonance between the public awareness of the event, despite the fact that this group was strongly and negatively impacted by the changes.

A pro-fracking film called FrackNation was subsequently released in February of 2012. This film generated $22K in funding from public crowdsourcing. Industry supporters buried Fox’s endeavors in a barrage of backlash by providing funding for this film. However, Fox’s inquiry into fracking reveals that the financial gains for the region are less important than the health concerns the residents face. Still, resentment is high with individuals in related areas who would have benefited from the companies favored the industry. The tinge of bitterness against Fox now runs through the community. According to Spin magazine, some of his property has been destroyed since the movie premiered.

According to the LA Times, Matt Damon will star in a Phelim McAller anti-fracking movie due to begin production and inspire more regulation later this month. The EPA and other organizations will undoubtedly be motivated to regulate the industry in conjunction with the Congress. The information disseminated by industry experts will reflect the contention and support the reform of this practice. The collaboration of activists, experts, and politically aware organizations must remember this instance and use it to seek renewable energy alternatives. 

Copyright 2012 The Radio Paper 

Overview of the Financial Markets for Wall St. Cheat Sheat

On the floor of the stock exchange, Standard & Poor's 400-stock index dipped from an April high into a June slump towards 9.9 percent. KBW Bank Index and other big players (Bank of America, Apple and Boeing) also sank in the latest onslaught of stocks. On the bright side of fiscal news, all the sidewalk hawking for gold liquidation has paid off and the Newmont Mining stock rose 6.7 percent. Activity on the NYSE has increased and is actually 24 percent above the previous, three-month average. However, the style remains to compare the unemployment slump or any type of crisis to the European Crisis as the budding summer continues.

Other systemic, undercurrents of ill illease impact the startup business community, wherein, participants have already unearthed a motley of problems. In mid-May, an article surfaced on Forbes, "4 Unintended Consequences of the JOBS Act for the Startup Community," which outlined problems with a previously popular bill. The JOBS Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) was designed to allow for Startups to finance themselves through crowdfunding. Crowdfunding allows them to generate capital incurred for their expenses from the public. This happens in lieu of angel or venture capital investors, which means that the startups still do not have access to sole mahatma. In the past, people in a trade have been capable of enriching these young companies through donations or investments. Angel investors or the startup companies that appreciate the risk of the investment are perhaps reflected in the unemployment stats (stats of those not employed with startups, nor staffing such a company). This fiscally conservative gesture might merely reflect the expansion phase of these corporations' business cycles. 

Washington Post reporter Hayley Tsukayama referred to a spectacularly different fate of a startup, that of Facebook, as "the bellwether moment for Web 2.0." Hopefully, the decline of Facebook's stock from $42 to $29.63 is not actually prescient of an entire phenomenon of the new dot-com firms throwing in the towel before going IPO. If such a phenomenon is possible, Tsukayama indeed outlines the possibility of other companies following suit. However, it seems that the State of California remains the most disappointed that it might not receive the tax revenue. The plunge, as picked up by Bloomberg, portends that some young participants in the stock market are more distrustful of stocks.

If investors continue as, Bloomberg purports, to withdraw from mutual funds for the sixth straight year in a row, then this is proof that elements of the financial crisis - distrust, a disavowal to participate in public markets, questions of the regulations of said markets, etc. - is clearly presages the 2008 crisis (which some report as the 2008-2009 crisis). Similar tech companies have reported violative slumps in the marketplace. Inflated estimates of potential user growth were slashed by the banks underwriting the details. All of these circumstances, including Facebook stockholders experiencing technical difficulties while accessing these stocks, have conflated into Zuckerberg's present-above-average-being-perceived-as-below-average-slump. A drop in stock to $29.63 is still higher than the typical, projected sales as one Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP employee reported.  

Words for Hart Crane, Barthelme

Barthelme's The King of Jazz is a dazzling clip from Barthelme's Great Days, a text published in April of 1979. The text is missing the jacket in this case, but the original still retains the red signature set. This collection of shorts, from an author who wrote hundreds of stories, was treated in 1981 in The Paris Review. He was also described in Time magazine by Lev Grossman as the weirdest literary genius. Grossman wrote, "Reading Barthelme, you'd think he crawled from the steaming wreckage of an asteroid that originated in the outer solar system.... he was a good-looking, headstrong kid with ironic eyebrows like circumflex marks."

Grossman's comments stem from a black and white photograph seamed to accompany the article in which the writer is picture with a lazy cigarette and sprightly brows. His tale is further confabulated by the assertion that Barthelme was the '70s hero of literature. His span in media consciousness is as intricate; I would like to later assert that his portrayal in the press went on to influence some realms of musical critique. Summarily, Barthelme stood out in the consciousness of Grossman, other families who used his word play, and served as a sort of literary template. Grossman's prose is littered with ones like, "Reading Barthelme, you'd think he crawled from the steaming wreckage of an asteroid that originated in the outer solar system." Grossman has the same oddball zeal and command of language. This demonstrates something of the echo of the fervor possessed by Barthelme.

