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The Machine Starts: Computers as Collaborators in Writing
Thursday, 28 April, 2011 - 23:33
Earlier this week I presented a paper at the Narrative Research Group Symposium on 'Nonhuman Narratives', at Bournemouth Unversity. It was a day filled with very interesting papers ranging through the posthuman and nonhuman, the monstrous and inhuman, and the nonhuman animal. The text of my paper is copied below, but I wanted to make a few remarks about the paper and the symposium first.
As usual, I found it incredibly difficult to compress the things I wanted to discuss into a 20 minute talk. I'd have liked to have talked more about the practice-led side of the ideas that provoked the paper, discussed a wider range of 'flat ontologists' (e.g. Jane Bennet, as Anat Pick suggested in the Q&A following my talk), and I'd have liked to have gone on to explore both playful and serious consequences of machine agency, from Ted Nelson's Computer Lib / Dream Machines to Kevin Kelly's arguments for The Technium.
The huge depth of subjects from the day make it impossible to sum up or do justice to the ideas, but I want to pick out a couple of insights from the day that really got me thinking.
David Herman talked about understanding (and writing, in graphic form) animal narratives, which was derived from a post-Cartesian approach to mind influenced by Uexküll's idea of an animal's 'Umwelt'. This hinged on a conception of mind as distributed in the environment, rather than sealed inside a thinking being (reminding me, incidentally, of the work of my colleague Dr Paul Stevens), thus permitting questions such as 'what's it like' to be a dog, mollusc, even doorknob. In particular I was intrigued by a remark in the Q&A following David's talk in which he suggested that because mind is a phenomenon distributed through body, environment and institution, we therefore do have access to it. Access to mind! - literally mind-blowing.
Anat Pick's talk, which examined Robert Bresson's portrayal of the donkey Balthazar, offered a way of thinking about determinism and agency that I'm not familiar with, but that I found really intriguing. The tension here is less determinism 'vs' agency, and more determinism 'and' grace; grace in the face of the necessity of the world which involves a form of assent, but is neither mere acceptance, nor does it preclude the resistance of persecution. In the Q&A she cited a Spinozan approach to understanding the necessities inherent in a deterministic universe, which then enables an agent to act within those necessities. I will have to learn Spinoza...
Finally an interesting phenomenon on the day was the frequent dismantling of binary oppositions. In the summary, it was noted that many tensions were explored in the day - human and nonhuman, humane and inhuman, normal and other, known and unknown - but that the categories kept breaking down. In the case of my talk for example, taking a relatively uncontroversial interpretation of nonhuman and following the logical paths such notions suggested, ended in dissolving the distinctions entirely. Human and nonhuman writers are indistinguishable; human and nonhuman texts are too...
I think of this as the inevitable consequence of any dialectic: the definition of a category depends on the splitting off of that category from it's other; it is as though we halve an apple, and are then surprised that the one half is very much the same as the other half... To define good, we create the not-good in the image of the good. Arbitrary categories are susceptible to and dissolve under systematic analysis. The difficulty (even impossibility) is in finding non-arbitrary distinctions. Humans are animals, humans make machines in their own image, monstrous killers are humans; the challenge thrown up by the dissolution of firm distinctions are all ethical: why might eating animals be morally different to cannibalism? what happens when you recognise nonhumans as 'persons'? does dehumanising serial killers absolve the social realms in which they occur from any blame? There may well be a boundary between human and nonhuman, but it is not necessarily where we conventionally think it is.
So I'm grateful to Bronwen Thomas and Julia Round for organising the day, Einar Thorsen for live-blogging it, and to the other speakers and participants for their ideas and openness. I am however, sad that no-one seemed to recognise the opening slide I used. While I was preparing the presentation, I woke in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep, going over and over in my mind the ideas I had for the contents of this paper; my mind had been possessed by a parasite, and as its host I was powerless to resist it. I lay there and remembered an album cover from 1981: The Police, 'Ghost in the machine'. I was barely 10 when I acquired the vinyl LP, and it fascinated me - the songs' lyrics about spirits in the material world, the ethereal synthesisers, the images of circuit boards on the inner sleeve. So I got up at 5 in the morning and went downstairs and pulled out my 30-year-old record, amazingly still unscratched, and played it, and felt a strange mixture of sadness and pleasure that none of my machine collaborators were scrobbling it to last.fm...
The Machine Starts: Computers as Collaborators in Writing
While I was preparing this paper, the 11-year-old I live with asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was preparing a presentation about how great machines are at telling stories. "How can machines tell stories?" he asked incredulously. I realised that should have been my title! I originally chose to reference E. M Forster's short story, 'The Machine Stops' in my title because I think it is necessary to invoke at once the dystopian vision that the idea of storytelling machines conjures. The idea of sentient machines - which surely they must be to compose tales - is popularly horrific, alienating, and dangerous. Intelligent machines always turn out to be evil. Often popular adaptations of this trope present clear lines between human and nonhuman 'intelligences', thereby permitting a war between them in which the happy outcome is the one in which the unfeeling machines are vanquished.
Forster's story is dystopian and has the contours of such an ethical boundary, but is more subtle, exploring the way in which the humans who inhabit the machine world are shaped by its demands and imperatives. A transgressing wanderer reaches close to the surface of the subterranean world of the machines, and later reports:
"There was a ladder, made of some primӕval metal. The light from the railway fell upon its lowest rungs, and I saw that it led straight upwards out of the rubble at the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran up and down it a dozen times daily, in their building. As I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves so that my hands bled. The light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and, worse still, silence which pierced my ears like a sword. The Machine hums! Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our thoughts. Who knows! I was getting beyond its power. Then I thought: "This silence means that I am doing wrong." But I heard voices in the silence, and again they strengthened me." He laughed. "I had need of them. The next moment I cracked my head against something."
The Machine Stops, (Forster, 1909)
I love the idea that the all-pervasive rumble of the machine is so constitutive of life that it withdraws from consciousness even as it guides our thoughts, and I'm going to return to the idea that how we think is shaped by the machines we live with. First though, I'm going to quickly talk about some work I've been doing with the digital writer, Tim Wright. In a project called 'Hauntology', we've been exploring how we can create interactive and participatory narratives using a combination of poetry, software, antique objects and digital sensors and circuits - and increasingly now - walking. In one piece, a chest of drawers was 'haunted' by the spirits of its previous owners. A user could access snippets of their lives by interacting with the chest of drawers and objects on and in it, as well as eventually 'haunting' it themselves with the sounds they left behind for the next users to hear.
We're currently exploring how we can use an old wooden box, wired up with an audio device and some sensors, to act as the focal device for a walking, talking, poetic experience based on the poetry of Thomas Hardy and the geography of the outskirts of Dorchester. In this we are trying to compose a narrative experience which is absorbing, authentic, haunting and provocative - out of antique bric-a-brac, digital sensors and media, physical space, sounds, smells, scenes, embodied and interpersonal interactions, and both reading and writing poetry. To this end I've been experimenting with wiring electronic devices into old wooden boxes.
One of the things I've noticed about the process is the feeling that the electronic systems and circuits, and the antique wooden boxes and drawers, are all exerting their own influence on the proceedings. They only allow certain sorts of behaviours and affordances to get the go-ahead. At first I thought this is an artefact of my own imprecision and inexperience. The further I get, though, the more I'm sure that the objects I work with have intentions of their own. Just as a sculptor seeks to find the form already within the matter at hand, as if discovering the spirit in the material, so I am collaborating with the devices I coerce and adapt to perform as they want to, as though I am obeying a ghost in their machine.
I'm now afraid that I'm sounding crazy, so I want to run through a quick and very partial history of writers collaborating with devices, to see if I'm alone in my craziness. I'm thinking here about the production of textual artefacts through the action of some sort of device - something I'm therefore going to call a device-oriented narrative - produced by some sort of rule or algorithm or heuristic process. I think this is a fairly good, low-level definition of a 'writing machine' - an apparatus or assemblage which performs some sort of function on the raw materials of textual production.
Here's an example of an electronically produced poem:
"Sentences begins.
money must
Sentences for love forsaken."
Sentences, (Hartman and Kenner, 1995)
