Workshop fail and remedy

I was at a university workshop today called “Media Suppression: Life and Livelihood”. The purpose of this workshop was to debate on topics such as “digital rights contracts, libel chill, the Internet in totalitarian states, and legal recourse for the torture, kidnapping, and murder of journalists.

While there was many intellectual people debating and explaining their field of work and study, there was some signs of ‘career-centrism’, whereas a professional journalist got straight-out upset over someone asking about the possibility of the social media (blogs, twitter, etc) contributing to widening the public knowledge. The way that I understood the question he was referring to the way hackers and members operating on the inside of certain organization, can contribute information without going through the traditional media channels. While completely ignoring the question the receiver of the question uttered “are you serious?”, in a tasteless and loathsome manner. In other words, Media Suppression workshop, for the loss.

But as a academic refresher, there is someone who does actively engage in public debates and lectures, with a profoundly open mind, that I admire. The man (or should I say Man) is Noam Chomsky. Here’s a lecture he called “The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism”.

Chomsky also has a wide online database of articles and interviews, and it is great how all his talks and texts are so available online. You can check out a wide range of his stuff here:

http://www.chomsky.info/

News

I just added a RSS feed to my blog. After a minor writing drought, I am adding a couple of new sociology related posts here by the middle of this month. I might also review the layout and add in some stronger colours. So stayed tuned.

Time

The Word 'Time' Illuminated at the Toronto City Hall

How could I ‘not’ upload this. During the Nuit Blanche art festival in Toronto, a giant light set up at the City Hall building illuminated four letter words continuously throughout the entire night, and by pure chance I managed to take a picture as it stood ‘Time’. And it made me think of the psychedelic environment that you would only associate with something Floydian (Pink Floydian, that is).

“far away

across the field

tolling the iron bell

calls the faithful to their knees

to hear the softly spoken magic spell…”

Self-Sufficency Framework and Surface-Centrism

I just thought of the most mindblowing social theory on how government takes away the means to self-suffice from the working class, whereas they could easily organize and assemble the necessary resources to maintain themselves if it hadn’t been for the bureaucratic tendencies that alienates the working class. Will write up a pretty descent theoretical framework soon with dealing with some clear pragmatic issues.

Pondering of the week: Do we [humans] suffer from surface-centrism? Just let it simmer in your brain. Some facts about the aquatic terrain: it covers 71.11% of the Earth’s surface, while land only covers the remaining 28.89%. Less than 1% water is available for direct human consumption.

Why the Hydrogen Cell Car Will Never Be A Viable Alternative to the Combustion Engine

The Hydrogen Cell Car has been promoted as the most viable alternative to the combustion engine and fossil fuel based car technology. The electric car created traction after the California Air Resources Board demanded that all car manufacturers would have to produce a set quota of cars that did not have any form of exhaust, in other words: electric cars. After initial testing the electric car gained a small following, even though advertising and consumer awareness was both at a minimum. However, the electric car soon faced its death after lawsuits from major car companies such as GM and the cowardice of the California Air Resources Board whereas their complete biased inability to stand up against financially-strong corporations provided both the hammer and the nails to close the casket for electrical cars, before it even had the chance to prosper. The most interesting part of the history of the electrical car was the purchase of the highly efficient electrical car battery, originally patented by Stanford R. Ovshinsky, by Texaco.

The development of the Hydrogen Cell Car was shortly after initiated, but even after years of development, it is still considered to be a conceptual car, hence not viable to be put out on the market within the foreseeable future. The Hydrogen Cell Car is the true scapegoat, a tool used by General Motors, in order to generate a facade that generates an appearance of social responsibility.

The fallacies of the Hydrogen Cell Car can be neatly compacted into five points, as explained by Joseph Romm who is working for the U.S. Department of Energy. These core points are:

1) The current cost of a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car is $1,000,000 U.S dollars.

2) There is not enough room for hydrogen fuel in cars 3) Hydrogen fuel is expensive, many multiple times that than the price of fossil fuels

4) The infrastructure needs to support the use of such cars, with fuelling stations, in order for it to be a convenient choice.

5) The current competing technologies must not improve

(Source for List: Who Killed The Electric Car? – Documentary)

A Condensed List of Hopeful Future Factors in the Development of Zero Emission Vehicles that I am hoping to expand on at a later date (list will be expanded in the future):

- Technology developed independently from people benefiting from the fossil fuel trade.