In the picture accompanying the Times text, Barthelme is photographed with a cigarette, a Japanese paper lantern, and a typewriter. If these are types of the writer's trade, Barthelme is dismissed as a sort of "novelty act" by Grossman in reflection of the larger social forces alight on the scene. This bit of the narrative did not conceivably fail to remind me of the fate of say, Hart Crane, jumping off a ship along the coast of Mexico or other writers who died alone after critical or self-perceived failure. Crane wrote one of his last novels, The Bridge, with the most nobel intent of countering the ethos in The Wasteland. His personal problems, as well as his foibles with waiters at Cafe Select, undoubtedly influenced this squandering of raw talent. Crane's tombstone recounts that he was "Lost at Sea," almost like a romantic elegy. But, Barthelme's path is somewhat different.

Crane struggled with approval from the very beginning (did James Franco channel the wrong writer's ghost?), but interviews with Barthelme reveal that he was excepted into a writerly melee from the beginning. He, at least, adopted a fluidity into the discursive tendencies of the scene. He has a certain pizazz, or jazz to his own writing.

In The Paris Review interview by J.D. O'Hara, Barthelme remarked that he was pleased with his coverage in the press in, at least, a joking sense. Barthelme said that "'there was an implication... the Times wanted to see gladiatorial combat, or at least a soccer game. I was always placed with the team.'" He seems relatively forthcoming in the interview, even delving into the circumstances in his work where he discusses his what portions of some texts are ficciones and which are not. Both of his parents are revealed to be humanities studies graduates. He read Márquez, even his unpopular texts, saying something about how art begets critique and critique begets art. Barthelme, in fact, is quite skilled and versed in quoting the writing and work of others in his field. He does this at length and comments that he is never not starting a new book.

He clearly fits into that odd segment between the postmodern and the modern, at the time of that article's publication, teaching courses at a graduate school. He mentions that writing cannot be taught, but that perhaps editing can. Many of his friends were actually editors, writers, and critics. Therefore, it seems unsurprising that the dazzling array of critique in Great Days reflects these enclaves. Here, we can see the reflections of an author who adopts dialog and transcribes it with ease. One short story, "The King of Jazz," sounds like the kind of story that kids delivered in lines while languishing on the hoods of cars in any of the old greaser movies. The self-proclaimed "King of Jazz" in this short is a guy called Hokie Mokie who seceded the dead Spicy MacLammermoor. Most of the short, aside from the introductory paragraph, is written in dialog delivered between two people.

As soon as Hokie Mokie's reign within the realm of jazz begins, it is immediately challenged. As soon as the new is distributed between brief blurbs of dialog, Hokie Mokie begins to play his trombone at a gig and remains unchallenged internally (in relation to his own dialog) until an anonymous character starts striking. The anonymous character refuses to play a tune called "Smoke," then, he is forced to introduce himself as a nefarious sort. He becomes Hideo Yamamguchi, the top trombonist in Japan. Following that, we have a regional devolution. In order to test Yamaguchi, they ask him about venues in Japan. However, the taste is always changing and Yamaguchi asserts a different night club is the spot. There is a universal quality to this story in the competitive elements of the musical trade. Immediately, Yamaguchi's ability to challenge Hokie Mokie is cemented further by the technique in which he holds an instrument. Hokie Mokie thinks to himself, "'He's sensational.... Maybe I ought to kill him" (Barthelme 57). Barthelme's initial reaction is an instinctual, animalistic jolt.

Soon, another person named Fat Man Jones enters the narrative. Much like workers in a factory, the musical gents talk shop. Fat Man Jones enters the scene and already knows what chord he is supposed to be playing in. He's known, like applicants with connections, through his previous work with other bands. I could continue to enumerate upon how the authors suggest that Fat Man Jones and they, themselves, want to enhance Hokie Mokie's music, much like adding electronic innovations to music production. Yet, the more questionable facet of Hokie Mokie's prowess comes into question. He's merely concerned with how his "trombone's been makin' [his] neck green for thirty-five years... How come I got to stand up to yet another challenge" (Barthelme 58).

Hokie Mokie, the jazz king, has egregious concerns with his profession and symbolically retires within the enclaves of his internal monologue. Hideo defers to his talent at recommendations and resolves that Mokie becomes king emeritus. Then, there is an extremely long monologue wherein Mokie delves into the construction of the sensation of sound. Barthelme, like Hokie Mokie himself, departs from the depiction of the musicians at play to demonstrate the musicality of his words. He compares a sound abstractly to "prairie dogs kissing," "witch grass tumbling," and "manatee munching seaweed" (Barthelme 59). Though the comparison would be more aptly phrased were the comparisons made using the terms "such as" rather than "like" ("like" indicates a comparison), the splendor of the passage and Barthelme's talent for imaginative comparison sculpts entire passages of text. The text optimistically ends with Hideo announcing that he will leave Hokie Mokie, but that he has learned considerably.

N is for the Nautical, Bureaucratic Books of Thomas H. Raddall

Research and Development: The Institution and the Contractor

The administrative production of knowledge into digital transference. 

Digitization circa 2011. 

I have considered the relationship between the institution and the contractor. The reason for this being a recent read of The Nymph and the Lamp in lieu of the relatively recent anniversary of the 3-D release of Titanic. While audiences glommed at the wreckage of the metallic hull shattering in more than one visual dimension, I mused over the vocabulary in The Nymph and the Lamp. While the screenplay for Titanic has considerable, smashing detail to the dialog of the workers of the ships at the turn of the 20th Century, this element has long fascinated many readers. For example, Melville honed much of his texts to the sounds of life on the rapturously unpredictable ocean. The difference between a read of Moby Dick and, say, The Nymph and the Lamp is that I imagine the latter text hasn't been endlessly glossed with edits for the textbooks of American schoolchildren.

