Archive for September, 2011|Monthly archive page
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist.
Once upon a time, we’d have thought of this as the “missing link,” but we don’t think that way any longer. In fact, it’s not entirely clear how we ought to think, as the narrative continuum given by fossil evidence–a layering, articulated by time’s measured deposit of dirt and other crud over the bones of interest–is inadequate. It does not give us a sense of the horizontality of genetic movement. Each layer, rather, is a black box from which we can induce a cause producing the effect, but it’s never adequate.
So we learn, instead, that humans were always promiscuous and that they were not, it seems, particularly selective. How could they be, in an age when there really were not that many? So that what counts now as H. sap. is snap, shot into the present, of the past episodically expressed, with no clear memory of how it got here, let alone there.
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist
The Mosaic Pre-Man | The Scientist.
Once upon a time, we’d have thought of this as the “missing link,” but we don’t think that way any longer. In fact, it’s not entirely clear how we ought to think, as the narrative continuum given by fossil evidence–a layering, articulated by time’s measured deposit of dirt and other crud over the bones of interest–is inadequate. It does not give us a sense of the horizontality of genetic movement. Each layer, rather, is a black box from which we can induce a cause producing the effect, but it’s never adequate.
So we learn, instead, that humans were always promiscuous and that they were not, it seems, particularly selective. How could they be, in an age when there really were not that many? So that what counts now as H. sap. is snap, shot into the present, of the past episodically expressed, with no clear memory of how it got here, let alone there.
Ejecutan a hijo de García Paniagua / Nacional :: Impacto Diario
Ejecutan a hijo de García Paniagua / Nacional :: Impacto Diario.
I know this area quite well. My mother, who died a couple of weeks ago, lived not too far from here, and on while we were down in GDL for the funeral, we went to this quite fancy, very costly, but not bad, café/bistro. It’s therefore all the more shocking to read of this. But it does remind me of similar events/atrocities that occurred in any gang-controlled domain.
The problem is of course that the gangs act with confidence of their impunity. And they have that confidence not because the police are incompetent or unable but because the politica and economic structure, one built over more than half a century, has all but insured them against reprisal. The police are underpaid and undertrained and understaffed for a reason. Same with other governmental services Mexico (and so many other similar countries) offers. Such a situation gives lip service to bureaucratic norms and expectations while still providing for–encouraging, actually–the traditional system of patronage and petty bribery. And as long as this system did not raise the legal or whatever hackles of Mexico’s powerful neighbour, it was okay, part of the beautiful characteristic, not a (contagiously) fatal flaw.
But then things changed. And in rooting out the “evil,” in a format that at best resembles the war in Iraq and at worst that in Afghanistan (or vice versa), but in either case *wrong*, as seen by the 40K killed over the last 6 years, and for zero real gain, the depths of the corruption become clear. But not clear enough. The logic motivating the killings, the structure and its history–and its history is deeply buried in the everyday and very important–need more exposure, explication, so that a more accountable system, even democracy, can be realistically imagined and implemented.
Firefighters balk at new digital radios, as failures risk lives | McClatchy
Firefighters balk at new digital radios, as failures risk lives | McClatchy.
Standards matter. And the lure of the “digital” is really pretty dangerous, if it is thought of as more or less the same way any product from the Jetson’s would be: with excited awe that the future is finally here.
The issue is of course also one of cronyism and profiteering. We see this in developing regions, which are (or were?) colonized by this or that new and seemingly heroic technology that is, in fact, quite wrong for the market, the environment, the milieu. It only wrecks the good and makes it that much harder to become better, and does little to solve the problem of the bad.
Study Shows How Well Manufacturers Keep Android Phones Up To Date
Study Shows How Well Manufacturers Keep Android Phones Up To Date.
Interesting. I wonder if this fragmentation is good or bad, whether it is the sign of a healthy and diverse economy or the sign of nodes of isolation whose failure to cross communicate (aka communicate) signals a failure of the commons market.
Put another way: it’s good that there is difference; monoculture is bad, as it is vulnerable in the same way a genetic monoculture is. But too much difference is also a problem, as it does not lead to the healthy exchange of genetic identity but only a crowd of monocultures, each vulnerable, and indeed, each *more* vulnerable, as they are simply smaller.
Police Say Cal State Professor Leads Devils Diciples Gang – NYTimes.com
Police Say Cal State Professor Leads Devils Diciples Gang – NYTimes.com.
Prof’s name is Kinzey, and he’s a prof of kinesiology. Egad.
The story itself is wonderful.
Haiti study: Mass mobile phone tracking can be laudable • The Register
Comments (1)Haiti study: Mass mobile phone tracking can be laudable • The Register.
As a guess–educated guess, of course–I’d say that “migration”–of bodies, but also of information and its proprietary attachments (those elements that make it useful but also valuable, or useless while still being valued)–is the character of this 21st century.
Why? Because, first, we can move as never before, where “we” means humanity. Sure, there are billions imprisoned in their regions. But with the advent of global climate change, and all that it entails, the movement of people, their exodus, will occur as never before.
Think: Equatorial regions, really, all those within the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn (and then more), will be in growing spots (nearly) uninhabitable: too hot, not enough (potable) water, scoured by insects, disease, storm. And it is within these Tropics that the vast portion of humanity lives now and has been trained to live for tens of millennia.
But with no fish, no arable land, no food nor water that doesn’t cause yet more disease and death, there will be a migration away from ancestral homelands to areas where there is still a living to be had.
These areas will of course be already inhabited, and inhabited by those with guns and lots of xenophobic bullets. The point is not that there will be (and there will be) wars over water and arable land–refugee wars, say–but that there will vast movements regardless, and that these will need to be not policed, contained, stemmed, but understood, first and foremost, so that humanity is not lost.
newspeak 