atlas(t)

types of mutation

i'm trying to discover the history of the discovery of mutation for my novel.

In the novel, which takes place at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century, the characters are on Mars without adequate protection from radiation, so they're all dying of radiation sickness and don't know it. (It's complicated.)

When did people start understanding genetic mutation?

In the course of researchy googling, I came across this diagram to the left. I have no idea what it means, but it looks cool.

I wonder, do we have a mechanistic view of the universe because our science makes it seem that way, or do we have a mechanistic view of the universe because our most obvious metaphors for physical processes are machines, and then we draw diagrams that make stuff look like machines?

I don't believe that chromosomes look like this, no matter what you say. LA LA LA LA I'm not listening!

atributos urbanos

this very cool dictionary/glossary  was created by the Andalusia Center of Contemporary Art for their Atributos Urbanos, or Urban Attributes, program, which will "generate a framework for reflection and debate on contemporary cities."

Urban Attributes undertakes a synchronic study of urban areas within Andalusia, and also of local and globally relevant phenomena which during recent decades have determined and defined ways of generating a city.

Two complementary work areas have been created together with a program of parallel activities that will take place in autumn 2006... The first of these work areas includes the study of adjectives and nouns assigned to the contemporary city by various authors. A glossary of attributes has ... served to describe urban phenomena from our recent history. ...

To complement this we propose the analysis of five urban areas affected by intense socioeconomic, infrastructural, and cultural transformations, i.e.: the Campo de Dalias-Campo de Níjar, the Costa del Sol, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Bay of Cadiz, and the SE30-SE40 district within the metropolitan area of Seville.

Some favorite terms:

• Buffer City: Global buffer cities become spaces of transition between countries and continents, where differences in economic development cause the uncontrollable decanting of people and businesses. The interest of the buffer city lies exclusively in the fact that it is crossed to reach the other side, and this condition of area of passage, where legal exchange and illegal traffic are more intense, gives it a high degree of crossovers and social conflict that become spatially various manifestations of a provisional nature.


• Cannibal City: We understand such a city to be one that in the process of its territorial expansion and growth engulfs any other urban area that it encounters. This is an organicist characterization of the city, which resorts to the analogy with natural phenomena to reveal the most irrational facet of its behaviour. Cannibalism becomes a valid reference for situations in which the expansion of the city is subject to the vicissitudes of the free market and the changing interests that encourage property speculation, which raise doubts about the efficiency of any regulation, norm, or form of planning.


• Surfurbia: Coined by Reyner Banham in his Los Angeles. The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), the term surfurbia is used to describe the influence that the overwhelming trinomial of the three Ss (Sun, Sand and Surf) has on the construction of the contemporary metropolis. In the first place, surfurbia arises as a habitual process of suburbanization: Since it was founded, the city of Los Angeles was kept separate from the sea until in the early 20th century the coast became the declared objective of its expansion. This process, as in the remainder of North American cities, was based on an alliance with rail companies which permitted easy access from the downtown area to the first exclusive resorts of the periphery such as Santa Mónica, created as a result of the growing fondness for bathing of the Los Angeles bourgeoisie of the late 19th century.


• Villa Miseria: Villa Miseria is the Argentinian version of a term that has numerous local equivalents: Favela in Brazil, callampa in Chile, pueblo joven in Peru, katchi abadi in Pakistan, shanty town in Kenya, bidonville in Algeria, township in South Africa, barong-barong in the Philippines, jhuggi in India, etc. All of them refer to the same phenomenon, the slum housing that surrounds the large metropolises of developing countries. The Villas Miseria are unplanned settlements. They appear as a result of the initiative of a group of citizens (normally from rural areas) who appropriate furtively and illegally an empty territory located on the periphery of a large city.

urban flora

the description on youtube says:

Urban Flora is a project that aims to alter city dwellers' experience of their environment through a series of stickers that identify objects in the urban environment. These "urban flora", such as mailboxes, lamp posts, and fire hydrants, are presented in a traditional taxonomy such as one would see in an arboretum or botanical garden. By defining these man-made artifacts in the context of the botanical world, the project draws attention to the presence or absence of nature in the urban space.

but it's really just a time-spender for urban artsies with too much time on their hands.