Perhaps, this is owing to the biographical detail of the writer, Thomas H. Raddall, a Briton born in school itself. Raddall was born in Hythe England at the British Army School of Musketry in 1903. The culture of the school was such that modern writer John Atkins discussed it in Black Powder, a journal of regalia and information for the studies of the Muzzle Loaders Association of Great Britain. He noticed that the attendants of this organization left with a particular understanding of military thought, implying that the cadets learned a considerable deal about weaponry. The school served the purpose of testing and experimenting with military equipment, which would then later be adopted by the military. Before Raddall's birth near or in this compound, the place reportedly was no longer used to fend of attacks of the French army. The temporality was focused upon the Minie bullet, an expanding bullet actually invented by a French citizen. Stereotypes of conflict aside, Atkins said that he school was built in 1853 and was "brought about by two majors developments in the design of the military rifle and the bullet" (35).

According to the Black Powder article or Atkins himself, the town viewed the inhabitants as a spectacle of the population. Atkins remarked that "the barracks in Hythe itself were used by the school staff, having been built to house 'military lunatics' in 1842... but no mention is made to what happened to them (35).  One of the children of these perceived fanatics was, of course, Thomas Raddall. His life-long involvement in the Canadian military and his work as a writer challenges the notion that the military is devoid of occupational theoretics. Much of the vocabulary in Raddall's piece reflects an end-user understanding of war devices and consistent inlay about military life. In this essay, I would hazard that the jargon in this text rings with unprecedented reverberations.

Of late, I have been preoccupied with a recent read of The Nymph and the Lamp. Thomas H. Raddall's work reached me in a tattered copy in, of all places, the recesses of a building owned by the government postal service. The work itself reminded me more of a modernist version of Thomas Pynchon, as if it were one in which the sparks and centrifuges tempered themselves out into remote sequences about nature. Instead of talking about the Pacific northeast, you could juxtapose American structuralism in remote military spaces with Pynchon's jots about electric pine trees. In conjunction with the release of Titanic, this vocabulary about ships would be pertinent to overall comprehension about military jingo as distributed by an author with a pizazz for the institutional life.

I ping to some of this terminology shortly.

The definition of these terms likely reflect nautical slang from the turn of the last century used by Ballard in the composition of the text. However, the entire course of a person's vocabulary cannot be uniquely contributed to an individual profession. Despite the fact that patois-like dialogs formulate and flourish in relation to machinery, anthropological linguists cannot necessarily be capable of constituting that environment as the single habitat. A body of users with different native languages approach objects in the visual sphere. The spontaneous development of piecemeal reference is fashioned as each unique user attempts to describe the object in different ways while connecting to common linguistic understandings or conceding to the creation of language through nonverbal agreements. The evolution of nautical language, surely, has its own architecture.

Regardless of these potential discrepancies, I have collated a short list of interpretive terms to reach the search engines. Some have been deduced from contextual inquiry and cannot be found in other dictionaries.

• bollard: 1. The part of the ship that you use to tie lines to in order to moor a ship. 
• bitt: 1. Same as "bollard." 
• fo'c'sles: 1. This is the kind of word that has been warped in an abbreviation for "forecastle. 2. Might refer to the bunks of sailors or spots near the front of the ship. 
• the sea-ice: 
• jingbang: 1. Everything 2. Synonym to "the whole kit and caboodle." 
• Marina (n): 1. In this case, the name of Raddall's island. 2. Jocose Spanish term for "sailor."
• The Labrador Drift: 1. Part of the current off the coast of Greenland that pushes ice south, likely responsible for the position of the ice encountered by the Titanic. 

viewfinder toys

Politician Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) introduced a bill that called for the drug-testing of CEOs.

Spangler, Todd. 2012. Drug tests for CEOs? Why not? Detroit Free Press, April 1, News + Views section, Midwest edition.

M is for Mechanisms

In keeping with the nod to Benjamin arcades project, the theme continues with acrostic-type entries populating the area between negative space. This post discusses the letter "M," pending the peer-review of the next portion of the e-book essay by members of the computer science department at the University of Michigan.

After considering writing a Thought-Catalog-type piece along the lines of "Money," a popular "M" as those behind NACPCS organizations could attest, the decision not to write on this topic reflected a type of political censorship. In the summer of 2010, the USSF fair was held in Detroit and, while thousands of activists flooded the Wayne State campus, life in Detroit continued as usual. The green consumer stores sold Peaberry coffee while luxury cars got their rear windows smashed on Jefferson. One car alarm bleated in scales of sharp while we walked past. Someone relatively wise from this city once told me, "Don't talk about money or we'll fight." "M" might not be about money, but a bit on public policies about money for public workers, briefly.

New employees of the USPS are currently hired in as temporary employees without benefits, in concurrence with the trending of private organizations hiring temps at cost. The Radio Paper notes that blogger Bryan Bradford was likely sacked for his work chronicling his experience as a postal worker. Bradford and other cases of blogotics remind us to focus on the literal webs, the maintenance of webs, and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms as the topic of discussion in this arcadian entrance.