Nick Montfort explains the provenance of this piece of text, taken from a book by Hartman and Kenner, "Sentences":
"To write Sentences, Hartman and Kenner took 457 19th-century "Sentences for Analysis and Parsing, Thayer Street Grammar School" and providentially generated an intermediate text, using Claude Shannon's Markov chain technique as implemented in TRAVESTY by Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke. The resulting text was corrected and used as input to Hartman's program DIASTEXT, which carried out diastic selection as developed by Jackson Mac Low."
Sentences in 1k, Grand Text Auto, (Montfort, 2008)
I don't want to dwell on the detail of the particular processes that were used to produce these texts - just to note that Montfort's description illustrates very clearly the notion that a non-trivial operation has been performed to produce the work: the raw input is worked on in some way to produce a text at the end. In this case at least two sets of iterative actions were performed on the input to produce strangely evocative words. This therefore is a machine text.
I want to draw a distinction here from what Espen Aarseth has refered to as a 'cybertext' - a text which requires work on the part of the reader to traverse it. I want to think of texts which require some act of delegation by the writer to a machine to produce them. We could get horribly metaphysical about what constitutes mechanism, machinism and what does not. Is a pen a machine? A typewriter? While it is tempting to say that in the term 'machine' I exclude devices which merely reproduce mechanical extensions of the writer's actions, this may become a moot point as we proceed. Katherine Hayles in How We Became Posthuman in 1999, deals with the difference, for example, between a typewriter and a computer by noting the non-linear disruption that occurs when dematerialisation is introduced into the machinic action. I want to avoid this distinction, as there are perfectly good examples of writerly delegation that can occur within entirely material parameters.
I'm going to go with Richard Sennet's understanding of the machine in 'The Craftsman' of 2008, which I read as an intermediary device between the hand of the craftsman and the work itself, which effects some non-trivial transformation. This allows me to include devices such as horoscopes and Tarot cards, runes and tea-leaves, dice and difference engines, as well as electronic circuits, random algorithms, neural networks and artificial intelligences.
As the inclusion of Tarot hints, divination or possession by a deus ex machina seems to have a provenance in machine thinking. The 'I-Ching' was not only a repository of confucian wisdom, but a device for answering questions. Aarseth describes it thus:
"The I Ching is made up of sixty-four symbols, or hexagrams, which are the binary combinations of six whole or broken ("changing") lines [...] A hexagram [...] contains a main text and six small ones, one for each line. By manipulating three coins or forty-nine yarrow stalks according to a randomizing principle, the texts of two hexagrams are combined, producing one out of 4,096 possible texts. This contains the answer to a question the user has written down in advance (e.g., "How much rice should I plant this year?")."
Cybertext, (Aarseth, 1997)
From a European, humanist point of view, there is no particularly significant difference between a blind algorithm and the pronouncements of oracles and fortune-tellers - both are equally meaningless, and in the post-Enlightenment mind it is difficult to think otherwise. Educated people are supposed to scorn horoscopes and prophecies. Yet this adoption of a rational, materialistic ontology doesn't extend to our celebration of the transcendence of human agency and intelligence, with which we persevere in cherishing against the blind heuristic principle of automatons.
The automative principle of composition is evident in the work of Raymond Roussel, such as in Locus Solus from 1914. Although after his death he inspired the OuLiPo writers and the nouveau roman, during his lifetime, after some initial popularity amongst the surrealists, he was largely ridiculed and certainly critically panned. His works are very unusual, as can be gleaned from this account of his composition technique from John Ashbery:
"Sometimes he would take a phrase containing two words, each of which had a double meaning, and use the least likely ones as the nucleus of a story. Thus the phrase 'maison á espagnolettes' ("house with window latches") served as the basis for an episode in Impressions of Africa about a house (a royal family or house) descended from a pair of Spanish twin girls. [...]
"Just as the mechanical task of finding a rhyme sometimes inspires a poet to write a great line, [...] "rhymes for events" helped him to utilise his unconscious mind. "
'Introduction' to Raymond Roussel, How I Wrote Certain of My Books, (Ashbery, 1995 [1962])
The French surrealist writer Michel Leiris suggested that Roussel is tapping into an ancient tradition of eliciting myths from words, seeking out the 'disease of language', which is the source of mythology or collective unconscious." (ibid) Here, though Leiris is still perhaps seeking to legitimise the text for its inner human truth, its interpretation of the human unconscious. The text may be unconventionally produced, but its defender still seeks to recuperate it into the realm of human desires, motives and meanings, against the criticism that the work is a joke of no obvious inherent merit.
Similar recuperations might be made of other device-oriented narratives. In the 1920s the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, cited by Burroughs and Gysin later as an inspiration for their employment of the composition algorithm called 'the cut-up', apparently started a riot by pulling a poem out of a hat. In his dada manifesto, his wrote:
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are - an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love, (Tristan Tzara, 1920)
It is difficult not to see the dada movement and Burroughs' later adoption of the cut-up as much a political gesture as one of literary exploration - though this was certainly an ingredient in Burroughs' extensive use of it throughout novels like The Soft Machine, Cities of the Red Night and others. Burroughs describes it in 1961:
"The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and , still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby and juxtaposition cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident [...]
Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like."
The cut-up method of Brion Gysin, (Burroughs, 1961)
The casual abundance of poetry produced this way directly challenges the idea that a specially gifted and inspired writer is the essential ingredient in the writing - all that is necessary is a heuristic device and some raw materials on which to act. The results are often extremely powerful, as any reading from Burroughs' work will attest:
"Pan God of Panic piping blue notes through empty streets as the berserk time machine twisted a tornado of years and centuries - Wind through dusty offices and archives - Board Books scattered to rubbish heaps of the earth - Symbol books of the all-powerful board that had controlled thought feeling and movement of a planet from birth to death with iron claws of pain and pleasure - The whole structure of reality went up in silent explosions - Paper moon and muslin trees and in the black silver sky great rents as the cover of the world rained down - Biologic film went up.. . "raining dinosaurs" "It sometimes happens. . .just an old showman" Death takes over the game so many actors buildings and stars laid flat pieces of finance over the golf course summer afternoons bare feet waiting for rain smell of sickness in the room Switzerland Panama machine guns in Bagdad rising from the typewriter pieces of finance on the evening wind tin shares Buenos Aires Mr. Martin smiles old names waiting sad old tune haunted the last human attic."
The Soft Machine, (Burroughs, 1961)
The production of literary texts through machinic devices seems to proliferate in the middle of the 20th century. Writers like Barthelme, Beckett, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Robbe-Grillet, Perec and Calvino all produce texts which can be said to have been written with the aid of a heuristic device in the tradition of Roussel and Tzara. Often they are consciously political - David Porush in his work on cybernetic texts named after Burrough's novel, The Soft Machine, argues that such fiction:
"...far from being representative of a class of fiction in its decadence, is the most meaningful and hopeful sort of fiction. It cannot as a body be understood without constant reference to its source in a highly technologised society. For that very reason, however, it has the power to invent a new way of seeing, it offers a new language, and along the way it tells a fine, often amusing, often grim story about how far along we are."
The Soft Machine, (David Porush, 1985)
This odd combination of decadence and Brechtian self-reference and estrangement is also reminiscent of the flâneur and the psychogeographic movement: Benjamin's flâneur walked, either to revel in decadence, or to ambiguate the scopic regimes of the city's imperative to consume. No doubt, as in the situationist dérive and later psychogeographic texts and actions, there is an important emancipatory element: situationists walked to resist a 'world moving away in to representation'. The algorithmic obedience of tracing out a route that is arbitrarily pre/pro-scribed, but through the elective and playful devices of our own choosing, is actually, (ironically), a way to reassert the agency of the human and the individual against a machinic world of capital and convention.
However I'd like to go much further than Porush goes. He argues that one of the tropes of cybernetic fiction is that of self-dismantling. This is a deconstructive move, and resonates with the late 20th century concerns of continental philosophy, which seeks to dislodge the layers of meaning that stratify human existence in order to bring to notice the complex shifting network of linguistic and textual currents which inform our lives and institutions. However, I'd like to go further than seeing cybernetic texts and device-oriented narratives as merely deconstructive.
