http://aphelis.net/ad-bell-telephone-system-1948/ http://aphelis.net/ad-bell-telephone-system-1948/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 00:50:17 +0000 Philippe Theophanidis http://aphelis.net/?p=13157

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☛ LIFE hosted by Google: “Who’s Tops in Telephones? It’s U.S.” advertisement for Bell Telephone System, July 19, 1948, p. 3. Large format retrieved from Graphic Mania.

From the text, we learn that in 1948 (according to Bell Telephone System) there were more telephones in New York City than in all of France:

There are more telephones in this country than in all the rest of the world put together. The United States has one telephone for about every four people, compared to one telephone for every ninety people for the rest of the world.

Sweden comes closest with one telephone for every eleven people. In Russia the estimate is about one in a hundred.

New York leads the world’s cities with the most telephones. It has 2,600,000―more than in all of France. In relation to population, San Francisco is on top with about one telephone for every two people. Washington ranks a close second.

And we’re still building and expanding at the fastest rate in history. The value of telephone service is increasing constantly.

Currently, what is increasing constantly is the price costumers have to pay to keep their landline telephone subscription. Some phone companies are contemplating the idea of terminating this service all together. The reason is the ever increasing number of cell phone and smartphone subscriptions. As of December 2012, 87% of American adults own a cell phone or a smart phone. More than a third of American homes only had wireless service during the first half of 2012 (no landline telephone). See the following resources for more detailed references:

• Los Angeles Times: “Landline rates just going skyward” by David Lazarus, February 12, 2013.

• USA Today: “Some phone companies seek to end landline service” by Marco Santana, March 30, 2013.

• PEW Internet: “Pew Internet: Mobile” by Joanna Brenner, January 31, 2013.

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention: “Wireless Substitution: Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, January–June 2012”, PDF.

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Images link to the content they illustrate. All those links were first collected on @aphelis (Twitter).

• • •

• The financial situation is dire in Greece and the far right party Golden Dawn is still gaining ground. However, Greeks are not remaining idle and have taken direct actions to correct the situation. One of the most striking example of such a direct action came when residents in Crete threw a Golden Dawn candidate MP into the sea. Throughout history, Cretans have proven many times of being capable of fierce resistance again invaders (see for example how they fought against Turkish domination as told by novelist Pandelis Prevelakis in his trilogy The Cretan and also how they fought against an attempted airborne invasion by Nazi Germany during World War II).

  • BBC: “Greek villagers block Golden Dawn food handout on Thassos” April 1, 2013.
  • Spiegel Online: “’Like 1930s Germany’: Greek Far Right Gains Ground” by Manfred Ertel, April 18, 2013.
  • The New York Times: “Greek Parliament Passes Plan for Layoffs” by Niki Kitsantonis, April 28, 2013.
  • The Guardian: “Greece’s people show the politicians how to fight Golden Dawn” by Daniel Trilling, May 6, 2013.
  • I Can’t Relax In Greece: “Golden Dawn candidate MP thrown in the sea at the harbour of Chania” May 5, 2013. This is the English translation of an article first published online by the Greek newspaper Ta Nea on April 3, 2013.

  

• Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, 2013. Among many other things, she is known for having argued “There is no such thing as society”. The statement was made in September 23, 1987 during an interview with journalist Douglas Keay. An edited version of the interview was published in the British magazine Woman’s Own on October 31, 1987 under the title “Aids, education and the year 2000!”. The transcript can be found at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

  What is wrong with the deterioration? [mistranscription?] I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

• Primer’s director Shane Carruth released his second movie titled Upstream Color. He’s also distributing it himself via his film company erpb. It means currently one can watch the film in theatre and/or buy a digital copy of it directly from the film director (“directly” being relative: Carruth relies on VHX form digital distribution). The film is also available through other means (DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, etc.).

  

• In April, North Korea gained international attention by issuing (again) various threats. Those threats were partially supported by different military operations, including the relocation of two Musudan missiles to North Korea east coast. However, most serious analysts agreed that the actualization of those threats were highly unlikely. A few days ago, the missiles were withdrawn. Other recent incidents related to nuclear power came as a reminder that the danger doesn’t only lies in the hands of warmongers: natural disasters and human error must also be taken into consideration. In Iran, the epicenter of a 6.3-magnitude earthquake was located only 100 miles from the nation sole official nuclear reactor. In the United-States, 17 Air Force officers responsible for nuclear missile launch were recently suspended after having failed launch skills test.