Matthew Kirschenbaum's work, Mechanisms, has a unique place in the historiography of the hypertext. Kirschenbaum wrote considerably about the types of machines and software that supported the hypertexts, mainly contributing to the crafting of the theory on the formalism of this media. The links become 401s. Acid rain erases the script on the imposts along the arch of Hadrian.

In Kirschenbaum's preface, one of his first references has already dissolved into an unmaintained hyperlink. Part of this area of scholarship involves ambiguity in scholarship, the kind that drives high schools teachers insane. In high school and even higher education, despite the proliferation of authors and editors contributing to Wikipedia, wary teachers shy away from allowing someone to quote it as an encyclopedic reference. Distrust still exists regarding digital texts and research compendium.

When meeting with NYC Teaching Fellows, The Radio Paper was still surprised to not get a call back after carefully lecturing that the digital sphere is a viable source from which a student can extract valuable, not to mention accurate information.

II.

I spoke in Washington Irving High School earlier this month and presented to a group of four to six prospective teachers (along with two certified teachers). I said that Wikipedia was not unlike the World Books of old, the high-res encyclopedias crafted by the publishing industry. I narrated how Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched the site in January 2001 and that "Wikipedia" came from the Hawaiian word "wiki" (quick) and the English word "encyclopedia."

I asked whether they'd ever been responsible for writing on the topic of this subject or new media. I suggested that my students in my theoretical English class would not only be allowed to cite this, but encouraged to do so after teaching everyone in the small circle how to make a log-in, what happens to Wikipedia articles in processing, and how the editorial process works.

Clear rain dripped down the side of the bricks on the high school. It spurted out of the mouths of the gargoyles on the side of the building. If "Jullian Assange: Hero or Villain" was still the extent of the conversation most people were having on digital literacy, if the volume of my voice was still the main focal point of any review on my potential candidacy, then the effort was as wasted as the plastic Starbucks cups wafting in the sewer. Someone asked me what I knew about horseback riding. Someone else dropped pizza near my foot. It slid into a puddle.

II.

A coffee shop outside of the rain away, before the occupiers returned to the square, I dug up some information for the next sequence of letters, including "M." While I read over the material for Mechanisms, I was struck by how one of the first citations was dissolving. I looked at this hyperlink for one of the sources on Ain't It Cool News and found the article no longer existed on the topic of a hypertext. Not only any hypertext, but this was about a type of software-discus-book called, Agrippa, and penned/scripted by Gibson.

Gibson had written a poem that was "treated with photosensitive chemicals that caused the images to gradually face from view once... exposed to light" and the poem "was encrypted so as to allow only a single reading from the disk... a 20-minute experience" (Kirshenbaum ix). Basically, this writer wrote a poem on a disk that came in a black box and it disappeared after a session. One can picture an app that contained a scrolling text, then it fades into vacuous space.

Much like the disappearing text of Agrippa, this topic was originally documented on Ain't It Cool News and concurrently remains out of the sphere of digital publication. It was, luckily, quoted in the preface to Mechanisms. This work was pointed out to me by a professor at NYU who made issuance that the volume was a seminal text in the academic field of the digital humanities. On the site, a 2000 interview of the author said that the text itself might not even exist.

He quoted Gibson as having said, "'[I]t's kind of an interesting question today as to whether or not any of these were ever really made. I don't have one... I've seen a photograph of one which I suspect to be either a forgery or a kind of dummy prototype that these guys in New York produced, and I don't know which" (Kirshenbaum X).

And, now, the even this February 2000 interview no longer exists.

The E-Book Essay II

The realm of online sociability, we must acknowledge, is not the fully realized "dream of an interconnected world" that Pinto at the Voice, and by inferred perspective, Zuckerberg imagine (or once imagined) exists online. The ugly truth of the matter can be found in any of the recent documentation of cyberbullying found in the 'Am I Pretty' videos on the Huffington Post site. Discussion has emerged around the film Hirsch directed and Weinstein produced that was entitled, Bully to further this topic. This isn't the first time I've heard of a film being rated as more obscene in the hopes of vetting out potential people who could watch the film, thus causing the filmmakers to lose money, and creating a snub in their gesture.

After some time, Hirsch and Weinstein managed to release the film with a slightly lower rating than originally anticipated. The fear is that this is another type of bullying. Bullying has been well-papered in the e-papers this week. Consider, for example, the case of the treatment of Lana Del Rey (a Weinstein affiliate). I know there are other musici who launch their careers amidst considerable critique, but news of her struggle has been particularly wrenching, not to mention specifically critiqued within the industry.

Moreover, the cast of The Jersey Shore (mostly Snooki and Vinny) acknowledged a considerable amount of cyberbullying by starting a campaign called A Thin Line. This campaign attempts to caution all evolved users of technology to indeed evolve. On their show's blog, there are also reports of Vinny Guadagnino being cyberbullied and becoming involved with the movement to prevent negative Tweets. While not serious here or there, you have to imagine that receiving a mass bulk of negatives right after the state of New Jersey cut the tax credit to film the show would be taxing, indeed.

