Picture of the Day - California Dreamin'

Today the Central Coast of California was warmed and stirred by mild Santa Ana Winds which were more intense further south and will intensify in the coming days with near-record temperatures possible as well as the threat of wildfires despite the recent rains from the current record-setting El Niño. Above is the quintessential California mid-wintertime image of a palm tree being stirred by Santa Ana Winds with a background of a clear deep-blue sky. The photo was taken this afternoon in Atascadero, CA.
Photo courtesy of Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Now I'm 294

Tonight I reached my highest weight ever.... 294 lbs. If I don't turn this thing around this year I will either die or I will acquire a chronic illness like diabetes. Fortunately although I look heavy I do not look nearly 300 lbs. However, that won't last if I hold onto this body fat much longer. I hate how my body feels and looks and how it moves. Change is coming one way or the other!

Cleverest Obit Ever

I spotted this on Facebook today and immediately loved it. This is by far the most clever obituary I have read thus far. If one does not possess a modicum of computer code knowledge then one might not get much of the humor contained therein. Photo credit unknown.

Why Go? I Know!

I have loved Faithless since I first heard their eclectic electronica hybrid of house and trance back in 2001. Here is one of their gems I discovered only in recent years from their first compilation album back in 2005. They had previously released this song as sung by Boy George in 1998, but this version is better with vocals by Estelle. The theme/plot of the accompanying music is also rather charming to go along with the catchy tune this song is.

Picture of the Day - I Look So Cheap

The manner in which I tithe is in keeping with the tradition of not letting the right hand know what the left hand doeth. I give anonymously.... most of the time. Occasionally, I forget myself and mindlessly include my name on a tithing envelope which then causes that gift to be officially attributed to me and goes into the tax records. Year-before-last I did this once and got back an Annual Giving Report with a single $20 gift. This past year I bettered that by one gift and tripled the previous dollar total. In reality, I gave much more than that both years but only a small fraction of what I gave was actually attributed to me. I wanted to remain entirely anonymous but instead I just appear cheap. Oh well. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

My Top 25 Most Pretentious Academic Words

I have encountered a number of words used in secondary sources which I have read in my various history classes at Cal Poly. Below is a list of words that while I feel they are good to know and even quite useful when used appropriately. I even use some of them to varying degrees. However, these same words are often employed in scholarly contexts to quite effective affectation. That others sometimes (okay, often-times) use these words pretentiously and ostentatiously does not mean they are not wonderful words when used appropriately. I invite you to know what they mean and use them yourself when appropriate. However, I do declare that each of these words has been employed in scholarly literature that I have personally read that in the manner used annoyed me on more than one occasion.
 Note: these definitions are in my own words but are verified for accuracy and contain hyperlinks to more information each.

1. agency ~ The capacity to make personal choices.
2. deviant ~ Outside of norms. Non-normative.
3. dialectic ~ Discourse involving people of differing perspectives with the goal of establishing the truth.
4. discursive ~ In a Foulcauldian sense the word is pared with "formation" or "practice" to refer to the qualities of modes of framing research or establishing rules for knowledge-marking..
5. epistemology ~ How do you know what you know?
6. gendered ~ Of or pertaining or dominated by traditional gender norms.
7. hegemony ~ Control by means of indirect control and implied threat.
8. hermeneutics ~ The study of the interpretation of texts.
9. historiography ~ What others have written about history.
10. homosocial ~ non-sexual same-sex relationship.
11. metropole ~  The imperial center as referenced in postcolonial studies. 
12. normative ~ What is considered normal or has become normalized.  
13. ontology ~ The study of the nature of being.
14. other ~  A non-conforming group.
15. patriarchy ~ A male-dominated social system.
16. philology ~ The study of the written word.
17. reification ~  Giving something physical form.
18. semiotics ~ The study of meaning.
19. space ~ In a Kantian sense of the word to suggest that space is subjective and artificial.
20. subaltern ~ Those without a voice in the colonial period.
21. tautology ~ Something perceived as truth by means of its being oft repeated.
22. teleology ~ Explaining how/why something is the way it is. 
23. typology ~ The classification of things.
24. unfree ~ coercive or otherwise lacking complete personal agency 
25. vernacular ~  The distinct language or dialect of a particular people.

Atomburbs vs. Atombombs: A Different Type of Distributed Network

Last spring at Cal Poly I took Dr. Lewis Call's History of Network Technology (History 354). Early on we discussed Paul Baran's concept of the "distributed network" in regards to networked computer systems during the Cold War which was s design which thwarted the efficacy of a nuclear assault disabling a computerized command and control network. This concept via ARPANET ultimately evolved into the modern internet and transformed the face of the modern world and how we all live. Fast-forward to today and I am conducting research for my senior project. The moment I found this image it occurred to me that it is a different sort of "distributed network," this one a network of distributed communities thus designed to minimize the efficacy of a nuclear attack by spreading the population out so much that there would be no population centers to target. This concept, christened the "atomburb," was created by the then-Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago later to be called the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Image courtesy of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (all rights reserved).