you might think that western art might include all the great traditions of ... but it turns out that the western art fair this weekend on Courthouse Square in the old downtown of Prescott consists of bronze cowboys, landscapes with mesas and rivers with teepees and warriors, horses, wildlife in either whimsical or mysterious homogenic poses, chubby barefoot Indian babies, bronze Indian maidens, buffaloes in marble, and all the artists with few exceptions are very white and waspish. the distinctions from booth to booth come almost purely in technique - pastels on white paper, oils, pastels on black paper (in the tradition of Elvis on black velvet being sold in abandoned gas station parking lots somewhere), bronze casting, pencil, charcoal, a few acrylic works, very few traditional prints (litho, monotype, engraving, or mezzotint). depressing lack of originality. some excellent technical works, a few oddities, but otherwise a rather crass and predictable presentation of uninspired cultcha. hmmmm.

the yucca (Agave americana) that I transplanted to a spot outside the back door as a fist-sized stub about a decade ago has reached three feet across with spined leaves that could easily impale any hearty mammal. to avoid the most direct damage, I trim off the sharpest part each time I am here. anyway, the plant is about to do it's thing. that is, shoot a 12-to-18-foot (4-to-6 meter!) center stalk that culminates in flowers and ultimately dried seed pods. sometimes called a Century plant this is a mis-nomer as it takes only (in this case) a decade to reach this point. the entire plant then dies off. not absolutely sure this is about to happen, but looking at the image you might see the yellow patches on the spines. it appears that the plant is drawing its energy inward, away from the spines in order to shoot the stalk up. either that or the plant is dying. we'll see. was considering putting a web-cam on it as it is just outside my office window...

back to the thesis application preparation. the following is, in a way, a utopian case that forgets the holistic and distributed system that communication and its impulses arises in:

We have thus established the basis in man for the simplest element in his communication: namely, the communication of man with man by the immediate use of language, when two men are face to face with one another... this capacity is not intrinsically restricted to the immediate presence of the individual, for we have many means to carry this tool of communication to the ends of the earth. -- Norbert Weiner

while the premise is intrinsically true, Weiner neglects (for example) the reality of the infrastructure assembly process to undertake the real movement of language across those vast distances. those infrastructures do not materialize themselves. they are specific and real social constructs. assemblages that social systems expend liberally on to assemble and maintain. therefore, while the mediation of abstracted language can be shuffled around, the human participating in the system of shuffling does, somehow use some real energy in order to participate. while this energy, considered on a limited scale may seem minor or non-existent -- i.e., someone hands me a phone to make a trans-continental call, which I undertake with an expenditure of a marginal amount of embodied energy -- someone, somewhere, as part of the larger social system, collected vast amounts of energy from the distributed individuals that make up the system and assembled the entire electrical/physical infrastructure of the telecom system.

meaning in/at the car wash. finding meaning from employment or perceived fiscal worth. bad direction to go in. moving around town, Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. -- Viktor Frankl on the phone, Bill suggests Frankl's logotherapy concept of finding meaning in life. at any rate, Jeb and Dave of Deep Canyon, the painters, have created meaning by protecting houses with thick layers of vinyl acrylic latex stuff. took them 5 days total to do the house. whilst not disturbing the nest with 4 pinky-sized hatchlings in the house finch's nest in a wreath next to the front entry.

driving around town, spotted a van with huge signs on the side and back with the texts: IN ISREAL JEWS TORTURE CHILDREN and SUPPORT PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS and THE JEWS ARE THE PROBLEM. the US is a complicated place. freedom of speech and all that. but somehow it is offensive. but combined with my knowledge from Elias, a Palestinian Jew who was representing the PLO viewpoint in Iceland. the whole situation seems endlessly tragic. including the whole historical and present US role.

of course, it's just a full moon, but the estimation of Light pollution is ... depressing -- what is pollution other than the direct re-formation of natural energy forms by the active intervention of human beings? a (theoretical) natural system without humans (very theoretical!) will be in dynamic balance with all elements, so when there is a concentration that is mortal to the local system, it will seek a balance. question is, when the system is skewed to the extreme of unbalance, what will the re-balancing be like? gradual, as history has gone, or, like the tsunami, sudden and catastrophic. and, I wonder, who cares? in the face of daily life, is it really possible to pretend a care for a macro-scaled system, what does it mean to care for the world? is it perhaps merely an annoyance combined with the leisure to contemplate the abstracted concept of the world?

