All right I am going a little overboard with the blogging today but after such a long hiatus, I am making up for some lost time.

So I usually not all that excited about stuff I find on the web but this one was an exception —> check out radical software, a website about a journal published in the early 1970s on technology, IP, decentralized media, and political activism. According to their history page, they were way onto the politics of copyright: “To demonstrate their commitment to free information, they rejected the standard copyright mark in favor of a new one, a circle with an X inside it, meaning, “please copy.”"

The best thing is this site is not only is it about Radical Software, but it has all of the issues online. Nice.

So I have basically stopped posting on my research blog, instead posting articles on free software, hackers, IP etc, on Geniza. I prefer the layout and since there are a number of us posting, I get to bear the fruit of the labor of others.

I just posted two pieces that both deal with the question of representation. One is an article that announces Linux is no longer fringe or kinda-fringe, but fully mainstream. While Linux is mainstreaming, piracy has not only been aligned with terrorism but now is compared to a drug war: (“”There are a lot of similarities with the drug war,” said David Israelite, chairman of the U.S. Justice Department’s Intellectual Property Task Force. “You never really are going to eliminate the problem, but what you hope to do is stop its growth.”). And while piracy is being fought with the massive resources, Mr Gates is of course trying as best he can to downgrade the mainstream appeal of the Free Culture movement by tagging it as communist.

On a smaller scale, my friend Rex is re-designing his blogand I can’t but help think that it reflects a Jack Handy’s Deep Thought aesthetic.

So so so I really want to see Century of the Self not only because I am obssessed about questions of selfhood but I also love documentaries especially really long ones, that don’t skip on the details. I think it is a shame that it is so difficult to see documentaries in the sense that they only play in artsy type film houses, are not on regular TV all that often, and are not readily available in your local video store. I guess I should check out netflix and see if it worth signing up and watching a handful of the d-mentaries per month.

I think it is also a shame that the world of documentary film making is not an integral component of academia especially teachinbg. For example, any good ethnography should have a corollary documentary. That is how the emotive, visual force of your material can really come through. There is a chance that I may pair up with a filmmaker who I met in Brazil while he was making to do a documentary on a large hacker con What the Hack but we will see if we can pull it off. The timing of the con is not all that ideal for me because I think I may be teaching then but I may be able to change my schedule if indeed we manage to get permisison to do it. Now, getting permission from a group of hackers who value decentralizing authority will be interesting.

If you are an academic blogger, there is a survey worth filling out. Below is some information from the student, studying at the University of Chicago who is writing her masters (long paper?) on the topic of academic blogging. I am not sure if I should even fill it out because I tend to use my blog as my escape from academics though from time to time I can’t hold back and write something quasi academic.

Hi. My name is Tina Huang, and I’m a Masters student at the University of Chicago. I am currently conducting a study on academics and their opinions on blogging. I am examining how people perceive this new Internet medium and how beneficial this new technology is to the academic community. If you are an academic and you either read blogs or write a blog pertaining at all to your field of study, please take some time to complete this survey. All information collected in this survey will remain confidential. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me. Thanks!

So today my order of sinus busterarrived in the mail. When I returned from the humid heat of PR to the dry heat of my apt, which I think has pipes directly connected to hell, my sinuses protested in despair. I think I am over the worst of it but while my sinuses were raging in pain, I first tried rinsing my sinuses with cayanne and water and then I decided to opt for something a *little* less intense, which is where the sinus buster comes in. So far I have nothing to say about it except that it felt much better going up my nostrils than my homemade concoction. If you do a google search on sinus buster there is tons of hype that seems a bit fishy to me so I will report back if the stuff does any good (or damage).

So this has been one of my most prolonged silences on satoroams; the reasons for absence are many and not worth listing here. I think the hefty snow, swirling at high speeds to only gently land on the ground has stirred me out of this writing lull.

It is now storming hard out, its effect at once being one of intensity, the wind howling, bordering on an angry tone, yet the blanket of white, the empty streets ushers in a peaceful silence. This duality captures what I feel about the administration’s decision to provide full health insurance for all PhD Students funded with stipends in the Social Science division, which may also be soon adopted by the humanities division. I am happy that student protest has had an effect, yet not all that happy (one may say peeved) at how we were notified (we were not) and how a solution was found only for future students, leaving current ones out in the cold, bearing the brunt of high costs, surely only to go one way: up.

Last fall I help start SOSHI knowing that some noise, press, and dialogue might change the U of C’s problematic policy of giving all the biological and physical science PhD students health insurance (which they can do because those dept have larger budgets thanks ot US gov grants) while basically turning a blind eye to the SS, Humanities, and Divinity school students.

With sky rocketing rates and general student ignorance about this policy, we provided some information, made some noise, and eventually the administration and board of trustees noticed although they basically refused to dialogue with us, in fact, for the past months they have told us that the administration was doing nothing to address this problem. And in the last few days, while we were hearing news of this new health insurance proposal, other administrators acted as if this was not happening. I find this entirely perplexing unless they woke up to this problem last week, and in one day drafted a proposal that was agreed to by the division deans the next day. In other words, highly unlikely.

