purple motes

In a nineteenth century dataset, cabinets group birds at a high level of similarity.  Each cabinet contains stuffed and mounted birds, arranged roughly in a grid.  On the top row of this cabinet are three flycatchers followed by three kingbirds.  On the second row are two kingbirds follwed by four flycatchers.  The next row displays a flycather, three phoebe's, and then three flycatchers.   The bottom row has an Eastern Pewee, a Western Pewee, three flycatchers, and then a Rose-Throated Becard.

The colored poster-board tags next to each bird provide textual information grouped into three fields.  The top textual field contains the common name.  The middle textual field contains genus followed by species.   The lowest textual field records unstructured information about the bird's geographic distribution, habitat, breeding, and other characteristics.

If you want to query this database, you have to go to the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and search among the birds in the cabinets.  Databases like this represented the leading edge of knowledge about a century and a half ago.

At the leading edge of knowledge today are database tools like Needle.  Needle organizes a database as a graph of data nodes (pictures, names, text), so that types of information can easily have a wide variety of relationships.  Needle provides a powerful query language that can quickly produce much different views of data.  Needle makes a database live, active, and accessible anywhere through the Internet.

A knowledge revolution has occurred.  The challenge is to bring it to good practice.

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"Wall Street has become mainly fraud and scams.  Wall Street traders and deal-makers ignore 90% of financial regulations," said a dispirited citizen.

"That's why we need ten times as many financial regulations," responded an earnest government bureaucrat.

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Information sources reporting on studies, but not actually citing and linking to those studies, apparently don't want to help readers to learn more.  Not citing and linking has created well-justified frustration.  Sources that don't provide relevant citations and links should be judged less credible.  You should be suspicious of their motives.  You should be  offended by their lack of respect for your curiosity and your interest in learning.

Formal possibilities for generosity go far beyond citing and linking.  Generosity means presenting information so that it is easier for others to use in their own ways.   Presenting a table of data in a pdf file is mean.  Presenting a table so that an application can access its data with understanding of its semantics is generous.  Linking the table to a web-accessible version of the whole dataset from which the table was derived is very generous.

Be generous!

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In a post that generated considerable controversy, I claimed that bike inner tubes are better than duct tape. Here's more evidence. As an efficiency enhancing alternative to doing laundry, I attempted to repair my torn underwear with duct tape. It didn't hold.

I'm not claiming that a bike inner tube can repair torn underwear. I saying that it wouldn't fail like duct tape.

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Jay Rosen on Wikileaks' Afghanistan War Logs:

8. ... “We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.” My fear is that this will happen with the Afghanistan logs. Reaction will be unbearably lighter than we have a right to expect— not because the story isn’t sensational or troubling enough, but because it’s too troubling, a mess we cannot fix and therefore prefer to forget.

A commenter responds:

Your comment inside point #8 is incredibly insightful:

“We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.”

This is the root cause behind why the UFO phenonema is not covered or discussed much intelligently in public discourse. The proof itself is simply undeniable given the mountains of evidence that are readily available at the fingertips of anyone with internet access. Yet, this subject does not get discussed because our ruling class has gone too far down the primrose path, 1) hiding the evidence for the past 60 years via denial and active disinformation campaigns, 2) spending hundreds upon hundreds of untold billions on "black" ufo projects, and 3) figuring out a way to tell the public what they've been doing re: ufos and the fact that we as a civilization are still powerless in doing anything about them. Not to mention having to deal with the religious upheaval that would be caused by acknowledging their existence.

The commenter's name is "Doug." But it's not me. My reaction is bigger. I'm trying to give up thinking.

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Telephone traffic profiles by time of day at the beginning of the twentieth century provide evidence of work hours. Analyzing telephone traffic data, a telephone engineer with Chicago Telephone Company described the Chicago business day about 1902:

In the Main office district in Chicago the business day may be said to have begun at 8.30 in the morning.  There is a partial cessation of business for luncheon between 12.30 and 1.30 o'clock and the business day closes at about 5:30 p.m.  For Central office also in the downtown district the business day is from 8:30 in the morning until 5.30 in the afternoon with scarcely any let up for lunch.  Lawyers predominate in the Central district.[1]

So professionals in Chicago about 1902 worked roughly an 8-hour day, with lawyers perhaps working through lunch for a 9-hour day.[2]  Today many lawyers and professionals in major U.S. cities probably work longer hours than those.