not spending enough time out there. too much in here. and working on the house -- the painters have been here for two days, prepping things, and I've put in 5 days of prep before that. mostly removing the damaged 3-inch poly foam insulation on the exterior of the foundation. several hundred square feet, I hope it does not impact the energy efficiency of the house overall, though it's stupid to even think that -- removing that much insulation will affect the thermal efficiency, period. it will. question is, how much. given the particular heating system for the house -- the solar heat circulation system -- simple but very effective. the house can survive the winter with interior temps dropping only to the 60's F without additional heating unless there are three days of cloud, then the wood-burning stove can be kicked in. one cord for the entire winter tops. but the insulation, I'll re-install that on the interior wall over what is already there, especially the north wall. hmmmm.

Phrynosoma solare, a horned toad which is not a toad, but a lizard. this cute fella likes to chow on ants. found him hanging out on the driveway, so I moved him over to the basalt outcropping nearby, watched his colors change. constantly aware that the abundant rains of this past winter have altered the ecosystem substantially. more bugs, more and fatter lizards, birds, plants, everything. very interesting.

For all of us, the arrangements, devices and machinery of technology are to a greater or lesser extent indispensable. It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices; they even challenge us to ever greater advances. But suddenly and unaware we find ourselves so firmly shackled to these technical devices that we fall into bondage to them.

Still we can act otherwise. We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go of them at any time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature.

But will not saying both yes and no this way to technical devices make our relation to technology ambivalent and insecure? On the contrary! Our relation to technology will become wonderfully simple and relaxed. We let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside, that is, let them alone, as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent on something higher. -- Martin Heidegger. sheesh, there is a silky fabric covering the white underbelly of National Socialism replete in his texts.

lizards are twice as fat as normal. and twice as slow. their usual lightning-scurry is replaced by a wheels-spinning shuffle. they are gorging on bugs of which there is a profusion from the relatively abundant rains this winter. this is a dorsal view of an Ornate Tree Lizard (Urosaurus ornatus) that somehow got caught under some foam panels I was moving around. I was unhappy that he was dead. at first I thought he was faking, as I had just seen him alive a few minutes before. he had no apparent damage, and with the colors on his belly -- a place you never see when they are alive, I popped him right on the scanner and made a 2400 bpi scan. both sides. incredible beast. and such a feeling of the body. pity he died, though.

and now the Nile Virus season begins.

fat lizards everywhere, and snakes. now run across several snakes around the house, one just outside the back door today. and a miniscule rattler out on the Mint Wash trail.

Friday the thirteenth. six hounds do a four part panting harmony: I'LL DO ANYTHING FOR A COOKIE! the day passes with nothing remarkable happening. reading more books than I can adsorb effectively. doctoral considerations take precedence, though. all networks that are deployed within social systems rest on a platform of electromagnetic phenomena. from the electric power system that underlies the entire social structure of the developed world, to the simple apprehension of visual cues in a conversation.

Parts are seen to be in immediate connection, in which their dynamical relationships depend, in an irreducible way, on the state of the whole system (and, indeed, on that of broader systems in which they are contained, extending ultimately and in principle to the entire universe). Thus, one is lead to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and independently existent parts ... -- David Bohm

Genes provide for one brain component with precise structure, and for another component in which the precise structure is to be determined. But the to-be-determined structure can be achieved only under the influence of three elements: (1) the precise structure; (2) individual activity and circumstances (in which the final say comes from the human and physical environment as well as from chance); and (3) self-organizing pressures arising from the sheer complexity of the system. The unpredictable profile of experiences of each individual does have a say in the circuit design, both directly and indirectly, via the reaction it sets off in the innate circuitries, and the consequences that such reactions have in the overall process of circuit shaping. -- Antonio Damasio

many inputs. but need to get back out into the wild-ness for a time. there is a new moon, though, and by the time I get out, it will be well on the way to full, which though it is magical to be in the silver brilliance of nights, I prefer the full darkness and moving about by starLight alone.

considering the next step on the doctoral front. to begin assigning topics and assembling chapters.

