Notes

The Car Dreams He is Real

2011-10-03T08:19:00.002-04:00

The Car Dreams He is Real
2011

L'enfer, c'est les autres

2011-09-03T10:35:00.006-04:00

L'enfer, c'est les autres

Boston Subway | June 2011

Hurricane fallout

2011-08-28T08:54:00.001-04:00

Trainscape No. 13

2011-08-23T11:27:00.009-04:00

Trainscape No. 13

Boston-Philadelphia | July 2011

Boston Subway (Red Line), 12:49pm

2011-08-22T23:11:00.002-04:00

Boston Subway (Red Line), 12:49pm

June 2011

Violence Against Women

2011-07-21T21:17:00.002-04:00

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Path To Salvation

2011-07-21T07:03:00.002-04:00

A Brief History of Time

2011-07-02T07:01:00.005-04:00

Macbook Pro, King James Version

2011-06-25T05:52:00.002-04:00

kjvbible.pdf, page 319 of 702

Morning Radio Panorama

2011-06-24T09:25:00.003-04:00

4:38AM - 4:49 AM, June 21, 2011

The Rapture

2011-06-16T09:12:00.002-04:00

Nourishment

2011-06-16T08:40:00.007-04:00

The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable precondition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accords with their personal characteristics and abilities. (Albert Einstein)

excerpt from Freedom, Its Meaning, edited by Ruth Nanda Ashen, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940. Translated by James Gutmann. From Einstein: Ideas and Opinions, edited by Sonja Bargmann, New York: Wings Books, 1954.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

2011-06-14T12:04:00.002-04:00

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Field of Vision

2011-06-04T08:04:00.003-04:00

Field of Vision

Horton Hears A Who

2011-05-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

Horton Hears A Who

Mott's In Situ

2011-05-21T09:57:00.005-04:00

Mott's in situ
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

In Bloom

2011-05-20T22:39:00.000-04:00

We Call These Colorful Things Children

2011-05-20T11:39:00.001-04:00

Einstein's Theory

2011-05-08T16:15:00.003-04:00

Mother in Three Movements

2011-05-08T08:50:00.005-04:00

Mother in Three Movements

[click to enlarge]

Male Gaze

2011-05-01T13:57:00.002-04:00

click to enlarge

8:00 pm

2011-05-01T00:31:00.002-04:00

Good Job, Sean
Somerville, Massachusetts

4:53 pm

2011-05-01T00:24:00.003-04:00

Bryant Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Morning Ritual

2011-04-30T22:56:00.007-04:00

Morning Ritual
Nunziato Field, Somerville, Massachusetts

Doors Are Closing

2011-04-18T22:28:00.002-04:00

Doors Are Closing
Boston Subway, Massachusetts, USA

Dinner

2011-04-18T21:52:00.001-04:00

Dinner
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

Boston Marathon

2011-04-18T21:17:00.004-04:00

Entering Copley
Boston Subway, Massachusetts, USA

Big Fat World

2011-03-24T21:11:00.003-04:00

Big Fat World
Minuteman Bike Path, Massachusetts, USA

Christmas

2011-01-08T13:08:00.005-05:00

Highland Avenue, Massachusetts, USA

Atomic Shoppers

2011-01-08T12:54:00.004-05:00

Cambridgeside Galleria
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Sixty Sex Tips

2010-12-19T14:57:00.004-05:00

Harvard Square
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Graffiti for Planet Earth

2010-12-09T18:43:00.009-05:00

click for larger image

Letter to a friend: Rendering the invisible

2010-12-09T11:45:00.001-05:00

Left: Sistine Chapel, Right: Painting by Cy Twombly

Addressing an acquaintance named Stephen presents a dilemma. What if you cannot remember if he goes by the phonetic 'Steve', or 'Stephen'? If he goes by Steve, the use of "Stephen" becomes formal. On the other hand, most "Stephens" don't want to be called "Steve". The ultimate product is the same, but there are slight distinctions in those unquantifiable things we call mood or feeling.

One way to resolve this dilemma is to explicate the problem. This is much the same strategy as that adopted in the ethnography and anthropology of the post-1980s. When the observer is an irreconcilable distance from his subject, when there is no practicable way to overcome this distance (no 'quantum leaps', so to speak), the strategy that remains is to be explicit, to include this ambiguity and subjectivity into the work. Thus an archaeologist may do well to include in her discussion of the past her own identity in the present- an identity which by necessity is entangled with and colors all relations to the past. The same is true of the anthropologist who wishes to understand culture- whether it is a culture at great geographical, temporal, or conceptual distance or a culture right under one's nose. The same is true also of the individual who wishes to understand another. An assessment of identity, both mutual and specific, and of all the historical and affective circumstances which contribute to that identity, must be made.

In regard to the minor and inconsequential Steve-or-Stephen dilemma, in the practice of the everyday these sorts of thoughts are supposed to streak in an instant across your mind, if at all, and not be said aloud. "Seen and not heard". But they are the kinds of things that in art or science can be seized upon for elaboration. This phrase is a borrowing from the anthropologist Margaret Mead. In a 1933 article titled 'More Comprehensive Field Methods', she discusses conceptual strategies in ethnography:

What can be said of puberty can be said with equal justice of childbirth, which is dismissed with a sentence if there are no religious or social rites, or immediately observable and striking customs; of marriage, to which pages are given only if the particular culture has happened to seize upon marriage for obvious elaboration. The field ethnographer in the past has too often been prone to describe culture only in terms of the conspicuous, the conventional, and the bizarre. It is at his door that many of the most characteristic errors of the arm-chair theorizer must be laid; there is small wonder that Levy-Bruhl sees the native as pre-logical, or Crawley as obsessed by ideas of sex, when only the cultural elaborations of the unusual are presented for their consideration.

I hesitated to include her specific examples 'puberty/childbirth/marriage' without larger context, because it's the general point that I wanted to point out. Somehow those terms have a larger gravitational mass in our field of meaning, and can act as distractions. But the point is that the 'invisibility' of things does not render them insignificant. By 'invisible' we mean 'not seized upon for elaboration'; the things which elude our familiar concepts or observations.

I like what she writes though, especially if you apply it to art. A lot of lay people think of art as something that is purely about technical wizardry, good art is judged to be such by the lay person if some kind of dazzling craft is available for immediate observation. I'm talking about the kinds of people who will marvel at the Sistine Chapel but will say of a Cy Twombly painting, that familiar phrase 'my child could do this'. This is not so much a complaint as a problem that demands solving since the ultimate point of art is to communicate or reveal. It cannot be done in a vacuum; audience is a part of the equation.

At the same time, there are people who now call themselves artists but only 'seize upon' what Mead calls the 'conspicuous, the conventional, and the bizarre'. This may be best exemplified by the photography student or amateur photographer who will photograph a homeless man on the street, or a close-up of a flower, and if the lighting is dramatic or pleasing enough they will consider it an artistic achievement. But is art about looking, or seeing? I say it is about both. The goal is to make someone see something, by getting them to look. An image of a homeless man or a flower does nothing to reveal the nature of either. It may function as a crowd-pleaser, but the things themselves remain mysterious and distant, without reverence given to either. In these cases they are merely appropriated for their superficial aesthetic value.

The success of any art or science depends on this ability to render the invisible. I think that the reason why certain comedians (who can also be considered artists) like Jerry Seinfeld are so successful is because they have done the comedic equivalent of Margaret Mead's approach to ethnography. They have seized upon the bits of culture or reality that are not considered to be an 'immediately observable and striking custom'. The achievement is not in being 'technically funny' or having produced a snapshot, but in identifying some part of a common reality that has thusfar not been elaborated upon, or in the case of art, revealed.

Click And You'll Miss It

2010-12-06T22:50:00.014-05:00

Thank you for riding Google Earth

Click image for full size

Left To Its Uncertain Fate

2010-11-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

The familiar behavior of a dog who's been 'temporarily abandoned':

What is going on in a dog's mind, this dog's mind, as it waits?
Does it 'realize' that it is 'waiting'?
Does the conceptual experience 'waiting' not apply?
Does the emotional, instinctual, or physical experience of waiting differ radically from the conceptual experience 'waiting'?

Is the experience one of utter anxiety? This dog certainly appears to be anxious. Yet in a different dog it may seem as though, once its owner takes leave, there is no immediate worry or afterthought-- it simply reacts to whatever happens or comes along, e.g. other people, other animals, passing cars, a sudden itch and immediate scratch, until that time its owner reappears and life as it was is resumed.

SELECTED TRANSCRIPT
Person 1: Oooh! Who are you! Are you shy?
Person 2: He's shy
Person 1: You're gonna bite me... I know that look
Person 3: That's not a biting look
Person 2: He's shy

Reflection

2010-11-07T11:11:00.000-05:00

Twelve days after her 30th birthday, the 19-year old boy she buys cigarettes from looked at her ID then apologized for looking at her "like that".

