Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sociology. Show all posts

21.9.12

.: The Vice Law of Cool: Square derivatives of the diminishing value of Cool. Socio-Thermodynamic Theory and Hipstanomic Application .


It's science time:
Science and Math. 
(ok - some satire)

The experiment in the following video was conducted by the cutting-edge social technicians at Vice. (Vice Institute of Cool Extraction - Hipstanomics Dept).
It predictably demonstrates one of the fundamental laws of Cool. 
(Cool being a value of social temperature). 
Study of the theoretical values of  social temperature is known as the field of Socio-thermodynamics. 
Its practical applications are known as Hipstanomics.


If  we say

Cool = C

then

C x C ≠ C²

Whenever the value of Cool is squared, the result will always be W

W = Wack

and as we know, 
Wack is the inverse of Cool, 
expressed here as

W = -C

therefore

C x C = W 

or

C² = W

or simply

C² = -C

so we have proven that Cool to the power of Cool, cannot be anything other than the inverse of Cool itself. expressed in the video below as:

lightsaber x segway = Wack 

[Nb: At the time of writing the cool value of a segway is negligible but measurable]

Vice lead the industry in deriving and extracting the value of Cool, and the huge amount of wealth involved, means only they can afford the technology required for this kind of research.
Therefore I propose we name this fundamental law of Socio-thermodynamics:

The Vice law of Diminishing Cool Values.



Bam!
Give me a fucking job.

21.3.12

.: Jeff Mills - Interview.







Jeff Mills talks to EQTV in a rare interview about music, his fears for modern technology, politics and more as he plays out at Pressure at the Arches in Glasgow

25.9.11

.: Noam Sayin'? The High Times Interview with Noam Chomsky

Brandon Bird: "Signifier and Signified"

Noam Chomsky  - interviewed by T.A. Sedlak - High Times, July 29, 2011

Q: You've spoken out against the War on Drugs, explaining that it's
essentially a means to lock up poor people, that it actually increases
drug use, and that it serves as an excuse to control foreign nations.
Would you briefly elaborate on these points?

A: Let's grant that there's a drug problem, for the sake of argument --
drugs meaning, you know, cocaine, marijuana and so on. Suppose you
accept that. How do you deal with it? There are studies -- government
studies and others -- that say that the most cost-effective way is
prevention and treatment. More expensive and less effective is policing;
still less effective and more expensive is border interdiction. And the
most expensive and the least effective is out-of-country operations,
like what they call "fumigation" -- which is, in fact, chemical warfare
-- in Colombia and so forth. I've seen it firsthand; it really is
chemical warfare. So those are the basic facts, and I don't think anyone
questions them very much.

Now take a look at the way the Drug War is conducted over the past 40
years. It goes back farther, but start from 40 years ago: There's very
little spent on prevention and treatment. There's a lot on policing, a
ton of stuff on border control and a lot on out-of-country operations.
And the effect on the availability of drugs is almost undetectable; drug
prices don't change on measures of availability. So there are two
possibilities: Either those conducting the Drug War are lunatics, or
they have another purpose.

Well, in the law, there's a standard way of trying to determine
intention, and that's by looking at predictable consequences. You have
40 years of experience with almost no effect on what they claim they're
trying to do, and you have very predictable consequences -- in fact,
several. At home, you lock up the people who are essentially
superfluous. The economy shifted dramatically in the '70s away from
domestic production and towards financialization and the export of
production. That leaves a class problem: What do you do with unemployed
workers? We happen to have a very close class/race correlation in
America, so that means, overwhelmingly, black males and Hispanic males.
Well, you know, we're a civilized country, so you don't assassinate them
-- you stick them in jail. And, in fact, the incarceration rate has
been shooting up, especially since the early '80s; it's now way out of
line with any other comparable country. Meanwhile, overseas, the War on
Drugs contributes to counterinsurgency operations. So a rational
conclusion is that those are the purposes. The only alternative I can
think of is sheer lunacy....'

18.9.11

.: 'It felt like a kiss' - Adam Curtis

                
It Felt Like a Kiss is an immersive theatre production, themed on "how power really works in the world".
Below is the 54 minute film component made by BBC documentary film maker, Adam Curtis.

"I wanted to do a film about what it actually felt like to live through that time ... Where you could see the roots of the uncertainties we feel today, the things they did out on the dark fringes of the world that they didn't really notice at the time, which would then come back to haunt us"

.: "Why I am an anarchist" - ESR

Eric S Raymond [or ESR] is most widely known for his definitive book on the history of the rise of open source software and Linux,  'The Cathedral and the Bazaar'. He is also responsible for the assembling of  'The Jargon File'. aka 'The New Hackers Dictionary'
He is a bit of a legend from way back in hacker culture and open source dev & his website is a must-visit HTML treasure, well worth exploring. His essays are very interesting and wide ranging.
lots of great stuff to read.
I read this one many years ago,
William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is one of the most subtly horrific pieces of writing ever uttered. The single most chilling paragraph in a book that does not flinch from describing Nazi atrocities is this one:
On August 19, 1934, 95% of the Germans who were registered to vote went to the polls and 90% (38 million) of adult German citizens voted to give Adolf Hitler complete and total authority to rule Germany as he saw fit. Only 4.25 million Germans voted against this transfer of power to a totalitarian regime.
With this vote, the position of Führer as an amalgam of President and Chancellor — the elevation of Adolf Hitler to the status of dictator — was formally and democratically approved by the German people.