May 302017
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May 302017
Thanks to a blog reader for pointing this out. Once again, someone apparently incapable of doing actual science, technology, engineering or math is using the jargon of science in order to further the goals of anti-science rubbish. The possibility exists that this is another Sokal hoax at the expense of leftist nonsense, but if so they seem to be going to a lot of bother.
Feminist researcher invents ‘intersectional quantum physics’ to fight ‘oppression’ of Newton
Let’s read from this Masterpiece Of Science For The Ages, shall we:
Assembled Bodies
Reconfiguring Quantum Identities
Introduction
I invest in Donna Haraway’s claim that “what counts as an object is precisely what world history turns out to be about” (quoted in Barad 2007, 42); that is, politics are about the hierarchies of what connections, or closenesses, are prioritized as bodily. All bodies are political gatherings, as what is understood as closely related, kin, the measured, congealing intersections of phenomena (social identity, histories, water, particles) considered legible/intelligible/singularized is always a political configuration, with systems and apparatuses (e.g., colonial sciences or clarity fetishism) set up to recognize these prioritized configurations/ separations (a “cut together/apart” in Barad’s words [2010, 240]), naturalizing insidious assumptions and hierarchies of value. And so “connect[ing] what’s been dangerously disconnected” (Rich 1987, 214) is directly political. Re/cognizing the connective/constellatory bodies typically not understood as connected (e.g., across disciplines) allows for embellishing alliances not following rules of typically understood closeness or kinship (space, time, social category, eugenic lineage) while also not discounting differing mattering realities (steeped categorizations). And, possibly, deprioritizing particularly naturalized, fetishizing borders has potentials for destabilizing structures that enable hierarchical othering (which justifies sociopolitical oppression and material-discursive violence).
Quantum physics disrupts the stagnancies of typically humanly recognized bodies. In quantum understandings, particles (classically understood as stagnant objects) also have wavelike properties, diffract, leap, and are quantumly entangled.
And. So. On.
Ummm. To me, this *sure* reads a whole lot like someone who’s just slapping together word salad in the hopes of creating another Sokal Affair. But these days, who knows… this could just as easily, perhaps even more easily, be another “Gender Studies” hack Deepak-Chopra-ing some quantum nonsense together in the hopes of sounding smart. I mean, come on… does this sound like GenderBlather, or someone parodying GenderBlather?
I specifically utilize feminist new materialist discussions of quantum physics and cyborgian posthumanism (Haraway 1985), along with seemingly separated discussions of noncentralized leadership practices and anti-oppression organizing, subaltern studies, intersectional identity politics, and safer space.
I just can’t tell anymore.
Now, I haven’t read the whole thing. Because, preponderance of evidence perhaps to the contrary, I do have some semblance of a life. But what I’ve read just keeps going in this fashion. And I just can’t tell if this is serious or satire anymore. In an age when people dress up in black, hide thier identities and go out into the streets in mobs in order to commit acts of bloody violence against people who simply disagree with them politically, and they have the astonishing chutzpah to call themselves “anti-fascist…” well, irony seems to be not just dead, but shot through the head with a deer slug, chopped up with a saws-all, soaked in a plastic tub full of nitric acid until it’s just a stew, fed through an incinerator and the ashes mixed in with the solid propellants of a Space Launch System booster rocket and then test fired out in the desert.
May 292017
Listening to the radio today, I heard part of Public Radios “The World.” There was one segment that was actually kinda interesting… where they discussed “Lettucebot.” Starts at around 13:50 in the downloadable MP3.
Lettucebot is, as the name suggests, a robot that can pick lettuce. It’s not only not a new concept (robots doing agricultural labor has been a Popular Science dream for decades),it’s not even a new machine, having been around for a few years. But I can recall arguing online, in the Great Usenet Era of fifteen, twenty years ago, that *eventually* robots will get good enough and cheap enough that they will be able to replace even illegal alien farm workers.
