Time to Put On my Champion Face

LET'S DO THIS.

Darlene McCoy

Karen Barad

FMST 80K

25 May 2011

Week 8 Readings

            I found the lecture on Biomimicry yesterday incredibly interesting. For some reason, I guess I had just never thought to look to nature for technological inspiration. I found the animals, specimens, creatures, or whatever they shall be called to be so fascinating! It was crazy to note that the pattern a shark’s scales were in helped it keep clean. The brittle star is quite the odd little creature as well, and it was entertaining to be able to just chat about it, and how a scientist like Karen would describe it. I can’t recall her name for the life of me – but the woman who headed the entire biomimicry project seemed incredible to me. I understand Karen’s concern for her work, since ethics really are a big deal and all, but I was just so amazed at what she had already done in her life and how apparent it was that she did actually care about science and nature.

            The article on nanotechnology more or less really made me think how much science influences daily life. Honestly, it’s just sort of hard to comprehend sometimes. The fact that there is nanotechnology in sunscreen seems kind of silly to me when I think about it, because sunscreen seems to be something so simple and mundane. But – I think because most people in the world are of the same mindset about sunscreen – it is important to know how it’s formed, and for who, and what it takes to form it. If something were to be mass distributed to the public, I’m sure the public would like to know what they’re applying on their skin.

            The Nature article also shed some light on the idea that humans sometimes play around with things they don’t quite fully comprehend the workings of yet, and because of that, there may be some serious consequences. I feel like because humans don’t understand the natural science behind such phenomenal creatures like the brittle star, they might be diving into unknown worlds. The results could be good or bad, and I think what Karen might have been trying to say is that scientists must take responsibility all outcomes, and not attempt to hide a more negative consequence because it makes their life easier.

I Swear to Freaking God

There will be real blog posts. Soon. Maybe soon? I don't know. But there are things that need discussing. DISCUSSION IS REQUIRED GODDAMNIT! Where are you Janet omg omg omg omg omg D: SLUUUUUT NOT YET GIVE HER TIME . . . Argh. Seriously. My brain right now is just a jumble of men, fishnets and Lady Gaga. Also: orgies. What the fuck? I'm so tired. So tired. Fem studies reading can die in a fire! I don't know how I feel about anything and everything at the same time. Next weekend is going to be batshit insane. More insane than everything ever that I could imagine. I think. I also think it might be one of the best weekends ever. I'm really excited to see UAWS again. It's been too long since I rocked out with my cock out. :D Rocky cast party is going to be the fucking shit, but I don't think I'm going to get to take the person I want to... small sacrifice, though! It's not like I wouldn't do anything to make things cheel anyway. I'd do anything. Hah. Haha. Hahaha. I'm so fucking cracked out and insane right now. You can tell by the not organized train of thought, right reader-friend person thing? Good lord. Good lord, good lord. I'm just a jumble. A hot mess jumble and I have every right to be. But I'm also incredibly happy. And incredibly grateful for peach milkshakes. I fucking love peaches. Anyway, dude. Dude, anyway. There's going to be so much to talk about soon, my friendly friend bloggin' buddies. There's so much happening right now, but I can't post anything about it, yet. I'm really excited, though. And I think you guys will be, too.

I really love you all more than you think.

xoxo foreva,

meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <3

Dunno What to Do

Dunno what to say~

but I'm super-duper happy and can't hide it~

Eh?