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part II

2010-10-23T11:37:00.000-04:00

     What remains of the dying population of Cambodia?
     One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms.
     What remains of Tomas?
     An inscription reading HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.
     What remains of Beethoven?
     A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning "Es muss sein!"
     What remains of Franz?
     An inscription reading A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.
     And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

--excerpt from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Florencio Ascends

2010-10-12T23:39:00.002-04:00

Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Part I

2010-10-06T17:28:00.001-04:00

It was drizzling. As people rushed along, they began opening umbrellas over their heads, and all at once the streets were crowded, too. Arched umbrella roofs collided with one another. The men were courteous, and when passing Tereza they held their umbrellas high over their heads and gave her room to go by. But the women would not yield; each looked straight ahead, waiting for the other woman to acknowledge her inferiority and step aside. The meeting of the umbrellas was a test of strength. At first Tereza gave way, but when she realized her courtesy was not being reciprocated, she started clutching her umbrella like the other women and ramming it forcefully against the oncoming umbrellas. No one ever said "Sorry." For the most part no one said anything, though once or twice she did hear a "Fat cow!" or "Fuck you!"

--excerpt from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being

September 11th Newsbox

2010-09-23T01:15:00.001-04:00

Highland Avenue
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

The Best Model of Reality is Reality Itself

2010-09-09T06:41:00.000-04:00

*This is a depersonalized version of a letter I recently sent to a dear friend.
**The title comes from the esteemed professor of anthropology Patrick Clarkin, quoting his own professor
. . . . . . . . . . .

Dear ______ ,

I am playing real-life tetris with the contents of my apartment. It's part of my Girlfriend, Get Your Sh*t In Order! back-to-school extravaganza. Well, that's the Oprah version.

Speaking of Oprah versions, since I'm working in the apartment I have the radio on. I just switched to NPR and caught the end of an extended radio piece on one person's FTM story. They did some interesting stuff with quick-cut audio layers, a sound collage of his audio diary during the time he took testosterone. When I say interesting I don't necessarily mean the best way to do it. I say that because it occurred to me that I was hearing the NPR version of this 'story'. I am not really comfortable with the word story, which is why on second thought I wasn't so impressed with the voice collage. It seemed like a creative special effect, something an art school or media trade student would put together. Special effects to preempt or avoid really investigating some kind of truth. Or making the truth too simple, too packaged. It was curious to hear the 'story' as tailored to an NPR audience. You know? If it were a children's book it would be called "Megan and Miles". If it were a Lifetime Television special it would be "How Megan Met Miles: The Miles Taylor Story". NPR calls it "Becoming Miles: The Journey of Changing Sexes". Which is why I said speaking of Oprah versions...

After I heard the piece I was curious what you'd think of it. I'm sure it would be interesting for you to hear, but I'm curious if you'd be satisfied with it. I say this because when I have come across stories about smell loss I am sometimes unsatisfied with the treatment they've given it. Always there is something more, something more 'at the essence', that somehow eludes easy treatment. And I feel like it is things like these fancy sound collages that act as red herrings, that lead one away from what is true.

Though I honestly don't know if it is possible to ever approach the truth head-on. It is like in quantum physics, and the uncertainty principle, which states... well, here, I'll just quote from Wikipedia (physicists are choking everywhere):

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states ... that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured .

And it is true that in art, or storytelling, or history, or really any discipline that aims to put some kind of frame around reality, this endeavor is so elusive and often its fruits so misleading. Or when it is done beautifully it is beautiful because it comes so very close to something that people can recognize, can instinctively feel, has the ring of truth. But it is always only a 'ring' of truth, isn't it? It is like catching fireflies. So ephemeral. The moment you try to explicate it, whether with words, with images, with sustained research, there is always something more and something complementary that cannot fit into the frame, and the reason it cannot fit into the frame is because you are standing in it!

This problem comes up again and again. Physicists have found a resolution in the complementarity principle, which states (again from Wikipedia),

that some objects have multiple properties that appear to be contradictory.
... in principle, it's impossible to view both at the same time, despite their simultaneous coexistence in reality.

But it comes up again and again, not only in the fundamental physical world, but also in these endeavors I mentioned above. In journalism what we hate so much is 'mainstream media', which you could say flaunts this problem rather than worries over it or attempts to resolve it. Anthropology's sub-discipline, archaeology, is not just about digging but is supported in its foundations by ever-changing schools of thought, from the 'Processualism' of the 1960s (which has its own sub-schools of thought), to the 'Post-Processualism' (and its own branches) of the 1980s (which continues to the current moment, though you could say the schools of thought are continuously fragmenting). (Hey!....just like evolution of species...)

These schools of thought represent different ways of coping with the problem of interpreting the past. Which is infinitely more complicated you see, than digging.

And in photography, we freeze moments, we take snapshots of reality. This is why the best photographs are those that show us some glimmer of truth. Except every photograph (well, non-doctored ones) contains some glimmer of truth, doesn't it? So the even better photographs are the ones that somehow account for this, this fact that it is only a glimmer, the ones that somehow make this explicit even if it cannot in principle be shown.

In anthropology this problem of 'user interference' is dealt with by making it a standard in ethnographic research to address one's biases, as well as the potential, or some would say unavoidable, interference of the researcher's/observer's presence. In scientific research of course it has long been the standard to account for bias by careful research design and statistical methods.

Sometimes you want to listen to Mozart and sometimes you want to listen to The Rolling Stones. Both are snippets of a spectrum or wavelength that we exist on, at different places at different times. We listen to one or the other and all outside and in-between, depending on where or 'what' we happen to be at a certain time and place.

So you see it is always this presence that is so problematic in pinning down any kind of whole truth. If you're over here, you can show what's over there, and if you're over there, you can show what's over here. But you cannot be in both places at the same time, just as a quantum physicist cannot measure both the position and the momentum of an elementary particle at the same time. Now, some say that this is a fundamental property of the universe (that's quoting Wikipedia), while others blame it on the limitations of the observer. "It's not the Universe's fault, you're just not cut out to measure".

Now, which is it? This to me, as an artist, or as an anthropologist, or as a curious human being, is an important question. If one accepts the first explanation, this to me seems cause for laziness. It is a disclaimer casting off responsibility. If, on the other hand, the second is true, then this means that 'the truth may still be out there', somehow still available to be apprehended.

So the more important question to me is whether or not it is a fundamental property of the universe that the observer is without exception always and forever to be limited not only in their observation, but in their ability to transcribe or measure or articulate observation. Is it possible somehow to simultaneously show what is there and what is missing? When you put a frame around something, when you write 'Becoming Miles', is there a way also to show what escapes the frame? Is there a better way? Is the only strategy to hint at what is missing, or is there a way actually to capture some kind of truth? Should we rely on a collection of representations and measurements, or is there one perfect measurement, one perfect equation?

This is what interests me.

I hope you won't be put off by this serious-seeming email. I think 'serious-seeming' for me means something different than it does with other people. You could say I'm always serious, not necessarily in mood but in how I think about things. So I hope this note won't have that uncomfortable ring of something serious from a person who's suddenly being serious. Ha! I'm starting to think I talk in riddles. Or not quite that but that it could look that way. I'm just really interested in problems of truth and as an artist or anthropologist or like I said, whatever I am or will do or will be, I feel without hesitation compelled to explore these things. Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable. But if it makes someone uncomfortable I always blame myself. It goes back to the problems shared by art or archaeology or quantum physics or journalism. I feel that if I can adequately or accurately address reality, then it will somehow have that 'magic key' to bypass what it is that makes people uncomfortable.

People like to say "the truth is ugly" but I don't feel this is quite right. I think it is more accurate to say that "the truth is ugly when it is handled in an ugly way". Or translated in an ugly way. Or photographed in an ugly way. Or reported on in an ugly way. By ugly I mean crude, sloppy. Insincere.

By the way, I am sorry to just casually drop into quantum physics like that but I've been thinking about and reading about it for a while ever since I saw this documentary that was just in theaters, 'Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel'. If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it. Totally fascinating. I for one have nothing but admiration for Hugh Hefner. The reason I've been thinking about quantum physics is because the movie addresses these issues of "Was Hugh Hefner good or bad? Was he liberator or oppressor? Was he a woman-lover or a misogynist?" And I started to think of the complementarity principle and wave-particle duality. It is not that he as an individual was both, but the impact of his enterprise on society was certainly both. Both views and effects are equally and simultaneously valid.

What It's Come To

2010-09-03T22:18:00.001-04:00

This is what going out to dinner with four males looks like

2010-08-25T11:11:00.001-04:00

Matryoshka Universe

2010-08-22T14:09:00.000-04:00

I am currently reading 'Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens" by Richard Panek, and just read the passage "...he calculated...the star at a distance of 657,700 astronomical units, or approximately 61 trillion miles..."

And it got me to thinking about this idea of nestedness, the idea of stars within galaxies and planets within solar systems, molecules within cells and atoms within molecules. We see it even in our numbers-- I suppose because of the very reason that our numbers and our mathematics are lifted from the realities of the physical world-- and so numbers are nested within each other. We can say "657,700 astronomical units", or we can say "61 trillion miles". We can say 12 inches or we can say 1 foot. The number 657,700 has six-hundred fifty-seven thousand, seven-hundred 1's in it.