- Th!nk cars

- Hybrid Electrical Cars

Life in Monkey Island Motion

FYI: This post has an estimated 74% chance of flying over your head.

<Use> chair

<Pick Up> laptop

<Pick Up> power plug

<Use> power plug with laptop

<Use> ‘connected’ laptop with desk

<Use> keyboard

The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the games that could have been considered lost with together with a properly functional attention span within the gaming community. Something that became especially prevalent and horribly obvious in the new revised version of The Secret of Monkey Island because of the added “hint” ability. Simply press “H” and hooray, you are able to progress where you would usually leave the game after an hour of frustration and come back somewhat recharged and amped with motivation, able to figure out the the mother flipping way to get past those killer piranha poodles in front of the Governor’s mansion. And yeah, putting the yellow flower on the stewed meat might not have seemed like the most obvious choice, and it was certainly somewhat puzzling, yet oddly rewarding, when finding out that it actually worked to put the piranha poodles to “sleep”.

I guess what these revised additions really imply about contemporary gaming is that being stuck in sometimes illogical puzzles (or too obvious ones) is a thing well kept within the minds of the nostalgic gamer, who remembers a time where the story lines wasn’t driven by the same speed of progression as one would expect from contemporary influences in big budget Hollywood films. And look, I just called it “film”. Wonder how long that word is going to be around.

<Close> mindspace

A Message To The Masses

Clapton is God.

Excessive Anti-Existential Illogical Probability of Life Philosophy

FYI: I don’t actually believe this and I am clueless about mathematical representations.

All right, the conclusion that is to be taken from the following premises and propositions is that our individual existence is unlikely, unprobable, and highly illogical; therefore there must be a system of reincarnation to cycle our life spans.

Now for the joyful debative premises

Take into consideration that we are living within infinities. In our existence there if an infinite quantity of space, mass, and time. Now, if we were to materialize all the time that has existed within an eternity into marbles we would be on the assumption that we would have an infinite amount of marbles.

Now, if we would materialize the human life span of an average of about 76 years, this amount of time would be represented by one single marble.

Our individual conciousness is occurring right now. The chances that this is actually occurring if you take into consideration our role as one single marble within an infinite number of marbles is completly unprobable. Any estimation in mathematics that would calculate the probability would be written down as something like 1 / 0.000000000000000 (infinite amount of “0″s), which would conclude that the probability for our existence is simply 0.

Now, in order for us to maintain our conciousness in this present moment in time, the logical assumption would be that there is a cycle, which enables us to maintain a constant state of conciousness. However, since we are aware of our birth and our eventual death, there must be a form of physical reincarnation, without sparing the mental attributes of humans (our could also be applied to animals).

Hence the conclusion is that our existence is too unlikely and illogical, hence rendering the most logical reason for our constant conciousness as that of our physical bodies going through a process of reincarnation.

EDIT: A thought that occurred to me later on: if we can apply the lack of probability for the existence of our current individual conciousness, we can also assume the lack of probability of humanity itself, or the Earth itself, as null, rendering part of the conclusion false.

The Neutrality of Whiteness

I have this slight feeling that its becoming more and more taboo to talk about racism…

We integrate a vast amount of racial imagery into our society. This imagery basically serves to consititute the difference amongst people. while being of a non-white “ethnic persuasion” one can expect there to be studies into the area of their social standing, mostly because of differences of social and economic factors. However, the most ignored area of studies is on that of whiteness. in our society whiteness is considered to be the “normal” ethnicity, and being white constitutes an ability to represent moral neutrality, often reflected in the domination of white people in government and administration. White is not considered to be a ethnic group, however is represented as simply “human”. Due to the social neutrality of whiteness the chosen educational paradigm in schools and institituions is that of white, hence white knowledge is passed down, because of its assumed neutrality. In class rooms situations where say black or aboriginal texts and writings are presented they are condensed and establlished as “the other” because of the deviance from normal discourse. Michael Moore makes a good point in his book “stupid white men”, whereas he points out the white history of aggression, violence and promotion of suffering, as well as their dominance in large corporations and governments putting people out of work and sending them to wars, however other ethnic groups are still targeted in the media, solely because it is no longer considered to be unnatural. It is important to keep in mind that in the U.S. American black citizens still make 60% less than an average white person does a year, which is the same percentage as they did in 1880.

Approaches to Power

EDIT: I decided to take this post down. To many searches leading here with kids looking to score an easy homework assignment.