At least, one year later, the talk about bullying seems to reveal that everyone, everywhere has experienced some type of negative social experience. But, these are, after all, celebrities who do exist within a certain type of media vacuum. The experience these individuals have is one akin to massive exposure to a scrutinizing public. Still, the issue of peer-critique can be painful on any basis, if you consider the Huff Post documentation on this subject. The most recent series of articles on this subject arose on the topic of ordinary, anonymous girls who took to their webcams to, apparently, amass a sea of haters. However, it should be noticed that they also received some concerned commentary by the minority.

The Huff Post article, "'Am I Pretty' YouTube Phenomenon Raises Red Flags" piece, emerged in print approximately one day ago. The writer brought up the phenomenon that I have seen circulated, but never thought to comment upon. The first gesture that these young adults are making towards their internet social identity, is by asking an anonymous and frequently hostile space, "Am I pretty?" In most cases, it sounds like they don't know because they are receiving conflicting peer commentary. Most are being bullied in their school environments and receiving different messages at home. Moreover, they are getting a warped sense of perception that comes from the external rather than the internal.

I noticed that, in terms of identity formulation, this was a disappointing contribution to the incessant ranking of physical attraction as the number one criterion of self-worth. Since the airing of that article, another appeared on the topic of Sophia Roessler, a multi-media artist who mimed the videos as part of a woman's studies project for research. Not all of the videos circulated in this batch might have been related to the original videos.

All of these news about bullying are coupled with the news in Congress of the troubles surrounding the passing of a simple, anti-bullying law. The type of news coverage this has generated seems to suggest that Congress functions among these same, strained social relations that negate a cohesive society. No wonder there's gridlock if Congress cannot resolve its own social conflicts, not to mention internal conflicts within bipartisan sects. The result of this stubbornness is that nothing gets done to help those who need the protection of the federal law when social communities generate high schools of interconnected peers and parents who were once peers. Teachers are not exempt from condoning bullying, which is why these fractured relations need to be addressed by federal laws.

Young people need a Congress that is not staffed with adults like Newt Gingrich. Recently, he decried against someone speaking out a hearing because he called Sandra Fluke "a slut." who goes around telling staff members that individuals are unqualified to speak as witnesses because they are assumed to be "sluts" because they are addressing women's reproductive health. There needs to be logical, sane individuals who don't resort to their constructions of gender, class-related or religious beliefs when confronted with opposing opinions. How do these people attempt to regulate bullying when the attitudes they are socially conditioned to possess are the ones that actually generate bullying? In these and all other conditions, there needs to a neutral Congress that doesn't mirror the same patterns of bullying that they are supposed to be eradicating.

Therefore, the social bullying that happens on Facebook is not the fault of Zuckerberg who composing an online environment that perpetuates the existing social conditions caused by the clefts in the schools. It is a material element rather than a social action: a host rather than an active participant. Facebook is further related to this media in the discussion of the e-book, not so much the politics that shape the genesis of the site. These will be further examined in the next section of this essay as it is necessary to contextualize the N+1 issue of "Machine Politics."

The E-Book Essay I

The debate around the e-book became of the public domain, much like how Facebook became a matter of business with it's newly publicly tradable stock, relatively recently. Do you see this TV, here? Remember how social change was structured in relation to this invention last generation? This essay posits that the computer is locus of a more interconnected debate among conflicted academic disciplines and industry giants. I refer this as a debate in reference to Number 13 of N+1, which provided a bisection of the sides of this debate within the humanities themselves within their "Machine Politics" issue. Historically, much of this discussion is spearheaded by the academy, Amazon, and Apple. E-books were traditionally created by the academies, notably researchers at Brown and Stanford.

This self-published essay will reference them as e-books in tandem with this definition. This definition is cross-referenced in The Oxford Companion to the Book and on the PCMagazine site. The purpose of this definition is that it is quoted and used as such within this essay for neither academic nor proprietary gain given currently nonexistent ad revenue. But, as you will see, there is a reason this television has been thrown on the sidewalk.

Ask a cross-section of the population, what is an e-book and you will get replies from teachers, readers, and owners of technology. Each have their own vetted absorption in the outcome of these objects. Information politics is, after all, a living debate about objects and their interpretation within society. I noted, lastly, the owners of technology who purvey these texts because as with all technological developments, issues of the digital divide should be assumed, not all the population in each production cycle affords the cost of the merchandise. This is a given as demonstrated in any of the work of the late Robert Frost III. Furthermore, it is an astute example of a key bias in the understanding of Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia is peer-reviewed entity, but you have to consider who the peers are in respect to the creation of any document. This is a resource created by the computer literate and monitored by the ultra-elite users within the community, notably, all individuals who have access or ownership of the technology they define within the scope of entries in the site.

The definition of an e-book, ebook, NOOK, what have you, is contingent within this frame of vocabulary. The names reflect the purposes for which the objects were created. For the sake of simplicity, the name e-book has been chosen to refer to electronic books. Electronic books are either existing print books that have been reformatted into digital outputs or books created electronically from their inception. I have now isolated this definition within the context of critical theory as well as the materialist underpinnings of the politics of literature. I am presently going to depart from that historical centering to demonstrate that using the politics of literature as a mere starting and ending point for a debate is not enough. When this happens, the entire field of literary critique loses its momentum. Moreover, the politics of publication is an excuse to let the skills of the newly annexed section of the field (and the direction of the future innovations of product development) go unnoticed by those in the academy who have not yet demonstrated familiarity in that technical specialization. This essay will shortly outline the iBook's Author, which is Apple's publishing application for e-book designed to encompass the publication venue of its iPad.