Also we even have nestedness within infinity, which is an insight that drove mathematician Georg Cantor to the brink of madness. He had the insight that you can have sets of infinite numbers. How does this make sense? What is infinite encapsulates all, yes? No? Well, it is like two school children boasting in the schoolyard:

"I have infinity!"
"Oh yeah? I have infinity plus one!"

Letter to a friend: Cardboard pyramids

2010-08-18T11:23:00.001-04:00

This photo-- taken during a flyover of Egypt which I did this morning via Google Earth-- is what I was seeing on the sidewalk last night, as we towered above that pyramid-shaped cardboard box.

I've had the most fantastic morning-- well I've been straight smoking, especially since I got home, which is not so very fantastic-- but it's helped me enjoy the morning, slow down, and also get out a few emailed letters.

I got out of the house before 8AM, and walked back to the hilltop bench. I was about to turn to the woman on the adjacent bench to ask if she minded if I smoked, and then realized she was herself smoking. We began talking across benches. She is from Romania, and before I found this out I was trying to place her accent. My old best friend Sonja who I lived with in DC is German, and lives back in Germany now- and I always loved her accent. Sometimes in the morning I'd wake up and she'd be on the telephone with her mother, and it was a flurry of German with the English "mummy" thrown in every few words. It always made me smile to myself in bed.

There is a certain quality to some female European, especially further eastern European, accents. A sort of soft-spokenness that is very feminine, but also with the angularity of the accent. To my English ears it is a lovely sound. Talking to this woman at the park reminded me of Sonja. It was nice to speak to her, felt simple and human-- I've noticed these types of interactions are more likely to happen with foreigners, certain disabled people, and elder people than they are with "peers" or fellow young urban Americans.

I was half-writing a letter to you in my mind as I walked, and I was sorry that it was too early in the morning to stop by one of the Union Square markets for a notebook. Then again, so many things came into my attention on the morning walk that I've forgot most of it anyway. Maybe it will come back later.

As I walked down Walnut Street there was a raised lawn and cement/stone quarter-wall rising up from the sidwalk. There were all of these very tiny slugs slithering on top of the cement. The grass blades were all covered in morning droplets. I wondered if they were 'baby slugs' or if they were a certain species of very small slug. I prefered to imagine that they had just been born and were making their first tracks into the world. I had to call my friend Amelia, even though it was still about a quarter of 8, because slugs are very near and dear to her. She also does beautiful drawings, and the most recent one I saw was just tiny delicate lines of criss-crossing colors, with the names of the colors written into the lines. The sheen of the slugs' tiny slime tracks reminded me of this drawing.

Then on the way back up the hill from the coffee shop a car was about to turn down the street I was about to turn off from. The driver and I looked at each other and both recognized each other at the same time. It was someone who I've been trying to arrange a $-for-Sam handoff with for the past week or so. So funny and fantastic to run into him like that! So I got in his car and we drove down the street then pulled over and talked for a little while. I mentioned something about WJIB 740 and he turned the radio dial to it. A sort of easy-listening version of Strauss' waltz 'The Blue Danube'--the song from 2001: A space Odyssey-- came on, and so even before 9am I've got this day in the bag. Our meeting ended when a feral-looking stray dog crossed in front of the car and began to sniff at something on the sidewalk. Then a jogger flew down the hill and the dog took off in hot pursuit.

Top that!!,
Amanda

p.s. There is a car in Somerville on Pleasant Street which can be characterized by the following:

A front license plate which reads "I love it when I'm right!"
A LoJack on steering wheel
A feathered Native American-style dreamcatcher hanging from rearview mirror

Overheard in New England

2010-08-17T07:27:00.000-04:00

1.
[Beach bathroom scene: Irritated woman waiting for the women's bathroom. People are starting to use the Men's. My turn is up.]

Me to irritated woman: Is the Men's open? Do you want it?
Irritated woman: No, because I want to confront her about why she's taking so long.

Humanity: minus one

2.
Subway conversation:

[group of children]

Girl 1: Hannah Montana always has a sparkly microphone
Girl 2: I'll punch her in the face!
Grown-up leader: Hey don't talk that way
Girl 2: She doesn't believe in God!

Cosmic Pinball

2010-08-16T17:32:00.000-04:00

The photons that would become the Hubble Deep Field- the HDF--- indivisible packets of energy radiated by innumerable pieces of matter--had begun their journey maybe ten billion years earlier, traveling some sixty sextillion (that's 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles before reaching the rims of Hubble's 94.5-inch-diameter primary mirror, which focused them onto a 12.2-inch secondary mirror, which redirected them into a host of scientific instruments, which, after translating them into electronic signals of zeros and ones, beamed them to a tracking and data relay satellite, which ricocheted them to a ground station in White Sands, New Mexico, which, after translating them into radio signals, zapped them back up into the stratosphere and toward a communications satellite, which bounced them earthward again to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which forwarded them via telephone circuitry to the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore, Maryland, where they took up residence inside computers until an astronomer called them up on a screen, at which point the zeros and ones regathered themselves into swatches of light and dark that, approximately two feet and 1/500,000,000th of a second later, reached the eyes of astronomers, who could hardly believe what they were seeing.

"As the images have come up on our screens," the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute declared, "we have not been able to keep from wondering if we might somehow be seeing our own origins in all of this." He dubbed the emerging image "the double helix of galaxy formation"; another astronomer likened it to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

--From Richard Panek's "Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens"

Perspective

2010-08-01T22:34:00.001-04:00

Her: Oh look, pretty
Him: Where? All I see is dead leaves

Thompson Submachine Gun

2010-07-31T11:14:00.000-04:00

Lest we forget that National Geographic is as glamorized as is Baywatch

2010-07-24T22:47:00.000-04:00

The Digital Stance

2010-06-06T12:14:00.000-04:00

This photo essay was taken during the Memorial Day Parade in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

Letter to Apostolos

2010-05-27T13:10:00.000-04:00

On Indeterminacy

I spent the morning thinking about John Cage's work 4'33" in relation to archaeology. "Notions of indeterminacy" and an exploration into what exactly constitutes the stuff of whatever medium you are considering-- (in the case of Cage, music; in the case of Archaeology, the past).

It is a great frustration of mine that art is not employed more often to address practical and theoretical issues in the sciences. Sometimes I feel artists are those best equipped to make a serious study of everything that is 'indeterminate'. What artists do is outline all of the empty spaces that the rest of our cultural disciplines and signals fail to adequately address, or signify. In statistics, it is addressed practically with complex formulas that quantify 'indeterminacy' in predictable ways. In media and the press, indeterminacy is obscured by definitive headlines; what is ambiguous is purposely ignored. In archaeology and history, indeterminacies hover constantly over narratives and materials of the past. In all of these areas, what is unknowable or unquantifiable is handled technically, bound by the conventions of the discipline, or area.
Only art can point a finger to something that has no shape, only art can put a frame around something, thus enabling the very beginnings of a vocabulary to acknowledge that it is there.

It is frustrating too that outside academic or artistic circles, a work like Cage's 4'33" becomes known as 'avante-garde', just chalked up to some weird gimmick created at an artist's whim. They fail to understand that art is deeply philosophical...

In the clip below, my friend and composer/guitarist Apostolos Paraskevas discusses and 'performs' John Cage's 4'33" in Germany:

Gangster rap colouring book under fire from parents

2010-05-19T16:48:00.001-04:00

A colouring book featuring images of rappers 50 CENT and ICE T brandishing weapons has been slammed by parents as "sick".

The book, Gangsta Rap, includes line drawings of famous hip-hop stars holding guns and knives - pictures which have infuriated those concerned for the impact of the images on young children.
And parents are demanding the book, which is on sale at British fashion chain Topshop for £6 ($11), be taken off the shelves immediately.

Mothers Against Guns campaigner MICHELL FORBES says, "It's sick." Topshop have yet to comment on the issue.

What this article fails to acknowledge explicitly is the social significance of the retailer, British fashion chain Topshop. Topshop is the UK's homologue to Urban Outfitters, which caters to the middle-class hipster and besides 'urban fashion' also sells kitschy books, games, and toys that are either retro or ironic (or both). The article is framed as just another blip on the "latest outrage" plain of the cultural landscape, yet it is worth pausing for a moment to interpret this cultural product.

The article states the coloring book has "infuriated those concerned for the impact of the images on young children." Retailing at a fashion chain for teens and adults, this product is obviously not intended for children. As such, this middle-class outrage distracts from what is most objectionable- the commodification of culture and appropriation of one culture to be poked fun at by another.

In a Time Out New York feature article, Christian Lorentzen writes, "hipsterism fetishizes the authentic". As I sit here reflecting on archaeology and writing a paper about the debate over the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (see link for summary of the controversial legislation that pits scientists against Native American groups), I am wondering why it is that such a controversy should exist at all. It was as I distracted myself with the internet that I found the above article about an offending coloring book. What strikes me as interesting is that the photograph illustration features two 'White European' children enjoying an idyllic moment of middle class existence. This photograph itself is ironic, and I am curious as to its origin. I suspect (perhaps incorrectly) it can be traced to the marketing of the product itself, rather than originating as a secondary image from a third party. The point here is that this book is ironic on arrival, it was never intended to be 'just a coloring book'.

