From Richard Butterworth
true advice!
Images
Simpsons in Russia
In Russia the Simpsons cartoon has given a hard-core adults-only rating. The show is being blamed for corrupting Russian schoolchildren and degrading family values.
The Russian State Duma have voted (417-1) to limit the cult of violence and cruelty on television. This legislation will have serious effects on the Simpsons. One MP said, “The experts gave just the result we feared. They found The Simpsons were crammed with violent and aggressive episodes. These cartoons also introduce antagonism between children and parents.” Did they need to hire an expert to find out that the Simpsons include violence???
The Russian television channels are faced with a choice: self-regulation or censorship.
The vote asks for television companies to more strictly adhere to a voluntary code of conduct signed in June by the chief executives of six leading national channels to avoid promoting a “cult of violence and cruelty”. The First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said it was a “yellow card” for the channels (was this an intended pun we ask?)
Considering the troubles in Russian with crime (organised or not), poverty and terrorism you might think that the Simpsons was the least of their worries.
The Antikythera mechanism
The Antikythera computing device, the most complex instrument of antiquity has been reconstructed and reinterpreted at the London Science Museum.
The new model is based on mechanism fragments dated from approximately 50 BC which have puzzled generations of engineers and historians. Found in amongst other treasures of an ancient wrecked ship – the Antikythera – the machine was packed with little cogwheels like a squashed clock.
“It had been suggested by scholars that the main dial showed the positions of the Sun and Moon amongst the stars at any chosen date� the other dials showing information on the lunar month and further functions which could not be understood because of its poor state. Nicknamed the “calendar computer”� it was hailed as the world’s first computer� but no one really knew what the gadget was for.”
After years of researchâ?? Wright has made a precise model – in the style of the original and using techniques available at the time – to demonstrate that his idea works. He saidâ??
â??Unfortunately historians do not know too much about the astronomy of that timeâ?? because later scholars paid so much more attention to the work of the famous astronomer Ptolemyâ?? who lived a few generations laterâ?? that earlier works were lost. But Ptolemy provided some cluesâ?? which helped in building the reconstruction.â??
Seminar Today: Changes & Poster
There have been a few last moment changes to the seminar this evening. Henrik Sandklef from FSF cannot make it so Jonas �berg will take his place. Rasmus Fleischer from Piratbyrån will be participating.
We also have a poster!
How you do'in?
After spending Sunday working on the big T, I woke up early and read what I had written. Here is a small taste to show everyone/anyone the direction my mind has wandered off in…
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Adopting a decentralised view of regulation takes into consideration the complexity of interactions between social actors and social structures. Admitting to complexity entails a recognition that everything cannot be understood and that social interaction between actors and between actors and structures is in a state of constant development. Blackâ??s fragmentation refers to the fragmentation of control. In traditional regulatory theory the control element of command and control was taken for granted. However this is too great a simplification for the model to hold true. There exists a great knowledge and power asymmetry between the regulator and the regulated. The regulator cannot be knowledgeable in all fields and all things. The decentred approach therefore takes as its starting point that no one actor has the information necessary to resolve complex problems. This can be further problematised by the understanding that there can be no social objective knowledge since information is socially constructed (Berger & Luckman 1967). Within regulation this therefore means that social subgroups and systems such as law, administration or technology create their views of other systems through the distorting lens of their own reality. Therefore the information/knowledge one subsystem (such as law) has of another subsystem (such as technology) is the result of what the former system (law) has created with their own tools, experience and knowledge (Teubner 1993).
… so how you do’in?
Amazing database
The Swedish Royal Library has put the “Suecia antiqua et hodierna” online it contains 353 posters from the Swedish age of 1600-1718. http://www.kb.se/suecia/default.asp
Here is a picture of my hometown!
Seminar: In the Line of Copyright Fire
Uppsala (Sweden) Thursday, September 15th
18.00-20.00 Geijersalen, Engelska Parken: In the Line of Copyright Fire: Culture, Knowledge, and the Information Age
Exacerbated by technological innovation and digitization, the means by which the ownership of informational resources is to be managed in a time of global flows and networks is a question of critical importance to the Information Age. Today, few resources are as valuable as information and knowledge. What are the possible ramifications for civil society, higher education, and cultural institutions in this scenario, where both increased access and increased control struggle for domination? Archives, Libraries, and Museums are organizations that together with their users face a number of challenges in respect to copyright. In what sense do private and public interests collide when it comes to the dissemination of information, knowledge, and culture today? How can we make images and text available in a way that will be conducive rather than detrimental to future research? Is copyright obsolete or still viable?
These and other questions relating to the nexus between culture, knowledge, and property, will be explored in this panel discussion hosted by the Department of Archival Science, Library- and Information Science and Museology (ALM). Confirmed panelists include: Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, Associate Professor, Swedish Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow 2002-2006, the Department of ALM, Uppsala University; Mathias Klang, Project Lead for the Swedish Creative Commons license and Graduate Student at the Department of Informatics, Göteborg University; Matthew Rimmer, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Australian National University and member of the Copyright and Intellectual Property Advisory Group of the Australian Library and Information Association; Jette Sandahl, Director, Museum of World Culture, Göteborg.
All welcome!
For further information, please contact Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, ehw@abm.uu.se
Giddens Human History
â??The flow of action continually produces consequences which are unintended by actors, and these unintended consequences also may form unacknowledged conditions of actions in a feedback fashion. Human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project; it persistently eludes efforts to bring it under conscious direction.â??
Anthony Giddens – The Constitution of Society (1984) page 27.
Quote: The Universe
“Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, [Edward] Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts.” Alan Guth
Bill Bryson “A Short History of Nearly Everything”
Erland Loe (1995) ? Kurt blir elak.
?Kurt nickar och stryker sig over mustaschen. Det är nästan otroligt hur rik och elak man kan bli bara man har en diamant som är tillräckligt stor, sager han.?