Not too far away on the internet from the developing pods of Apple and Google are the changes in social media that showed up as a ripple in 2011. Last week, the paper publication, The Voice, dedicated a significant portion of its text to social media. I say paper publication, but you must also and perhaps obviously understand that this publisher also has a website. The articles ranged from Michael Musto article "Facebook Is for Dummos. LOL. And I don't mind as long as you click on my link, genius" to its feature article about Zuckerberg's new nemesis on the user experience and design front. The feature article was called "The Facebook-Killers" and made one interesting point; not only is there not a portion of society dedicated to the critique of the social media industry as more than a generational trend, but the competition within said industries is the subject of descant.

Writer Nick Pinto defined Facebook in the more open terms that characterize the discussion of social media within this decade. The landscape of social media is depicted as fluid and you can thank this blog for that. Making the argument that media should remain open, within the jurisdiction of private and public Universities as well as community colleges has not been easy. The argument has to be made on behalf of keeping these structures open within the terminology of literary theory at a time when these industries threaten the tradition topology of these fields. But, if you follow Pinto's argument and by extension mine, this is something that continues in the face of public turmoil over the question of the intellectual in an environment hostile not only to the individual intellectual but the educational system as an entire entity. Is anyone surprised that members of a vague social contract face a unique juncture of identity politics and seek a social space to articulate this concern?

On a side note, when a Facebook staff member recently attended a design jam at the University of Michigan School of Information, they presented some development ideas behind the most recent iteration and update of Facebook. The guest speaker articulated that the addition of timeline to your interface was brainstormed to convey that Facebook was the medium in which you could narrative or convey a story. While artists might want to research the end-user particulates of that agreement, this staffer suggested that there was indeed a connection between how one cultivates a social identity and the linear projection of this identity through digital space. For those not familiar with this update, the transition resulted in the site being redesigned internally to showcase the individual's profile in respect to numerical dates and features. On the right-hand side the most obvious indicator of time is the appearance of the timeline. The user then has the option to use Facebook as a present-oriented activity or to go back further and define aspects about their past in strict relation to sequenced events in time.

The other element that one might need to consider about Facebook, which in this essay is being cited as but one example of social media in an isolated occurrence, the writing of Nick Pinto is again helpful. Nick Pinto wrote, "Facebook offers us a space in which to talk, connect, and share music, pictures, and the stories of our lives, a space to express who were are and learn about one another and our world." I take this to mean that there is something about this space that also fosters as a digital meeting place where information is exchanged. The exchange of information in a public space is not unlike the public squares of old. In tandem to a time of social furor in relation to insecurities (on all sides) pertaining to monetary contracts and job opportunities, this is of the utmost importance. People are, and always will be, social creatures. The purpose of social protest is to improve the conditions of a society.

The Occupy Movements (OWS et al) proved, on a dismal level, that there is no such thing as the freedom to assemble peacefully in public space indefinitely when you are irritating the oligarchy. When you are irritating the ruling class by pointing out a ruling class, you will likely be banished from a public space. When you are demonstrating your affinity to the police officers and other onsite workers, you will likely be banished from a public space. You will see an surge in the quantity of the arts that are created in a time when the ability to articulate one's existence becomes colluded by turmoil or transition. Of course, Facebook and other social media outlets surge in popularity whenever individuals feel the demand to satiate their own social needs (the social needs of the individual within a collective) in a time when it is not summarily possible to achieve this in real life or physical space. The platform, therefore, becomes one of international continuity to the truly open-minded artisans, entrepreneurs, traders and travelers.

When websites meet such a vast social demand, it's not surprising that their creators start to take on the aspects of folklore. Zuckerberg is situated as a hero of folklore. This individual is cast much like a prophet within the writing of Pinto.

Pinto suggested that

the story of the beginnings of Facebook has been retold so many times that it has taken on the patina of myth. A lonely nerd who go not respect at school... found a golden ticket, a dream of an interconnected world.

Zuckerberg's story, one of social isolation incidentally leading to the groundwork behind which millions of users interact online, is engrossing and certainly paradoxical. Could it be that one of the figureheads for the epitome of the lonely schoolboy is actually insanely social in a kind of meticulously categorizing way? Likely. Mainstream media: do you understand that, now? Can we now briefly address, within two paragraphs what the next two months of news about this organization will generate in the minds of those who have just reached Point A?

All active users of Facebook partake in sharing information at the risk of their own privacy. All active users of Facebook generate data that is sold for profit. All active users of Facebook face the review of all their affiliates on this social network. Now, the last concern, that of the conditions of sociability, is not governed by Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg should only be credited for tapping into the incessant need of humans to have peer attention, studying computer science, and creating a company. The currency of likes, the secret dislike button, and all other ad-ons or plugins are separate from the character assessment of Zuckerberg. Moreover, the rise of the competitors should be depicted, socially, as it is; their innovations are created in opposition to key elements of Facebook's privacy policy.