Professional work hours in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York about 1902 were even shorter. The telephone traffic engineer noted:

In Philadelphia ... we find the heavy traffic between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., with lunch between 12 and 1.30.

In Boston the traffic shows a work day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with time for luncheon in different [telephone] offices varying from one and a half hours to two hours, between 12 and 2 o'clock.

New York telephone users seem to take life even more serenely than those of Philadelphia or Boston and we find the work day beginning as late as 9.30 in the morning and ending at about 4.30 in the afternoon, with two hours for lunch between 12 and 2 o'clock.[3]

At the start of the twentieth century, New York City had by far the largest population of any U.S. city.  It was also the business capital of the country.  Firms that had telephones were using the leading technology of the day.[4]  But being at the business and technological leading edge did not imply life-crushing work hours.

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Notes:

[1] Wray (1903) p. 77.   James G. Wray was an engineer with the Chicago Telephone Company.  By 1907, Wray was Chief Engineer at the Chicago Telephone Company.  According to Wray's paper, workday telephone traffic in the business district of Chicago began to rise at 7 a.m. and reached a maximum between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.  Telephone traffic dropped 40% below that morning maximum during the lunch hour from noon to 1 p.m.  Traffic then rose again to 80% of the morning maximum from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.  Traffic then soon declined:  "From 3 p.m. until 5 or 5.30 p.m. there will be a rapid decrease in the traffic load with an almost complete cessation of business at 6 p.m."  See id. p. 76.  Time-of-day traffic curves for exchanges in Chicago in 1906 are available in a special telephone report delivered to the Chicago City Council in 1907.

[2] In 1902, workers in manufacturing industries in the U.S. averaged 58.3 hours per week.  Postal employees averaged 48 hours per week.   See U.S. Historical Statistics, series D 765, D 776.   Professional workers apparently worked fewer hours than other workers in the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century.   In Clinton, Illinois (a small city) in 1976, the business telephone traffic profile seems similar to the business telephone traffic profile in the central business districts of major U.S. cities in 1902.  For the Clinton business traffic profile, see Park and Mitchell (1987) Fig. 2.

[3] Wray (1903) p. 78.

[4] The number of telephones in use in the U.S. was increasing rapidly from 1898 to 1902.   In 1905, inner New York City (Manhattan and the Bronx) had a teledensity of 6.7 telephones per 100 persons.  That teledensity was relatively high for the time, but not world-leading.

Reference:

Wray, J. G. (1903).  "Some Features of Telephone Traffic and their Effect on Service." A paper read at a meeting of the Chicago Branch of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 19, 1903.

Park, Rolla Edward and Bridger M. Mitchell (1987).  Optimal Peak-Load Pricing for Local Telephone Calls.  Rand Report R-3404-1-RC.

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This is another chapter in the emasculation of men.  Just say no to seedless watermelons!

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"Of all the millions of people, nine of ten hold no official position: how could all of them be High-minded Men?"

So observed Meng Lou, a scholar-recluse, quoted in the mid-seventh-century Chinese text, "Accounts of Reclusion and Disengagement."  In Chinese history, refusing to take up an official position in the government bureaucracy was celebrated as "an exuberant expression of individualistic endeavor and freedom from worldly taint and constraint."  These highly respected persons were known under a variety of names:

Hidden Men (yinshi; i.e., men-in-reclusion), Disengaged Persons (yimin), Disengaged Scholars (yishi), Overlooked Persons (yimin #2), Scholars-at-Home (chushi), High-minded Men (gaoshi), Lofty and Disengaged (gaoyi), Lofty Recluses (gaoyin), Remote Ones (youren), Hidden Ones (yinzhe), Hidden Princely Men (yin junzi), Men of the Cliffs and Caves (yanxue zhi shi), Sojourners Who Prize Escape (jiadun ke), Scholars Who Fly to Withdrawal (feidun zhi shi), or Summoned Scholars (zhengshi; i.e., men who receive an imperial summons to court but decline appointment).[*]

But John the covert bureaucrat understands the truth:

The wisdom of hermits isn’t austere. It is practical and rooted deeply in practice. A practice that is embedded in the Dharma but expressed in the daily working of a hard, cold and sometimes lonely life. In that way the practice of the hermits is not so far from our own practice at times.