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalaa :DDD

Tumbler - On the Edge of Internet Glory
    A vast universe of pictures, text, quotes, links, conversations, audio and video clips exists on a website known to many as "Tumblr." (I am correcting the site's spelling error for the sake of grammer.) Everything displayed on a computer screen is composed of pixels, and Tumbler is no exception. Though it does share this key characteristic of being pixelated with every other website ever, Tumbler is a new, unique way for people of all ages to express themselves through the microblogging world. According to David Karp, Tumber's founder (and high school dropout, thus the mispelling), in 2009 there were about 2 million unique bloggers on Tumbler, and 10,000 new people signed up for the website each day. Of those 10,000, 85% remained active. By those statistics, Tumbler should amass 3,102,500 new bloggers in one year. In approximantley 2,183 years, every person on the planet should have a Tumbler, providing the global population does not fluctuate in any way anytime soon.
    A microblog is a form of a blog. It differs from a traditional blog in that its content is framed in an area that is 600 pixels wide. The small space demands its own suffix! Thus, in most instances microblogging is much akin to what a person can simply do on Facebook. Why the craze then? Why will Tumbler encompass the world's population in 4194 AD?
    Tumbler has a few key features that give it it's great appeal. First, and foremost, nude and pornographic images are a-okay on Tumbler. On Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg will get disown you from his website for posting nudes or other images deemed as containing "inappropriate content." Tumbler also has two other features that Facebook simply cannot compete with: a blogger can post an entire conversation bet between two people on Tumbler, or an audio sample that looks nice and is embedded into the page. One simply cannot do that on Facebook. The act would require far too much effort on the user's part. Tumbler is much easier to operate.
    Another appeal to Tumbler seems to be the commuinities built upon a function of the site known as "Reblogging." A blogger can "reblog" a post that another user posted, denoting that the user that reblogged the post finds it unappealing in some way, and wishes it to return from the idiot user it came from. The user from which the post originated is notified that someone else has reblogged their blog's content. They then have the opportunity to check out that person's blog, and reblog whatever fetid images they find. The cycle continues. Because of this function, people across the world can share their varied hatred for many different kinds of things and ideas. Furries, distressed fifteen year olds, horny bros, and college freshman who believe their long-distance relationship is forever can connect and share their hatred through the internet in this new, fantastic, way!
    While we here at TMP do not understand the world's fascination with hatred, we endorse free speech and think that Tumbler is a great way to massively communicate what needs to be removed from today's society.
    Gatemaster, an internet regular, said in regards to Tumbler: "It's like 4chan, except without all the kiddie porn! I love Tumbler!" He, and many other students at UCSC have started to experience the Tumbler craze. It will not be long before the entire world catches on, too!

Darlene McCoy

Karen Barad

FMST 80K

11 May 2011

Week 6 Readings

            I found Niels Bohr’s philosophy-physics to be a new way of thinking about how things as humans see them are “real” or not. I really like his concept of a thing is only “real” if it can show its capability to intra-act with an apparatus. I enjoyed his definitions of position and momentum because now that I think about them, and how they are defined, I can’t figure out how I defined position and momentum before. I suppose they were just numbers that meant something on a lab report in high school. I never actually thought to myself, “What is momentum?” I also just adore the fact that if a person is measuring a particle’s position, its momentum cannot be calculated, and I think that Karen linked it to the feminist idea that “something is always excluded” very well.

I also found Niels definition of the difference between subject and object to be fantastic. I mostly enjoyed it because his example made sense to me. The idea that a walking stick is an extension of the subject because said subject is using it to see versus the idea that if a subject were to just be feeling the walking stick it would be the object allowed me to understand what he was speaking of.

            Karen’s piece on Agential Realism was a great thing to read before class. I feel like I would’ve been much more confused if I hadn’t. I think that what we’re attempting to do with our projects in class is look at the material-discursive practices that went into making our object a material reality today. Because my object is a supernova, I found quite a bit of things that relate to it in some sort of way. For example: I figured that if the Scientific Revolution and Nicolas Copernicus did not happen, the supernova as I know it now might be different – different in the sense that it might not exist, might be called something else, may be portrayed in a different way – whatever. I just feel like Copernicus’ actions were part of the material discursive practices that went into construction the idea of a supernova in my head today. I feel like I’m on the right track with this project, but I’m still sort of shaky on what exactly a material-discursive practice is. I feel like the material part is what physical objects are being used to measure a phenomenon, and the discursive part is what social implications are behind the making of the object, why the research is being done, etc.