Interestingly enough, creating a viable social network unleashes a certain amount of ambiguity both in cultural theory and law. The true responsibility for the interactions on Facebook remains, as always, with the individuals. The fostering of data in legal concerns, proprietary measures and government inquires is debatable. But, for the sake of simplicity, any treatment of Facebook has to move beyond the biographical narrative of Mark Zuckerberg once the story has passed its initial introduction to the masses of society who happen to use that service. Imagine what would happen to the biopic/ biographical genre if every company's CEOs and CFOs were depicted, humanized, and made responsible for the mass action within the arena of their organizations. This would change the way we, in the 21st Century, conceptualize companies and associate them with human characteristics.

That concern would be more akin to the interests of activist-programmers of the Federated General Assembly and other organizations, the developers at Diaspora*, the corporate and social architects, the shareholders, and the other social bodies that demonstrate their interest in this debate through either currency, social justice commitments or other vested contracts. For the purpose of this neutral inquiry, Facebook and others like it, are relevant to the methodological approach to assessing the conditions in which the modern e-book has arisen. Here are your social conditions for the flickering of printing innovation.

Preview for the E-Debate of the Century

E-books, eloads, and the OECD have garnered conflicted stats in their mainstream depiction. You might remember the story of the famous e-book writer who jockeyed to fame on the basis of her latent text about vampires. Then, there's the Simon Owens piece of 2011 that initially brandished the success of that industry based on the viability of one Stephen King publication before moving along to more onerous details. Owens graphed the success of the e-book industry in relation to one survey on Riding the Bullet, a Stephen King text. Owens suggested that the $2.50 purchase of the King novel ended up jamming the server space of one organization that vetted the novel in electronic sales. He and other industry giants predicted that the "'revolution has well and truly begun.'" For those of you who have been out of the debate between electronic and print copies for the past five years, I will outline the surfeited economic justification for the electronic print industry as well as a prediction of how, though omnipresent in the publishing industry, the true theory behind literary publications remains untouched from the perspective of the thinker, the writer, and information processing worker.

My opinion to be published within 1-2 business days.

List Poem: Life in America

That it takes years, years that occur in correspondence to life events and not as isolated occurrences in abstract and granulated instances tracing in the lines of the of Polaroids (like lithography) into iterative instances of achievement, trophy.

It is also the strain of hours that are not in the dark in a hallowed and Romanticized fantasy of laboring over work by candlelight, but through the opaque mechanism of cost-efficient lighting and tempering the monotony with the types of dreams distilled in immobility.

It is commingling this with personal adversity, life happenstance, death in the family, the denounement of relationships, change in social status, relocation, financial instability, taxes, estate taxes, attention deficit disorder, post-industrial capitalization, dimorphism, identity theft, Jerry, diaspora, racism, sexism, classism, gender-studies majors, Queer theory, small claims court, collectors, long distance relationships, friends with benefits, second marriages, foreclosures, student loans, social anxiety, mixed marriages, diuretics, enemy combatants, Momma Grizzlies, reality television, yellow journalism, the culture industry, the New Yorker, The Post, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Bros, George Soros, Alan Greenspan, Woody Allen, criterion collection couples, Internet dating, step-dad, local bands, pitchfork famous, chopsticks, sangria specials, cafe cuties, mall of America, indoor rollercoasters, list-servs, indexical thinking, metafiction, the white Negro (book), death of the author (essay), death of irony (essay), death of the hipster (essay), death, the apostle's creed, latent [,] corporate Catholicism, youth group makeouts, David Lynch disography diapers, trash on Tuesdays, free beer on red eyes, 99 reasons you won't text me back, the Great Recession (moniker), Sex and the City tour buses, the former children of child stars, trustafarians, bankrupcy, Facebox friends, skirting second life, thrift-shopping, fill in the blank, multiple choice, box sets, stealing from Stanely Kubrick, associative though patterns, read-only files, turbulence, tipping well.

Large Cat

Embossed cat.

the computer's rebellion II

the computer's rebellion

Convolute P = Thoughts on PolyMath (Journal of Publishing Reform)

Controversy surrounding academic publications continues amidst the backdrop of institutes of higher education facing uncertainty in public opinion. Specifically, this discussion is occurring where the cost of public, educational institutions is the highest.

The Detroit News reported in an article entitled "Crushing the Dream" on Thursday, February 2012, that the tuition cost of public institutions is causing invariable unhappiness for students who must grapple with the consequences of these hikes. In this article, Phil Power claimed that "tuition at Michigan public colleges is higher than for nearly every comparable school around the country."

One surprising educational cost?

The pricing platforms of subscriptions to academic journals.

Why

Many rely on these periodicals to enhance their research, gain earn publishing experience on their CVs and learn more about their field. The funding for these materials is generally budgeted by the libraries of these institutions. Notably, the academic community has raised objections to these publishing materials and the UK battle against the Dutch publishing publishing company, Elsevier, has drawn particular notoriety within this professional sect.

Tim Gowers

The movement can be traced back to Tim Gowers, an academic who objected to the publisher in late January. On Gowers's Weblog, he detailed his involvement in questioning the mechanics of the company and explained his decision to avoid publication in the journals. His main objection to the publisher seemed to encompass a look at the practice of "bundling" by libraries. According to the practices of the publisher, a library is more-or-less required to purchase several installments of various periodicals. The materials are sold in sets and libraries are required to finance an entire assemblage of magazines rather than one or two popular journals.

