Our Canal Walk brought us to many great old building …. loved the ripple of this reflection. click ~ click

Canal Walk

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches:

Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata
Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
Pragmatics: Relation between signs and their effects on those (people) who use them
Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions; for example, Umberto Eco proposes that every cultural phenomenon can be studied as communication.

Sometimes symbols can be things that are personal to us. Things that have journeyed with us. Take for instance, my Curious George doll was my childhood companion who walked with me everywhere I went. I mean, everywhere!! And so, through the years Curious George has evolved into something less than he was, at this time, he is more of a memory and something that will always be a part of my development as a person. Symbols have power. For some, symbols might hold something even deeper than a memory, maybe your identity. For those who follow the god of Wal-Mart, it might be the cheesy yellow pin with a grin on it. For those who follow the god of the Dallas Cowboys, your symbol might be the blue star of Texas. And others who say they follow Yahweh, their symbol is a cross. For those in the Old Testament, their symbol might have been the burning bush or the two tablets or a map with little traveling nomads on it. We can’t get away from the reality that symbols shape us. Symbols might even have more influence than we think.

Semiotics seeks to make sense of symbols and what they mean and why they mean what they mean. Take for example, the cross. We might think of the cross as a symbol of atonement or a symbol of self-sacrificial love or maybe a symbol of death. For Rome, the cross didn’t signify atonement. It signified someone who deserved to die because they were insurrectionists. It was a tool of embarrassment and public shame. It signified failure on the part of the crucified ones. It signaled victory to the way of Rome. But, why the cross? Why has the cross come to mean so much to those who follow in the way of Jesus?

Some might say because it is the ultimate act of love and salvation of the God-man who came to earth on our behalf. Others say it is a symbol of deep hope and invitation to the world. If I can pose a question at this point in the conversation: How would the electric chair be a symbol of hope or redemption or atonement? Don’t get me wrong, I think we needed Jesus to save us, but it is an act that is past tense in the sense of universal salvation. He is still saving us, an for that I think the cross can be a reminder of what He did for us and what He is doing. But the cross as a semiotic tool becomes a bit anemic to the story of Jesus only because, according to some of his closest friends, He comes back to life. And so, why isn’t the symbol we hold dear the tomb? It was a sign of victory over sin, over death, over darkness and destructive ways of living. It was an act of defiant hope against all odds. The cross was defiant, it was deadly. That’s what the purpose of the cross was and is and anything else like it today would hold the same stigma. So, why end the story there when all of us know it didn’t end there?

I think we might have been misled to think that the cross was the point. And so our symbols have gotten mixed up. Think of it like a radio signal. Every radio has its own signal it uses to broadcast its’ station to the world. Now, those signals can even go over the Internet. But, we can easily flip the dial and switch over to another radio station because static is just that tricky. And so maybe in the historic static of semiotics, either the people who directly followed Jesus or those who followed after them might have mixed up their signals and have turned an instrument of death into hope. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is good to restore paradoxes, but that’s if the story we subscribe to ends there, and as we know it, it doesn’t It ends with resurrection. Which is a better symbol for hope. A better symbol to empower us to go and resurrect love, peace, grace and redemption wherever we go!

As part of my studio practice I work with found objects and multiples .This year my studio practice has brought to look further into the retail world and commodity. Using Hangers as my starting point to my studio practice, this year I decided to collect approx. 600+ hangers and counting,  from all high street shops collecting masses upon masses of hangers. Each week I have collected transparent hangers, wooden hangers, black plastic hangers, all serving the purpose for me to play with !

Image 1: First week and started in my studio Space seeing the potential to expand and explore possibilities of going outdoors

I decided to make the hangers a very 2D object  become 3D and come alive, I started connecting the hangers and through trail and error i managed to create 3 dimensional clusters of hangers. Seeing the potential I decided to branch out even more and expand my obsession and create monumental Sculptures

Image 2: I decided to go up in scale and not solely rely on structures alone.

In week three I decided to be brave and go out into the colleges foyer, an old listed building, I built in a large open space. I built around the stairs, the beams of the college and the supporting pillars. It was a challenge and was harder than the last time as I was building in a public walk way so lots of distractions was to be had from tutors to security telling me all about health & safety and ENDLESS hangers jokes. I managed to hang on… and create a whole room of hanger structures. I was happy as in different parts of the sculpture I  worked into it making it more complex,rigid and using tiebacks and fishing gut i created a claustrophobic sculpture.

