"From a Media Ecology perspective, it is possible to examine television content as a function of the television medium itself. As a "one to many" medium, American television acts to dictate and reinforce acceptable social norms and behavior. The content of television seems to have fallen by accident into three distinct categories : entertainment, news and advertising. In fact, these broad categories of programming each stake out a different level of social behavior to manage and control."-R. Blechman

The project is to develop a naturalist viewpoint on culture. "We aim to close the divide between the natural and human sciences, removing psychology from its myths of interiority and enthralment to ego." This is done by modeling the spread of culture on the transmission of infectious diseases

"The age in which humans existence is now framed, the age in which human life and technology so massively and intimately interact, can well be styled not only the information age and the age of interpretation, but, perhaps, even more inclusively, the ecological age, in principle an age of total interconnectedness, where everything on the earth, and even the universe, is interconnected with everything else, no only in itself but, ideally, in human understanding and activity." -Walter Ong from an unpublished manuscript

on darwin

Link to Charles Darwin Webinar Just Click!

The very last words in On the Origin of Species are:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

"It's a powerful idea that not only serves scientific progress; it has the power to inform all of our individual existences with clarity and reason instead of obscurity and mysticism. One would think that after so many years, more people would have realized its worth and taken it to heart."

The above quote from the book is probably one of the better known ones... deservedly I should add. But I think my favorite part is from the last page of the introduction.

"No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance, for they determine the present welfare, and, as I believe, the future success and modification of every inhabitant of this world."

A possible Neologism

Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bio, "life"; and κέντρον, kentron, "center") is a term that has several meanings but is commonly defined as the belief that all forms of life are equally valuable and humanity is not the center of existence. Biocentric positions generally advocate a focus on the well-being of all life in the consideration of ecological, political, and economic issues. Biocentrism in this sense has been contrasted to anthropocentrism, which is the belief that human beings and human society are, or should be, the central focus of existence.

Biocentrism also refers to the philosophical position that the attributes of living things form the basis of perception, and thereby form the basis of observable reality itself.[1] The biocentric theory proposed by Robert Lanza builds on quantum physics by putting life into the equation.[2] His theory places biology above the other sciences in an attempt to solve one of nature’s biggest puzzles, the theory of everything that other disciplines have been pursuing for the last century. [3]

1 Ecology

Donald Worster has traced today’s biocentric conscience, which is an important part of the recovery of a sense of kinship between man and nature, to the British intelligencia of the Victorian era reacting against the Christian ethic of dominion over nature.[4]

He points out that Charles Darwin was the most important spokesperson for the biocentric attitude in ecological thought and quotes from his Notebooks on Transmutation:

If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, diseases, death, suffering and famine - our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusement

- they may partake of our origin in one common ancestor - we may be all netted together."

New Discovery Shows Climate Changed the Fate of Great Empires

The decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area's climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.


Detailed climate record shows that the Eastern Mediterranean became drier between 100 A.D. and 700 A.D., a time when Roman and Byzantine power in the region waned, including steep drops in precipitation around 100 A.D. and 400 A.D. "Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn't known, but it is an interesting correlation," Valley says. "These things were certainly going on at the time that those historic changes occurred."

R-Rated movie trailer-not for kids-graphic violence

humorous but lots of cussing -not for kids

The concept behind this project was to explore autonomy as a medium. I was interested in a career in media but had no direction. I began to develop a theory that focused on the medium of writing and it's processes (creative, critical and technical) as a potential creative avenue that might lead me to greater independence possibly as a writer for media or writing about media or both simultaneously.

This diagram is not a tetrad but perhaps is in the form of a metaphor-autonomy and it's integral processes (creative, critical, technical)

The transition from analog media to digital-writing is the central issue or metaphor being examined-that words are central metaphors now in motion at lightspeed as in scriptwriting where words are in motion and must be put in order.

Initially I couldn't decide what form the role of my research should take-on writing for example in 1. a critical sense such as a professor would do or 2. technical as a journalist or 3. creative like a scriptwriter or 4. in a particular genre, as forms of specialization or using it as in 5. multimedia in relation to other skills.

I finally settled on a third and final metaphor that of the relationship of scripting to multimedia and began to design some online-multimedia content.

The inclusions of the project centre around a critique of what happens to the two forms of autonomy-personal and media when the writing process goes online and where these three metaphors that are central to this process meet up creatively, technically and critically.

The message of this critique is the task of giving identity to both voice and an audience to these metaphors by learning how to apply imagination to put on words and make some order out of this seeming chaos when these metaphors collide.

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The demand to be permitted to govern ourselves reflects the conviction that we are, in essence, self-governors. In essence, but not always in fact. Sometimes our authority over our actions is nothing but the form of self-government. Sometimes we are not autonomous agents. If, then, the structure of rational agency justifies our conviction that we are capable of governing our own actions, it does not hold the key to the distinction between those cases in which we fail to exercise this capacity and those in which we succeed.

The conviction that there is such a distinction is grounded in the obvious fact that victims of brainwashing, compulsion, addiction, depression, anxiety, and many other conditions are prevented from governing themselves. If their lack of autonomy is not simply a function of the fact that their actions are causally determined by states of affairs over which they have no control, and if it is not equivalent to any fact about the considerations they are disposed to recognize and be moved by, then it would seem to be a more intrinsic feature of their agency.

No particular attitude seems to be essential to autonomous agency, however — except, of course, the attitude of authorization that is essential to all action for a reason. Nor is it necessary that any particular principles of reasoning serve the autonomous agent as guides — except, again, whatever principles must guide the action of even nonautonomous agents. The content of our desire to govern ourselves when we act thus remains obscure to us, even as the legitimacy of this desire is clear.

The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions. Addressing this question requires understanding the relationship between freedom and cause, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic. The various philosophical positions taken differ on whether all events are determined or not — determinism versus indeterminism — and also on whether freedom can coexist with determinism or not — compatibilism versus incompatibilism. So, for instance, 'hard determinists' argue that the universe is deterministic, and that this makes free will impossible.
The principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an omnipotent divinity does not assert its power over individual will and choices. In ethics, it may imply that individuals can be held morally accountable for their actions. In the scientific realm, it may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain and the mind, are not wholly determined by physical causality. The question of free will has been a central issue since the beginning of philosophical thought.

earth day version