  • BBC: “South Korea raises alert with North to ‘vital threat’” April 10, 2013
  • The Economist: “Young, callow and out of his depth” April 5, 2013.
  • The Diplomat: “North Korea Is the Boy Who Cried Wolf: There Will Be No War” by Robert E. Kelly, April 10, 2013.
  • Nautilus Institute: “Propaganda, Fire-Thrashing, and the Risk of North Korean First-Use of Nuclear Weapons in Korea” by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos, April 11, 2013.
  • BBC: “N Korea ‘removes’ missiles from east coast launch site” May 7, 2013.
  • Foreing Policy: “Fault Lines, Not Red Lines” by Ali Vaez, April 10, 2013.
  • AP: “Is There A Moral Crisis in the US Nuclear Force?” by Robert Burns, May 11, 2013.

  

• David Graeber teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He’s the author of Debt. The First 5,000 Years. He was also involved in the early stage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Baffler (No. 22) recently published an excerpt of his latest book The Democracy Project: see “A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse”. Among other things, Graeber argues for the idea of “debt cancellation”:

  What is debt, after all, but the promise of future productivity? Saying that global debt levels keep rising is simply another way of saying that, as a collectivity, human beings are promising each other to produce an even greater volume of goods and services in the future than they are creating now. But even current levels are clearly unsustainable. They are precisely what’s destroying the planet, at an ever-increasing pace. Even those running the system are reluctantly beginning to conclude that some kind of mass debt cancellation—some kind of jubilee—is inevitable.

  For David Graeber, it seems that debt is mostly financial (it has to do with money first and foremost) and that it is charged with a negative value (it is mostly bad). In Debt. The First 5,000 Years, nexum is only mentioned once in passing although there is a discussion about the Roman debt bondage contract (my point being that historically, there are forms of debt that allow for the creation of bonds without servitude). There is no mention of the other important form of Roman contract based on debt, mutuum. However, chances are that Graeber’s idea about debt cancellation will find sympathizers. Just two days ago, The New York Times wrote that the student debt in the United-States had reached $1 trillion in total: “Student Debt Slows Growth as Young Spend Less” by Annie Lowrey, May 10, 2013. For what I found to be a balanced view on David Graeber, see recently in The New Yorker: “David Graeber’s “The Democracy Project” and the anarchist revival” by Kelefa Sanneh, May 13, 2013.

• PBS Frontline: “The Bombing of al-Bara” by filmmaker Olly Lambert, April 2013.

  When FRONTLINE filmmaker Olly Lambert sat to interview Jamal Maarouf, a Syrian rebel commander, he did not anticipate that bombs from government jets would begin to fall just 300 meters away.

  Though the first blast knocked him to the ground, Lambert kept his camera rolling. He spent the next hour documenting the impacts of the Oct. 28, 2012 bombing of al-Bara, a village in Idlib province an hour south of Aleppo. The result is a rare, immersive portrait of the immediate aftermath of Syrian government air strikes on a civilian population.

• Wall Street Journal: “Gold Plunges as Fears Over Inflation Fade” by Christian Berthelsen, David Wessel and Gregory Zuckerman, April 15, 2013.

  Gold posted its biggest one-day percentage drop in 30 years Monday as new signs of a global economic slowdown emerged and fears diminished that central banks’ easy-money policies would stoke inflation.

  Gold futures for April delivery fell $140.40, or 9.4%, Monday to a two-year low at $1,360.60 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. That extended their bear-market descent of more than 20% from their 2011 all-time high. Since Thursday, gold prices have declined by more than $203 an ounce, a record skid since the futures began trading in the U.S. in 1974.

  

• The Economist: “Consumer microbiomics” April 11, 2013.

  AN APPRECIATION of the wonderful world of microbes used to begin and end with a jar of live yogurt, the odd bit of French cheese and probiotic supplements. This is changing fast, for three reasons. First, as some common unfriendly bacteria rapidly evolve resistance to antibiotics, an overreliance on such traditional cures is being questioned. Second, research is challenging the cherished idea that having fewer bugs in the environment is healthy. Indeed, there is growing speculation that an obsession with cleanliness is leading to a steep rise in allergies, asthma and other inflammatory and autoimmune disease. Finally, the notion that “infecting” people with bacteria might be a good thing is entering the popular consciousness.