Consider that, even though we accept the premise of the intentional fallacy, we still privilege human intentionality as both qualitatively different from and somehow better than the nonhuman world of relations. So, even though we accept the notion that a text might be a device which can surrender novel meanings and effects which the author didn't intentionally encode there, we still find it hard to accept that an algorithmically generated text could offer anything of equal value: note that we still conventionally attribute the richness of a text, and its capacity for renewed interpretation, to the skill of its author - to have written something that 'transcends' the finitude of its human creator.
As I've suggested, we have tended to think of automatically produced texts as somehow lesser than those originated by acts of human imagination alone. It is with this tendency that we also consider the possibility of artificial intelligence as a watershed: the achievement of machine consciousness will be equivalent to lifting those machines up to some lofty, hard-to-reach transcendental threshold which makes them finally equal to humans. I'd prefer to see the problem from the other side, and wonder what it is we think is so different about human agency that separates us from the rest of the universe. This is not to reduce humans to mindlessness; Zizek puts it:
"It is here that the "reductionist" project goes wrong: the problem is not how to reduce mind to neuronal "material" processes [...] but, rather, to grasp how mind can emerge only through being embedded in the network of social relations and material supplements. In other words, the true problem is not "How, if at all, could machines IMITATE the human mind?," but, "How does the very identity of human mind rely on external mechanical supplements? How does it incorporate machines?"
Organs Without Bodies - Gilles Deleuze, (Zizek, 2008)
This is not just deconstruction (in which a philosophy of consciousness gives way to a philosophy of linguistics and signification), but a shift towards "placing humans and nonhumans on an equal footing". To go further then, we have to re-equate humans with the menagerie of other things in the world, the nonhuman - what object-oriented ontologists have called a flat ontology.
Levi Bryant has outlined a book-project called The Domestication of Humans in which he considers the way that plants and microbes have transformed human beings:
"The whole point of such a project, of course, is to develop enhanced techniques for thinking in terms of flat ontology. When posing questions in the humanities our tendency is to think in terms of unilateral determination. We talk about humans structuring reality through their perceptions, concepts, and signs, treating the process of structuration as proceeding from the human towards a sort of gooey chaos that then gets structured by the human. Flat ontology calls for bilateral determination, where determination doesn't simply run from human to world, but where all sorts of other entities structure humans and societies as well."
The Domestication of Humans, (Bryant, 2010)
Bryant derives this notion of a flat ontology alongside Graham Harman, who in turn cites Latour's Irreductions as a breakthrough in terms of escaping the realm of the human. Adrift on a sea of other agents and irreducible entities, Harman argues that we should start to rethink the bustling nature of the world of objects, amongst whom the human object is a mere one among many:
"Even as the philosophy of language and its supposedly reactionary opponents both declare victory, the arena of the world is packed with diverse objects, their forces unleashed and mostly unloved. Red billiard ball smacks green billiard ball. Snowflakes glitter in the light that cruelly annihilates them, while damaged submarines rust along the ocean floor. As flour emerges from mills and blocks of limestone are compressed by earthquakes, gigantic mushrooms spread in the Michigan forest. While human philosophers bludgeon each other over the very possibility of "access" to the world, sharks bludgeon tuna fish and icebergs smash into coastlines.
"All of these entities roam across the cosmos, inflicting blessings and punishments on everything they touch, perishing without a trace or spreading their powers further, as if a million animals had broken free from a zoo in some Tibetan cosmology."
Object Oriented Philosophy, (Harman, 1999)
Andrew Pickering considers the consequences of putting human and nonhuman agency on the same footing. His work The Mangle of Practice from 1995 looks at the way that scientific work proceeds in practice, and argues that far from being the logical, deductive unfolding of evidential knowledge, this picture is a retrospective portrait imposed on a messy sequence of stumbling events in which human goals have strived and struggled with the material agency of machinic experimentation. Work of this kind (and I argue that there is a direct parallel here to the way that writers write and texts are produced) is the product of a mangling of ideas and forces, machines and hunches, objects and products. This is a dance of agency between the human and nonhuman, in which such apparently crucial phenomena as human intentionality emerge from the interplay of possibilities and events, "brought to heel by the cultures in which they are situated":
"Scientists do not simply fix their goals once and for all and stick to them, come what may. In the struggles with material agency that I call tuning, plans and goals are at stake and liable to revision. And thus the intentional character of human agency has a further aspect of temporal emergence, being reconfigured itself in the real time of practice, as well as a further aspect of intertwining with material agency, being reciprocally redefined with the contours of material agency in tuning."
The Mangle of Practice, (Pickering, 1995)
So I want to conclude by suggesting that I was right to feel that my machines are trying to have their own way. Me and my machines are, to use Pickering's terms, tuning each other to our own 'agenda'. We are both devices which perform machinic captures of input material and transform them into artefacts which, in Tzara's phrase, resemble ourselves. So the computers, circuits, dice, algorithms, typewriters, pens - and even the words themselves - are cybernetic machines with which we are forced into collaboration and partnership, rather than mastery.
Italo Calvino confirms this from his own experience of writing:
"Literature as I knew it was a constant series of attempts to make one word stay put after another by following certain definite rules; or more often, rules that were neither definite nor definable, but that might be extracted from a series of examples, or rules made up for the occasion - that is to say, derived from the rules followed by other writers. [...] The "I" of the author is dissolved in the writing. [...] Writers, as they have always been up to now, are already writing machines; or at least they are when things are going well. [...] And so the author vanishes - that spoiled child of ignorance - to give place to a more thoughtful person, a person who will know that the author is a machine, and will know how this machine works."
Cybernetics and Ghosts, (Calvino, 1967)
Forster, E. M., 1909, The Machine Stops [Online: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html]
Hartman, C. O. & Kenner, H., Sentences, Sun and Moon Press, New American Poetry Series: 18, 1995
Montfort, N., 2008, 'Sentences in 1k', Grand Text Auto [Online: http://grandtextauto.org/2008/12/31/sentences-in-1k/]
Aarseth, E., 1997, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Baltimore: JHUP
Hayles, N. K., 1999. How We Became Posthuman, Chicago: UCP
Sennett, R., 2008, The Craftsman, London: Allen Lane
Roussel, R., 1914, Locus Solus, [Online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19149/19149-h/19149-h.htm]Ashbery, J., 1995 [1962], 'Introduction' in Roussel, R., 1995, How I Wrote Certain of My Books, Cambridge, MA: Exact Change
Leiris, M., 1987, Roussel l'ingénue, Paris: Fata Morgana
Tzara, T., 1920, dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love, [Online: http://www.391.org/manifestos/19201212tristantzara_dmonflabl.htm]
Burroughs, W. S., 1961, 'The cut-up method of Brion Gysin' in The Third Mind, New York: The Viking Press
Burroughs, W. S., 1966 [1961], The Soft Machine, Paris: Olympia Press
Porush, D., 1985, The Soft Machine, New York: Methuen
Zizek, S., 2008, Organs Without Bodies - Gilles Deleuze [Online: http://www.lacan.com/zizsalsation.html]
Bryant, L., 2010, 'The Domestication of Humans', Larval Subjects [Online: http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/the-domestication-of-humans/]
Harman, G., 2010, 'Object-Oriented Philosophy' in Towards Speculative Realism, Ropley: Zero Books
Pickering, A., 1995, The Mangle of Practice, London: Duke
Calvino, I., 1997 [1967], 'Cybernetics & Ghosts', in The Literature Machine, London: Vintage
Tim Wright, digital writer / cross-platform produce [Online: http://timwright.typepad.com
Very interesting. You write so well that I'm starting to think you're being used by a generative program as an experiment to explore the affordances of meat. I'm sure this was very well received at the symposium.
I've recently become intrigued by the implications of OOO and flat ontology by way of Bogost and your paper really resonates with this shift in perspective.
Returning to the human-centric though, I was wondering what role human emotion plays in meaning-making and how we construct and internalise personal narratives. I've heard, for example that the military has experimented with preemptively dosing up troops who are likely to enter highly stressful or traumatic situations with beta blockers in order to disable memories from being tied to emotional content, thereby preventing PTSD.
It would be very interesting to read and compare the differences in how meaning is constructed between those in a control group and those who had received this "treatment".
Hey Paul, thanks for the message :-)
I am haunted beef.
I didn't respond earlier to your question about narrative and meaning-making simply because I was in the middle of 7000 words on that very subject! See the next post - Narrative Approaches to Wellbeing. It's quite succinct. DId I say "succinct"? I meant, "veryverylong" ;-)