The irony that Lorentzen attributes to hipster culture (or should we say the hipster condition) comes from the appropriation of "cultural stores of every unmelted ethnicity" where it is "regurgitat[ed]...with a winking inauthenticity". In other words, this coloring book would be quite a different product were it to be found as a legitimate children's activity book in the corner stores of minority neighborhoods throughout America. In reality, this book is not for children at all but is for teenagers and young adults of the "hipster subculture".

I mentioned that before I found this article I was in the middle of writing about the debate between the science community and the native community (keeping in mind that such designations are misleading, for neither are monolithic nor exclusive). I do not believe that both subjects are unrelated. If hipsters "fetishize the authentic", scientists (archaeologists in particular) can be said to "fetishize the past". Material remains of the past such as human bones, mortuary objects, ceramics, and other objects are displayed as "artifacts" in museums and are analyzed and quantified in laboratories. In all of these cases the materials are removed from their original, "authentic" context and are appropriated as objects of study and scientific significance. An online retailer of the 'Gangsta Rap' coloring book describes it with the following: "The juxtaposition of the outlaw image of the rappers with the childlike innocence of a coloring book makes for an instant laugh." There are many things to object to here, one being that this "childlike innocence" is represented by two white middle-class children. Another being that complex sociocultural relations are here boiled down to one big joke. However, this ironic "juxtaposition" is a much easier and obvious objection to make than is the objection to the prohibition of "artifacts" from scientific study.

The values of science permeate Western capitalist culture, for both influence each other, and we are not often asked to question these values. Indeed, the very values of science de-legitimate other ways of knowing. We are taught that scientific knowledge trumps 'traditional' knowledge. ('Traditional' in many ways being a euphemism for 'primitive'). The empirical trumps the spiritual. And so on. The difference is popularly framed as a clash between religion and science, but it goes much deeper than this. For one thing, in the context of indigenous culture versus Western culture, Western religion and science are closely aligned, from a cultural perspective.

From the perspective of Science, and its associated culture, science does not occupy a space alongside other forms of belief and ways of knowing, nor even does it occupy a space above it, in hierarchical fashion. Science, as practiced and understood, claims to exist outside other ways of knowing. It is viewed as pristine and objective, untainted by the ambiguities or 'arbitrary' nature of the supernatural and immaterial. The notion of 'progress' in Western societies inhibits consideration of these issues.

By definition, Science is unable to consider things that are outside the realm of the material; such practice is considered, in different contexts, 'pseudoscience' or 'spiritual'. This segregation of thought and perception has manifested itself at several occasions throughout human history. One of these is land rights issues between indigenous and colonial groups. In these cases, native societies are often denied rights to land because they must appeal to and navigate Western concepts of property. (See Legitimizing Dispossession: The Tanzanian High Court's Decision on the Eviction of Maasai Pastoralists from Mkomazi Game Reserve.) Western-defined legal channels necessarily place native groups at a disadvantage. I will save further commentary and point you to the comedian Eddie Izzard's wonderful "Do you have a flag?" story.

(Transcript:

We built up empires, we stole countries. That's what you do, that's how you build an empire! We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. You just sail around the world and stick a flag in.
"I claim India for Britain!"
And they go, "You can't claim us, we live here! 500 million of us!"
"Do you have a flag?"
"We don't need a bloody flag, it's our country, you bastard!"
"No flag no country! You can't have one. That's the rules that I've just made up. And I'm backing it up with this gun that was lent from the National Rifle Association.")

In similar fashion, native groups in North America who make custodial claims to objects and human remains must prove cultural or ancestral ties to the materials in question. By being forced to pursue these items through 'foreign' administrative routes, native groups are again necessarily disadvantaged. On the other hand, a climate of political correctness and a government sympathetic to political relations over scientific interests often favors the position of native groups. Both scenarios, however, are problematic.

The fundamental issue is that Science is not often perceived to be a 'cultural' tradition. Science is perceived to be 'outside culture'. Yet scientific practice as it exists today has its origins in Western philosophy and is therefore culturally-based. Anthropology and archaeology in their early formal stages (and arguably, in their present stages) have imperial elements that ought to be considered along with any consideration of the fruits of their disciplines. As for the 'Gangsta Rap' coloring book, the assumptions and traditions that place Western science in a superior relationship to indigenous beliefs, archaeologists' 'fetishization of the past', their rational approach to the natural world, and extraction of cultural elements from original contexts (in order to study them), derive from the same traditions and approaches that enable the Western hipster to believe there is no harm in buying an ironic coloring book from a British fashion chain, so they can have an innocent laugh over 48 line drawings of "gangsta rappers".

Depressing Language Trends: An unscientific correlation of prefixes

2010-05-13T00:48:00.000-04:00

sad

2010-04-30T09:23:00.001-04:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/26/AR2010042604308.html

Now Showing

2010-04-13T01:33:00.000-04:00

Obsidian Rock

2010-03-27T15:22:00.000-04:00

2010-03-20T15:30:00.000-04:00

Pam and Horse, 2010

5 Million Worms Massacred in Boston Downpour

2010-03-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

5 Million Worms Massacred in Boston Downpour
BOSTON-- In just 48 hours, an estimated 5 million earthworms...

All Grown Up

2010-03-13T11:33:00.000-05:00

Red Line Subway, Boston, MA
A business man is sitting to my right. His black hair is slicked back, he's wearing shined loafers and a wool overcoat. He's clutching his iPhone in his fist, and with the other he brings his size extra-large iced coffee to his mouth. As he suckles the coffee through the straw I understand why his image appears so grotesque: he looks like a baby!

This Film has been Rated B for Botanically Explicit Material

2010-03-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

Some cultivar epithets may not be suitable for children under 10

The naming of cultivars is an important aspect of cultivated plant taxonomy and it must conform to the Rules and Recommendations of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (the ICNCP, commonly known as the Cultivated Plant Code). A cultivar is given a cultivar name, which is a Latin botanical name followed by a cultivar epithet, mostly in a vernacular language. For example, the full cultivar name of the King Edward potato is Solanum tuberosum 'King Edward'. The 'King Edward' part of the name is the cultivar epithet which, according to the Rules of the Cultivated Plant Code, is bounded by single quotation marks.^[1]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivar

One of the Most Important Tales of All Time

2010-03-05T01:01:00.000-05:00

image by Thorarinn Leifsson, www.totil.com

Crayola Slims

2010-01-30T01:57:00.000-05:00

Every age group has its vice (Marlboros), 2010

Every age group has its vice (M&M's), 2010

Not in my neighborhood!

2010-01-22T00:26:00.000-05:00

On my way back to Somerville Wednesday morning, I stopped at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. The photo above does not really do justice to the beauty of Bates Hall in the research side of the library. As anyone who knows me has surely heard me gush, the room is gorgeous. A giant high-ceilinged hall, filled with the brown rectangles of uniform desks, illuminated by the glow of green banker's lamps. Balancing this is the periphery of the room that consists of all the little colorful slices of books, with their standard primary-color bindings: navy, dark red, green, mustard. The imagination-equivalent of this actual space feels something like sitting by a fireplace surrounded by children's alphabet blocks. When I lived in the neighborhood I would stop by often. There are tiny windows carved between the immense bookshelves, allowing one to peek out on Copley Square. In the winter when everything is white with snow it can be very beautiful. This description leaves out the aural component of the space. It is library-quiet, and the domed ceiling amplifies this hush. When there are cabs and busses fighting for right of way outside, the room is especially gorgeous, filled as it is with warm colors and the absence of strangers' cell phone conversations and the hiss of their iPod headphones.

I stopped on the library steps to smoke a cigarette, and as my back was turned a defeated looking man I had passed earlier approached me to bum a smoke.
"In four weeks I get my housing."
"You don't have anywhere to stay now?"
"No but in four weeks my housing will come through."
"There are shelters..."
"Yeah, I'm staying at the Pine Street Inn but it's kind of a rough crowd over there..."

He told me he had moved to Alabama after his wife died. "Then all my friends died and I got rid of all my memories. I don't look back anymore."

We finished our cigarettes and shot the shit together, then he thanked me and went on his way.

Back in the warmth of my apartment, I was curious to test the limits of my cognitive dissonance by looking to see if Boston's local homeless shelter, the Pine Street Inn, was represented in Generation-Me's online playground, Yelp. Sure enough, I found humanity at its finest: http://www.yelp.com/biz/pine-street-inn-boston.

"I would encourage moving the much needed Pine Street Inn a few miles south to the much less expensive, much more sensible, Roxbury area where there is plenty of bus service to get the residents to wherever they need to be without polluting the South End neighboorhood."

I think by "less expensive" and "more sensible", Thomas R. meant "poorer" and "blacker".