  

• Digital Public Library of America: “Welcome to the Digital Public Library of America” by Dan Cohen, April 18, 2013.

  It’s not very often you get to build a new library. Together, that’s what we will begin to do today. Starting with over two million items, each with its own special story and significance, the Digital Public Library of America will now begin to assemble the riches of our country’s libraries, archives, and museums, and connect them with the public.

  

• Dictionary of War: “Perception Attack” by Brian Massumi, February 24, 2007. This is a 35 minutes video where Brian Massumi explains his concept of “perception attack” which is meant to further develop the understanding of preemptive war. It can be watched online or it can be downloaded as an Ogg video file. Sound quality is very good. The video is also available on YouTube and is embedded below.

• Slate: “The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi” presented by Larry Siems, April 10, 2013. Aside from being disturbing, the case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi illustrates the crucial role of “habeas corpus” in regard both to constitutional law and to sovereign power. It also underlines the dangerous consequences that come with its suspension in (always) exceptional circumstances.

  Had Slahi been released following his habeas corpus victory in 2010, we may well have heard him tell many of these stories. But the Obama administration appealed Judge Robertson’s decision, and later this year Slahi’s attorneys will once again be arguing his habeas petition in a Washington, D.C., federal court. Slahi will again testify by video link from Guantánamo, and his testimony will likely once again be classified. Here, at least, is some of what he might say.

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention―Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: “Suicide Among Adults Aged 35–64 Years — United States, 1999–2010” May 3, 2013, 62(17), pp. 321-325:

  Suicide is an increasing public health concern. In 2009, the number of deaths from suicide surpassed the number of deaths from motor vehicle crashes in the United States (1). Traditionally, suicide prevention efforts have been focused mostly on youths and older adults, but recent evidence suggests that there have been substantial increases in suicide rates among middle-aged adults in the United States (2). To investigate trends in suicide rates among adults aged 35–64 years over the last decade, CDC analyzed National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) mortality data from 1999–2010. Trends in suicide rates were examined by sex, age group, race/ethnicity, state and region of residence, and mechanism of suicide. The results of this analysis indicated that the annual, age-adjusted suicide rate among persons aged 35–64 years increased 28.4%, from 13.7 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 17.6 in 2010.

• As the publication date for the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) approaches, various organizations are taking the opportunity to voice their concerns over the controversial classification system. In the United States, the National Institute of Mental Health has announced its intention to abandon the use of the manual all together. In the U.K. the British Psychological Society has issued a statement casting doubt on the reliability of the (in)famous manual as a diagnostic tool.

  • New Scientist: “Psychiatry divided as mental health ‘bible’ denounced” 03 May 2013 by Andy Coghlan and Sara Reardon.
  • The Guradian: “Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle” by Jamie Doward, May 12, 2013.
  • The New Yorker: “The D.S.M. and the Nature of Disease” by Gary Greenberg, April 9, 2013.
  • Boston.com: “Where is the media coverage of the DSM V vote?” by Claudia M. Gold, December 8, 2012.
  • Psychology Today: “DSM 5 Is Guide Not Bible—Ignore Its Ten Worst Changes” by Allen Frances, M.D., December 2, 2012

  

• Khan Academy: “What is Bitcoin?” May 3, 2013. This series of 9 videos teaches the basics about the Bitcoin digital currency. All the videos are released under the Creative Common license. Explanations are provided by Zulfikar Ramzan:

  Zulfikar Ramzan is a world-leading expert in computer security and cryptography and is currently the Chief Scientist at Sourcefire. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT.

• Cody R. Wilson is the co-founder and director of Defense Distributed which specialized in the development of 3D gun printing technic (or “wiki weapons”). For a short introduction, see VICE documentary “3D Printed Guns”. On May 5, it announced the creation of a weapon named Liberator which was entirely printed out of a $8,000 3D printer bought on eBay (see Guardian: “3D-printable guns are just the start, says Cody Wilson”). A proof-of-concept video was released the same day: “Liberator – Dawn of the Wiki Weapons”. For a few days, plans for the fabrication of the weapon were freely available online at Defcad.org However, on May 9, 2013, the files were removed at the request of the State Department: see at The Atlantic “State Department Asks Defense Distributed to Take Down Its 3D-Printed Gun Plans”. Internet being what it is, the files have found their way on various peer-to-peer networks (C-Net: “The Pirate Bay now offering banned 3D-printed gun files”, May 10, 2013).

• Astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, just handed over command after a 146 days mission in space. To mark the occasion, he performed and recorded his very own, personal version of David Bowie’s classic song Space Oddity. The video was uploaded on YouTube on May 12, 2013. It’s just 5 minutes, it’s quite something and it’s embedded below, just after the links.

  • The Star: “Chris Hadfield ready for return to Earth” by Kate Allen, May 12, 2013.
  • CBC: “Chris Hadfield hands over command of ISS” May 12, 2013.
  • C-Net: “Chris Hadfield sings Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ in ISS farewell” by Tim Hornyak, May 12, 2013.

☛ The University of Auckland – Department of Computer Science: Removable 1GB Hard Drive Assembly (HDA) from the IBM 3380 storage device series, announced in June 1980. Another image is available at Wikimedia Common. See also the video embedded below.

The photo shows a single hard drive assembly (HDA) used on the IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD), a series which IBM announced on June 1980¹. The 3380 series was a storage solution to be use alongside a computer (it was not a computer in itself). Each unit of the early models of the 3380 series (A4, A4F, AA4, AAF, B4 and BF4) was composed of two of those hard drives (or two HDAs). Each of them had a capacity of about 1.26GB, providing one storage device of the 3380 series with a total capacity 2.52GB.

Those were the very first hard drives to break the 1 gigabyte barrier, as explained on the website of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland:

From the early 1960s most disks had platters 14 inches in diameter. This became a standard size for the high-end disks for over twenty years. The high point for the 14 in. disk came with the IBM 3380 (1981) with 9 platters and the breaking of the 1GByte barrier with a capacity of 1260 Mbytes. This device was also housed in the tallest largest cabinet ever used for a disk – truly the pinnacle of large disk development. The IBM 3380 continued in different versions until 1987 with the 3389K drive of 3781 MB capacity. (“Computing History Displays: Fifth Floor – Magnetic Data Storage – Magnetic Disk Storage”)

In an oral history of the IBM 3380 series recorded in 2006, engineers who have worked on it in the 80s reminded the “refrigerator size” of this first gigabyte storage device:

Mike Warner: About $120,000. And for these, and they stood in a meter wide, a meter deep, and two meter high assembly.

Jack Grogan: Called the refrigerator size.

Warner: Yeah, about a big refrigerator, a big, deep refrigerator. So it was extremely difficult to make this large a device, with all its mechanical complications reach the aerial densities and the technical objectives that we had. And we’ll go through that in the next hour or so. (Computer History Museum: “Oral History Panel on IBM 3380 Disk Drive”, interviewed by Jim Porter, recorded on January 3, 2006, Mountain View, California, ref. number X3413.2006, p. 4, PDF)

The weight of a single HDA such as the one depicted in the photo above was about 29 kilograms (roughly 64 pounds)². The price for one of those 1.26GB HDA was about $50,000. The “Oral History Panel on IBM 3380 Disk Drive” hosted by the Computer History Museum website really is the most detailed documentation available online about the IBM’s 3380 series. IBM Archives also offers some detailed documentation about its 3380 series: “IBM 3380 direct access storage device” (PDF for archive purpose).

However, one of the best way to have a good look at this first gigabyte hard drive is to watch a 10 mins episode of Tested titled “Inside Adam Savage’s Cave: Geeking Out about Bits and Bytes” (Oct. 11, 2012). In this episode Adam Savage explains the difference between bits and bytes and shows what they looked like when they were made out of vacuum tubes. At about 4’14″ he presents a HDA unit from the 3380 series ―which he managed to buy on eBay― and talks about it.

For more related documents, consider the following links:

• mkomo.com: “A History of Storage Cost” by Matthew Komorowski.
• Nova Scotia’s Electric Gleaner: “Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space” last updated on March 31, 2013.
• Computerworld: “PCMs Braving Ups and Downs In Disk Market” by Marcia Blumenthal, August 18, 1980, Vol. 14, No. 33, p. 1. Google Books.