Either that, or these people are "artists" who need some "projects" under their belts. That would be indicated by the earnestness of the text. I'd actually prefer the former. My friends and I used to sit around and drink beer and come up with ideas galore for projects. Sometimes we'd even do them, but we mostly just sat around and talked. Doing the projects was problematic because it always required some work, and the projects were always one liners, like this one, so it never felt quite sane to spend 200 hours--or 20 or even two--making something that people would look at for a second, say "huh" about, and then walk away.

But I realize that these sorts of one-off projects are how artists cut their teeth so I'm trying not to be too much of a bitch. And it's a neat idea, for about a second. Then it's just precious. My main issue is art that purports to invite random mans on da streets to "think about" something. Unless the artist is very careful, and very thoughtful, these invitations are more along the lines of demands. Condescending demands that offer an ill-defined idea in the confidence that viewers have never thought of such things before.

Such projects also do all the thinking necessary for engaging with the piece, so that when your two seconds of engagement are up, so is all the thinking around the piece.

The problem here specifically is that this idea requires a great deal more thought and discussion to really give anything new to the random viewer. Pretty much every city dweller has thought, at some point or another, about the lack of vegetation, or wished for more trees or green or just plain shade. Pointing out that we've "replaced" trees and shrubs with hydrants and streetlamps doesn't really cut it--for anyone.

The fire hydrant sticker was starting to get somewhere interesting with its line about hydrants now serving multiple purposes. But the format of the stickers was too brief to allow thought to go anywhere. This could have been solved in a number of ways:

1. making the stickers a little bigger and giving oneself a little more leeway to spin out fantasies
2. making a lot more stickers about a lot more objects, and shaping a discussion by sheer accumulation
3. adding a url to a website that included longer (and maybe not so earnest) discussions about the taxonomy of street furniture, or a map of said street furniture, or a taxonomic table or family tree, or maybe simply an interactive component where viewers could suggest other objects to taxonomize

I hate to see a good idea go to waste.

taxonomy of popular techology

what wired geeks do when they're bored.

taxonomy song

wow. Taxonomy sorts out all life on Earth, in the present day, in the future, and all through the past. ... Classes will take us up one further rung. Mammals for example, all suckle their young ... except when they use formula ...

It's a great idea, but maybe a songwriter should have written it.

what we are

point:

counterpoint:

band name taxonomy

the Flint Journal -- yes, Flint, Michigan, as in Roger and Me -- that pillar of cultural commentary, has produced this taxonomy of band names.

Much like biological taxonomy and dichotomous key, various types of bands often will have common name traits with other bands of a similar sound or style, since names convey an attitude and image before a band ever plays a note.

Hence, that's why (sic) there aren't many heavy metal bands with names like Happy Johnny and The Smiley Faces.

And here's an example:

'The' bands

Examples: The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives, The Avatars, The Pulse

The most famous "the" bands were classic rockers The Doors and The Eagles, but The Animals and The Kinks were the bands that had the greatest influence on the early 2000s crop of bands that drew liberally from '60s garage rock and bubblegum pop. Fuzzy guitars, off-key vocals and a heavy backbeat for three-minute songs are the form's stock in trade.

Exceptions: The The and The Smiths - '80s British rockers who were more into mopey, atmospheric pop.

He forgot "The Commitments."

Did we know all this already, without it having to be noted? Well, yes, but somebody did finally note it in print, so ... well, we're noting the notation here. Hmmm ...

cio taxonomy

continuing this week's theme of personality taxonomies, here's a blog post cleaning up another blog post categorizing CIO stereotypes.

A CIO (I had to look this up, although I assume most of you didn't) is a "Chief Information Officer", something which became an executive position while I was scratching my ass and writing letters to my congressman, apparently.

The taxonomer only provides four stereotypes:

1. The Bluffer
2. The Tweetie Nerd
3. unnamed, but called "a variant on greenmail"
4. The Absent Genius

Okay, dude, you need to learn how to taxonomize. If you're going to categorize people, you have to give each category its own name. Then you have to explain the name. I'm sure other CIOs know what "tweetie" means in this context, but taxonomers are throwing themselves upon their rubrics, so to speak, for the good of insiders and laypersons alike. Ya know?

