(Hogpen, deciduous growth, etc.
making neither much dent
nor any feeling: the trees completely
or incompletely
attached to ground
During which time all the time sounds of an anterior conversation
and what are they talking
about
Cares mount. My own
certainly
as much as anyone else's.
Between
each and every row of seats
put a table
and put on that
an ashtray.
(Who don't know what I know
in what proportion, is either off, too much
or on.
Look it up, check
or if that's too much, say, too time-consuming or whatever other
neat adjective to attach to any
distraction
(for doing nothing at all.
The rites are care. The natures
less simple. The mark of hell knows what but
something, the trace of
line, trace of
line made by someone
Ultimate: no man shall go unattended.
No man shall be an idiot for purely exterior reasons.
--Robert Creeley
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Language has a similar function
In structure we can pull the parts and into pieces, revise them and edit as we please; after all, the foundations of language rest on my words and your design. To quote myself: “I don’t want to hear simply that which he has to say, but I said it, now, then and again to myself.” How? Like this? Or otherwise. I wouldn’t know what or how to say it. Creeley wrote, “I I speak it speak it.” Grammar is useful in this respect – it never allows us to say what we want. But if to distort grammar’s very formulation, then my words. Grammar is a tool and language is quite another; language has a similar function.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
uck anguage
As much as I pay attention to language, I really couldn't care less about it as lyrics to a song. I've never paid much attention to lyrics, always been more interested in the intrumentation and even the instrumentation of the voice, rather than what it's saying. Hm.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
More and more, I'm coming to realize that soon, a large part of my homework will consist of poring over public policy websites and journals that discuss environmental and energy issues, as well as magazines, newspapers, movies, tv shows, commercials, and ads that discuss this things. God! I am so fucking excited about this independent study!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
'e miss ions
"Representative John B. Larson, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, has circulated a draft bill that would impose “a per-unit tax on the carbon-dioxide content of fossil fuels, beginning at a rate of $15 per metric ton of CO2 and increasing by $10 each year.” The bill sets a goal, rather than a cap, on emissions at 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050" (from nytimes.com).
Does he mean 80% of 2005 levels or does he mean to subtract 80% of 2005 levels from 100% of them, so that the bill would reduce carbon emissions to 20% of 2005 levels? If he means the former, then emissions would still be 4,710.4 million metric tons per year, which is still too much. (2005 levels were 5,888 million metric tons). If he means the latter--which is probably what he does mean--then carbon emissions will be reduced to 1,177.6 million metric tons per year. Is this acceptable? The School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in England's Carbon Reduction Project (CRed) calls for a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for developed countries by 2025. Worldwide carbon emissions in 2005 were close to 8,000 million metric tons per year (the data I found had figures only for fossil fuel emissions, although the above data for the US is also mainly based on fossil fuel emissions--ScienceDaily.com says US carbon-dioxide fossil fuel emissions for 2005 were actually closer to 6,000 MMTs). Apparently, 60% reduction in global emissions (by developed countries, at least) is the generally agreed-upon minimum for curbing climate change. (My data is probably old: I just did a cursory search on Google to find all of it, so work with me, people). If there were a 60% reduction by 2025, then there would be only 3200 million metric tons of global (fossil fuel) emissions to be dealt with, rather than if the plan incorporated Rep. Larson's strategy, which amounts to around a less-than 40% cut in carbon-dioxide based emissions by 2025. (At this point, I'm arguing about principles; I'm not working with compatible data schemes (US vs. Global) to make any kind of substantial comparison or contrast at the moment).
Anyways, what the hell I'm trying to say in my ramble is that Larson's strategy for reducing carbon emissions is too little. I've heard of calls for 90% below 1990 levels by 2050 or earlier, which would amount to a cut of about 5,500 MMTs (from 2007 levels) to a meager 500 MMTs per year. I hardly think it's a matter of what is the least we can do to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Rather, it's a matter of what is the most we can do. ramble ramble ramble...