Rough FRL! Article

Needs work. Still depressed. ~.~

Tumbler - On the Edge of Internet Glory (Rough Draft)
A vast universe of pictures, text, quotes, links, conversations, audio and video clips exists on a website known to many as "Tumblr." (I am correcting the site's spelling error for the sake of grammer.) Everything displayed on a computer screen is composed of pixels, and Tumbler is no exception. Though it does share this key characteristic of being pixelated with every other website ever, Tumbler is a new, unique way for people of all ages to express themselves through the microblogging world. According to David Karp, Tumber's founder (and high school dropout, thus the misspelling), in 2009 there were about 2 million unique bloggers on Tumbler, and 10,000 new people signed up for the website each day. Of those 10,000, 85% remained active. By those statistics, Tumbler should amass 3,102,500 new bloggers in one year. In approximately 2,183 years, every person on the planet should have a Tumbler, providing the global population does not fluctuate in any way anytime soon.
A microblog is a form of a blog. It differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically much smaller, in both actual size and aggregate file size. A microblog entry could consist of nothing but a short sentence fragment, or an image or embedded video. Thus, in most instances microblogging is much akin to what a person can simply do on Facebook. Why the craze then? Why will Tumbler encompass the world's population in 4194 AD?
Tumbler has a few key features that give it it's great appeal. First, and foremost, nude and pornographic images are a-okay on Tumbler. On Facebook, 'ole Mark Zuckerberg will get yo' ass for posting nudes or other images deemed as containing "inappropriate content." Tumbler also has two other features that Facebook simply cannot compete with: a blogger can post an entire conversation between two people on Tumbler, or an audio sample that looks nice and is embedded into the page. One simply cannot do that on Facebook. The act would require far too much effort on the user's part.
Another appeal to Tumbler seems to be the communities built upon a function of the site known as "Reblogging." A blogger can "reblog" a post that another user posted, and it will appear on the blogger's "Tumblog." The user from which the post originated is notified that someone else has reblogged their blog's content. They then have the opportunity to check out that person's blog. They then can reblog any content they may like, and the cycle continues. Because of this function, people across the world can share their varied interests. Furries, distressed fifteen year olds, horny bros, and college freshman who believe their long-distance relationship is forever can connect through the internet in this new, fantastic, way!
Gatemaster, an internet regular, said in regards to Tumbler: "It's like 4chan, except without all the kiddie porn! I love Tumbler!" He, and many other students at UCSC have started to experience the Tumbler craze. It will not be long before the entire world catches on, too!

The 'Cho, and Why It Makes Me Sad:

(Click image for larger.)

I'll post actual words on this later. Maybe.

By the way: if you can tell who this person is, please let me know. I don't want anyone to bother them over a silly blog post made by some bitch that doesn't even know them. I'm using this as a statistic and am in no way making fun of them or their life.

Also: obviously edited for names.

A New Activity!

Darlene + Rocky Horror = win!

May 28th. Stevenson Event Center.

Give yourself over to absolute pleasure.

Seriously. It's gonna be hot!

And I'm in the pre-show, doing something to Lady Gaga's Telephone!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Bad Depression is Bad

:/ don't even feel like writing most of the time... ~.~

Darlene McCoy

Karen Barad

FMST 80K

4 May 2011

Week 5 Readings

            Doing the readings this week, I realized that I’ve had quite the interesting college career so far (especially for being a Lit Major!). Last year, I took a class called The Quantum Enigma, so the concept of diffraction did not boggle my mind as much as a person who hasn’t been introduced to the idea before. Though, I must say, the concept that an atom is both a wave and a particle is pretty strange. I’m incredibly interested to see how Karen uses diffraction in her book, though, because I feel like it is a wonderfully different way to look at phenomena.

            I was incredibly excited when Karen brought up Judith Butler’s theory of performance versus performativity. I read the essay that Karen quotes in her book in a different class. We also went very in-depth when we discussed it, so I had a fairly good idea of what she was talking about. It was so relieving to have Judith’s theory compared to what we’re talking about in class, because it made it so much easier for me to comprehend. I love the idea that a tree isn’t a tree because I can look at it and say, “This is a tree.” A tree is a tree because of the way it looks, the way it moves in the wind, the whole producing oxygen thing – a tree performs its role constantly, therefore it is a tree. If a tree were to not perform what I would think is the regular role of a tree, it would be something else. At least, I think that’s how it works. Judith’s original explanation involved performing gender roles and whatnot.

            I was also incredibly interested in the idea that a phenomena’s “realness” depended on its interaction with an apparatus or another object. I believe that quantum physics is more or less justified because of this idea. I think that while scientists don’t exactly know what is science is taking place in quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics work and interact with other objects or phenomena.

            I was also very excited to eat raisins. There sure is a lot more than sunshine and grapes. Horray, raisins!

FMST 80K Final Paper Annotated Bibliography

Darlene McCoy

Karen Barad

FMST 80K

3 May 2011

Supernovae Annotated Bibliography

Baade, W., and F. Zwicky. "On Super-Novae." (1934). National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web. 3 May 2011. .

This is the first use of the word "supernovae" in a scholarly/scientific article. I believe that the article may give me some insight into how the idea of the supernovae formed in modern-day minds.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory Center :: Gateway to the Universe of X-ray Astronomy! NASA. Web. 03 May 2011. .

This is the website for the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center. I believe that it will be useful in researching modern-day telescopes and technologies because there is a fantastic amount of information on the site. The Chandra is also quite associated with supernovae, for it is one of the few satellites that can observe far off supernovae. The site is sponsored by NASA. I believe in NASA!

Monnier, John D. "Optical Interferometry in Astronomy." Reports on Progress in Physics 66. IOPscience. Institute of Physics, 25 Apr. 2003. Web. 3 May 2011. .