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Paper Magician
November 23, 2014 by Angela Carstensen Leave a Comment
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About Angela Carstensen
Angela Carstensen is Head Librarian and an Upper School Librarian at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. Angela served on the Alex Awards committee for four years, chairing the 2008 committee, and chaired the first YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adult committee in 2009. Recently, she edited Outstanding Books for the College Bound: Titles and Programs for a New Generation (ALA Editions, 2011). Contact her via Twitter @AngeReads.

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text: experiment Roos / August 8, 2016 Related Roos Hi! My name is Roos (pronounced as "Rose"), and I am a creative dreamer, passionate traveller and a bit of a nerd. Travelling is the thing I love to do most, but apart from exploring the world I also enjoy obsessing over films and tv shows, books, and history. Escapism is real! My goal in life is to see as much of the world as possible, through culture, nature and adventure.


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If you tried to reserve a hotel room at the Hyatt over the weekend you may have seen a message they were sold out. Well, we filled our room block at the Hyatt, but Wait There�s More, try again today. We called this morning and they were able to add more rooms for our group. Try again, but don�t wait too long; we will sell out soon.
We�ve also filled two buses now and we�re working on our third bus for the pre-convention bus tour to the Detroit area (10 haunts in 2 days). We�re limited to four buses. We know you can�t leave your business in October to tour other haunts; that�s why we plan these trips in June to give you a chance to learn from your peers while having a good time being entertained.
The Friday Paranormal bus tour is filling quickly too. We�re limited to just one bus on this tour that includes the Ohio State Reformatory. If you�ll be in Columbus on Friday, sign up for a tour of our haunt; The Scare-A-Torium on Friday night, followed by a Scary-Oke Show and Party.
Registration for the Midwest Haunters Convention is up 60% compared to last year; looks like we�ll exceed our target of 3,000 attendees this year. Some of our classes and popular activities are selling out fast, unfortunately we have limits due to space constraints.
Monster Makeup Wars is FULL, Ms Midwest Scary Pageant is FULL and the trade show floor is just about SOLD OUT. Check out the show at www.midwestshow.com
This will be the 9th year for the Midwest Haunters Convention is Columbus, Ohio. If you haven�t been to our show; just ask around the boards and let others tell you what you�ve been missing. We wish all the conventions a great year; get out and support your fellow small business owners and join your friends for a fantastic time with haunters.
Kelly Collins
The Midwest Haunters Convention
The Scare-A-Torium


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My own twenty-something is healthy and fit, thank goodness. But something could happen. Even if she stays well and uninjured, just having the ability to have a check-up is important.
So my reaction to Obamacare is basically, whew. This young adult can stay on my health insurance up to age 26. After that, if her job doesn't offer insurance or she wants to start her own business, she'll have good options for coverage.
I know an awful lot of twenty-somethings. Whether they're working or studying they're busy bees.
And when I think of them, one thing is clear: they should have health insurance.
With the health insurance marketplaces about to open on Oct. 1, some claim these young people shouldn't get health insurance, that it's a bad deal for them. But how could that be?
What if they have an illness? One of my students had cystic fibrosis. Following a double lung transplant, he needed expensive medication to prevent rejection and lots of costly tests and follow-up visits with specialists.
A careless driver hit another, who was riding a bike. She needed hospitalization, surgery and physical therapy.
A friend's son, now twenty-something, had leukemia in his teens and a bone marrow transplant. Imagine if he started feeling really tired but didn't have insurance and couldn't get it because of his pre-existing condition.
But insurance isn't just needed for sickness and accidents. Young women get pregnant and need prenatal care to have healthy children. Pregnancy and delivery are expensive.
So why do some argue young people shouldn't bother?
Obamacare opponents often say that young adults will be subsidizing older Americans who get more expensive care. They see this as unfair to young adults.
However, people under 30 can buy low-cost catastrophic coverage that includes preventive care with no co-pay. The law provides for different rates by age, so older folks will pay higher rates.
But, to the extent there is a subsidy, so what? It's not as if young adults have paid for everything they've gotten. Middle-age and older Americans funded younger people's schooling. When it comes to K-12 schools, plenty of people pay property taxes when they don't have children in school, even if they never had any kids at all. And if the young adults went to college, they benefited from federal spending.
Besides which, we have an inter-generational compact. Age, disability and sickness are likely to hit everyone. Young people today will be older later and will help support children and those coming into adulthood. What comes around goes around.
And when you look closely at financial calculations from people who say young people won't benefit, they're mathematically dishonest.
How so? Critics compare the cost of insurance to the fine one might pay if no insurance is purchased. But the numbers are frequently incorrect. For one, critics often leave out the financial aid that's available to people buying insurance through the marketplace. This overstates premiums' cost.
Then this calculation is made even stranger by leaving out the benefits of having insurance and misstating the cost of the fine for not buying insurance. Fines won't stay at the first year's rate; they'll go up. And if you don't figure in the benefits people get from having care covered by insurance, the arithmetic is just completely off.
Sometimes those telling young people not to buy insurance claim they can buy insurance anytime they want. Just wait, they say, until you actually need health care.
But that advice is both factually wrong and terribly irresponsible. Each year there is a purchasing window. This year, people can pick insurance from the marketplace between October 2013 and March 2014. Every other year the window is narrower, just October-December.
What happens if you miss the window? You have to pay for whatever costs you've incurred when you didn't have insurance and you can't get insurance until the next calendar year. And you're less likely to get the preventive care that improves health and saves lives because that's not offered by the only medical locales that have to see you, emergency rooms.
As a parent, I'm glad that health insurance is more available to my young adult. And I bet other parents with twenty-somethings feel the same.


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Learn how to verify family stories—from oral tradition to fact. Jeanie Chooey Low, author of China Connection: Finding Ancestral Roots for Chinese in America, will provide techniques for interviewing family members and deciphering gravestone inscriptions. She will discuss U.S. 20th-century immigration and naturalization case files, how to find and visit ancestral villages, and how to research war and census records. The presentation is for all levels of researchers and will be presented in English.
Low is the child of immigrants and a specialist in Chinese American genealogy and 20th-century immigration and naturalization records. Her interest in family history started several years ago when she realized that the Chinese traditions and language of immigrants were gradually being lost with each succeeding generation of Chinese Americans.
Since 1993, Low has presented workshops for various organizations that include: National Archives and Records Administration, National Genealogical Society, Chinese Historical Society of America, Oakland Museum of California, New York University, and San Francisco State University.
Low is the Communications Co-Chair of SONA (Save OUR National Archives), a coalition of non-profit organizations that successfully advocated that older Alien Case Files be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration as a permanent historical collection and accessible for public research. She holds a degree in Library Technology from City College of San Francisco and a Bachelors in Arts in Chinese Studies from San Francisco State University.


