mugispace comic

Here is a new mugispace comic from our man in Japan.

Fun cartoon

I stumbled upon this great little cartoon from 1948 warning against the evils of communism.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! have been very clever and created something called Pipes, which is an interactive data aggregator and manipulator that lets you mashup your favorite online data sources.  Iain spent about five hours today (admittedly spent mostly working out how it works)  setting up a politics feed that grabs articles relating to politics from a load of different sources.  A version of this feed is now in the side bar, but the full version with a nifty time frame setting is here.  The potential is massive, and we (Iain) will continue to play.

Puzzle

Here is a puzzle that my friend Iain sent me. He solved it in 12mins, it took me a little over 20. If you think you have solved it comment with your email address and I will send the answer. Good luck!

“Einstein wrote the following riddle. He said that 98% of the world could not solve it. But several NIEHS scientists were able to solve it, and they said it’s not all that hard if you pay attention and are very patient. Give it a try:

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage. Other facts:
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.

The question is: WHO OWNS THE FISH?”

More fun weapons…

Now its the Brits’ turn to get a scary new weapon. Check out this enhanced blast device, it’ll take the breath right out of your lungs!

And on a lighter note…

I found this awesome website today.  The guy is a genius!

Modern Living 

Hyper what?

Its been a fair few days since my last post – my dissertation has been sapping all my energy! Thankfully that is coming to an end and I begin to think about different things.

Yesterday, as I was watching an interesting documentary about the creation of the German national myth in the years leading up to WWII, I had some thoughts on the link between reality and events. I have been reading Baudrillard on and off for the past few weeks and his notion of hyper-reality has really stuck with me. But it was a chapter about Hannah Arendt’s view of theory that really got me going. The following is for my own sake as I think through these concepts, but feel free to comment!

Once a theory of something comes into being, that theory in essence begins to create reality for those who adopt it. It is not events themselves that create our sense of reality, it is the discourse and theory that surrounds those events. So it may be the case that the theoretical paradigm events are interpreted though that gives them their historical significance. WWII German ideology is a good example of this, as once the theory of German supremacy was proposed, all events – be they contemporary anthropological discoveries or re-interpreted historical actions – were viewed through that theoretical prism and a fitting reality was constructed.

Events only gain meaning through perception, making only subjective statements about events possible. David Luban sums it up beautifully:

“Historical truth” is simply the name for the kaleidoscope that successively reveals and dissipates these patterns. All of which is to say: there is no fact of the matter in politics, only a plurality of perspectives.

But certain perspectives can be given more legitimacy by those in positions of authority – scientists, academics, leaders – coming out in support of the theory. At a certain critical mass of support the hyper-reality builds its own internal logic and becomes self-perpetuating (in essence ‘real’).  It is only with the benefit of hindsight – after the hyper-reality implodes due to a cataclysmic event – that such a reality seems ridiculous.

I then thought about more recent events. A White House aid once said to a a New York Times reporter that America created its own reality (see here): the theory being that history had ‘ended’ and liberal democracy had emerged as the only ‘true’ way in which to organise societies.  However, in order to reify this idea Bush et al. could not just create events, they also needed to manage the theory through which those events were interpreted in the public sphere: ie by the media,  by intellectuals etc.  After some success to begin with (the media was very receptive in the post 9/11 environment, especially the FOX news network), ‘information management’ has become more difficult, at least not as far as the war in Iraq is concerned (as such I don’t think that Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent paradigm quite fits today’s media). Now Bush says he wants to leave judgement of the Iraq War to history – more evidence of faith in the theory. I suggest that he might not get the vindication he is looking for, as cataclysmic events – Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the sectarian violence in Iraq -  have already taken place.

But another type of hyper-reality is starting to take hold. The race for the Democratic nomination has been peppered with references to the dangers in the Middle East and particularly Iran. As the competitors run with the theory that a confrontational stance on Middle East is what the American people want (or even is inevitable re: Huntingdon), the rhetoric heats up. Of course, leaders in the Middle East hear the threats and start shouting back. It is the classic Realist security dilemma: all actions taken by the other side must be taken at face value and appropriate measures taken. But Realism is a theory – it takes one view of events invests in them a certain significance. The dangers of this hyper-reality are obvious.

I have always been skeptical of Realism in the way it professes to know certain fundamentals of human behaviour, and equally skeptical of any ’scientific’ theory of human interaction (neo-realism I talking to you). The question is where do you go from here?

(ps. The photo is by Gregory Crewdson, who is a little like the still image equivalent of David Lynch.  With the reality theme it seemed apt)

Chomsky and Foucault talk about power

I found these great videos on YouTube today.

Are we living in a simulation?

Here are some links to very interesting articles somewhat along the lines of my last post about Second Life.

New York Times article about the probability that life is a simulation run by post-humans

Philosophical argument behind the article as proposed by Nick Bostrom at Oxford University

Comic for 13-08-2007 – Click to expand