Does he mean 80% of 2005 levels or does he mean to subtract 80% of 2005 levels from 100% of them, so that the bill would reduce carbon emissions to 20% of 2005 levels? If he means the former, then emissions would still be 4,710.4 million metric tons per year, which is still too much. (2005 levels were 5,888 million metric tons). If he means the latter--which is probably what he does mean--then carbon emissions will be reduced to 1,177.6 million metric tons per year. Is this acceptable? The School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in England's Carbon Reduction Project (CRed) calls for a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for developed countries by 2025. Worldwide carbon emissions in 2005 were close to 8,000 million metric tons per year (the data I found had figures only for fossil fuel emissions, although the above data for the US is also mainly based on fossil fuel emissions--ScienceDaily.com says US carbon-dioxide fossil fuel emissions for 2005 were actually closer to 6,000 MMTs). Apparently, 60% reduction in global emissions (by developed countries, at least) is the generally agreed-upon minimum for curbing climate change. (My data is probably old: I just did a cursory search on Google to find all of it, so work with me, people). If there were a 60% reduction by 2025, then there would be only 3200 million metric tons of global (fossil fuel) emissions to be dealt with, rather than if the plan incorporated Rep. Larson's strategy, which amounts to around a less-than 40% cut in carbon-dioxide based emissions by 2025. (At this point, I'm arguing about principles; I'm not working with compatible data schemes (US vs. Global) to make any kind of substantial comparison or contrast at the moment).
Anyways, what the hell I'm trying to say in my ramble is that Larson's strategy for reducing carbon emissions is too little. I've heard of calls for 90% below 1990 levels by 2050 or earlier, which would amount to a cut of about 5,500 MMTs (from 2007 levels) to a meager 500 MMTs per year. I hardly think it's a matter of what is the least we can do to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Rather, it's a matter of what is the most we can do. ramble ramble ramble...
eggs and rice
I wonder if any work has been done in linguistics on a person's mental pronunciation of words versus their verbal pronunciation of them. For example, I pronounce "Mary," "marry," and "merry," all the same when I speak aloud, but when I speak to myself in my head, I pronounce "marry" differently. It could just be me, and it could just be these few words, though.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Meta-narratives, anyone?
Can all human knowledge be broken down into narratives? To be more explicit, what I mean by “narratives” is a way in which disparate elements are pieced together in a more or less linear order to generate a picture or an idea of a certain facet of life, so that life isn’t just a jumble of chaotic, unconnected series of events. In this light, a narrative is a lot like when a detective, such as Columbo, solves a crime, piecing together all of the separate pieces of info into a coherent sequence of events that eventually lead to the crime.
Although I might be getting uneasily abstract and redundant, aren’t Western academic ideas about narratives narratives themselves? For example, scientific inquiry is based on removing assumptions and weighing empirical evidence against a hypothesis. If the evidence supports the hypothesis, then the latter becomes a theory, which is still subject to empirical testing—and thus rests on the assumption that it is true (for the time being). But this method is simply a narrative, a story. I don’t mean to be a deconstructivist, so to speak; rather, I’m simply pointing out that in the case of science, there is a story of stories, or a meta-narrative, which categorizes narratives under a larger schema. This categorization is different from tacit, culturally embedded notions of what sets apart good stories from bad ones, which lay the foundations of how stories should be composed, how they should impart ideas, etc., because the scientific method is not tacit—it is a very constructively critical, and constructively criticized, system. (Although it does, of course, rely on underlying assumptions of Western European thought about how the universe operates). This isn’t to say that tacit cultural ideas are accepted as canon: culture is dynamic, and so ideas accepted by members of a culture are subject to change. I wonder if there are any comparable meta-narrative schemas elsewhere in the world, or is Western society just that picky about things that it needs to categorize everything?
Although I might be getting uneasily abstract and redundant, aren’t Western academic ideas about narratives narratives themselves? For example, scientific inquiry is based on removing assumptions and weighing empirical evidence against a hypothesis. If the evidence supports the hypothesis, then the latter becomes a theory, which is still subject to empirical testing—and thus rests on the assumption that it is true (for the time being). But this method is simply a narrative, a story. I don’t mean to be a deconstructivist, so to speak; rather, I’m simply pointing out that in the case of science, there is a story of stories, or a meta-narrative, which categorizes narratives under a larger schema. This categorization is different from tacit, culturally embedded notions of what sets apart good stories from bad ones, which lay the foundations of how stories should be composed, how they should impart ideas, etc., because the scientific method is not tacit—it is a very constructively critical, and constructively criticized, system. (Although it does, of course, rely on underlying assumptions of Western European thought about how the universe operates). This isn’t to say that tacit cultural ideas are accepted as canon: culture is dynamic, and so ideas accepted by members of a culture are subject to change. I wonder if there are any comparable meta-narrative schemas elsewhere in the world, or is Western society just that picky about things that it needs to categorize everything?
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