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Media Inquiries
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202-633-1000More Information
WHAT: Press preview of "Time and Navigation: the untold story of getting from here to there"
WHEN: Wednesday, April 10
9 a.m.: Breakfast
9:30 a.m.: Remarks
9:45 a.m.: Gallery tour
WHERE: Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Sixth Street and Independence Avenue S.W.
WHO: Paul Ceruzzi, chair of the division of space history, National Air and Space Museum
Roger Connor, curator of aeronautics, National Air and Space Museum
Andrew Johnston, geographer, Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, National Air and Space Museum
Carlene Stephens, curator of timekeeping, National Museum of American History
The National Air and Space Museum will host a press preview for "Time and Navigation: the untold story of getting from here to there" April 10. For centuries, nations have invested enormous resources to determine time and place for geopolitical reasons, and their research has changed people's view of the world. Advanced technology that was once available only to the military has become commonplace in car dashboards, cell phones and a growing number of other portable devices of daily life. Time and Navigation explores how revolutions in timekeeping over three centuries have influenced how people find their way. It is organized into five sections: Navigating at Sea; Navigating in the Air; Navigating in Space; Inventing Satellite Navigation; and Navigation for Everyone.
This project is a collaboration between two of the Smithsonian's most popular museums: the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History. The exhibition opens to the public April 12.
For the first time the museum is inviting social media users to apply for credentials to attend an exhibition's press preview. Ten social media users will be selected and will be given the same access as news media. The deadline to register is March 31. The hashtag for social media is #TimeNav.
Media must RSVP to email@example.com or email@example.com


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Mediterranean stuffed peppers
Nutrition and extra info
- Vegetarian
Nutrition: per serving
- kcal321
- fat15g
- saturates4g
- carbs37g
- sugars13g
- fibre4g
- protein11g
- salt1.4g
- 1 large red and 1 large yellow pepper, halved and deseeded (leave stalks on)
Also known as capsicums, bell peppers, sweet peppers or by their colours, for example red and…
- 85g couscous
Consisting of many tiny granules made from steamed and dried durum wheat, couscous has become a…
- 25g pine nuts, toasted
- handful black olives, roughly chopped
- 50g feta cheese, crumbled
- 50g semi-dried tomatoes, snipped, or handful cherry tomatoes, quartered
A member of the nightshade family (along with aubergines, peppers and chillies), tomatoes are in…
- 2 tbsp shredded basil
Most closely associated with Mediterranean cooking but also very prevalent in Asian food, the…
Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Pop the peppers on a plate and microwave on Medium for 5 mins, until almost soft. Place on a baking tray, cut-side up.
Meanwhile, place the couscous in a bowl and cover with 125ml boiling water. Stir, cover the bowl and leave to stand for 10 mins. Stir the couscous with a fork to break it up, then mix in the pine nuts, olives, feta, tomatoes and basil. Pile the couscous stuffing into the pepper halves and bake for 10 mins.
Recipe Tip
Couscous saladThe couscous stuffing can be served as a salad in its own right - good for a packed lunch. Simply place in a lidded container and top with a handful of mixed salad leaves. Stir through just before eating.


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Well, fellow Southerners, The Polar Vortex is upon us. Or what the rest of the world knows simply as winter.
While my dentist tells me he "doesn't believe in global warning and all that hippie crap," he sure does believe that it's "cold as a witch's t*tty" right now, and I would have to agree. About the cold; Not about choosing to ignore science.
In honor of my dentist, here's a drink that's the liquid equivalent of a cavity. It's hot, spicy, strong and chocolate, much like my girl Sophia from Orange Is The New Black. Let this keep you warm until she returns.
(Which will be "sometime in 2014." Netflix, you are a flippity trick but I. LUV. U.)
Disclosure: The non-boozy version of this drink was originally published in Southern Living, but according to our bylaws, we cannot publish beverages that do not have an alcoholic option, thus the hooch.
3 cups milk
1 cinnamon stick
3 tbps unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 (3.5-oz.) chili chocolate bar, chopped
1/4 tsp chili powder
1 shot Kahlua or Bailey's per mug
1 cup heavy cream (optional)
1 tbsp powdered sugar (optional)
- Mix everything but booze and cream and cook over low heat until chocolate is melted.
- Mix heavy cream and powdered sugar in a separate bowl and whip (ideally with a stick blender because it is so much easier and you don't want to get The Carpal Tunnel).
- Pour hot chocolate into glasses, add liquor and garnish with cream and a cinnamon stick.


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3 December 2013
6:30pm - 8:30pm
(Doors open at 6:00pm)
Sault College
443 Northern Avenue,
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Room: M1030
Pricing: FREE
In many ways, designing and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. A great designer excels at iterating and problem solving, qualities that are invaluable to developing a successful business. Now more than ever designers are nurturing their inner CEO, with design playing a central role from the outset. Join our expert panel as they discuss the unique parallels between design and starting a business, and share individual case studies highlighting the exquisite potential of designers as entrepreneurs.
This edition of Future by Design features new interactive elements, as well as international panelists streamed virtually.
Designers as Entrepreneurs is the eighth in RGD's ongoing Future by Design series of panel discussions. These panels are broadcast live via webcast to reach across all parts of the country. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com to find out how to participate.
Moderator: Gary Ludwig RGD, Principal, Hark Ideas Inc.
Aaron Draplin, Co-Founder, Draplin Design Co.
Russell Gibbs RGD, Principal at Russell Gibbs Design
Jessica Hische, Letterer, Illustrator, and Type Designer
...more to come!


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Mostly reposts from elsewhere for the moment.
* What actually became of Haller? Tycho says on "Hairy Legs" that the ship that Durandal had you send Haller to, the UESC Triumph, doesn't exist, and you in fact helped Durandal do a bad thing. However--remember the seventh terminal back on "Honk if You're an Underpaid Cyborg"? The one with the line "Send_To: Tactical Analysis, UESC Triumph"?
Pretty sure Tycho's the liar here. Durandal's pretty serious about the UESC-Pfhor war effort as long as he doesn't know that Tycho's still alive, so I doubt he'd compromise it by not giving Haller back (he did probably have Haller's escape pod momentarily dock at the Rozinante for architectural analysis and note-taking, though). Plus, as far as I can tell, there are no real signs that Durandal assimilated what remained of Haller.
* Poking around "10001 Nordic Nerds", you can find a terminal claiming that Arthur Frane hand-coded the RNA structure of the Achilles virus; however, that was actually Lysander's doing. Obviously a bit of misdirection on the Dangi Corp's part, but does it hold any significance beyond that?
There could be any number of explanations for that; the one my brain jumped to was "Frane was Lysander's creator and possible overseer like Strauss was to Durandal, and thus the guy who'd have the easiest time successfully misleading the UESC should they suspect something".
* Around the midway point of "Frog Blasting/Blasted Frogs", Durandal discusses the remains of organic Jjaro AIs that he came across while the Security Officer was in stasis, and suddenly says, "You can imagine how wastefully constrained I must feel here, dealing with old threats improperly handled in the past, reopening ancient wounds that should have been healed and forgotten ages ago."
The old Volunteers series assumed he was talking about his own possible mortality, IIRC, but I think this was actually an allusion to Tycho, with whom Durandal clearly has serious issues. He didn't handle Tycho properly in M2 (leading to Durandal's capture and presumably month-long torture), and the sight of him must've brought all those unpleasant memories right back to the forefront.
In addition, Durandal's more jerkass-y than usual on this level (meta-wise, because these terminals were the sole writing contribution of one team member), so perhaps his frustration over Tycho is mounting.
* Speaking of Tycho, "It's not my brain..." is a weird level story-wise. You're sent into what I assume is the Pfhoric boonies to retrieve the one clone of his that he hasn't already re-assimilated...but this 'clone' seems to be the Tycho from the UESC Marathon, who remembers you as Durandal's errand boy.
Seems to be; my guess is, that's a clone that happened to retain Tycho's memories of his time there. The original Tycho does specify that that was the data he copied; plus, his earlier use of the term "re-assimilated" on "Carpe *mumble mumble Latin*" does sound a bit like all those copies were carrying fragments of his mind, or something.
Plus, Tycho not being the original would undercut his eventual victories over Durandal in two of four Planks, so.
Any further theorizing would be welcome, especially on stuff like whose dreams the SO was actually experiencing and if "Dangi" actually means something (some kind of Norwegian wordplay I'm not getting?).


