Connectivity, Youtube, Google Videos, Google docs and more

In my ongoing investigation of connectivity innovations in Web 2.0 I have uploaded shaky (longtake) videos to a YouTube oceanflynn account using the Canon PowerShot A550’s basic video clip capacity. As YouTube background I used a Flickr image adapting Escher’s rippled reflections and Davidhazy’s macro shots of water drops. Flickr images cannot be used directly with YouTube so I used the .jpg url of that image from my Speechless @ WordPress uploads. YouTube seems to limit uploads to one a day? The tags are limited and so are categories. I use travel. Uploading is very fast and easy. There may be fewer views of my slow world videos than on Google Videos. There is more room for descriptions on Google Video. I think the full upload time is longer. Both are seamlessly integrated with WordPress through a simple html-like code using [] brackets instead of <> youtube = and googlevideo =

I am using Google docs as a space for note-taking related to my YouTube and Google Videos. It allows me to add images seamlessly with no problems formatting. I appreciate the ‘remove coding’ icon so I can keep coding as plain as vanilla. It helps me keep track of bibliographies and webliographies although these are also on delicious. Google docs also allows for lots of tags (folksonomy is the key to connectivity). Although these docs are often a mess of collaged text, urls and images, they help me keep track of information such as First Nations preferred names for places, evidence of benign colonialism, etc.

I uploaded some digital images from our two excursions this weekend to oceanflynn @ the Google Earth community.

I have bookmarked the YouTube videos on the social bookmarking site, ocean.flynn delicious

video.google

googlevideo

I’ve also subscribed to this at my Google Reader as .rss feed. http://del.icio.us/rss/ocean.flynn/youtube

del.icio.us/ocean.flynn/first.nations

http://del.icio.us/rss/ocean.flynn/first.nations

Finlayson Point, Juan de Fuca Strait

With just a month left on the Island we went for our last visit to Beacon Hill Park and the nearby look outs over Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic Mountain Range. Wind and surf were ideal for the parasurfers riding the waves between Clover Point and Finlayson Point.

Beacon Hill Park occupies over 62-acres of with numerous trails crisscrossing through informal and formal gardens designed in 1889 by Scottish landscape architect, John Blair. The rustic stone medieval bridge was built then. About 2000 trees and shrubs were brought in. Although there are many rhododendrons there are also rare and endangered plants.

I’m not sure what kind of tree I photographed here. Dave made a video clip of waves crashing against the rocks on Clover Point and a Towhee singing. I filmed the wind in the willows at Fountain Lake and the Stone Bridge and a panorama from Finlayson Point. I’m going to upload some to Google Video and some to Youtube. I put several photos on Flickr and one on Google Earth community. I want to connect the video clips to the Google Earth community. I’ve also linked these with deli.cio.us.

“[What is known as Beacon Hill Park] was once part of the land used and occupied by the Songhees Indians. When first observed by Europeans in the mid-19th century, there were no Indian villages in the present park area. However, the evidence of prehistoric activities and oral tradition tell a different story. Evidence of prehistoric use of the Park area by native peoples consists of the remains of village refuse at defensive localities along the waterfront and burial grounds nearby. A Songhees elder, Jimmy Fraser, gave the name “Meegan”, meaning “warmed by the sun”, to the open meadow in Beacon Hill Park where people sat to have their bellies warmed in summer (Keddie).”

Before heading home we biked over to the Cameron Bandshell, in the Park off Arbutus Way and Bridge Way where we caught the final numbers in the performance by the Highline Community Symphonic Band, Colonel Bogey that Dave used to play in high school.

Webliography and Bibliography
Keddie, Grant. “Native Indian Use of Beacon Hill Park.” RBCM Notes, Note #14/88, ISSN 0838-598x

Struggling with God: the US litigation explosion (Garry 2006)

Garry (2006) skillfully constructs a the historical, judicial and ideological underpinnings of the robust debate on the First Amendment, specifically the interpretation of Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor of the wall of separation (1802) argues that [slow world interrupted . . .]

Notes:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties (Jefferson 1802).

Timeline

1973 U.S. Supreme Court. Lemon v. Kurtzman,

Bibliography

Garry, Patrick M. 2006. Struggling with God: the Court’s Tortuous Treatment of Religion. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.