The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new. -- Norman O. Brown

mowing lawns, in the expanse of time that is the summer of childhood. the noise, wonder deafness isn't a factor these days, the smell, well, the smell of cut grass. it is the smell of summer. that and watermelon in the lightning-bug twiLight. but the mowing, the lawn. this projection on nature, this habitus of class, measure of English rectitude. social status determined by the status of greenery around the house. manor or tract suburbia. essence of control. and with this control of the landscape comes subtle and not-so-subtle shifts. consider, for example, as environments shift to ever more homogenous conceptualized ideals, species which are more adaptable to that particular ideal explode in number, while more specialized species are squeezed out. this is why there is a proliferation of 'pest' species -- deer, raccoons, starlings, Canada geese -- the so-called "Wal-Mart" effect. all the fuel, time, and effort used in primping lawns would be better used for (at least) simply defining (controlling) a small area of the total available land used for housing clusters, with the rest used as natural environmental buffers. developers generally hate this concept. rather using 1-2 acre lot grids evenly spaced over the entire available land. ah well, seems there is no limit to the greed and avarice of said developers, so, what to do? so far, if what I have seen in the West in the last 30 years is any measure. it's hopeless. more humans, more pressure on the environment. period.

finally got around to reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, an overview of the New Physics. it's somewhat dated, but still carries a nice historical narrative with observations on the uncertainty of the whole thing that is being dealt with. watching a video (produced in Japan), on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. speaking with the Dalai Lama and others. all of whom were dying. phone call from Nick. catching up. possible travel plans to Missouri; also talked to Greg, possible travel to Seattle and BC or Moab. proposals off to NIFCA for a curators position. and waiting on the doctoral proposal. reading more than I have in the last years, on average. wider, and deeper. note-taking. resonating with stylistic text forms across academia, science, philosophy, technology, engineering, and esoterics. but unemployed at the same time. dog-sitting, using the riding-mower to cut some of the lawn, joined the YMCA since the college pool is closed now. getting used to a different regimen. lifting in the cybex room. sore today. getting my sunglasses replaced finally, ebay for a pair of artcraft round gold frames since they no longer make them. gotta call Kate at IBM to see about her open source connection. what else? weeding. and many emails to Europe for a fall tour. and the need to get back out to the desert on the moonless nights.

paint-by-number. reminds me of summers at Aunt Mary's house, she loved doing paint-by-number kits. now she is an excellent painter, starting to free-style after retiring to Florida.

how does the assumption of constant 110 volt ac (220 volts in Europe) electricity supply to a connected device bear on the efficiency of the engineering design process? this is an issue driven not by absolute power/energy consumption, but by the economics of the same. a subtle difference, but something to look at in more detail. the drive for engineering optimization has also been strapped into the Market. although there are hints that this process is built into engineering as a social construct. inseparable from economics.

The effectiveness of the leakage reduction depends on how precisely the behavior of cache line can be tracked. While turning off a cache line later than the last use can waste energy consumption, prematurely turning off a cache line can incur energy/performance penalties when it needs to be accessed. Thus, deciding when to turn off a cache line is very important. In this work, we utilize the knowledge about the state of an object in its life span to direct the turning off cache lines. In particular, we identify different states in the lifetime of an object, when it is created, last-used, becomes garbage, and is collected by the garbage collector. It must be observed that the cache lines containing only objects beyond their last use waste leakage energy. Our analysis in this paper reveals that this wasted leakage energy contributes to a significant portion of data cache energy consumption. (G. Chen, et al, 2003)

note, these terms used in systems engineering -- asset, communication, coordination, disaster, economics, engineering, feedback, management, methods, organization, planning, policy, project, protection, recovery, responsibility, schedule, technique -- are adequately defined by Webster. the rest of the terms in the Certified Software Development Professional Examination specs glossary, have discipline-specific meanings: the exclusivity of language in the priesthoods...