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Guest Author: Tom Uglow, Creative Director, Google Creative Lab
> No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse. – Theseus
On the 21st to 23rd June 2013, the Royal Shakespeare Company put on a unique, one-off performance of Midsummer Night's Dream in collaboration with Google's Creative Lab. It took place online, and offline – at the same time. It was the culmination of an 18 month project looking at new forms of theatre with digital at the core.
Midsummer Night's Dreaming occurred as a live performance in 4 locations over three midsummer days, following the time structure of the play (which, it turns out, meant mainly at night. Clue is in the title apparently). Simultaneously, an universe of 30 new characters were created on Google+ (i.e. Hercules, Theseus's best man, Phoebe the Moon & Bottom's Mum). Their role was to illuminate and augment the play. We didn't really expect them to go spinning wildly off from the play into their own fractured and fragmented narratives online. But that happened. Even fictional characters like to document their mundane (fictional) experiences: a concept that an audience member described as "like a live online soap opera wrapped round the drama of the play".
This piece isn't about what we did or why – for that see about.dream40.org/why. Our collaboration on Midsummer Night's Dreaming was an experiment for Google and an experiment for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It wasn't really marketing or sponsorship, it wasn't a live stream; it was a trial, a rehearsal, an attempt to do something new. #dream40 was an experiment in online narrative for the digital creative world from local theatre through to global agencies. It wasn't a passive broadcast of a play and it was always meant to be more about questions than answers – so that is why we want to share our thoughts, what we learnt. It's for you, if you are interested in this sort of thing.
We soon discovered that our experiment had two paradoxes buried firmly at its heart.
1. Until we saw what we were creating we didn't know what we were creating.
2. Until new paradigms for interaction are defined it is impossible to interact within them.
And finally a truism: An audience with no idea what to expect can only have their expectations confounded. People 'watch' plays, they don't 'perform'; cultural consumption is traditionally passive. I personally realised that physical theatre is magical, transformative. It is a form of virtual reality.
"We learn through doing" said Sarah Ellis. Wisely.
And what did we learn? Well, we learnt a lot. There is almost nothing that could not have been done better, but there was also nothing wrong with what we did. And if it were a rehearsal we would be able to change up for the big night – instead of which (alas) these 'notes' are for other players with similar ideas.
Fail once, fail twice, fail better said Beckett. Although I am not sure who was there to hear it. Maybe Mrs Beckett tweeted it.
This project started out as an essay for Sarah Ellis's MyShakespeare project of 2012.
It began as a question: What would theatre look like if you invented it in 2013? Would this new theatre would be physical, with a stage, un-augmented by the dominant technology of the day? A format uniquely unaffected by the profound shift from static to fluid information?
Then, we thought the essay would work better as a single scene translated via social media. This became a single act. Then a whole text, perpormed live, in real-time, in Selfridges, with cctv, and celebrities. But we never quite got to that. Google finally committed to the dream in Jan 2013 and a more modest schedule that involved a full RSC production performed over three days in the middle of the night, a creative team of five writing 2000 pieces of material for 30 new characters to be shared online non-stop for 72 hours, and a digital team of three.
Our expectations also scaled up as the project became more visible; the more people we brought in the grander the vision became. We all know how that story ends. Several things didn't change: 1) the principle – to illuminate a traditional play with online augmentation; 2) the core team (Geraldine Collinge, Sarah Ellis, myself and James Boyce); 3) the budget.
Looking back what we achieved seems unimaginable.
Biggest successes:
Energy and reach – the ability to reach so many people worldwide on our terms was unexpected.
Theatre – the RSC's 'scratch' performance was transcendent and mesmerising.
Behind the scenes – the transparency of RSC process (e.g. Hangouts) was a special win.
The RSC went from 0 to >300k followers on Google+ moving them into the top 1k brand pages globally. Their page has 375,000 +1's ('likes')
We assembled a community of more than 1k creators as part of the project.
On twitter we reached more than 20m people; we assume similar reach on Google+
#dream40 trended 4th worldwide on G+ for two days
The project lives on in as a timeline and in archive form at http://dream40.org
We made a film
What people said: storify.com/tomux/dream-quotes
Behind the scenes: storify.com/tomux/dream40
What would we do differently?
1. Do all the new writing a long long long way in advance. Like a long way. Really long. We hurt the production through the anarchic chaos of having creative arriving simultaneously to the performance, and trying to incorporate live content via the audience, and having creatives live-write for their characters. Having said that, it was great fun.
2. One vision directing every aspect. We had digital, artistic and creative directors without oversight of the other teams. It was a miracle the three parts came together at all.
3. Have a strong, obvious over-arching narrative that brings in the online characters. In television a show-runner makes sure every line, every character feeds back into a topline story arc. So photos, responses, quotes should all be part of a grand whole. Keeping it firmly in the world of the play and with characters who digress less wildly onto their own orbits.
4. We didn't let the main characters speak (which was correct,) but we should have involved them more. The play must be real, and have integrity and you shouldn't break from the words Shakespeare wrote, or their characters — but those characters needed to exist more online and interlink with the new cast more intelligently.
5. A story requires the audience to see themselves revealed through a character. Action: Have a hero online, as well as on stage. Puck got closest to this for us and created the most interaction online. He was brilliant but we could have made more of his part.
6. Create strong media channels. People understand how to share news and gossip. We allowed too much content to be led by the characters not the events. This is the thing I feel we did least well.
7. Introduce your characters more slowly and clearly. Clarify the characters and introduce them easily. (Big profile pieces).
8. Know your content. Build a content library (including imagery & video) which can be drawn on – digital content needs significant pre-production to make sure it responds to the original text appropriately.
8. Have a stage performance that made sense of the online characters. It was a shame that the online characters did not 'appear' in the live performance – which in turn could have made the use of their phones make sense in the context of the play.
9. Contrive opportunities to 'show' the live action more, 'Film' must be contextual, you can't just 'live-stream' – but we could have done this better than just letting audience members film and share raw from the room.
10. Screens break the wilful suspension of disbelief. When we physically sit together as a collective audience (simultaneity) this we become part of that moment; the actors transport us as a whole (transformation) to another world. But operating a phone or ipad drags us out of that world into a solitary world connected to our lives. Which is not where we should be at that moment. Mediating a shared reality or fantasy through a screen removes the possibility of being present in the reality/fantasy. This probably applies to life in general. Ban screens unless they are integrated into the dynamic of the performance.
11. The power of music. The live musical arrangement created magic and drama and tension – right down to the blackbird at daybreak in Act II – we completely failed to transfer this to the online. Which was a shame.
12. Know your tools better. I came away impressed with Google+ but we should have used it more widely beforehand. It has endless confusing but epic properties. Communities, Events, Circles, Photos, Q&A, Hangouts, +1's, Pages, API's etc. Fb wasn't a focus but Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Storify were all great tools.
13. The digital stage confounded some, annoyed others, and delighted a few. It suffered from trying to show too much, yet also carried too much exposition. Trying to show the story but also not baffle first-time visitors.
14. To 'watch' the play, the online audience took a 'research' approach. While the site was pretty, the audience indicated that the play worked best in conjunction with their native G+ and Twitter i.e. as if they were browsing a news event, rather than watching a channel. Allow and encourage multiple ways to experience the action online (and maybe offline).
15. Don't confuse the hell out of your audience. However much we hide behind the "first time" or "experient" argument, clearly the structure was baffling to some we could have done better at guiding our audience. Create catch-up trailers and hold the hand more.
16. Ask clearly and make it easy. When we specifically asked people to do something it worked well. Yet we had a community of 1k people who actively signed up yet we didn't successfully 'ask' them to do as much as they clearly wanted to. Choose clear activities, create roles and jobs and assign those roles to users.
17. We obey 4th wall dynamics even when told not to. It was optimistic to imagine that our audience would disobey the natural instinct to 'watch' a play rather than interact. Those that did found it rewarding but those that didn't found the fragmented, fractured and intentional disorganization off-putting. We could have helped them more. Don't fight the desire to consume passively – give easy ways to 'just watch'.
18. Know your level. Working with the RSC actors was incredible and perhaps highlighted the distance between 10 years of social digital and 500 years of theatrical practice.
19. Be in the room. We made it so hard by having the digital, creative and theatrical teams on different sides of the planet. That was dumb.
20. If you don't tell people, they won't come. Online advertising works. I know you think I would say that, but it is true.
21. Involve everyone. Alix Christie brilliantly suggested (the day before) that a journalist would have wanted a hangout round-table on issues around subjugation and misogyny in Athenian/Fairy marriage. Talk to everyone about your idea, all the time. No one will steal it.
At the end of the project we must re-examine the hypothesis and interrogate our ambitions.
Have we explored? Certainly.
Have we reached new audiences? Yes.
Was it successful? No idea.
We believe it was a blueprint for something with enormous potential. As a kindly friend put it, something that shouldn't have worked, did sort of work – and for that reason we are very happy with the outcome.
There is more we could have done with the content and activating passive audiences. This is the power of retrospect. Also I disliked the way we used phones and cameras. They broke something – so we need to integrate the hardware, more intelligently. They need more context to be less clumsy. The actors were unperturbed, nor was everyone in the audience bothered – so possibly just me.
Throughout the project I was astonished by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's bravery and energy, it's ability to conjure fairy worlds, and its belief in trying. Both from the board but also the people there, everyone was so many passionate, courageous, involved – so I would like to offer a one-person standing ovation to the entire Company. Bravo.
This was a disruptive experiment and a hugely successful one if judged simply on what we learnt and where we now move forward from.
My hope is that the next time someone wants to have a non-linear play that leaks across multiple realities in real-time performed physically and digitally simultaneously to a global audience they will not have to explain it from the ground up to blank looks and puzzled faces. They can point at the RSC's seminal 2013 production and say "like that, but much better".