Jefferson, Thomas. 1802. “Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists: the Final Letter, as Sent.” Jan. 1. 1802. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html

U.S. Supreme Court. 1973. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 411 U.S. 192 (1973) 411 U.S. 192. Lemon et al. v. Kurtzman, Superintendent of Public Instruction of Pennsylvania, et. al. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. No. 71-1470. Argued November 8, 1972. Decided April 2, 1973.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=411&invol=192

Soul, Self and Personal Identity

A smile came into his eyes as contemporary theorist Rob Shields casually mentioned a potentially potent area of research, as if it had just come to him — tracing the history of the modern concept of self. For a moment I considered it but I realized it was far too ambitious. So it was with eagerness that I began to read Martin and Barresi’s (2006) he Rise and Fall of Soul and Self. In it they trace the development (and eventually deconstruction) of Western theorizing of soul, self and personal identity from Plato to Jacques Derrida with impeccable skill, lucidity and logic. They conclude that this anthropocentric project is an exercise in human pride, a western myth of human sense of worth and nobility over all other life forms. While relegating the concept of soul to either folk psychology or religion, and excluding the use of the term in the disciplines of philosophy or psychology, they acknowledge that concepts of soul, self and personal identity have become interchangeable in everyday life. And when the accountant tallies the numbers, in spite of Epicharmus’ argument¹ — one is not the same person one was before since everything is constantly changing — debtors are not forgiven their debts because their molecules have changed.

to be continued . . . slow world interrupts . . .

According to Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), for instance, language is unstable and lacks an external reference. A student of Foucault, Derrida named his view, Deconstruction; but, he said, even though words and concepts, including the self, are open to question, we have no choice but to use them. Once we are aware that they are open to question, we should put them “under erasure,” that is, never lose sight of the fact that their meaning is ephemeral (Martin and Barresi 2006b).

Notes:

^1.

One of the earliest indications of interest in the problem of personal identity occurs in a scene from a play written in the fifth century b.c.e. by the comic playwright Epicharmus. In this scene, a lender asks a debtor to pay up. The debtor replies by asking the lender whether he agrees that anything that undergoes change, such as a pile of pebbles to which one pebble has been added or removed, thereby becomes a different thing. The lender says that he agrees with that. “Well, then,” says the debtor, “aren’t people constantly undergoing changes?” “Yes,” replies the lender. “So,” says the debtor, “it follows that I’m not the same person as the one who was indebted to you and, so, I owe you nothing.” The lender then hits the debtor, who protests loudly at being abused. The lender replies that the debtor’s complaint is misdirected since he—the lender—is not the same person as the one who hit him a moment before (Martin and Barresi 2006:3).

Bibliography and webliography

Kingswell, Mark. 2001. The World we Want: Virtue, Vice and the Good Citizen. Toronto/New York: Penguin. p. 91.

Levitt, Steven D., Dubner, Stephen J. 2005. Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: Harper Collins. p. 92

Martin, Raymond, Barresi, John. 2006. The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: an Intellectual History of Personal Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.

Martin, Raymond, Barresi, John. 2006. Excerpt. The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: an Intellectual History of Personal Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.

2006b. “Interview with Raymond Martin and John Barresi, authors of The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self.” http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/publicity/martinbarresiinterview.html

Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_243f8v533

© Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. “A history of the soul, self and personal identity. >> speechless http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_243f8v533

Foucault’s ethical turn 1984

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) spent most of his life examining the archaeological dimensions of his philosophy of freedom, but at the end of his life as he was dying of HIV related illness he re-examined his concept of freedom with an ethical dimension.

In 1984

“. . . Foucault sought a heightened consciousness of how individuals are embedded in cultural practices, especially in various sorts of power relationships, to enhance individual freedom. In his final interview, he said that he had tried to distinguish “three types of problems of truth, that of power, and that of individual conduct,” but that he had hampered himself by overemphasizing truth and power at the expense of individual conduct (Lotringer RM: 466:1989). Now, he continued, he hoped to break free of mere subjectivity by reappropriating the ancient practices of care of self. These, he said, so not include finding a deep inner truth but rather governing “one’s life in order to give it the most beautiful form possible (Lotringer CT 1989:458 cited in Martin and Barresi 2006:261).”

“[...] In the end, Foucault advocated a return to the project of care for the self and to the constructing of an ethical self. (Martin and Barresi 2006:262).”

Bibliography

Foucault, Michel. 1984. Vol III: Le Souci de soi. Paris: Gallimard.