Image 3: Being Challenged by the building I managed to bear all the hangers jokes and health & safety rules to build literally in space!

I learnt to confront the issue of space and working around with what I faced with and also the issues of working in  public areas and making compromises to abide certain rules. Over all I enjoyed the building in space and broke down a few creative barriers I once had.

All images are my own documentation for my studio practice

So this post I’m going to teach you about if, else if and else control structures. What the if statements do is give the person or yourself using the program some kind of choice. So lets say you ask a question if the person answers yes or no they will get a response that goes with their answer.

ex:

#include
using namespace std;
int main{


string gender;
cout<<"Are you a boy or a girl? "<>gender;

if (gender == boy){
cout<<"I heard you ate worms in school!";
}
else if (gender == girl){
cout<<"your learning to program??? that's so cool!";
}
else {
cout<<"Whats wrong don't know your gender?";
}
system(pause);
return0;
}

So you can see that when the person say’s they are a boy it goes to the if statement and runs the code there. If they say they are a girl it goes to the else if statement and runs that code but if they put anything else as an answer like “onion” it will run the else statement. Else is basically the part of your code that runs when no other answer was given. So that’s the basics of if control structures. Need any help just leave a comment.

Fan area of Richmond - Great Wall Art

Lots of photo opportunities in the River District of Richmond, Virginia, as well as Fan and Carytown. Can’t wait to get them onto the computer and see how they came out. Unfortunately a lot of the interesting doors have a parking meter, bus stop or place of business sign that obstructs the image.   On the plus side the Irish Pub has great pints and Irish Nachos.    Our anticipated 1 mile walk to Carytown took us throw the Fan area where we came across Fritz’s Car Care … that 1 mile walk turned into a 3.4 mile hike … made for a cab ride back.  click ~ click

Shingles from the 1800s

These are some old shingles.  Found on the top of the John Oliver Cabin in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, these wooden shingles are definitely showing their age, with plenty of rotting wood, moss, lichen, and other things growing on top.  But hey, the inside of the cabin seemed nice and dry, so they must do an okay job of keeping out the rain!

<Intro Here>

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As a child I collected stamps and shells. These days I still collect shells, but I have a more passionate pastime these days.

I love lighthouses. I visit them whenever I am travelling and inveritably take detours to ensure I stop to visit. Nowadays’ we do it as a Family activity. The boys love it! What is the attraction? Well, everything!

Every lighthouse has a unique light. The lights may be different colours, flash for different lengths of time, or remain solid. They use different lenses and come in all shapes and sizes. The way a lighthouse looks tells a shops captain where they are geographically, so each lighthouse is painted with a different design. No two lighthouses have the same set of stripes and or colours.

Consequently, a lighthouses design is called a day mark (because that’s how ships can tell where they are) and the light frequency at night is called the light pattern. It’s a science and I am a scientific girl!

I photograph each light I visit and study all it’s attributes. They are such wonderful structures that really capture my imagination. So every now and then, I am going to treat myself and post a picture of a beacon friend that I’ve visited. After all, everyone loves a lighthouse!

Cabo de Santa Catalina (Lekeitio) - Basque County, Spain

Cabo de Santa Catalina (Lekeitio) - Basque County, Spain

The 160m long wave shaped roof frame for Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Center has just been lifted and lowered into place, marking one of the most complex engineering and construction challenges of the Olympic Park for the London 2012 games.   Weighing in at over 3,000 tons, the gigantic steel trusses rest on a mere three concrete supports to provide open space for the facility’s large racing and diving pools.  The roof is also designed to stretch, twist and contract in response to the effects of snow, wind and changing temperatures.

Fabricated in Newport from plate rolled in Gateshead, Motherwell and Scunthorpe, the steel framing was assembled on site and connected 20m off the ground on temporary supports.   The completed roof frame was then carefully lowered into its permanent position and the temporary supports were removed in phases to enable work to continue beneath the roof, namely, the excavation for the venue’s two 50 meter swimming pools and 25 meter diving pool.

The Aquatic Center is right on schedule to be finished in the summer of 2011.  In a few months, work will begin on the aluminium roof covering.   After the aluminium, the 12,000 sq m ceiling will be clad in Red Lauro timber, a sustainable sources that will combine the required level of durability and visual impact.

As seen on World Architecture News.

