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October 31, 2007
The Power and The Powerless
He noticed:
"...... huge holdings of foreign exchange, the wealth it adds yearly to the world economy and the promise its further growth"
"It's international goals and policies matter as never before. So does the nature of its nationalism and what kind of a world its regime feels safest in."
And his friend reveals:
" a struggle over the appropriation of symbols, a struggle over how the past and present shall be understood and labeled, a struggle to identify causes and assess blame, a contentious effort to give partisan meaning to local history......"
Posted by Xiao at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2007
Not about Picasso
A German official approached Pablo Picasso, he was standing in front of his enormous, black and white magna opus, Guernica. It was the 1937 world's fair, the Spanish Civil War was raging, and the German Wehrmacht was gaining strength. "Did you do this?" He said, motioning with obvious disgust at the giant mural, Picasso's shocking portrayal of the destruction of the Basque village of Guernica by Hitler's Luftwaffe Condor Legion. The iconic image is jagged, grotesque, man and animal alike scream into oblivious violence, a horse is broken, a spear puncturing its flank, a bare breasted mother roars into the sky, her dead baby cradled in slack arms. The German repeated himself, his voice growing louder, "Excuse me, did you do this?" He demanded. Picasso turned, smiled politely, and answered, "no sir, you did."
Posted by Xiao at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2007
Public Transcript
“public transcript is the self-portrait of dominant elites as they would have themselves seen. “
“It is designed to be impressive, to affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites, and to conceal to euphemize the dirty linen of their rule.”
And here is the “Voice under domination.”
Posted by Xiao at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
疲惫之网
Through
The Web
Posted by Xiao at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2007
Trajectory of self
Mediated symbolic materials
Shared local
And
Internal referential
Leads
To
Posted by Xiao at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2007
错宿林中
在盐之角
Posted by Xiao at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
Redefining citizenship
Self identity
Networked citizenship
And social skills
"main democratic potential of technologies like the Internet does not rest in their ability to support deliberation. Instead, it rests mainly in their ability to support the work of issue entrepreneurs: identifying and researching emerging issues, distributing analyses of current events to an audience, organizing events, and networking with other entrepreneurs in the issue lattice."
Posted by Xiao at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2007
Worth Knowing
Marc and Angel
7 Clever Google Tricks
Posted by Xiao at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)
Characteristics of life
Life is an organized pattern in space-time
This implies that there is a potential for life to exist in any medium that can be arranged to form long-lasting patterns. Carbon-based molecules constitute the medium for terrestrial life, a medium that is organized into complex molecular patterns.
Life is self-reproducing
At a fundamental level, self-reproduction coupled with evolution can ensure the long-term independent existence of complex patterns. Self-reproduction eliminates the need for external intervention, while evolution allows the patterns to adapt to their environment.
Life stores a representation of itself
Each living organism stores a description of itself but does so by using only a fraction of the total resources required to sustain the organism. For any evolving life form, this self-representation opens the door to future self-manipulation and possible enhancement. The human race has already reached a point where genetic manipulation of human beings and other organisms is possible.
Living organisms have a metabolism
Being organized patterns and subject to the second law of thermodynamics (that is, tending to increase in entropy or randomness), living beings require some mechanism to maintain cohesiveness. A metabolism is just such a mechanism, and may be described as a process that uses external energy to maintain internal order.
For the most part, living things interact with their environment
At a minimum, organisms have to interact with their environment to obtain the energy required by their metabolism. Such interaction takes place across the organism/environment interface, which under normal circumstances is clearly discernible.
Interdependence of constituent parts
Living organisms consist of different parts. One factor distinguishing living from non-living things is the interdependence of their parts.(a)
Stability under perturbations
Living things normally exist in complex environments that may not only be challenging and dangerous, but that are also subject to change over time. Organisms have to be able to endure and survive these changes or challenges.
Life evolves over time
Evolution is reproduction with a chance of deviation of the reproduced copy from the original) It takes place over long time spans (with respect to an individual's life time). Small errors occur in the reproduction process, inducing changes in the offspring of an organism. Some of these changes result in increased survival capability in some of the offspring and a decreased capability in others.
To such a list of life characteristics can perhaps be added the property of increased complexity. Evolution tends to bring forth increasingly complex life forms. This appears to result in organisms becoming better adapted to their environment over many generations.
Life is seen as an emergent phenomenon -- it results from the interaction of organized elements at lower levels: an insect consists of a set of interacting systems (e.g. a nervous system working together with a digestive system). The nervous system in turn consists of a set of organized organs (e.g. a brain connected via nerves to the eyes). The brain in turn consists of a set of organized tissue layers, and so on. Each of these levels of biological organization has emergent properties that are the result of the interaction between the parts making up the level. The interaction between the different levels of organization itself results in emergent properties that cannot be anticipated on the basis of the properties of the individual levels when studied in isolation.
Posted by Xiao at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2007
光学的错觉
“我们在自己的周围看到许多穿着军礼服、大礼服或燕尾服的人。
这些人身高五英尺半或六英尺，而有些人还要高些；他们之间有的人在两颊、上唇和下颚留着胡须，有的人则刮得干干净净。我们于是以为......“
Posted by Xiao at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2007
危楼会后
她的消息。
Posted by Xiao at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2007
Spice of Life, again
Not new.
Posted by Xiao at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
Mantra updated
Thanks to
Mindmeter.
Posted by Xiao at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2007
十月的风
Posted by Xiao at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2007
蝴蝶与心跳
Posted by Xiao at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2007
Home Mindfulness
Chills
In the courtyard
Steamy Ravioli
Bath, and
Posted by Xiao at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2007
Time within time
His Nostalghia
Posted by Xiao at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2007
金门桥
等待飞行
Posted by Xiao at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2007
Hypertext
Posted by Xiao at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)