Foucault, Michel. 1988. ‘The Return of Morality’, in Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture, Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence Kritzman, trans. Alan Sheridan and others. New York: Routledge, 1988, 242–54.

Foucault, Michel. 1986. ‘Postscript, An Interview with Michel Foucault by Charles Ruas’, in Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel, trans. Charles Ruas. New York: Doubleday, 1986, 169–86.

Foucault, Michel. 1984. Vol III: The Care of the Self. Paris: Gallimard.
‘The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practise of Freedom’, in The Final Foucault, ed. James Bernauer and David Rasmussen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988, 1–20.
‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. J. Harari. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, 340–72.

Lotringer, S. 1989. Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966-84. Semiotext(e).

Martin, Raymond, Barresi, John. 2006. The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self. New York: Columbia University.

Memory work, arcades and montage

Cupboards, drawers, boxes and storage bins are open and private everyday objects are strewn about, turned into something public in preparation for the moving sale. Personal histories related to each item are re-examined. Will they survive without the physical archives? Do they need to?

Le Carré describes this tortuous upending of a home in A Perfect Spy as agents tramp through every cranny and cupboard of her house. Mary’s husband, gifted in the spy tradecraft, has gone missing. He’s taken a ‘retirement’ and is writing his autobiography. I am intrigued by his process because he wants his story to read like a fiction and he wants his hero, himself to be lovable. In her interrogation with the agents, she said,

He’s not writing yet. He’s preparing.

He calls it a matrix.

When he retires, he’ll write.

He’s still finding the line. He likes to keep it to himself.

Listen to this: ‘ When the most horrible gloom was over the household; when Edward himself was in agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how. ‘

It’s from something he read. When he reads a book he underlines things in pencil. Then when he’s finished it he writes out his favourite bits (Le Carré 1986:51).

I think of a mise-en-abime, the hypodiegetic and diegetic framing narratology but this is only a spy mystery. But I also think of the collage-montage and I remember Benjamin. It seems to be what I am doing with my blog. I underline with digg or deli.cio.us. I cut and paste using Flickr, Youtube, Google docs or WordPress itself. But unlike Benjamin or the perfect spy, I scrupulously hot link the most reliable url I can find to every image, citation, idea. The blog itself may seem fragmented or may link the images with new juxtapositions but the sources can be followed by the reader. So my blog is more like a collage-montage than writing.

Before being driven to suicide through physical and mental exhaustion while fleeing the Nazis at the French border in 1940, German cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin was working on a consuming project to educate his own generation and awaken a new political consciousness (Buck-Morss 1991: 336, 47 in Holtorf 2001) . Using the Paris arcades as his prime metaphor, through his passion for collecting fragments of everyday urban experience he wanted his contemporaries to engage in a cleansing memory work, history with an ethical dimension, to revisit 19th century Parisian social and cultural history. He introduced a new form of ‘writing’ which consisted of cutting-and-pasting original citations without citation marks.

Benjamin’s fragmented direct, literal quotations, images and things were purposefully taken out of context. In this way they were deliberately not reduced to generally accepted theoretical or methodological frameworks or categories. He wanted his contemporaries to question unchallenged assumptions about anthropological nihilism, iron construction, the flâneur, the collector and capitalism itself. Something new was created from the old by constructed these fragmented, de-racinated elements into a collage-montage by juxtaposing them in a new way. In this way Benjamin questioned commonly held notions of ‘representation as finding some correspondence with an exterior reality’ (Shanks 1992: 188-90 Holtorf 2001).

Webliography and Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Trans. Buck-Morss. Das Passagen-Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V [1982]. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. [English edition 1996]

Buck-Morss, Susan (1991) The Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project [1989]. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.

Holtorf, Cornelius. 2001. Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk.

Le Carré, John. 1986. The Perfect Spy. New York: Penguin.

Shanks, Michael (1992) Experiencing the Past. On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge.

18th Century Values for a 21st Century Dilemma

Le Devoir has invited authors to use the tools of philosophy to examine contentious current events. Montreal philosophy professor, Jean Laberge (2007), tackles missionary ecologists in the wake of UN report by invoking the work of the Scottish empiricist and Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1716-1776). Laberge based his argument on Hume’s meta-ethics, his is-ought problem.