The Orange Revolution: Late-Night Tetris

2010-01-18T01:20:00.000-05:00

Just five years ago in January 2005, the Orange Revolution was raging in Ukraine. (And has now come full circle, but that's another story.) This was a series of protests that followed in the aftermath of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Viktor Yanukovych had just been elected president, but Ukrainians know how to smell a rat. After a corrupt election followed by a rigged run-off vote, massive protests hit the streets. Yushchenko was poisoned, nearly killed, and people were threatening the breakup of the country. Revolution ensued. The crisis resolved peacefully with the inauguration of Viktor Yushchenko on January 23, 2005, after he was declared winner of a second run-off.

But what do poisoned politicians and a country on the brink of civil war have over Team Coco vs Team Leno?

You’d have to be living under the proverbial rock to not have noticed the commotion over NBC’s late-night television lineup that began Monday and continued through the week. As one blog cried with glee, “The great late night war has begun!” The thing reached fever-pitch midweek when an “I’m With Coco” Facebook fan page began popping up left and right in my Facebook feed. It’s creator, 27-year old Mike Mitchell of Los Angeles, has organized protest rallies for tomorrow in L.A., New York, and Seattle. Reminiscent of the Yushchenko-led revolution, Mitchell has asked protestors to show up wearing orange.

Why is it that groups polarize as they do? What makes Conan O’Brien the character some want to root for, while for others Conan is nemesis to their hero Leno? On a normal day, the late-night talk shows arouse about as much passion as does the day’s lunch menu. Late-night TV is a stable presence in our lives, always there, and usually taken for granted. People do not muster much excitement over it. Here in Boston, those emotions are best reserved for Red Sox games.

So why the commotion? For one thing, we live in a time where individuality is not merely expressed but is cultivated. Commercial brands provide the raw material, and social media sites like Facebook provide the platform in its most amplified form. Where people once gathered in halls or inns to drink mead or ale, we now have “I’m a Bud man”. We don’t just use computers, we "are" Macs or PCs. When generic products began to speciate into all the brands we know today, nobody could have imagined that a deodorizing product was anything more than the sum of its parts. But here in the 21^st century we know better, or at least are made to think so. There are men who use Axe and there are men who use Tom’s of Maine, and there are separate species of women to go with each.

This is why Newport-smoking Republicans who listen to The Postal Service confuse us.

Commercial items have so infiltrated our lives that we have adapted to recognize each other socially through the brands that we choose. There is a feedback loop: people seek self-expression through display of garments, products, and preferences, and corporations exploit this. But I am not writing to echo a long-dusty complaint against corporate America. You see, in the history of human evolution, not so much has changed. Archaeologists have found evidence of body adornment in archaic humans who lived 80,000 years ago. Going back further, the mating dance of the Paradisaea apoda, or the male display of peacock feathers betray an instinct that seems to be hard-wired into the behavioral patterns of most animal species on earth. The human male pays for his Tom Ford cologne with Visa and the peacock male pays for his feathers with his biology, but this might be best called a formality. Not so much has changed. It is just that for Neanderthals we speak of “body adornment” and for Generation X we speak of skinny jeans or Chuck All-Stars.

The Conan-Leno war is to some degree an extension of the same impulse. People polarize around a figure with whom they self-identify. If our inner sense of justice was truly straining inside us, we’d be out researching the cases of falsely-accused convicts, we’d be fundraising for refugee organizations. The polarization around NBC’s late-night schedule has not so much to do with justice, nor our personal taste in comedy. People who like Conan O’Brien identify with his quirky and witty comedy and see Jay Leno as nothing more than a glorified goof. People who prefer Jay Leno see Conan O’Brien as a trendy weirdo. But in each case, it is not actual preference that matters but social signaling of that preference.

I'm a Letterman girl myself.

Birth of a Car Salesman

2010-01-15T02:26:00.000-05:00

This evening I watched the PBS program "The Human Spark: So Human, So Chimp". The program was fascinating, but more than being struck by the footage, I was struck by the persistence of human self-obsession, what I might call the self-congratulatory impulse. We have come a long way from the climate that made Darwin hesitate to publish his theory of evolution, fearing a religion-minded retaliation; nevertheless, the homocentrism of Creationist views persists in a secular form: the constant insinuation that Man sits atop a long chain of evolution, heir-apparent to the natural world.

Evolution is commonly conceived as a process of which we find ourselves at its pinnacle, yet this is a fallacy. With 3.5 billion years of earthly life behind us, we can surely expect as inconceivable an amount to come. It is certain that every human being alive on this planet as I write this will not be around to witness the state of life on earth in the next 3.5 billion. And just as certain as this is the understanding that there will indeed be something, though it is incomprehensible to the human mind what this something may be.

There exists a "contemporary ancestor" fallacy, one in which the complexity of evolution is popularly summed up by the phrase "We evolved from chimps." However, this is false. Chimpanzees are regarded as our closest genetic relatives not because we evolved from them but because we have both as a species evolved from a common ancestor. What this common ancestor was is a question science is very eager to answer. But we cannot say we have evolved from chimps. This is akin to claiming your father's brother as your direct ancestor. This is important to remember because it reminds us that every extant (living) species today has just as rightful a claim to "contemporariness" as do we.

Returning to the subject of homocentrism, we see evidence of this in the title of the PBS program: "The Human Spark", and in its host's closing comments. As he stands in front of a chimp habitat at a research center, he remarks, "It is me on one side of the glass, and [a chimp] showing his uncivilized side on the other."

I will here refrain from further commentary and close with a quote from Albert Einstein, who said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." In similar fashion, there are two ways to regard two species separated by a glass wall: One is that only one is a miracle, a shining achievement of evolution, and the other is not. The other is that they are both a miracle.

One sidenote: I was struck by what seemed to me a major flaw in one of the experiments featured on the show: Child subjects were compared with ape subjects in an experimental game/test involving the performance of a series of maneuvers with a box to extract dice (in the case of the child), or a grape (in the case of the ape).

Yet....a die means not nearly as much to a child as a grape means to a chimp. Dice are relatively neutral objects to a child. A grape to a chimp is....FOOD. The experiment sought to test for each species' ability to grasp the idea of "right way/wrong way" in regard to how to perform an action. But what motivation would an ape have to follow a certain order of movement, when a faster way may be available, and that grape is staring him in the face?

Perspective

2010-01-02T01:23:00.000-05:00

They say the space between a nucleus and the rest of its atom is best illustrated by imagining one fly in a sports stadium. And the next atom is another fly in the next sports stadium, and so on. Richard Dawkins invokes this illustration in a TED lecture from 2005. This is an amazing image. One that reminds us of our perceptual limits with deafening clarity.

And we wonder why it is so hard to empathize with a stranger, to walk in the shoes of another. Thinking about the natural world is not dissimilar from empathizing with friends, neighbors, strangers. Both require one to evoke the imagination. To remind us that however things may seem, we are not always privileged to perceive completely how they are.

The world is mysterious and beautiful, and we have not evolved the cognitive machinery to understand it more than one slice at a time. That we have gazed through magnified vision at the very molecular structure of our bodies, that telescopes at this very moment make measurements out of the past, that countless citizens around the world are right now directing countless aircraft through the sky; these things too are like a fly in a football stadium, where the fly is both miracle and speck, and the empty space the unimagined and unimaginable mysteries of the natural world.

Try squinting your eyes

2010-01-01T20:17:00.000-05:00

I've been working on a new project involving Google image searches. Working recently with the page of image results returned for the search phrase "cloudscape", I noticed a curious similarity of the sixth image result to the famous painting L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) by 19th-century painter Gustave Courbet.

Here is the Google image search result:

And here is the comparison:

I pointed this out to my friend Arthur, who confirmed the similarity and thus relieved me of any Freudian second-guessing. I suggested a viewing of a Google image search on the phrase "l'origine du monde", altogether a pretty trippy experience. Check out all the internet meme variations on the image:

(You'll have to click for original and scroll to get full effect)

Dislike Button

2010-01-01T19:37:00.000-05:00

*

* This image represents a thoroughly photoshopped fantasy

Since designers make a living not out of designing things but by designing things well, I have never understood why a “Rename” file menu option has not been included in the normal suite of commands for any application in which you are working on an open project. Perhaps “open project” is the operative word here, I know computer software often returns a blank look of confusion when one asks it to rename an open file. Nevertheless, I find the cumbersome route of renaming via file directory, or via a new or copied file with subsequent deletion of the original, to be one of the small annoyances of life. There has got to be a less circuitous route to renaming a file from "Very few proxemic miscues.doc" to "Wild_Language_Project_6_PROXEMICS.doc". (For lack of less dry example; apologies to readers.) And so I propose the "Rename As" command.

I’ve found there is a learning curve to the Art of Filenaming, one on which I’ve only recently begun to round the peak, largely thanks to my dear boss’ obsessive-compulsive, militant, yet entirely organized approach to filenaming. I have spent many an afternoon in his office at his side, watching as he creates a conceptual scaffolding of file folders and template filenames before actually launching into a new project. As a helpless bystander, especially as the clock ticks excruciatingly nearer to that holy workaday hour, 5 PM, this often has the effect of bringing me to the brink of madness. Nevertheless, I’ve begun to use his approach, and that early investment has definite payoff. Still, I slip up from time to time, and a ⌘R command would be quite the godsend.

