Link Musings

I've been debating starting to do regular link posts... I might. If I do, they may be in the form of thought-streams from my day, or a few days (if some sort of topical, or at least related, lumpet emerges from my reading/thinking/writing for more than a day). This may also be another random post, never to be repeated, in a blog full of them.

Digital Ecology? - This musing from Jacquet is pretty interesting, and reaches beyond the immediate field in which her musings occur. I keep returning to “This is a different type of ecology, one facilitated by the digital universe”, and wondering if there isn't more there. The idea that the digital universe has its own ecology whispers beneath the surface. Not that that is a new idea...just a compelling one.

50 Posts About Cyborgs - This is interesting for the topic/material, but also for the format. I'm increasingly interested in the variety allowed by “blog form” publishing. I like the idea that a stand-alone, non-continuous, digital object can be created as a blog – Particularly in the simple interface delivered by Tumblr. Although I'm not sure I need more inspiration to start new blog projects, as I'm sitting at... half a dozen blogs now, including this one. Most of them I have no idea what to do with... other than I wanted to write about, or create something about, a topic that didn't fit in well on a blog I'd already established. That said, I have some writing/thought projects that would make interesting non-updating blog-form works.
On the Cyborg topic:

Clearly, we are self-made. We are the first technology. We are part inventor and part the invented. We have used our minds to manufacture our selves and thus we humans today are the first cyborgs. We have invented ourselves. And we are not done yet. Kevin Kelly

I like a lot of this (the whole piece), although some of it is just distressing. Distressing in that it gives me visions of fat, iDevicePadObject plugged in, and tuned out, humans; Evolved with our technology, gone slow, dumpy and soft. Slow, soft, dumpy things are food to my mind. Obligate button pushers are a terrifying concept. They are not spear throwers, or rifle shooters; Those dangerous creatures of beautiful and lethal form. I refuse to be a button pusher. I'll go wild, and raise other wild things, if I must.

Newspaper Extinction Timeline- Interesting in the whole new publishing vs. old publishing way. I wonder how true this is for local papers in more remote places? The nearest towns to me are small, and isolated by miles and miles without urban sprawl; They are also not technologically contemporary communities, nor (most importantly) are there electronic media sources to supply them. What of the small town local paper in the Western US, and similar areas of geographic isolation, low population and low support from electronic media? Local media is different when you're in San Francisco, Ca. and San Francisco, NM.

I got notification of an acceptance the other day (on my birthday actually), and it should be getting published soon... If so, you'll get more soon. If not, perhaps more weeks of silence. This is my blogination-machine, and I'll use it as I see fit, after all.

Scorched Bastards

A nut hit the dirt ahead of my boot, its fleshy paleness rivulet with blood and blue veins. Stepping through the dust, I felt it slide and rupture under my heel accidentally. The injection gun in my hand creaked as, bending to the heaving flank, I stuck the needle in and squeezed. I stepped away again quick, as I felt the heat of the iron pass beside me. The denutted bull-calf bawled in pain as the hot iron struck his hip. He strained and twitched. The kid on the calf's neck twisted the foreleg higher, screwing himself down harder to the animal and the earth. Hot iron struck flesh once more, and then everyone pulled back. The calf jumped up, all snot, flying hair and dirt, kicked free of the rope and bolted to the corner of the corral. There, shoulders bumping against the others, the fright passed from his eyes. I spit, flicked a droplet of antibiotic from the needle tip and slid into observation.

The work was more than just putting the old two iron brand to flesh. The calves were roped out, and dragged nearer the cedar fire where the irons rested. Swift in movement, I stepped, gave the shot and withdrew. An ear got notched, and nuts got cut. Then the fiery-irons and scorching. All together the work became a flow. The dust, bawling and smoky smell of blood thickened in the senses, and the rhythm carried us. An easy joking rose among us in moments of panic, and fell to silence in the fluid moments of steady work. We darted with function and purpose, and laughed in disregard to the tastes in the air. We were all scorched bastards there, burnt in the sun and by the irons, but some laughed.