Laberge (2007) questions the way in which Al Gore, the Pope in this fight against climate change, has turned the issue into a moral imperative. Laberge claims that according to Hume, the statement that global warming is bad is erroneous. It is a confusion between descriptive (is) and prescriptive (ought) statements. The planet is getting warmer. We cannot logically deduce from that, that humans ought to modify behaviour to diminish the impact of climate change. According to Hume’s anthropocentrism, the human faculty of reason serves human interest exclusively, not the environment. “For what does reason discover, when it pronounces any action vicious? Does it discover a relation or a matter of fact? (Hume 1739-40). Facts in themselves are value neutral. Logically, in order to decide whether something is good or bad, there must be a moral sensitivity upon which a judgment could be made. The ‘environment’ is not endowed with a moral sensitivity as humans are.

Logiquement, pour juger qu’une chose est bonne ou mauvaise, il doit y avoir une sensibilité morale à partir de laquelle un jugement de valeur peut être rendu. Or, au contraire de l’humain, l’«environnement» ne dispose pas d’une telle sensibilité morale (Laberge 2007).

In the socio-historical context in which Hume was writing he was concerned with distinguishing vulgar reasoning from true philosophy. He argued that there were four sciences: logic, morals, criticism, and politics. He claimed that morals do not result from logical reason and judgment but from tastes, sentiments, feelings and passions.

Hume distinguishes also between a vulgar [thinker who uses only common language] who proposes a system of morality and a true philosopher, between the thinking of a peasant and a true artisan. Vulgar reasoning shifts from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ imperceptibly without giving a proper explanation or producing evidence.

Is Laberge suggesting that Gore is a vulgar thinker who has not provided enough evidence for his case? In the case of climate change the science is overwhelmingly clear.

And humans do have the moral sensitivities which are the basis for making ethical decisions. We also have reason and scientific tools that provide us with experience-based evidence that informs our moral choices. Even Hume describes a political will, a social covenant in which citizens consult and agree upon a common ‘moral’ action.  We are not conscious of most of our mundane, everyday moral choices. Failing to protect forests or watersheds is a moral choice. A couple of decades ago most of us were insensitive to the moral nature of our actions that were destructive to ecosystems. In complex ecological issues where so many political, economics, geography, social and cultural interests converge, we consider ethical dimensions. Science can provide tools for measuring forest regeneration and efficient technologies for implementation. But science itself is not invested with moral sensitivity. It is only through human moral sensitivities that value judgments can be made in regards to unintended risks or side effects. Once science has provided evidence of shared, heightened risks we move from mere truth claims to moral justification for action or inaction.

Notes:

Keywords: Hume, philosophy, epistemology, ecology, is-ought, meta-ethics,
Webliography

Markie, Peter. 2004. “Rationalism vs. Empiricism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Hume, David. 1739-40. “Footnote 13.”Treatise of Human Nature.

Laberge, Jean. 2007. “Le devoir de philo: le scepticisme de Hume contre les écolos.” Le Devoir. 19 mai.

Ethics, Ethos and Moral Mathematics at the Interstice

French philospher and superstar of atheism Michel Onfray’s (Onfray 2007) movement of evangelical secularism depends on a moral mathematics of risk society. At its most extreme it advocates a form of instrumentalist social atomism and radical anthropocentrism.

Onfray refers to the influential writings of Nietzsche, who combines philosophy with a searing aesthetic to unsettle 19th century ethics, ethos and morals. Nietzsche work is permeated with a heightened moral relativism where individuals are free to choose their own virtues and vices subjectively and interchangeably. But Nietzsche’s avatar Zarathustra is not advocating a new religion. He is following in the Enlightenment tradition wherein the modern individual perceives religion to be pitiably self-delusional and comfortable. And I never forget that Nietzsche wrote against a late 19th century backdrop of a distorted form of Christian/utilitarianism driving unfettered destructive colonial expansion.

These masters of today- surpass them, O my brethren- these petty
people: they are the Superman’s greatest danger!
Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the
sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable
comfortableness, the “happiness of the greatest number”-!
And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I love you,
because ye know not today how to live, ye higher men! For thus do ye
live- best! (Nietzsche 1892)

The brilliance of the canonical writing of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Deleuze and even Derrida, is not enough to provide incentive to transform inner ethical orientations or to change outward moral behaviour. Marx was not a Marxist. Derrida himself deconstructed the Author. These leaders of thought provide useful concepts and robust arguments but not comprehensive systems intended for universal adoption. Their space-time dependent oeuvre never claimed to provide comprehensive manifestos with an ethos, code of ethics and a will for social change under accidental temporal and spatial conditions.