On the one hand, this news is a clear victory. Future U of C Social Science PhD students who are funded won’t have to worry that by the time they finish their tenure at U of C they will be paying the price of a small Eastern European (or now Chinese) car for health insurance. On the other hand, their policy sends a message that current students don’t matter; they are left to entirely fend for themselves, including future unfunded students. Why not find a solution that positively impacts the entire U of C community? Why not provide subsidies for current students (or those in the first three-four years of the program); Why not cap the rate of increase so at least student can realistically know their costs? There are many

Some chastise Christmas for being grossly inauthentic, dominated by crass commercialism. And this is almost impossible to deny In fact, the traffic to the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean (which happens to be where I am. Puerto Rico), is SOOOOOOOOO insane, that it only confirms the more banal aspects of this holiday that I tend to ignore as best as I can.

At the same time, I think it is quite nice that we have a

So I never thought that I would have steady Internet-acess in PR but as it turns out there is an open wireless connection in my mom’s “jardin.” It is a little weird to be surfing as the birds chirp, the coqui’s sing, and the bees try to drink your delicious morning cafe. But I am not complaining. It probably, along with short stints in the ocean, has helped me retain my sanity being that running errands in PR is totally maddening. But all of the major errands are now complete, with some the minor ones still loomming as they always will.

In the meantime I am doing a little work for my course next quarter and I ran into the site that ck help start and build connexions and I was reminded at how wonderful of a place it is. For example, something as simple as A Primer in Modern Intellectual Property Law which not only has great content (check out the side links) but aesthetically, it is arranged very well. Pleasing to the eye and easy to find information.

As of late as I run otherwise mind numbing errands and do domestic work, the question of aesthetics has been on my mind. Aesthetics has probably been the dominant issue in my mom’s life. The arrangement of a room, of even the ceramics on a table mattered like nothing else. She would spend hours fixing stuff so that is appearance was truly perfect. It was an obsession that worked well because our surroundings were always really nice. She had an uncanny ability to achieve what she called “la harmonia.”

About 4 years ago I came home for an extended period of time because I was sick and not getting better in the states. I found that my mom had stripped down her house to the bare minimum. She had one cup, and about 2 of everything else: 2 forks, 2 plates, 2 towels, etc. Evertything else was packed up, out of the way.

At the time I chalked it up to my mom’s general eccentricities, attributing it to some new found zen state of her aesthetic development. Little did I know at the time that this was the first serious sign of her illness, already she was having trouble differentiating things so she was simplifying her life so that the clutter of things would not get in her mental way. It is strange to think that her general obsession in life was an underlying neurological condition that eventually fully exploded around 4 years ago and has become steadily worse.

While here I have filled the kitchen with food and I generally take care of all the cooking and cleaning so she does not have to worry about the ordinary clutter I bring with me. Before I leave however, I will pack up everything extra and leave her with the bare essentials: a couple of utensils, plates etc. The fridge will be emptied out and her house will be transformed again to zen simplicity out of sheer necessity.

It has been a year since I have been in PR and honestly not much has changed. The roads are in total dissray, construction the norm on about half of the roadways. Congestion is rampant and though the new urban train is nearly done, I have a feeling that it will only get worse.

Unfortunately things have changed also. My mother, I can’t say, is any better. She has worsened although it may be do to moving into a new place. She is easily disoriented since she perceives the world as another world and has to relearn a place through feeling and touch.

I have been working hard to unpack the boxes and move the furniture so her house is once again liveable (she recently moved places and unfortunately she was quite used to the other place but it was an investment apt and had to be sold). I am not sure how much longer she can live without help but she is being really stubborn about admitting that she needs some help. She has always been the most stubborn person I know and I have a feeling that this quality of hers will only grow and magnify to become her defining personality trait.

At first she said she refuses to pay someone to help so I found a program through the Alzheimers association of PR where they send a volunteer over 3 days a week for 4 hours to help cook and to provide company. At first my mom dug the idea, now any mention of it and she breaks out in a string of insults about most everything, letting me know that she DOES NOT want any help. It is far from amusing and all I hope is that the main social worker at the Alzheimers association whose got mad upaya (not to be confused with papaya) will be able to convince my mom that having someone help her is not such a bad thing after all.

Since I found things so upside down here, I changed my tix to stay till the end of the month. There was no way I could finish all the errands and do all of the house stuff by the 22nd. I am trying to get some of my own work done but honestly PR has never inspired me to concentrate especially with my mom whose brain is a sea of confusion. It kinda rubs off on me because it is hard to have to be the eyes and brain for someone else all the while trying to get things done in PR which can be confusing in and of itself.

Anyway, the first week was the most hellish, now I am coasting, still not the most comfortable ride but I can manage the turbulance much better. I hope to get to my blog a little more especially since I have found out there is an open wireless connection in my mom’s backyard.

Walking down the street with your elderly mom is like walking your new born puppy. Everyone smiles your way as if you are doing something really great.