Okay? and a real taxonomy has subcategories and sub-subcategories, and can be mapped out, or more accurately, diagrammed, kinda like this:

Anything with less than three hierarchical strata is mere categorization. Yes, that's a haughty tone in my voice. Not every set of categories is a taxonomy! There's more at stake here than mere stereotypes!

And cross-referencing? Hello? Any single taxon must be able to find more than one parent. Okay? Dude.

Plus, what is "greenmail"? Is it like blackmail, but with plants?

astrology

of course, the original, best, and still ultimate, still useful taxonomies of human personalities are those described by astrological symbol systems. (Because there's so much bullshit online about astrology, I've had to go to wikipedia for the basics. Salt to taste.)

Okay, so as far as I can tell, the twelve constellations of the zodiac are the constellations that form a perfect circle around the Earth, so that when our planet turns, the zodiac signs are always in the middle of the sky (or rising or falling on either side along a central line). So, "your sign" (baby) is the sign of the zodiac in which the sun falls on the day on which you're born. I don't know what this means. Presumably, it means the sign that is in the center of the sky (and not rising or falling) on your birthday.

So your sign describes personal characteristics. It seems these personalities we like to use astrology to describe are based on convergences: this sign has this element, that aspect, and the other quality. Or something. Each of these (aspects, elements, etc.) carry with them characteristics. Combine all of these characteristics, and you can extrapolate a unique personality for each sign.

In addition, each visible planet and the moon also fall into signs on the day of your birth. Because days are determined by the sun's movement, the exact time of your birth on that day can change the position of the planets or the moon. The planetary and lunar signs also affect your personality in certain ways, so to determine your personality, the astrologer would have to choose the set of characteristics determined by your sun sign and all the rest, and then calculate and interpret their impact on your overall personality.

Then there's Chinese astrology, in which not only the 12 animals of the year in which you are born are important.

These yearly cycles represent what others perceive you as being: while a person might appear to be a Dragon they might actually be a Snake internally and an Ox secretively. Combined with 5 elements, this makes for 8640 combinations (5 elements, 12 animals, 12 months, 12 times of day). The inner animal is assigned by the month of birth. This dictates your love life and inner persona and is critical to a proper understanding of your compatibility with other signs. It may be considered what the individual wishes to become, or believes to be their true self. The secret animal is determined by exact time of birth and is your own true sign which your personality is based on. It is important to compensate for daylight savings or any clock adjustment performed by your country, as it is mapped according to the sun's location and not the local time.

This gets very complicated, so complicated, in fact, that one can suspect that a person's birth signs can be tweaked to mean pretty much anything. Which is why I've always respected astrology as a way of advising people---and probably why astrology is still so powerful in our culture. The astrologer isn't someone who understands how the stars affect us; the astrologer is someone who employs a woo-woo vocabulary to help her client understand himself better. "When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter is aligned with Mars" basically means "get your shit together before you lose momentum," or something like that. Well, imo.

Anyway, I think it's fascinating that 12 seems to be the magic number for personalities. Magic numbers are: 3 (very magic), 4 (elements), 7 (seventh sons, etc.), 8 (musical scale), 10 (counting), and 12, for different things, but 12 tends to be a natural cycle number and a human number (12 months, 12 jurors, 12 doughnuts). While we count things in groups of ten, and estimate larger numbers in tens (hundreds of, thousands of, millions of) we still estimate smaller numbers in twelves (dozens of, not tens of). It seems that 12 is the largest number of discrete identifiable units that we can maintain overview of. It's perfect for personalities, because we can fit personalities into twelve categories without feeling constrained, but we can still remember all twelve categories.

Someday, maybe soon, I'll write a cycle of 12 stories, each one driven by a character typical of one of the astrological signs. The question is: do I use the western or the Chinese system? I should probably do a little research first and figure out if the 12 western signs match up with the 12 eastern ones, or if they're divvied up differently.

flame warriors

a taxonomy of the personalities that make your blog comments section a living hell.

Mike Reed's "Flame Warriors".

What's with the taxonomizing of personalities? Ooo! I've got another one! See tomorrow!