Morgan, Colleen. “Where Are the Female Contemporary Archaeologists?” Middle Savagery. Accessed February 23, 2015. https://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/where-are-the-female-contemporary-archaeologists/.

Todd, Zoe. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism (Urbane Adventurer: Amiskwacî).” Uma (in)certa Antropologia. Accessed February 23, 2015. http://umaincertaantropologia.org/2014/10/26/an-indigenous-feminists-take-on-the-ontological-turn-ontology-is-just-another-word-for-colonialism-urbane-adventurer-amiskwaci/.

So, for every time you want to cite a Great Thinker who is on the public speaking circuit these days, consider digging around for others who are discussing the same topics in other ways. Decolonising the academy, both in europe and north america, means that we must consider our own prejudices, our own biases. Systems like peer-review and the subtle violence of european academies tend to privilege certain voices and silence others. -- Zoe Todd

( Whine )

I *am* getting better. I just resent this week.

One silver lining: being sick has allowed my ankles to continue to rest from the sprains earlier this summer.

--==∞==--

Last night we watched Netflix documentary Mission Blue: both wonderful and heartbreaking. http://mission-blue.org/ Sylvia Earle's life is amazing to ponder: a marine botanist and one of the first to use scuba gear, one of the first aquanauts, pioneer for women scientists, and witness to what may be the beginning of one of the great extinctions.

50% of coral reefs gone?

My recent reading has led me to spend time thinking about how the oceans probably have incredible evolutionary information. While plants may be the extremely long lived creatures of the land, underneath the waves animals live for a very long time:

There’s a 2,742-year-old Gerardia coral, and nearby, the 4,265-year-old Leiopathes, a
black coral related to sea anemones, both discovered in exceedingly deep waters off
the Hawaiian archipelago using a submersible vehicle—approximately 1,200 feet
down. Older still, in Arctic waters off the Norwegian shelf lives the 6,000-year-old
Lophelia pertusa coral, around 330 feet down.

The oldest animal on the planet could be the 15,000-year-old Anoxycalyx joubini
volcano sponge off the McMurdo shelf in Antarctica. I’m not sure of their exact depth,
but no one has visited the oldest among them face-to-face, in fact, as they were
found using a SCINI ROV—that’s “Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation
and Imaging Remotely Operated Vehicle.”

Sussman, Rachel; Zimmer, Carl; Obrist, Hans Ulrich (2014-06-03). The Oldest Living Things in the World (Page 265). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

I tell myself that shallow coral reefs are unlikely to harbor ancient individuals, what with sea level changes and so on, but the species could have been ancient: ecological niches effectively and efficiently filled since the niche was discovered now empty?

And the fish stocks plummeting?

What heartbreak. What blindness. Sylvia Earle's eyes are wide open, and this documentary helps us all see.

nellorat's recommendation reminded me of the recommendation i would like to make: Continuum. For the time travel fans, it's a story of characters pushed back in time. There's social commentary: the crux of the plot is the initial sentencing of a group convicted of terrorism, and the context of the terrorist action becomes thicker and complicated over the season. The "kill your own grandfather" paradox is handled in an interesting way: it's not clear if it's ever quite resolved. Relationships are interestingly complicated, and it is definitely a series designed to be consumed as a serial.

I devoured the first season far too quickly, and i'm delighted to a second season is listed on netflix. I will not click past the "2" in order to avoid spoilers.

Interesting analysis:

Abstract –As in statistical physics, the concept of universality plays an important, albeit qualitative, role in the field of comparative mythology. Here we apply statistical mechanical tools to
analyse the networks underlying three iconic mythological narratives with a view to identifying
common and distinguishing quantitative features. Of the three narratives, an Anglo-Saxon and
a Greek text are mostly believed by antiquarians to be partly historically based while the third,
an Irish epic, is often considered to be fictional. Here we show that network analysis is able to
discriminate real from imaginary social networks and place mythological narratives on the spectrum between them. Moreover, the perceived artificiality of the Irish narrative can be traced
back to anomalous features associated with six characters. Considering these as amalgams of
several entities or proxies, renders the plausibility of the Irish text comparable to the others from
a network-theoretic point of view

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4324

McSweeny's Issue #33

Oh My.

That's where i'll be for a while.


(Thank you Christine!)

Sorry about spamming LJ with the Torture Awareness post. I was having a frustrating time getting a successful post. I've had a weird thing happen with Wordpress where an edited post disappears from the interfaces -- particularly when it's issues with the timestamp -- but the post continues to exist if you go directly to the post number.

I finished The Enthusiast last night. In this rare occasion of me reading a recently published book, i'm hesitant to write what i think of how it concludes. The journey of reading it, all the way to the end, is pleasant and rich. I don't read many contemporary American novels, but I'd enjoy more like this one. There's both a contemporary humor and a sensual richness to the detailed descriptions of place and environs that appealed to me.

I think one of the things i don't like about the American novels i was reading in the 80s and into the 90s (and, hrm, yes i may have been too young for them, but i don't think that's it), was a certain jacked-up drama, a heightened focus on the anxieties of modern life, and a sense for me that the editorial act of writing was generally leaving out the gentle moments where we get the clues, tools, wisdom, to resolve those anxieties in a human day-to-day way.

The Enthusiast that captures the slow accretion of relationships, knowledge, wisdom. While the protagonist Henry Bey travels from small magazine to small magazine, exposing himself to different enthusiasts, everyone is an enthusiast to some degree, even, if there's not a name for it (yet). I'd argue it would take a remarkable person to not experience that slow accretion and, given the modern anxieties and concerns of life, not have the resources and catalysts at hand to change and grow under pressure.

I suspect that if you read Live Journals to connect with a broad group of people, both people who share your passions and people who are different, you might find The Enthusiast a rewarding read. (And then i want to ask you about the last chapter, although i'm growing to appreciate it more and more as i write this.) gurdonark -- you will be delighted by this book, i suspect.