Mickey Mouse ancestors

2009-12-30T11:58:00.001-05:00

Mickey Mouse ancestors, ca. 1906

Watching the Dancers, Edward S. Curtis, ca. 1906.

Miscues

2009-11-24T18:17:00.000-05:00

“Help yourself” and “No problem”: Analysis of Greek-English rich points

“Help yourself”

Linguistic signaling of friendliness or hospitality is a potentially volatile area for Greek-English interaction. In general, speakers from these cultural backgrounds will have different attitudes and approaches to these areas. Many of my interactions with my Greek friend have occur over the sharing of food, where I repeatedly and unintentionally offend him by using the common (in English) phrase, “Help yourself!”

In English, “Help yourself!,” when spoken in a positive and rising intonation (and commonly used in the context of a meal), signals friendliness and a desire to share. A Greek speaker, however, is likely to interpret this not as an invitation to share but as a rude spoken gesture meaning “I don’t want to serve you, do it yourself.” He will feel unwelcome, and the English speakers’ intended sentiment will have the opposite effect.

This point of miscommunication may derive from the differences in Greek and American attitudes to hospitality. Greek culture places high value on hospitality, and a hospitable attitude must be enacted, rather than simply signaled in speech. A spoken invitation to share is an insufficient welcome if not accompanied by the physical or gestural act of serving and offering. From this observation, it follows that the linguistic gesture “Help yourself!” is not only an insufficient offer but is also rude, as the very utterance makes it clear that nothing will be physically offered and the guest must help himself.

“No problem”

Another Greek-English rich point is likely to occur during a typical English-speaker’s response to “Thank you”: No problem. A more appropriate response to a Greek person’s thank you would be “My pleasure.” “No problem” in response to a thank you will be perceived by a Greek person as a negative response, as if a problem had been anticipated.

Both “Help yourself!” and “No problem!” are common phrases in English and as such carry a meaning larger than its literal parts; this meaning will be recognized by a native speaker of English in the United States. In regard to “Help yourself!”, an English speaker will understand this utterance to mean that they are being welcomed by their host to share. “No problem!” is meant to connote enthusiasm and polite down-playing of effort. Why would these friendly phrases offend a Greek speaker? The problem of miscommunication here derives from two levels. First, a non-native English speaker is more likely to translate speech literally, and will not have access to the supra-literal meanings that accompany the repertoire of common sayings in a particular language. Second, when the perceived literal meaning conflicts with the cultural values and practices of a speaker, offense is likely to be felt. In both cases “Help yourself!” and “No problem!,” the problem is not one of mismatched sentiment, but of mismatched signal.

Cap'n Crap

2009-10-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

On the news yesterday morning NECN reported that the Connecticut Attorney General is calling for an FDA investigation into a nutrition-labeling campaign called Smart Choices. This campaign is responsible for green “Smart Choice” checkmarks that appear on the packaging of certain food products. The technical meaning of the green checkmark is to signify that “the product is better for you than some of its competitors”, as U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro explains in the Connecticut Post. But this meaning is lost in advertising, and the signal consumers are more likely to receive from the label is “This product is good for you”.

I think the key point here, the point that is so critical and so tricky because it is so subtle, is that there is a world of a difference between what is “better for you” and what is “good for you”. The “better for you” angle is the one taken by food industry, but its ubiquity distracts from the fact it is a relative description. Michael Pollan’s 2007 New York Times article “Unhappy Meals” points out that the two-decades long trend of focusing on specific nutrients over actual “food” is a key factor in distorting ideas about what constitutes healthy eating.

The breakfast cereals Cap’n Crunch and Fruit Loops are some examples of the products labeled as “Smart Choices” under this campaign. I think the problem with this scenario is that “real” food, e.g. the plant foods hailed by Michael Pollan, is left out of the frame of reference completely. Cap’n Crunch might be “better for you” than Cocoa Puffs, and so it is stamped with a green checkmark. But “real foods” don’t get checkmarks because they do not require packaging, and so have no “voice” in the food aisles.

I think that one problem surrounding the situation with these objections or investigations is that their line of attack doesn’t give any credit to the common sense of the consuming public. I believe that most people, if asked point-blank, would agree that Cap’n Crunch is not a poster product of a healthy food. And so complaints against a campaign like Smart Choices run the risk of seeming frivolous; in the media they may come off as a “liberal” attack on “those evil food companies”.

And so I think it is at this point you realize the problem is much deeper and more complex than one of objectionable food labeling practices. For one thing, there is the fact that our society is one in which something like Smart Choices is even possible. According to a Connecticut Post article from 10/16/09, Smart Choices is “a coalition of some of the largest food manufacturers, nutritional experts and scientific researchers.” It is not an outside regulatory board, but a voluntary coalition of food-industry insiders. It is essentially a collective marketing campaign.

Researcher Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity describes his institution’s focus as “The intersection of biology, behavior, environment, the law, and health”, which I think makes the complexity of the food industry-health problems issue apparent. All of these different perspectives/disciplines serve to complicate the arrival at a solution. The cause-and-effect is not simple and linear. If it were, it might be easy to make a change in food labeling practices and be done with it. But why do we even have food labeling practices anyway? What of the cultural and economic conditions that result in food labels, and food products, to begin with? As mentioned before, most people would agree that certain popular food products are not “healthy” in the definitive sense. But how many people have alternatives? Developed-world lifestyles call for quick and easy solutions to life’s problems, and processed food products are quick and easy solutions for people who are pressed for time, short of money, and have mouths to fill. Also, as our food markets fill their shelves with food “products”, and leave the “real”, unprocessed foods in small areas along the store’s periphery, our expectations for what actually constitutes “food” changes. It is very easy to accept chips, ready-made meals, cookies, and “health bars” as food when they are the primary items in the food landscape.

See NECN's news report with video here: http://www.necn.com/Boston/Health/2009/10/15/How-healthy-are-Smart/1255639423.html

See Kelly Brownell’s research profile here (he appears in NECN’s report): http://www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Brownell.html

There is also a relevant and interesting article here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994389,00.html
In it, Kelly Brown discusses a full-page ad for a Frito-Lay product called Munchies Snack Mix that appeared in the Wall Street Journal that reads "Mom and Dad, you'll feel great about offering it to your kids because Munchies Kids Mix is a good source of 8 essential vitamins and minerals, has 0 grams trans fat and meets nutritional guidelines established by [Texas fitness expert] Dr. Kenneth Cooper for sugar, fat and sodium." As the article notes, the snack is a “mix of Cheetos, Doritos, Rold Gold pretzels, SmartFood popcorn, Cap'n Crunch cereal and M&M-like candy.”

The Connecticut Post article is available at: http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_13570458

Michael Pollan’s “Unhappy Meals” article is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html

And the Smart Choices program website itself is pretty interesting, see it at: http://www.smartchoicesprogram.com/index.htm l

Illustration © 2009 Amanda Wild

On evolution and typos

2009-08-27T00:06:00.000-04:00

Seeing correspondences:

"The ancestral message from the dawn of life has grown to an instruction manual containing three thousand million letters coded into DNA. Everyone has a unique edition of the manual which differs in millions of ways from that of their fellows. All this diversity comes from accumulated errors in copying the inherited message."

From Life itself: Its origin and nature (1981) Francis Crick, cited in The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge (1998) Jeremy Narby

In the game variously known as Chinese whispers, Telephone, Broken Telephone, Whisper Down the Lane, Gossip, Arab Phone (from the French Le téléphone arabe), and Stille Post (Silent Post), the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.

From Wikipedia's article on the children's game "Telephone", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers

Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

[This post is no longer available. Please contact a@amanda-wild.com if you would like to receive it privately through email]

Culture and Biology in Black and White

2009-06-25T01:14:00.000-04:00

[Originally posted as a response to a classmate's post about vitiligo, a condition which causes an absence of pigment in the skin]

It has been reported that pop star Michael Jackson suffers from vitiligo. Apparently there are de-pigmentation and re-pigmentation treatment options for the condition, and he chose the former. It's been reported that de-pigmentation treatment was available before re-pigmentation treatment, but I don't have the resources to confirm this. Intuitively it would make sense though-- it is often easier to remove something than to introduce something new (in this case, pigment).

The fact that his skin color has been such a controversial issue is a good example of how skin color, though a product of biology and evolution as much as number of limbs or color of eyes, has taken on huge and problematic cultural meaning.

Taking into account his wealth, and therefore his access to health and cosmetic care, I accept the diagnosis. The fact that others are offended by the change in his skin color speaks to how loaded an issue skin color (and by extension, cultural notions of "race") is for so many human societies. We have to ask- if there is reason to object to the change in his skin pigmentation from dark to light, why is that? What does it say that some are offended? What kind of racism is implied? (from either end- "white" people who connote some kind of social or cultural exclusivity in their objection, and "black" people who connote or define a value of "blackness" by making "sellout" or "traitor" types of accusations/objections).