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[*] Meng Lou quote from Jin shu, Yinyi zhuan, 94.2443, trans. in Berkowitz, Alan J. (2000), Patterns of disengagement: the practice and portrayal of reclusion in early medieval China (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press) pp. 1, 198.  The second and third quotations are from id., pp. xi, xii.

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Leading twentieth-century artist Yves Klein helped to generate enormous growth in art.  His influence is readily apparent in major recent works of contemporary fine art such as Maximillian Miles' sensuous and provocative Masterwork in Bluish.

Klein's work, however, has much broader importance.  Klein pioneered marketing "zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility" -- what media businesspersons today call content.  Klein focused this artistic business not on content creation, but on transactions associated with the immaterial content.  Traditional media should follow Klein and seek profitable transactions for freely available digital pictorial and textual sensibility.

Klein defined engaging, segmented transactions. Klein offered potential buyers prices from 20 grams to 1280 grams of gold in exchange for an elegant, personal, physical receipt for a zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility.[1] The receipts for each immaterial price product were differently denoted, but had the same form. They were printed on heavy paper and shaped and typescripted like a bank draft. The background of the receipt featured in large letters IKB. These letters stand for International Klein Blue, Klein's signature monochrome. Klein also personally signed and dated receipts for immaterial zones that he sold.

Klein retained some vertical control in the market for immaterial pictorial sensibility, but at the same time provided a platform for participation. Those who exchanged gold for Klein's immaterial content had to agree not to resell the receipt / immaterial content for more than twice the value of the initial purchase. This condition was written directly on the receipt. In addition, Klein declared that for a purchaser to acquire the fundamental and authentic immaterial value, the purchaser must "solemnly burn his receipt." Klein, in turn, would ritually dispose of half the gold he had acquired from the sale:

In case the buyer wishes this act of integration of the work of art with himself to take place, Yves Klein must, in the presence of an Art Museum Director, or an Art Gallery Expert, or an Art Critic, plus two witnesses, throw half of the gold received in the ocean, into a river, or in some place in nature where this gold cannot be retrieved by anyone.[2]

Klein omitted specifying the buyer's attendance at the event. Such buyer participation, however, was an important part of actual practice.[3]

Klein's immaterial content business had strong fundamentals. It was gold-flow positive at its very start.[4]  Disposing of half the gold apparently lessened Klein's net income.  But under more creative accounting, this gold expenditure could be recorded as an investment in good will or in business development. Alternately, one could recognize that most gold, like most immaterial content, is a natural part of the world's commonwealth. Klein's 50% retained share of the gold he received gave him a more favorable revenue split than Google gets through its 32% share of AdSense revenue.

Content businesses today are rapidly dematerializing. Addressing these acute business problems requires less technology, and more art.

With the Void: Full Powers, a major retrospective of Yves Klein's work, is at the Hirshhorn Gallery through September 12, 2010.   Leaders of newspapers and broadcasting companies could do far worse than requiring all their employees to spend a day enjoying this exhibition.

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Notes:

[1] Explicitly denominated immaterial receipts were available for  20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, and 1280 grams of gold exchanged.  See Stich (1994) p. 268, n. 92.

[2] From Yves Klein, "Ritual for the Relinquishment of Immaterial Pictorial Sensitivity [Sensibility] Zones" (1957-59), in Stiles and Seltz (1996) p. 81.

[3] Photos of the three immaterial integration rituals that took place in early 1962 show the buyer present.  Small reproductions of these photos are on a placard in With the Void: Full Powers.

[4]  With no formal business organization, Klein sold 8 zones of immaterial pictorial sensibility from September, 1959 to February, 1962.  All these transactions but one were for 20 grams of gold.  The other transaction, with Hollywood writer Michael Blankfort, was for 160 grams of gold. See Stich (1994) p. 268, n. 93, which details each transaction.  Blankfort was delighted with his acquisition of a zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility.  He declared that he had:

no other experience in art equal to the depth of feeling [of the ritual integration of the immaterial zone].  It evoked in me a shock of self-recognition and an explosion of awareness of time and space.