Via ArchDaily

Origins of Democracy in Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherer Groups

A paper by Doron Shultziner, PhD, referenced in Part I of this essay and entitled, “Evolution and Liberal Democracy,”  highlights the shortcomings of definitions of democracy in the 20th century that ignore and obscure the evolutionary nature of democratic ideals.  The discussion is found in a section labeled, “Setting Democracy in a Larger Evolutionary Context,” 

Democracy at the beginning of the 21st century is a term that denotes a variety of regimes that share similar main characteristics. Democracy has a thin procedural definition and thicker definitions. The thin definition of democracy is a political system with universal suffrage and “whose leaders are elected in competitive multi-party and multi-candidate processes in which opposition parties have a legitimate chance of attaining power or participating in power” [citation in original]….Thicker definitions of democracy require effective and enlightened participation as well as human rights and freedoms beyond what is necessary for a democratic process [citations in original]. Thicker standards of democracy usually relate to liberal-democracies, namely democratic countries which are free and respectable to human rights. The two categories, however, are not necessarily synonymous [citation in original].

Defined by these criteria, however, democracy is a very recent invention that appeared only in the 20th century after women gained voting rights. The merits of these definitions have been recognized by political scientists for providing a useful analytical tool and for distinguishing democracies from other types of regimes, at least since the 20th century [citation in original]. 

Unfortunately, 20th century definitions of democracy, useful as they may be to distinguish democracies from nondemocracies at present, are not applicable to democracies prior to the 20th century [citations in original].  The famous democracy of Athens (and other Greek cities) about 2500 years ago is not a democracy by today’s definitions because not all men, women or slaves were allowed to vote or have any say about matters that influenced their lives. For similar reasons, the American democracy was lacking significant characteristics prior to the 20th century. In Switzerland, men gained suffrage as early as 1848; women in Switzerland, however, began gaining suffrage only in 1971 and the Swiss canton Appenzell Innerrhoden was forced by the Supreme Court to give women voting rights as late as 1990.  Still, it would not make much sense to argue that Switzerland became a democracy only in 1971 or 1990. 20th century definitions of democracy detach democracy from its historical roots for reasons of analytical clarity. It is not that these historical roots are not unacknowledged; rather, they are perceived to be irrelevant for the purpose of analyzing the unprecedented number of democratic transitions in the 20th century. This logic, as I intend to show in the following pages, is flawed because it fails to recognize seminal historical democracies as forerunners of a much deeper and profound phenomenon….

Egalitarian Social Structures in the Paleolithic Era

I believe that much of our ability to understand the transition to democracy is impaired by the focus on 20th century standards of democracy. I argue that shared features exist between 20th century democracies, democracies prior to the 20th century, and ancient forms of human egalitarian societies.

Estimates for Homo sapiens appearance are between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago [citation in original].  We know that all human beings lived throughout this period, known as the Paleolithic era (2 million -10,000 B.C.E), in small nomadic societies of hunters and gatherers (i.e. foragers) who were usually of an average group size of 25 people, although at times of festivals group size could reach over one hundred [citations in original].  Human beings in the Paleolithic era have [sic] had the same physiological and psychological capabilities as us (“biologically they were us” [citation in original], although their cultures and ways of life were obviously different.  These forager bands sustained their ways of life and social structures into the 20th century. Forager bands, albeit influenced to different degrees by external factors, were extensively studied around the world by anthropologists, and these studies provide valuable information regarding behavior and social structures in the Paleolithic era. 

An important characteristic of forager bands, which has become a topic of interest especially since the 1990’s, is their egalitarian social structures.  Wide agreement exists that the social structure of small nomadic societies in the Paleolithic era was egalitarian [citations in original]. Even at the present, after a long period of environmental influences, only a few examples of nonegalitarian foraging societies exist, and these too are affected by high population density and large group size, sedentary life, and other specific characteristics [citation in original]. As Boehm [citation in original] puts it, “Indeed, this egalitarian approach appears to be universal for foragers who live in small bands that remain nomadic, suggesting considerable antiquity for political egalitarianism.”  No strict hierarchical structure existed in foraging bands: decisions had to be reached through consensus, leaders usually had little, if any, substantial power over other group members, and people could come and go as they pleased [Emphasis added].