The Gowers post also revealed that part of the frustration with the publisher traces back to problems within the peer-reviewing system itself. Some contributors to this site noted that the academics are not being paid to individually review, edit, or otherwise receive compensation by the company for their edits. The unpopularity of Elsevier in the UK and Springer in France can be somewhat attributed to internal quarrels within the scholastic editing process, but this is not the sole means of the publishers' late unpopularity. Gowers further objected to the support Elsevier, of late, showed in regards to SOPA, PIPA, and other regulatory bills. For all of these reasons, Gowers expressed his disdain for the periodicals.

The Genesis of the Cost of Knowledge

He next suggested that the tactic displeased academics should adopt is one of protest. He opined that the academics should be for the academics should refuse to be published on the site, join an editorial board, edit theseor a combination of the three actions. Gowers outlined that this should be documented on a public site. Indeed the website, The Cost of Knowledge, was founded to specifically organize signatures against this publisher and indicate academics who chose not to associate with it. While Gowers acknowledged that signing up in support of this action could ultimately be seen as criticisms of the individual authors or editors who require such services, it was a gesture against this specific publisher. One can trace these actions back to the original post Gowers made on January 20th.

Gowers wrote, "If all libraries were prepared to club together and negotiate jointly, doing a kind of reverse funding... accept this deal or none of us will subscribe to any of your journals... the Elsevier's profits... would be genuinely threatened." He conceptualized that after the action of the libraries, the academics would get involved. The development of the site allowed the academic crowd to "be encouraged to take a stand if they could see that many others were already doing so and that it would be a good way of making that stand public." But, what's notable about this debate is not what a sizable portion of academics think or do not think about the manner of the academic periodicals.

Not all academics are unhappy with the practices of their journals. Some pointed out that machine learning and bio journals, at least, provide less restrictive forms of subscription. Others appreciated that Elsevier allows writers to retain copies of their preprints. No, what is upstanding about this debate is the platform of discussion created on behalf of these academics in terms of organizing themselves in protest. Gowers wrote in the article that that it was an attempt to coordinate academics and demonstrate their collective bargaining power. It will be interesting to see what the formal response from Elsevier. Such a coordinated movement could dynamically influence their publishing tactics, increase outreach to academics and libraries, and create an ultimately rewarding debate for consumers and producers of journals alike.

While Gowers might suggest that these academic journals are "rubbishy mathematics journals," he raises a point about the exclusivity of peer journals. Perhaps, those in the academy should take note of Alan Cann of Leicester University who had an innovative approach to publishing his own publication. Cann (and undoubtably others) published his work on a site and encouraged the other commenters to respond with their edits in an open peer review. Like any digital community, the commenters reply with their remarks and professional critiques. While Cann's approach doesn't resolve the issue of pay to anyone with their editorial critique, it does demonstrate that the blur between the academy and authors becomes enhanced in a tumultuous economic climate.

Image courtesy of jscreationzs.

Convolute N... (Announcement in March)

Interlude. I have a better "N" to post for a convolute, but here's a short, metaphysical sort of post until I am allowed to do a press release on topic N.

Nothing like signing on to the World Wide Web after hiatus and finding out that not only do you not recall posting on "We Are All Going To Die," but there is a new blogger on the Intranet, she thought to herself as she pawed at her phone. She imagined herself in another city and captioned her meeting, Two Girls Discuss Magnitudes of Small Things Over Belgian Ale at Keybar.

There were CDs and shiny things dangling from above the lacquered table at 13th Street. The place had a wraparound sort of charm, couple slanted benches strewn to the side, but there were no cloaks left in disarray as there typically were after an evening's close.

She waited for her friend. The girl looked to see what was on tap. She picked a beer that had a wooden, cupid figurine on the handle. She did not know the name of the beer, nor its pronunciation, but the barmaid informed her it was Belgian. She gave her a card for drink deals that was faded. It seemed like she had handed the card out, gotten it returned and then passed it out again with repetition.

"There should be an Introduction to Disqus for Dummies that goes over etiquette in these situations," she sighed and kept talking to her phone. Strange little electronic, the kind of phone that kept time. She wanted one of the moleskins with a watch sewn into a cover. She sipped on her drink, a touch, and noticed no one was on the street at 4 o'clock PM. The only people she had seen were the casual sorts of couples that walked down the street arm-in-arm.

She felt lonesome. Not only did she not recall posting on this board, but the name BigBodyBrett perplexed her. Her friend was late. She wouldn't bother explaining this to her friend. After all, her friend usually responded to her dilemmas with declaratives like, "Boys are only companions. They are only companions."

Lest we not jump to conclusions, it is perhaps reassuring, she noticed (,quietly, on her phone,) that Korea airs this commercial on public television.

Lest someone not be offended, somewhere.

The sounds of sweeping footsteps echoed outside the door. There was the rubble of someone pushing a garbage can to the sidewalk. Someone dropped some quarters. The music grew fuzzier and the sun set, a little slanted-like. A little slanted-like, she waited for her friend. She was writing for the analytics, now, and then the city was calculating it cabs to its burghs.

M is for Madison Avenue MTV

http://bit.ly/T1TA4

In honor of SOPA, here is the proper link to a proper video with no copyright_infringes_ in this blog.