Quoted in id. p. 156.  Id. describes the depth of feeling as "[the sale ceremony]", but this is likely a mistake.  A photo reproduced in With the Void: Full Powers shows Blankfort and his wife participating in the ritual integration.   With the Void: Full Powers also reproduces an unattributed comment from the exhibition catalog for When Attitude Becomes Form (Berne, 1969): "artist and owner each had nothing but the art experience."  That's incorrect.  The artist had half the gold.

References:

Stich, Sidra, and Yves Klein. 1994. Yves Klein [... published on the occasion of the exhibition Yves Klein, Museum Ludwig, Cologne and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, November 8, 1994 - January 8, 1995; Hayward Gallery, London, Februar 9, 1995 - April 23, 1995; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, May 29, 1995 - August 29, 1995]. Ostfildern: Cantz.

Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Howard Selz. 1996. Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists' writings. California studies in the history of art, 35. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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A bian-wen text copied in Dunhuang (China) in 921 describes highly industrialized punishments in hell:

Iron discs continuously plunged into her body from out of the air,
Fierce fires, at all times, were burning beneath her feet;
...
Bronze-colored crows pecked at her heart ten thousand times over,
Molten iron poured on top of her head a thousand repetitions;
One might ask whether the tree of knives up ahead were the most painful,
But can it compare with the cleaving mill which chops men's waists in two?[1]

The iron discs and the cleaving mill are images of industrial machinery.  Aspects of the natural landscape, mountains, trees, thorns, crows, dogs, and snakes, become fabricated torments: knife mountains, sword trees, metal thorns, bronze-colored crows preternaturally pecking, copper dogs breathing smoke, and iron snakes belching fire.[2]

Punishments for illicit sexual passion distort sexual imagery into technological torments:

Women lay on the iron beds with nails driven through their bodies,
Men embraced the hot copper pillars, causing their chests to rot away;
The iron drills and long scissors were sharp as lance-tips and sword-edges,
The teeth of the ploughs with their sharp metal points were like awls.
When their intestines are empty, they are at once filled with hot iron pellets,
If they cry out that they are thirsty, molten iron is used to irrigate them;[3]

This imagery of punishment suggests imaginative effects of traumatic industrial development.[4]  Much technological development occurred in China during the Tang Dynasty period (618-907).  Metal industries, along with an industrial workforce, became prominent in Western Europe in the nineteenth century.  At least in hell, these industries apparently were prominent in China a millennium earlier.

Punishment in Dante's Inferno is less technological and more organic and interpersonal.  In the Inferno, the punished are confined in tombs of fire, brawl in mire, are blown about in storms, and are frozen in a lake.  The punished are consistently identified as specific persons with particular histories.  They regularly engage in personal conversations with Dante.  Dante's hell doesn't emphasize masses of persons subject to impersonal, external machinery.  Dante authored the Inferno in Italy between 1308 and 1321. Unlike the Chinese bian-wen text, copied in Dunhuang in 921, the Inferno reflects the socio-economic structure of a commercial city-state.

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Image credit: Baodingshan, Dazu, rock carving, c. 1200 GC.  From K.E. Brashier's superb website of Chinese hell scrolls.  Here's a wider image of the iron wheel punishment.

Notes:

[1] Transformation Text on Mahāmaudgalyāyana Rescuing His Mother from the Underworld (Dunhuang manuscript, S2614), trans. Mair, Victor H. (1983) Tun-huang popular narratives. Cambridge studies in Chinese history, literature, and institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 99.

[2] Id. pp. 99, 100, 105-6 provide the additional details cited above.

[3] Id. p. 102.

[4] China has long had a highly developed state bureaucracy.  The administrative machinery of this hell includes highly developed bureaucracy.  For example, when Maudgalyāyana, searching for his mother in hell, asks King Yama for information, King Yama summons his "karma-watcher, fate-investigator, and book-keeper."  The karma-watcher reports:

Three years have already passed since Lady Nīladhi [Maudgalyāyana's mother] died.  The legal records of the criminal proceeding against her are all in the case-book of the Commandant of Mount T'ai, who is Recorder for the Bureau of the Underworld.

Id. p. 95.

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