The Linkage Between Technology and Democracy

As Shultziner points out:

The Paleolithic era, however, ended with the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, human beings began to settle permanently in one place and to grow plants and animals for their subsistence. This period in human history is known as the Neolithic era. Gradually, sedentary agriculture became the dominant mode of life in most areas of the world inhabited by humans (but not in all areas). The invention of agriculture revolutionized the environmental conditions human beings once lived under, and consequently remarkably changed social structures. Small egalitarian foraging societies were replaced by larger scale sedentary settlements, some of which later became empires. As these sedentary settlements developed and grew, central authoritative power of large scale societies came into being. Put differently, the invention of agriculture resulted in far-reaching consequences on the social structures of human beings.

Shultziner aids understanding by putting the “entire time-span of human history, into an intriguing, one-day, temporal scale.

In order to put the emergence of democracy, and the transitions to democracy, in the right context, then, it would be helpful to compare the scope of this phenomenon to the entire time-span of human history, namely at least 102,000 years (if not 200,000) since Homo sapience began to dwell on the earth. A helpful perceptual scale and illustration would be to compare the relative portion of historical periods to their equivalent in a one-day scale. For more than 21.5 hours of the day (more than 90% of human history), human beings lived in small egalitarian societies of foragers. The emergence of agriculture and the beginning of the Neolithic era occurred in the last 2.5 hours of the day. The Athenian democracy briefly emerged and disappeared 36 minutes before midnight. The modern territorial sovereign state system that began to crystallize after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was created in the last 8 seconds of that day. Democracy, as a type of regime that qualifies to 20th century definitions, emerged barely 2 seconds ago! In this context, and by 20th century standards of the term, democracy is a very recent development in human history [Emphasis added].

Shultziner goes on to state:

Although democracy by 20th century definition may be a very new phenomenon, I argue that its historical roots and causes lie in ancient times, long before the Athenian democracy came into being [citation in original].  In order to gain a better understanding of why we witness a fast rate of transitions to democracy in recent history we are required to look more closely at the egalitarian social structures under which human beings lived through the Paleolithic era.

In Part III of this essay, I shall discuss the development of these egalitarian social structures as they relate to the culture of early man and their linkage with what is known about social behavior in other species.

What a wonderful place.  Close to the main entrance to the Pitti Palace is the Boboli Gardens. The  year 1549 saw plans put into motion to  establish this  grand area. Enjoyed experiencing the gardens, terraces, sculptures and fountains.

Charlie and I stumbled onto this gardener’s shed, may not of been  a gardener’s shed at all, but it appeared to be a work area of some kind. We had to  call “dibs” as to who  was going to take the photo.  (I wonder, does any one call “dibs” anymore?)  Anyway, I won and this was the result.         click

Although confusionists do want to regularly delve into political debate due to the nature of confusionist ideas on government, oppression and what confusionism sees as the unique nature of democracy, every now and again something that highlights the confusion, contradiction that governmental systems create is so glaringly obvious that it cannot be left, and sometimes a story emanates that exposes the reality of a governmental system.

By all we are told a democracy is not meant to be a system that would lead to the practice of war crimes and a system whereby the elected politicians would conceal planning that would lead directly to war crimes while the military of the country would expose this. This is all directly opposite to the theoretical idea of a what a democracy is.

A democracy is we are a told a system where government is of the people by the people and for the people. It is not theoretically expected that democratically elected governments will defy the will of its people and just do what is in the interests of those in government, those they are allied with and those that really exert influence over the system. It is not expected that a leader will deny preparations for war are being made while actually making them. Democracies are not expected to invade countries for little valid or legal reason.

This story from the Uk’s Guardian exposes that such things do indeed happen in a democracy and not just any democracy but the worlds longest existing one. As confusionists point out it is important to try and understand the real nature of structures, institutions and systems and that democracy although giving people a stake in the system, including in their own oppression, doesnt mean the system will work in the name of the people or for the people. This story serves well to highlight certain aspects of governmental systems that arent confined to only more totalitarian ones but to all systems so far known.

Kiva.org

Team Permaculture We Let You Loan to Low Income Entrepreneurs

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on Kiva, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to entrepreneurs from communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Kiva creates an interpersonal connection at low costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery.

Team Permaculture

[Kiva.org]

203333     การออกแบบโครงสร้างไม้และเหล็ก     Design of Timber and Steel Structures

การออกแบบโครงสร้างไม้และเหล็ก องค์อาคารรับแรงดึงและแรงอัด คาน คานรับแรงอัด องค์อาคารประกอบ คานประกอบ รอยต่อ วิธีปฏิบัติในการออกแบบ

(Design of timber and steel structures, tension and compression members, beams, beam-columns, built-up members, plate girders, connections; design practice.)

(203333 มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์)