Robots have replaced just about every other kind of manual, repetitive labor… so why not. At least here they’d be replacing workers that society should be fine with making redundant. Along with robots for picking lettuce, there are prototypes for apples and cotton.
Unsurprisingly, the Public Radio piece focuses on the plight of the poor illegal immigrants, with a farm workers union rep saying that farmers should forget about all that robot stuff and should work instead on changing the laws to make it easier for “migrants” to come in and take the jobs of honest, hard-working red-wired American robots.
Granted, if I recall correctly farm laborers are a minority of the illegal alien population. Heck, most illegals are coming in from Asia, not Latin America, and are coming in legally and overstaying their visas, not sneaking across the border at night. Still, a robot that can replace any practical need for hundreds of thousands or millions of foreign lawbreakers? Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that.
As the union rep says, bringing in robots does have a certain job-creation benefit: you need someone to operate and maintain the robots. At least initially, I’d expect these farmbots to be finicky, prone-to-malfunction expensebots that farmers will tend to hire; and there will be a reasonably well-paid technician riding herd on them. One guy could potentially replace hundreds of laborers. This means that that one guy could get paid really well. Which means it’ll be a job a whole bunch of Americans would be happy to do. Which would be one less reason to hire illegals.
May 292017
May 292017
The Disney movie “The Black Hole” was a little “off.” Still, for a lot of us 70’s/80’s kids, it’s something a little special. Heck, it is – to the best of my knowledge – one of the few movies (never mind the “Disney kids movie” subset) that has the villain die at the end… and then get sent to Hell. Even if that was only a delusion by one of the other characters, it was a hell of a thing to see on the screen back then.
Like most sci-fi movies, the “sci” was pretty awful. The ship designs were basically nonsensical from a basic engineering standpoint. Still, the starship Cygnus was an undeniable thing of beauty. Made from a whole lot of photoetched brass, it was a massive “cathedral” of a spaceship model. It’s a crying shame that Disney has not yet seen fit to release “The Black Hole” on Blu-Ray, if for no other reason than to see the Cygnus in hi-def.
As a modelgeek, I’ve always wanted a good model of the Cygnus. MPC released a 1/4225 kit in 1979; it was certainly a product of it’s time. Like the MPC Star Destroyer, it’s a good *approximation* of the Cygnus, but given the filigree nature of the Cygnus’ construction, a conventional injection molded plastic kit for kids could hardly be expected to be very accurate. Even so, copies of this kit are going for prohibitively high prices (here’s one on eBay for a mere $350).
Technology has advanced to the point where a really impressive model of the Cygnus can be 3D printed… and is available for purchase. Available through Shapeways, you can buy all the bits and pieces needed for a ginourmous 1/700 Cygnus… for about $1200.
Here’s a Flickr account of someone who bought the parts and built up the kit. He went the extra mile and added a laser-cut plexiglass inner structure for strength and lighting purposes.
It is… really impressive.
Droooool:
The results do show the current limitations of 3D printing when seen close up. The surface finish is unfortunate. But 3D printing has produced parts that would be essentially impossible with injection molding… and the technology will only get better and cheaper in time. Give it a few years, and Shapeways will probably have parts with far better surface finishes and for (slightly) less cost.
May 282017
A few days ago word began to spread of a prank where an intentionally utterly nonsensical paper on the utterly nonsensical field of study that is “gender studies” was published in a peer reviewed journal.The problem there was that the journal involved is one of those “journals” where if you pay their fees, they publish. It’s basically self-publishing, so apart from the amusement factor… meh.
But now comes a better example of “there be something wrong with peer review:”
Is this the world’s smartest canine? Or has science gone to the dogs?
In short, a dog is sitting on the editorial boards of seven medical journals. Whoopsie.
Honestly. Who steals a coat of arms?
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May 282017
Take a wild guess.