It's a toss-up

2009-06-25T01:07:00.000-04:00

via SMS:

Me: I'm writing about DNA...drinking Johnnie Walker Black
Joe: I'm throwing out trash and flirting with lesbians

Genes and Butterflies

2009-06-12T00:02:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts on the genome...

I think as lay people we have all been conditioned to think of “genes” as discrete units with a 1:1 correspondence to a trait (even if that trait is polygenic*). I also think the terms/concepts of ‘DNA’ and ‘gene’ have come to have nearly synonymous meaning to the general public. For each, we think of some abstract and discrete unit that determines each sum of our parts. It has been interesting to read in this class how the concept of “gene” is in flux. It seems fairly consistent that genes are defined as the specific protein-coding portion of DNA, but this is confusing because there is a broader connotation of ‘gene’ in general or non-professional discourse. This connotation points to ideas about a specific “thing”, i.e. “the code” that maps out who and what we are in an automatic fashion. Scientific literature reiterates that the word gene refers specifically to the “segment of the DNA that codes for a protein (or a trait)”.

But we learn, and it is pointed out by Natalie Angier in this New York Times article, that there are many more elements and processes at work when it comes to determining who and what we are. She points out instances of RNA behaving like DNA, and the not negligible role of the non-coding, or “gene free’”, regions of our DNA. Virginia Commonwealth University's “Secrets of the Sequence” video on Watson and Crick (The Secret of Life: Discovery of DNA Structure) mentions that, because of prevailing ideas about proteins, Linus Pauling came up with a faulty triple-helix model of the structure of DNA. The VCU video tells us how Watson and Crick came out of left field to correct this model. This video especially conveys the feeling that a focus on proteins distracted from a “true” understanding of DNA (and thus the genome).

But it seems this focus-on-the-proteins bias persists, because the term “gene” has the specific scientific meaning of a protein-coding segment of DNA, yet the term “gene” also carries a more general and popular meaning of “the (biological/genetic) things that are responsible for our makeup” (what is collectively referred to as “the genome” in science). But if only 2.3% of the 3.2 billion base pairs in our genome code for proteins (and are given the distinction ‘gene’), why is there still such a focus on proteins?

One thing we learn very quickly in science is that nature is generally very frugal. That is, it does not contain a lot of superfluous elements. Kind of like the “law of economy” in the principle of Occam’s Razor. That the non-coding 97.7% of our genome is still regarded as somewhat of a mystery makes me feel like there is a need to conceive of it as integrated with what we mean by ‘genes’; after all, it is only by arbitrary scientific convention that we parse the genome and all related biological structures as we have.

In considering the genome, I find the following analogy to be helpful. With regard to weather systems, we can think of thunder, rain, clouds, wind, and lightening as “traits” of weather, analogous to phenotypic traits in biology. We would never lose sight of the fact that any expression of a weather process is the result of many dynamic processes. (Using artistic license for a moment to ignore the fact that there is no DNA in weather systems, it would be ludicrous to claim that a "thunder gene" is what causes thunder...) This makes me think of chaos theory. The Wikipedia article on chaos theory says that certain systems “... may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. Related to chaos theory, the “butterfly effect” refers to the notion that something as small as a butterfly could cause a chain reaction, or ripple effect, on events. In talking about genetics, if we assign the role of the “butterfly” to genes, that is, the role of the “initial condition”, aren’t we dismissing other “conditions” (e.g. “junk DNA”, RNA, etc.) that, if not more “initial” are at least dynamically involved?

Can you apply chaos theory to the human genome? In this case, ‘genes’ would be the “initial conditions” and the final phenotype (and by extension, some behavior and experience) the “chaotic system”. Of course, human biology is not regarded as chaotic, but I think chaos theory lets us consider the role of “junk DNA” and other more “mysterious” parts of the genome more carefully. The theory can be applied even more when we bring a consideration of environment (nature/nurture) into the picture.

* the term polygenic refers to “quantitative traits, such as intelligence and personality traits...affected by many mutations at many genetic loci, each of which is called a quantitative trait locus (QTL).
(Plomin, et al., 1994, cited in Penke, et al., 2007)

(I originally posted this as a contribution to a class discussion forum at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.)

A Study in Contrasts

2009-05-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

This photograph is front and center on today's New York Times. Setting aside it's informative value for a moment, it is incredibly beautiful just by its visual properties. It has a cinematic quality, and the greens, browns, and navy punctuated by Clinton's neutrals and shiny orange tie would make this a gorgeous painting. (Try it, just squint your eyes.)

Turning to its content, I also love the contrast between Bush and Clinton. Here's Bush, dressed in presidential blue, his hands somewhat formal and stiff on both arms of his chair. And here's Clinton, looking affable as ever in his light neutral suit and trademark fluffy (now white) hair. He's draped across the left side of the chair, his arms relaxed. He looks completely at ease, settled into his role as an ex-President. Bush appears to be in limbo, not quite president, but not quite anything else.

These are the people in your neighborhood

2009-05-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

I took these on a recent trip to Philadelphia via Amtrak:

Boston - Philadelphia 1

Boston - Philadelphia 2

Boston - Philadelphia 3

Boston - Philadelphia 4

Boston - Philadelphia 5
Texter spotted from the Amtrak porthole

Boston - Philadelphia 6
Something For The Whole Family!

You don't have to be an ornithologist: Making a case for empathy

2009-05-25T00:03:00.000-04:00

A radio show this morning covered the "Tennessee Coal Ash Spill Devastates Recovering River" story. This would be the 1 billion gallons of "coal ash sludge" that flooded the Emory River and surrounding land in Eastern Tennessee on December 22, 2008. (To give some perspective, the Exxon Valdez oil spill was about 11 million (as opposed to billion) gallons). This is a major thing that I have heard surprisingly little of in the news or even that informal barometer of general interest..."public chatter".

But this is not about the sludge spill story. It is about a casual remark I caught at the end of the story that aired right after. It was a comfort piece about science and nature, following a bird researcher’s quest to capture bird calls. I half-paid attention to the story, but caught at the end the words of the ornithologist being interviewed, "You don't have to be an ornithologist to appreciate..." followed by a remark on the wide appeal of birdsong.
But the full radio story betrayed his interest in the subject matter way beyond that of the casual listener.

And so after I heard this I immediately thought, but that is just it! That is the problem! You do have to be an ornithologist! And so is the case with so many of the "challenges and problems" human beings face. Who has time these days to appreciate what does not concern them? Add to this the vast media landscape that is unavoidably instructive rather than descriptive, and you begin to see that the prognosis for understanding and empathy is not good. During moments of national or international tragedy or crisis, we hear familiar sentiments to the effect of the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (President John F. Kennedy's words in West Berlin in 1963), "We are all Americans" (the words of French President Nicolas Sarkozy following the 9/11 terrorist attacks), and the unfortunate and uninspired "We are all Georgians", declared by U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain in August 2008 during the Russia-Georgia conflict. This verbal template is oft-invoked to convey a sentiment of understanding and solidarity. It is a worthwhile sentiment, but how often is it really, truly felt? And can it be really, truly felt? We all nod our heads when we hear these words in speeches, yet I do not find this willingness to identify with and imagine the experience of others in daily life.

Last Thursday, driving towards 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, I passed a man standing in the median of a busy road, holding a "Homeless And Hungry" sign. His appearance itself was a cliché, and the recognition of this visual cliché (and more significantly, societal cliché) was disturbing to me. How many people passed by that day, barely registering it on their mental radar beyond "Oh, a homeless man". As in: "Homeless Man". We all know what those are. Those. Them. And how many passed him by the day before? Or the day after? And on, and on? I also wondered what he thinks in his head to stand there and experience so much indifference.

On the train ride from Boston to Philadelphia two days earlier, I had been upset to realize that a man seated across from me in the café car had not had the courtesy to mention I had dragged my scarf onto the floor after I slid out of my booth to photograph from the window in the booth behind him. This was a small annoyance that pointed to the state of social relations but did not do me any actual harm. But the thought of hundreds, maybe thousands of people passing by a man who is "homeless and hungry" seems harmful indeed.

I thought how each person passing by reinforced the larger pattern of the next person, and the next, passing by. I had a small fantasy of one person screeching their brakes, jumping out of the car, exclaiming "What’s going on here?!". Not that dramatic of course, but this was just the cartoon version in my fantasy. But what if people took these images with surprise? What if it seemed completely unacceptable to pass this person by? Not unacceptable as such that we avert our eyes, but unacceptable in the sense of sticking out, seeming immediately and intolerably amiss. To give a hard example, if we saw a man bleeding on the street, who would hesitate to intervene? But somehow a homeless man with a sign we’ve all seen before seems part of the landscape, familiar. We do not often conceive it in this way, but our reaction affirms that he belongs there. As much as stop signs and traffic belong there.