Moral orientation imposed through legislation and education aims at protecting current and dominant (not necessarily democratic) concerns of society. Such ordinances and curriculum are necessary in a civil society but they provide at most a minimalist state protection for those at-risk of social exclusion. At their worst the algorithms of moral mathematics ensure a legal and civil method to heighten the vulnerability of the most vulnerable. See Foucault on crime, punishment and discipline.

Nietzsche’s concept of authenticity which is a form of self-making in the register of the aesthetic is incompatible with that form of imposed morality, the Christian-inspired ethic of charity for the Other crushes an individual’s elemental, instinctive and powerful desires (Taylor 1991:65).

In contrast the inner ethical orientations ( BIC 2006 ) of moderate civil religion relevant to social, historical, economic and political context are constituted by a concept of faith as conscious knowledge expressed in action (‘Abdu’l-Baha 1915:549) combined with an an ethos of caring and mutual trust. This concept of faith is held in tension by the use of the faculty of reason to prevent fanaticism and superstition. First it is to know and then to do (‘Abdu’l-Baha 1915:549).

Taylor (1991:10) describes the fading of moral horizons, the loss of meaning, the eclipse of ends, rampant instrumental reason and the loss of freedoms as all part of the malaise of modernity. He cautions that atomist and instrumentalist approaches promote a debased and shallow form of authenticity (1991:120).

keywords: moral mathematics, consequentialism vs deontology, 

Webliography and Bibliography

‘Abdu’l-Baha. 1915. Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Baha.

Bahá’í International Community (BIC). 2006. “A New Vision for Humanity’s Future.“

Colbert, Stephen. 2007. Unquisition. May 3.

Derrida (1990) in Le droit à la philosophie du point de vue cosmopolitique.

Etzioni, Amitai. 2007a.”The West Needs a Spiritual Surge” >> Amitai Etzioni Notes. March 6, 2007.

Etzioni, Amitai. 2007b. “L’Occident aussi a besoin d’un renouveau spirituel.” Le Monde. 7 avril.

Hitchens, Christopher. 2007. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve/Warner Books.

Higgins, Andrew. 2007. “As religious strife grows, atheists seize pulpit.” Northwest Herald. >> nwherald.com. April 13.

Kinsley, Michael. 2007. “In God, Distrust.” Sunday Book Review. New York Times. May 13.

Lacroix, Alexandre, Truong, Nicolas. 2007. “Nicolas Sarkozy et Michel Onfray: Confidences entre Ennemis.” Philosophie Mag. No. 8. >> Philomag.com

Onfray, Michel. 2007. Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1892. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Trans. Common, Thomas.Taylor, Charles. The Malaise of Modernity. Concord, Ontario: House of Anansi Press.

Malahat on Youtube and Flickr

Panorama from Malahat

Originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

This outdoor sketch was completed in a few hours at the Malahat look-out this summer.

We returned to this site not along ago: We stopped at the Mill Bay Tim Horton’s take out on the way to the Malahat. We sipped our coffee and drank in the view. It was the clearest we’ve ever seen it. The glaciers of Mount Baker were clearly visible but what left me breathless were the skyscrapers of Vancouver shimmering in the distance behind Mount Newton on Saanich Peninsula. Mill Bay is center-left. Mount Tuam on Saltspring Island is in the center. Mount Baker was visible off to the right although not shown here.

Bridging YouTube and WordPress

The Kinsol railway trestle (145 feet high and 614 feet long) spanning the Koksilah River was completed in 1920. A project to save the trestle … all » is attracting numbers of enthusiasts. See their website: http://kinsoltrestle.ca. We met Justin & David @ Bike Canada for Kidney at the beginning of their cross-country fund-raiser and tour. See their site http://bikecanadaforkidney.com/journal.asp

See also http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/482214484

48°40′ 29″ N, 123°41′ 54″ W

Note to myself: using the [] as brackets not <> begin code with youtube= then enclose youtube’s url provided for each clip between “”. I think it works in either ‘Visual’ or ‘Code’!

Thanks YouTube support

[ youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=_dIya1aJJKA]

Perhaps others have already mentioned this but for someone not familiar with html you do need to delete the space [ youtube and enclose the YouTube clip’s url in “”.

Thanks for the easy solution. I am surprised at the number of complicated suggestions out there for embedding YouTube into WordPress blogs.