The Coat of Arms Said ‘Integrity.’ Now It Says ‘Trump.’
In short, the Brits issues a “coat of arms” to a family decades ago, then Trumps company Culturally Appropriated it.
Lame.
Especially lame: that Trump, an American, felt the need for a “coat of arms” or gave a damn about heraldry. Such things are not only anachronisms, they are about as non-American as you can get, ranking up there with reverence for (rather than a sneering disdain for) royalty or a fascination with ones distant ancestry.
Bah.
May 282017
What’s the most popular boys name in the Muslim world? “Mohammad,” or some spelling variation thereof. What’s a real popular name in the Spanish speaking world? “Jesus.” What’s *not* a popular name in the Anglosphere? “Jesus.” This has always kinda surprised me. Naming kids after revered characters is quite common, yet in the English speaking world naming your kid after the primary religious figure is considered inpoor taste. That said… “Joshua” is popular enough, won’t get you a second glance. Yet “Joshua” is the Anglicized version of the Latin name “Iesous,” which is a Greekified version of the Hebrew name “Yeshua,” what Jesus would have been called by the Hebrews of that time and place. Similarly, Mathew, Mark, John, Paul, Ringo, Steven, Luke, Han, Adam, Mary, David, Debby, Abigail, Peter, Joseph and a number of other distinctly Biblical names are now quite popular.
Why blather forth about this? Because I laughed my face off a few days at WalMart. Wandering about, minding my own business, I passed by a common enough WalMart trope: a mother yelling at her oblivious, misbehaving horrible little brat. You learn to tune such things out. But something penetrated the wall and got my attention: the mother, in yelling at her child, kept calling him “Messiah.” Now maybe it’s “Massiya” or some other oddball spelling, but the pronunciation was the same. And it seems to me that if “Jesus” is considered poor form, surely “Messiah” should be too.
Ponderable: if “Mohammad” is popular in the Islamic world, how about naming your kid “Allah” or “Mahdi?” Surely that would result in nothing but praise and instant puppies.
May 272017
So, progress on the novel has been brisk of late. The end is in sight! I’m currently sitting at about 400 novel-length pages, which is frankly probably far too long for a first novel by an unknown nobody. But, y’know, editing… For all I know, cut all the drivel out of it and it might result in a pamphlet.
But let’s say it gets published, and meets with great acclaim. Huzzah! One thing that authors seem to do is book signings. Now, at the best of times this idea fills me with an uncomfortableness. On the one hand, being the center of attention? Bleah. On the other hand, how many times have you gone to a Books-A-Barnes & Borders and saw a book signing by an author you’ve never heard of, hawking a book that seems uninteresting to you, and the author is sitting at the table, piled with books… and there ain’t nobody there. Yeesh. Talk bout a buzz kill. About the only thing more distressing than being the object of attention of a bunch of strangers is to be *ignored* at such an event. I always feel *real* bad for the very sad and lonely looking authors at such empty events.
So, California has come up with a solution: basically make book signings illegal.
California threatens to shut down book signings and therefore small booksellers
If you are selling a “signed something-or-other worth more than five bucks,” guess what… onerous new book-keeping regulations:
Sellers must, among other things:
- Note the purchase price and date of sale,
- specify whether the item is part of a limited edition,
- note the size of the edition, anticipate any future editions,
- disclose whether the seller is bonded,
- divulge any previous owner’s name and address,
- if the book was signed in the presence of the seller, specify the date and location of the signing, and identify a witness to the autograph.
And what happens if you don’t have such records for a book signing that occurred, say, five years before the State official shows up to check your papers? Potentially tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Ta-da. No more book signings.
May 252017
Star Wars premiered 40 years ago today, May 25, 1977.
Yeah, yeah, I’m old. But there’s this: I saw Star Wars in the theater three times during its initial run. I was *exactly* the target demographic.
Suck it, Millenials. Here’s one bit of awesome you’ll never have.