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I'd like to study for the EAS Master Beekeeper written exam. Probably won't take it this year, but maybe next year. Anyway, they have a list of "suggested" reading on their site:
I've gone through about 3 or 4 of those books, just on chance of learning more. Some are very difficult (or expensive) to find, so I likely won't read them all (and won't limit my reading to just this list). But I did want a book on predators and diseases (especially about mites, can't help to learn more). The only two on the list, other than Hive and the Honey Bee and ABC XYZ, was Mites of the Honey Bee (published in 2001) and Honey Bee Pests, Predators, and Diseases (published in 1998). With recent developments in mites, miticides, mite related viruses, and "CCD", how helpful would those current Masters find these two books? One more helpful than the other on the topic of better understanding diseases? One more helpful than the other on the topic of studying for the exam?
I can get either of them for about $40 a piece. It would be worth while to have a good $40 book on the topic. It would be a waste to spend $40 on one, find it's dated, spend $40 on the other, find it's dated as well, and have to move on to a third book.
Any suggestions?


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text:
Officials dump sugar to combat childhood obesity
Howard County Unsweetened Campaign to educate kids, parents
Howard County officials dumped sugar on Tuesday.
Officials said if every student at Burleigh Manor Middle School in Ellicott City drank just one can of soda daily for one year it would equal 9.6 tons and they demonstrated the amount using white sand.
To curtail that reality, local officials launched a community-wide campaign to reduce childhood obesity by tackling sugar.
The centerpiece of the effort is called the Better Beverage Finder -- an online tool designed by researchers at Yale that enables parents and kids to identify healthier beverages.
Officials are also launching a blog for parents offer tips on how to keep their kids healthy, including videos on how to read labels and stay nutritious.
For more information on the program check out the Howard County Unsweetened Campaign website.


text: Civiballs: Xmas Levels Pack is just what you think it is: a bunch of brand new, awesome Civiballs-levels situated in the North Pole. Help Santa get the Civiballs into the right gift-boxes both At Home and Outdoors. Features 2 x 10 levels with snowboarding snowmen, a Yeti, ski-lifts, the nut-cracker, Rudolf and, of course, Santa Claus. Merry Christmas!


text:
Plant to close in Greensboro, 620 employees affected
A technology manufacturer will close a plant in Greensboro in 2013, meaning 620 people will have to look for other jobs.
TE Connectivity, known as Tyco Electronics before 2011, will close its plant on Piedmont Triad Parkway, said Tom Peacock, company spokesman.
The plant will close in phases, and employees will be told of their last day of work 60 days in advance, said Tom Peacock, company spokesman. Employees were told of the overall closure plan on Thursday.
The plant employs a total of 670 people, but 50 employees are being transferred to another facility in the area. The other 620 employees "have the opportunity to apply for positions at other plants," Peacock said.
Employees will be given a severance package, and outplacement services will help employees with the transition, Peacock said.


text:
Prism - Titanium Rainbow & Matte Large Hoop Earrings:
These hoop earrings are made from Titanium, a hypoallergenic alternative to sterling silver. They feature beautiful rainbow colours which are achieved by subjecting the metal to an electrical current; different voltages create different colours.
Each piece of jewellery comes in a presentation box.
(Dimensions: Diameter: 5cm) (Material: Titanium)
Mainland UK Standard
1-2 working days
Non-Mainland UK Standard
2-3 working days
UK Next Working Day* Available on orders placed before 1PM *UK Next Day delivery service excludes certain postcodes and not available on Saturday orders.
Next Working Day (if ordered before 1PM)
Click and Collect in-store
Same Day (if ordered before 12 noon)
Orders before 1PM (Mon-Thurs) are eligible for next day UK delivery. Any orders placed Friday to Sunday will be dispatched the following Monday. Saturday delivery is available as a premium service and so will incur extra charges – please contact the shop by phone for a quote before the order is placed.
We can also deliver to other nominated delivery addresses e.g. your place of work. Please ensure any special delivery instructions are submitted alongside your order.
PLEASE NOTE: We cannot accept returns for refunds or exchanges on any earrings, unless faulty, for hygiene reasons.
For more information about delivery and our returns/cancellations policy, please visit our Delivery & Returns page.


text:
Join the weekly Classic Castle set review discussion. Please post your opinions on the set play ability, piece selection, design, etc. Which sets stand up to our catapult of critique and which ones crumble in shame!
This week's set is 0016 Castle Mini-Figures.
This pack of three minifigures was released by Samsonite in Canada, probably in 1981. It is extremely rare and includes two set 383 soldiers and one 677 soldier. The castle pack was released concurrently with 0016 Space and 0016 Town minifigure packs.


text:
Steam community
If you prefer Steam community groups to communicate please give us a bit more time to pass all registrations issues. We will announce futher when everything will be ready.
In order to login you must be registered. Registering takes only a few moments but gives you increased capabilities. The board administrator may also grant additional permissions to registered users. Before you register please ensure you are familiar with our terms of use and related policies. Please ensure you read any forum rules as you navigate around the board.


