Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Idiot

I've not published but given a few talks on the role of humor as a mode of political resistance--this is the modality of the Field Marshal. Coupled with this is the role of the idiot, akin to Bartleby the scrivener, who "prefers not" or who cannot speak in a mode which is intelligible in our world. Enter Lyotard and the differend:  “It is in the nature of a victim not to be able to prove that one has been done a wrong. A plaintiff is someone who has incurred damages and who disposes of the means to prove it. One becomes a victim if one loses these means. One loses them, for example, of the author of the damages turns out directly or indirectly to be one’s judge. The latter has the authority to reject one’s testimony as false or the ability to impede its publication.” (8) What would it mean to give the victim standing? Lyotard goes on to say: “To give the differend its due is to institute new addressees, new addressors, new signification, and new referents in order for the wrong to find an expression and for the plaintiff to cease being a victim.“ (13).

For further resources, consider: "We know, knowledge there is, but the idiot demands that we slow down, that we don’t consider ourselves authorized to believe we possess the meaning of what we know" –Stengers "Cosmopolitical Proposal". 

In the ongoing saga of Animals Asserting their Airspace


A swarm of bees attack a drone flying to survey real estate. Who owns the skies? See the earlier news of a hawk attacking a drone. Why do we assume our technological right to expand to the skies (as if the sky is not the limit) when others are there first?

Friday, October 17, 2014

Tarsier



Animal communication is an open secret. They are sending signals out in the open but we have no way of comprehending these signs that are all around us. For decades scientists watched these 15 cm long primates. Occasionally the animal would open and close its mouth but no audible sound came out. Perhaps, it was speculated, they were cooling themselves off somehow. Then in the last decade, field recordings showed that "these tiny primates can send and receive ultrasonic calls, joining a select club of mammals with the same acoustic talent—namely, whales, dolphins, cats, rats and bats. Researchers already knew that tarsiers make at least 15 distinct calls—all of which are audible to people—but until now no one had good evidence that they also communicate with ultrasonic shrieks"

More on ultrasonic Tarsier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rBndmo8DKA

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Animals assert their rights to Air Space

Hawk attacks drone that is trying to observe from the bird's eye view.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/oct/10/hawk-attacks-drone-video