Optical interferometry is technology used to detect and record supernovae. It is important for me to understand how it came about, so I can understand how people materialize supernovae. This article explains what it is and how it works. The Institute of Physics a scientific charity with over 37,000 members since 1874, published this article, and seems like quite the reliable source. I feel as if the technology may have progressed since 2003, but this article will let me at least grasp the workings of it.

Motz, Lloyd, and Jefferson Hane Weaver. The Story of Astronomy. New York: Plenum, 1995. Print.

This book follows the path of astronomy through history -- from the very beginning in Greece through Galileo and on to more modern astronomy. It highlights what physics had to take place in order for astronomy to grow as a field. This book looks a little old to be super relevant to my paper, but I believe that it will provide enough information that is still relevant in the field of astronomy for it to be a reliable source. Lloyd Motz wrote twenty-one books on astronomy. I feel like he has at least a good idea of what he's writing about. I am not so sure who Jefferson Hane Weaver is. But I do know he wrote a book entitled "Conquering Calculus" and another called "World of Physics". That implies that he might know something about physics or even astrophysics. I think this source will be very helpful in discerning how Supernovae came to be.

Naeye, Robert, and Rob Gutro. "NASA's Swift Satellite Catches First Supernova in the Act of Exploding." Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA, 21 May 2008. Web. 3 May 2011. .

This is a news article provided by the Goddard Space Flight Center, sponsored by NASA presenting the news that the Swift satellite has caught real-time video of a supernova exploding. I feel like anything posted on NASA's site probably has some strong credentials behind it. Both of the authors are experienced newsmen. I trust that have their sources in check. I am including this article in my bibliography because it is the first time a supernova was recorded in real-time. Otherwise, humans have only seen still shots of a supernova and because of this recording, scientists can discover new implications about how supernovae function in space. It's important to the history of supernovae, and may also constitute as evidence for supernovae being "real."

Osterbrock, Donald E. "Who Really Coined the Word Supernova? Who First Predicted Neutron Stars?" American Astronomical Society 33 (2001): 1330. The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. Web. 3 May 2011. .

I just have the abstract for now -- but this paper will explain who coined the term Supernova first, basically, who "discovered" supernovae. I need this source to credit another one of my sources. I trust articles that are published by the American Astronomical Society. Though this is a 10 year old paper, I feel like the material in it is still relevant and will help me in my research. It is a scholarly article.

Watson, Fred. Stargazer: the Life and times of the Telescope. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Print.

I am adding this source to my bibliography because telescopes are very relevant to supernovae! Many supernovae have been discovered by amateur astronomers simply looking up at the night sky and noticing an incredibly bright star. Telescopes are also one of the key tools in discovering supernovae. Fred Watson has a PhD in astronomy. I trust him and his knowledge of astronomy and telescopes!

Woosley, Stan, and Hans-Thomas Janka. "The Physics of Core-Collapse Supernovae." Cornell University Library. Cornell University, 12 Jan. 2006. Web. 03 May 2011. .

This paper explains just what happens in the core of a star before, during, and after a supernova. It is information that I will need to explain to my reader in order for them to have some understanding of what a supernova is and how it works. It is very detailed and I feel I can pull whatever information I may need out of it. This source seems entirely reliable. I am aware that UCSC has one of the best astrophysics programs, and that the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany isn't short of any credentials itself. The authors are from the two universities. I feel that by being in the department of astrophysics at either of these universities makes a person qualified to write a paper on astrophysics. I feel as if the research is as "objective" as possible. The paper is divided into a few different subsections, and has graphs and figures to go along with its explanations. It is a scholarly article.

I Found All of My Bibliography Stuff!

1. http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0601/0601261.pdf
2. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/swift_supernova.html
3. http://books.google.com/books?id=HRcddzNMlzkC&pg=PA76&dq=&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
4. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001AAS...199.1501O
5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1076395/pdf/pnas01745-0006.pdf
6. http://chandra.harvard.edu/
7. http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~monnier/Publications/ROP2003_final.pdf
8. http://books.google.com/books?id=2LZZginzib4C&pg=PA40&dq=intitle:Stargazer+digges+coins&lr=&as_brr=0&ei=BIwrSc6pB4OClQT4zfyxBg#v=onepage&q&f=false
9. http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980223c.html

ANNND MAH REFERENCE SO I DON'T FUCK UP: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/02/

Now off to the Kresge comp lab to actually do this shit! ~.~

PS: I'm writing a giant paper on the materialization of supernovae.

Sounds smart right? :D

Was Doing Better, but

Still pretty down. Blog isn't much consolation as of late.

:(