text:
As the 50-year-old RIBA Plan of Work stages A-L are consigned to history, Felix Mara explains what architects should expect from the institute's new schema for progressing construction works
In spring next year, the Outline Plan of Work 2007, with its familiar stages A-L, will be no more – replaced by the new RIBA Plan of Work 2013.
The move marks the most significant changes to the Plan of Work (PoW) since its introduction 50 years ago. The institute hopes the shake-up will allow greater integration of architects within the wider construction industry and help them avoid marginalisation at a critical stage in its development.
As with the current plan, the new framework will help explain to clients briefing, design, construction and post-occupancy processes and will be a springboard for tools and supplementary core documents, including services appointments, scope of services and project protocol documents and building contract forms. Although it appears radically different, the use of stages and task descriptions is similar to the 2007 regime.
What is good about PoW 2013?
- While the existing plan is linear, PoW 2013 has a gridded matrix structure, with columns for work stages and rows for tasks. Its stages will still generally follow a linear sequence, but it will now be possible to bring forward certain aspects of the design or for some stages to overlap allowing more flexibility. The new task bars, which form the eight rows of this grid, are either fixed, variable or switchable and will help to make jobs more specific to practices and projects – effectively it is an adaptable kit of parts.
- PoW 2013 will be more integrated with the rest of the construction industry, with new stages aligned with the Construction Industry Council schedule of services, and will allow the interchange of supporting documents produced by different bodies. These stages will also align with the government's proposed information exchange gateways – the formal issues of documents for review and approval at key stages of projects.
- The proposed 'matrix' responds to current forms of procurement. PoW 2013 will be 'procurement-neutral' – ie it will be possible to generate project or practice-specific versions electronically online, enabling the template to be converted into a project, practice or client-specific Plan of Work.
- The new PoW avoids assumptions about the timing of planning applications which can, in reality, be made at various stages of projects and the town planning task bar allows for this.
What is bad about PoW 2013?
- There are concerns that PoW 2013 doesn't make sufficient provision for the aftercare of construction projects. On the other hand, some architects think PoW 2013 could involve architects in excessive and unpaid soft landings activity.
- Role descriptions in PoW 2013 do not include environmental, sustainability or ecology consultants.
- There are concerns that small practices, although involved in PoW 2013 consultation, will be at a disadvantage. Yet others argue it lends itself to small projects, with its emphasis on stages 1-3.
- Architects are worried about the fee implications. Residential clients sometimes wish to stop projects after planning or Building Regulations approvals. The large stage 4 (equivalent to former stages E-H) will make this look expensive. Others argue that PoW 2013 will support BIM fee structures and that this will be beneficial.
- Some architects think the architectural profession should have been involved at a higher level and with input from more members in the development of PoW 2013, and not just in consultation.
How the RIBA plan of work 2013 will affect architects
There will be eight, rather than 11, work stages, which will be numerical, rather than alphabetical. Eight task bars replace single descriptions of key tasks. Three task bars (Core Objectives, Key Support Tasks and Information Exchange) are fixed and apply to every PoW. Sustainable checkpoints and government gateways can be switched on or off. Three other task bars – procurement, programme and town planning – will be variable and can be selected to reflect practices' usual working method in the case of practice-specific PoWs.
The 11 roles defined in PoW 2013 include Construction Lead, which will be the contractor when the project reaches stage 6; and the Information Manager, which is crucial to BIM projects. To align with international practice, there will be no reference to a Lead Consultant.
Defined work stages will be milestones for agreeing output, fees and activities of other parties involved in design, construction and support.
Five strategic stage changes:
- New stage 0, which is optional, emphasises the need to strategically appraise and define projects before detailed briefs are formulated
- Stage 3 is similar to D and part of E, but developed design will be co-ordinated and aligned with cost information by the end stage, necessitating extra time for information review
- Stage 4 accommodates the residual technical work of the core design team members, whose design work will be completed at the end of this stage, although they may be obligated to check fabrication design information during stage 5 or deal with question arising from work on site at stage 6
- Stages G, H and J have been replaced by a procurement task bar to enable the PoW to be used in conjunction with different procurement strategies. This schedules the principal tendering and contract tasks at each stage
- The new stage 5 recognises the increased importance of design work undertaken by specialist contractors and/or suppliers employed by the contractors and the need to define this work early in the process in the Design Responsibility Matrix
Fee scales: the RIBA recommends practices consider the implications of the five strategic shifts in the PoW on their processes and call out rates. Whereas stage 0 is likely to be chargeable at an hourly rate, stage 3 co-ordination may result in higher fees than the previous stage D. Fees for tendering and other procurement work should reflect specific activities for the form of procurement. Eg: in the case of traditional procurement, tendering would conclude stage 4.
In the case of projects for which the Procurement Strategy is not, as recommended, finalised at the end of stage 1, the pull-down options in the electronic version of the PoW provide flexibility. A 'holding' bar can be placed in the project PoW and a new Plan generated when the Procurement or Town Planning Strategies or the Project Programme have been determined.
References to design management processes and leadership in the BIM Overlay are embedded in PoW 2013. The Execution Plan, Technology Strategy and Design Responsibility Matrix will ensure proper implementation of BIM.
Overseas: in countries where the PoW or procedures derived from it are used, the draft PoW 2013 will act as a briefing document.
Comment by Felix Mara
One of strengths of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 is its commitment to plain, jargon-free language that won't quickly become unfashionable. Painful words such as 'deliverables' have crept in, but it could have been much worse.
So far, there have been fewer naysayers than one might have expected. Although traditional procurement is at centre stage in the current plan, few argue that PoW 2013 will undermine it or that it further erodes the powers of architects, because it is procurement-neutral. In fact, traditional procurement, more common on smaller projects, remains the typical route.
Explicit references to building information modelling (BIM)are suppressed in PoW 2013, which is surprising, because the RIBA group that worked on its BIM Overlay later became involved in its PoW taskforce. Nevertheless, BIM and its underlying principles are written into the structure of PoW 2013. Some would argue that the same is true of sustainability.
If architects wish to challenge PoW 2013, they will need to do so quickly or tackle problems once they have the opportunity to try it out in spring next year.
Many architects will be looking forward to the new challenges of PoW 2013 and the opportunity to play with this new gizmo, with its architectural grid structure and electronic interoperability.
- Felix Mara is the editor of AJ Specification and technical editor of the AJ. email@example.com
Did you know reading this article can count towards your annual CPD requirement?
RIBA scraps Plan of Work: say goodbye to stages A-L
The new RIBA Plan of Work: What you need to know
Monitoring and the Plan of Work
RIBA scraps Plan of Work: say goodbye to stages A-L
The new RIBA Plan of Work: What you need to know
Plan of Work 2013 face-off: ACA hits outs at ditching of stages A-L
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text:
State Bar Group Calls for 'Mandatory' COVID-19 Vaccinations, Regardless of Objections
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text:
In Number of digits in n!, now closed, there was a mention of Dmitry Kamenetsky's formula, $[\bigl(\log(2\pi n)/2+n(\log n-\log e)\bigr)/\log 10]+1$, for the number of decimal digits in $n$-factorial. Here, $[x]$ is the integer part of $x$. The formula appears at A034886 in the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, http://oeis.org/A034886. My question is whether this formula is exact for all $n$, or is it occasionally off. No proof of exactness is given at the OEIS, no paper of Kamenetsky appears in Math Reviews.
In the other thread, I mentioned the discussion in the Usenet newsgroup sci.math in January-February, Subject: Number of digits in factorial. Although neither proof nor counterexample was found, I'd recommend looking over that discussion before starting in on this question.
EDIT 11 Aug 2011: I note that the question also came up at m.se: question 8323, 30 Oct 2010.


text: I have always loved looking at and collecting shells. I love their shapes, colours and patterns, so it seemed like a good idea to draw or paint one shell each day for 100 days. I have a huge collection so it will be no problem finding a new one each time. I was going to try different methods, but I'm enjoying getting to know how to use watercolour and ink, so I'm going to stick to that.


text:
Greetings - I have been trying to get Ubuntu 14.04 Server to install in a VM environment (VMWorkstation 10) after installing BootitBM 1.32 (the latest one). I have followed as carefully as possible the instructions in KB 279 "Linux Installation Notes: Ubuntu", installing BootitBM first from the ISO, then using it to create the partitions (30GB EXT4 for / and 2GB for SWAP). The install seems to go correctly (including where I have to "goback" in the network configuration to set the new system with a static IP). During partitioning, it does find the partitions I created and I can assign the EXT4 to root (/) which seems to go correctly and it makes it all the way to where it wants to install GRUB. That is where the problem occurs - the grub installer gives me the message that [i] "It seems that this new installation is the only operating system on this computer. If so, it should be safe to install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record of your first drive.... Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record?"[/i] with the option of "go back", "yes" or "no". If I select "no", then it fails (although a couple of times I managed to get to where it would let me specify a partition - but that failed to install). The partitions on the disk were created as 3 primary partitions (limiting was enabled) - first was 8 meg for BootitBM (which works fine), second was 30GB as EXT4 (per KB 279) and the third was 2GB as swap (per KB 279). I was careful to make sure I completed steps 4,5 and 6. I have repeated this a number of times trying minor variations. I have seen the note about issues if there is a blank primary partition in front of where you are installing GRUB but that should not be an issue - I let Bootit BM pick it's install location on a "blank" disk and install, then used it to create the EXT4 and swap partitions immediately following the 8 meg Bootit BM partition.
[b]A couple of things that are interesting and may be part of the issue:[/b]
1) there is NO other OS installed so the GRUB installer is correct on that issue (but I want to keep BootitBM)
2) If I let Ubuntu have the whole disk and do it it's way, I find it creates a primary partition of 550mb EXT2 as /boot then puts the root (/) and SWAP in an extended partition and everybody seems happy (except BootitBM is gone now)
3) The server install is a bit different from the desktop install, but very close.
4) I find it interesting the the Ubuntu install if you let it do it it's way creates a separate /boot partition that is EXT2 (in KB 279, you indicate you only need "a root partition and a swap partition at a minimum" (#3 under "recommended installation steps for Bootit BM users")
Googling around has turned up a number of issues around GRUB, but nothing that sounds like just what I am running into. Any assistance would be much appreciated !!