I felt sad and helpless to pass by, I had another fantasy of being able to be this person to slam the breaks, look him in the face, suggest he come with me to rest in my home , or share a meal. But of course this is not “practical”, and being young, small, and female, it would also be wildly inappropriate. But to consider again this phrase "You don't have to be an ornithologist...", I feel that you do need to be an ornithologist, you do need to be yourself homeless, you do need to be a citizen of Gaza, you do need to know what the sound of a car bomb going off is like...and so on, and so on. And because the person who suffers is always a minority, the chances are good that in the face of suffering--from the small scale to large--most people will continue to go about their daily business. I do not know how to solve the world's problems but I believe that a willingness to imagine and really, sincerely consider the lives of others is the easiest, smallest start. We are enculturated by our social spheres as well as our media to recognize the “templates” of “Homeless”, “Muslim”, “Gay”, “Weirdo”, “Bitch”, “Fool”, etc., but each of us is complicated and complex behind these societal clichés. Each of us has arrived at this public identity from a long trail of families, friends, strangers, hopes, and struggles. Do we really believe that each of these templates legitimately separates us from someone who could have been our friend, our sister, our mother, our husband? Do we really believe that people who do not offer us glamour by their friendship, success by their partnership, and power by association are not worthy of our attention, our kindness, our curiosity?

We can chalk things up to “survival of the fittest”, but if fitness is determined by skewed values, values that instruct us to step on each other instead of being open, curious, and reciprocal, what can we say of the fitness of our society as a whole?

Some thoughts on translation (taken from 2004-era sketchbook)

2009-04-13T21:23:00.000-04:00

SYSTEMS OF NOTATION

V S

WHAT IS NOTATED

sheet music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . music

puzzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . answers

punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . serious or silly

Benesh notation (dance notation) . . . . . . . . . . . dancing

algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?

alphabets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thoughts

maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . places

costumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fun identity

uniforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . serious identity

"Preramble" to a letter to Jenny

2009-03-28T02:00:00.000-04:00

Internet Debris and a Business Model About Nothing
This started as an email to a friend, when I realized that such general musing probably ought to be addressed generally.

So I'm typing a message to a friend, specifically a response to a Facebook message, but I'm typing the response in Gmail as a reply from the "John Doe sent you a message on Facebook" email notification since I don't feel like logging into Facebook. And I deleted the "noreply@facebookmail.com" address so to not hit send by accident and inadvertently send some private thoughts to the dumping ground of erroneously addressed emails on Facebook's server. And then I started thinking about allllllllllllll the "noresponse@companyname.com"-type addresses and started wondering about alllll the random emails that might come through there. Unlike physical things, it's not likely that someone might just "happen upon" the cache of messages one day. In my Archeaology studies, you know, someone discovers some fossils and some stone flakes and you match the artifacts to the sediment layer and start piecing together a story... not gonna happen with "Internet debris"!

So I was thinking it would be a cool project to gather all these emails and give them some cultural space somewhere. Although in reality it's not gonna happen because I'm sure there are privacy issues galore, and besides, all the emails are probably boring anyway, like things that just ended up going to the right address once the sender realized their error.

But still...you know how there are "typo web addresses"? Like google.co or comcst.net, and some people have had the foresight to register those addresses, or domains. Actually it is interesting, I was just typing "goooogle.com, gooooooogle.com", etc into the web address bar, and it looks like Google has registered some "extra 'o' " addresses but some cheap ad companies got hold of others-- like o's to the 5th "decimal" still point to Google, but o's to the 9th point to a cheap ad site advertising Russian brides. Google to the 7th "o" points to a simplified:

Then there is the cryptic http://goooooooooogle.com, which points just to a web site displaying the phrase "It works!"

Anyway, I could easily get wayyyy ahead of myself here, and I already have, but the point is that it would be interesting to somehow make some use out of all the "lost" messages that fly over the Internet. Will have to make some major internet company connections or gain some major artist clout before I can get to that one...

Anyway I did get very much ahead of myself but there is something really fascinating and I have no idea if it interests you, but you should read this story at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/ . This guy named Kevin Ham had the "genius", you could say, to do things like make deals with the country of Cameroon over their web domain/traffic...Cameroon's designated web domain "suffix" (I have no clue what the technical term is, but you know, stuff like ".biz", ".org", etc) is ".cm" which is a pretty common typo. So this guy plugs in all these ads to these "typo locations" and makes a fortune out of the web ad sales that are generated. He struck a deal with Cameroon to give them part of the profits. So one guy with a genius idea is now funding part of the Cameroon government's national budget..... crazy, no?! I appreciate genius like that, even if it makes your head spin a little, and you wonder if it is for the better or for the worse. It is the genius to anticipate human behavior and put a value to that, a value that actually generates wealth out of, essentially, nothing. This guy is like the Seinfeld of businessmen. I can picture the meetings with venture capitalists-- "So, tell me about your business model..." "Well, it's a business model about nothing..."

Armchair Traveler x 1000

2009-02-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

So, via Google Earth tonight, I've so far "traveled" to the Lincoln Memorial, two of my old apartments, and the National Zoo in Washington, DC, United States; the Franklin Park Zoo in Massachusetts, USA; Nairobi, Kenya; Beijing and the Great Wall in China; St Petersberg, Russia; Modo-ri, Bukdo-myeon, Ongjin-gun, Incheon, South Korea (Modo Island Sculpture Park, which I am utterly tantalized by); Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and finally Sibera.

By "travel" I mean scroll around a visual depiction of the world via a computer application. While lacking the nitty gritty of actual travel, I have to say that the sense of space one gets from doing this is remarkable. Keep in mind I own a television that has a whopping depth of 26 inches, own a battered cell phone that has never been "upgraded", and have a microwave-less kitchen. I am 28 years old in the year 2009, so this is not owed to a persistence of old habits.

To zoom out of Washington DC, recognize the familiar shape of the United States and feel a pang of patriotism, to scroll across the Atlantic, to get a sense of the enormity of Africa, to whiz by India and feel another pang, this time of regret at passing by the detail that could be zoomed in upon....... I believe the appropriate response to all this is "Holy f*ckin' sh*t".

Below are selected zoom images focusing in on an area in India which I got to simply by chance. "Malabar Hill", a neighborhood in the city of Mumbai (India) which Wikipedia defines as "an extremely upmarket residential area". Look-- swimming pools!

You smell what I mean?

2009-02-07T03:46:00.000-05:00

Some of you may know, and some of you may not, that in June of 2008 I lost my sense of smell. This evening walking from one room to another I stopped dead in my tracks as the claustrophobia of this condition hit me suddenly and completely. I'm not writing to be descriptive of what this is like, as I fear both my ability to articulate it accurately, as well as the social repercussions of dwelling on a topic that most will be lucky to never understand.

I'm writing because realizing that I felt "claustrophobic" made me wonder if there is anything from the wonderful world of medicine that may alleviate that aspect of this condition. Which then made me realize that I would have to clarify this type of "claustrophobia" as "metaphoric claustrophobia". Claustrophobia is generally and acceptably defined as "the fear of enclosed spaces". I have to delve into a brief description of why lacking (and specifically, losing) sense of smell results in a sensation of claustrophobia. To describe it one way, it agrees with the general definition of claustrophobia if one wants to consider one's own body as an enclosed space. But more descriptively, and personally, to not smell means to lose the constant update on environment that smell provides.

One closes the door to one's apartment and notices the distinction between the smell of "home" and the smell of "hallway". You then walk outside into the outdoors and are greeted by the smell of today's air. Is it rain? Is it crisp Autumn? Is there a hint of Spring? Will snow be coming? Was there an animal nearby recently? Was the trash not picked up? Has a car recently screeched its tires on the road?

You then continue to the subway station and, though maybe unappealing, feel comfort from the assured sense of space that the smell of the air provides. Like "subway smell, here we go...". An instant smell-snapshot in your mind of the most common denominator attached to the people of the city as they come and go: the various smells left behind by people, trash, and dirt. It may not be pleasant but it is the one and only smell of the city. Then, on the subway car, you may know that one corner of the car should be avoided because it smells of urine. Or you are tipped off that the man who has just sat down next to you may be a potential problem (alcohol), or perhaps (and harmlessly) living in unfortunate circumstances ("homeless" smell). Or

--This is too hard to write about, I will try it again later.

From Bird Strike to Theory of Everything in 20 Steps

2009-01-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

(Top 20 reasons nothing has been ticked off my Saturday morning To-Do list)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophic_failure
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_(media)
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Restaurant (Seinfeld episode)
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pony_Remark
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_crash
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_crash#Mathematical_theory_and_stock_market_crashes
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_(geometry)
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_definition
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry#As_a_description_of_physical_reality
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_Of_Everything

aaaaaeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaahhhhh

BOS-PHL

2009-01-17T05:30:00.000-05:00

Photo from recent Boston-Philadelphia trip via Amtrak. I guess this is a sketch for a bigger project I hope to do. Would like to film the thing in one straight shot, to be displayed like a six-hour "painting" in "real time".

Click for larger version and scroll to the right to get the idea. (Works better in larger format but Blogger doesn't seem to allow this.)