Long Time Coming
Two advance copies of Polygraph 22 arrived in my mailbox yesterday! Subscribers’ and contributers’ copies will start going out once the other 698 arrive. Now to start updating Amazon and the Polygraph web site…
Contents:
Introduction—Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr, and Ryan Vu
The Cultural Politics of Oil: On Lessons of Darkness and Black Sea Files—Imre Szeman
Ecology after Capitalism—Timothy Morton
When Nature Calls; Or, Why Ecological Criticism Needs Althusserian Ideology—Andrew Hageman
Inverted Astronomy: Ungrounded Ethics, Volcanic Copernicanism, and the Ecological Decentering of the Human—Ben Woodard
Philosophy and Ecosystem: Towards a Transcendental Ecology—Anthony Paul Smith
The Ecology of Consumption: A Critique of Economic Malthusianism—John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark
The Animal and the Political: Biopolitics, Sovereign Power, and the Hydrologic of Immanent Space—Robert Geroux
Black Nature: The Question of Race in the Age of Ecology—Britt M. Rusert
The Anti-Nuclear Movement in Germany—Joachim Radkau (Translated by Lucas Perkins)
Embodied Materialism in Action: An Interview with Ariel Salleh—Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr, and Ryan Vu
Science, Justice, Science Fiction: A Conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson—Gerry Canavan, Lisa Klarr, and Ryan Vu
On Ecology: A Roundtable Discussion with Timothy Morton and Kathy Rudy—Timothy Morton, Kathy Rudy, and the Polygraph Collective
Living in the End Times—Slavoj Žižek
Two Faces of Apocalypse: A Letter from Copenhagen—Michael Hardt
A Cure for HIV?
Amazing if true: A team of researchers from the Hebrew University has developed a treatment that completely destroys HIV-infected human cells in laboratory cultures, according to an article published last month in the scientific journal AIDS Research and Therapy.
The therapy, developed by scientists from the university’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences and the Institute of Chemistry, destroys cells infected with HIV without damaging adjacent healthy cells. Via MeFi.
Tough Out There for Nerds
SF Signal has your fall television preview. Fringe and The Walking Dead aside, it’s looking pretty bleak.
Lost Generation
The total balance of all outstanding US student loans (given as $730 billion in DIY U, based on OMB estimates) is now estimated by Mark Kantrowitz of Finaid.org at more like $830 billion—$605.6 billion in federally guaranteed student loans, which have interest rates fixed and in some cases interest subsidized by the government, and a further $167.8 billion in private student loans, with interest rates that hover around 18-20%. Furthermore, Kantrowitz says, $300 billion in federal student loan debts have been incurred in the last four years.
Chart of the Day: Lost Decade
Your chart of the day (via Ezra Klein) charts the Bush-era decline in real wages—through 2007, before the start of the Great Recession.
What Do Students Think of College Professors with Tattoos?
The answer may surprise you:
128 undergraduates’ perceptions of tattoos on a model described as a college instructor were assessed. They viewed one of four photographs of a tattooed or nontattooed female model. Students rated her on nine teaching-related characteristics. Analyses indicated that the presence of tattoos was associated with some positive changes in ratings: students’ motivation, being imaginative about assignments, and how likely students were to recommend her as an instructor.
Hat tip to Eric Barker via @quidebo via @aaker. In general, if you’re not reading Eric’s site daily you’re missing out.
Google as God
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” said the search giant’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, in a recent and controversial interview. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” From William Gibson’s op-ed on Google as superorganism in the New York Times.
European-Style Photoblogging
I’ve finally thrown up some photos from our European vacation on Flickr, including (among other things) a lot of shots of those Belgian comics murals we were so taken with. Enjoy, if you’re so inclined…
Confidential to Graduate Students
Always backup, to multiple drives, including one off-site.
John Boldt is pleading for the return of his hard drive, which contains research and notes for the thesis he was writing for his master’s degree in history. He only had three chapters left to write before his paper was complete.
Unless he gets it back, Boldt will have to abandon his dream and quit at the University of Calgary.
Via Gawker.
Viewers Can’t Handle Ambiguity. Not Even a Little.
Overthinking It tries to distill lessons from the successes and failures of Lost, particularly in light of an ongoing fan backlash following the (really not that bad) final episode and the (okay, pretty bad) DVD epilogue.