• • •

^1. Although the 3380 was announced in June 1980, due to technical problems the first units of the 3380 series finally shipped on October 1981. See Computer History Museum: “Oral History Panel on IBM 3380 Disk Drive”, interviews by Jim Porter, recorded on January 3, 2006, Mountain View, California, ref. number X3413.2006, p. 2 (PDF). IBM also gives 1980 as the date for the introduction of the 3380 series: “20th century disk storage chronology” and “IBM 3380 DASD with IBM 3880”. ↩

^2.I have got the weight of the 3380 series HDA unit from Newcastle University’s Virtual Museum of Computing Artefacts: see “IBM 3380 Disk Drive”. In the video episode of Tested Adam Savage weights the unit he bought at 75 pounds.↩

☛ Cuba Bazan by Ernesto Bazan, BazanPhotos Publishing, 2008. © Ernesto Bazan. Large format retrieved from Everyday I Show.

This photo shot in 1997 is part of the self-publish book Cuba Bazan which won the Best Photography Book of the Year Award at the New York Photo Festival in 2009. It shows a cigar factory worker while she begins her shift by rolling a cigar. Behind her, on the wall, one can read the inscription “Viva el 1ro de Mayo” (a celebration of the International Workers’s Day or May Day). The photo is also included in a story on tobacco growing and cigars in Cuba (also by Ernesto Bazan).

From The New York Times’s LENS blog:

Mr. Bazan’s book documents that parallel and heartbreaking reality, devoid of color but rich in gritty black-and-white textures. He captures the stoic pride of the guajiros, farmers with rough hands and strong faces. Inside a store filled with empty shelves, a bored caretaker — how could he be a salesman if there is nothing to sell? — sits at a counter. Penitents in Havana seek divine intercession crawling on their hands to the shrine of St. Lazarus. Or they haul crosses, oblivious to the revolutionary slogans that no longer put food on the table or hope in their hearts. (“Showcase: Sisyphean Days in Cuba” by David Gonzalez, September 30, 2009)

To learn more about Ernesto Bazan, consider the following links:

• Everyday I Show has 41 large format photos (both black & white and color).
• Enersto Bazan official website bazanphotos.com and as well as the main website for his book Cuba Bazan bazancuba.com The website has a preview of the book as well an introduction by Ernesto Bazan, photos of the making of the book, link to reviews, etc.
• NPR: “Ernesto Bazan’s Vision Of Cuba” by Heather Murphy, July 7, 2009.
• See also the video interview “Talking with Ernesto Bazan” produced in 2011 by Peruvian photographer Luigi Abanto Varese (it comes with English subtitles). Watch it below:

☛ Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Red Stripe Kitchen”, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, 1967–72 (printed early 1990s), chromogenic print, image: 59.5 x 45.2 cm (23 7/16 x 17 13/16 in.), accession no. 2002.393. © Martha Rosler 1970, 2002.

I was browsing through various online galleries of photos taken in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings when I remembered Martha Rosler’s collage. I had seen “Red Stripe Kitchen” a couple of months ago while visiting the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop (October 11, 2012—January 27, 2013). The placement of soldiers inside an immaculate kitchen had made quite an impression at the time.

The photos from Boston available online ―often uploaded by regular citizens― which depict the so-called lockdown and the manhunt that ensued, were not produced by means of an artistic photomontage. The sight of law enforcement personnels passing through a living room in full tactical gears made an even greater impression.

Photo originally uploaded on Twitter by Henry Nguyen (@MunKYBoii) on April 19, 2013 with the mention “Just got searched for safety measures for the #manhunt in #watertown ”

Various military units were deployed in Boston, including members of the Massachusetts National Guard¹. Soldiers are usually believed to be deployed on the outskirts of the body politic: they either work outside or at the frontiers, protecting civilian populations. The use of the Army inside the civilian sphere is even restricted by a congregational act in the United States: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878².

Up until recently (First World War), warfare had traditionally made a clear distinction between civilian and military targets. The bombings in Boston is yet another striking reminder that things have since drastically changed. The front lines that need to be protected have moved within the most intimate spaces of the civilian sphere. The war zone extend all the way into private living rooms and backyards³.

Photo originally uploaded on Twitter by Shawna England (@shawna_england) on April 19, 2013 with the mention “View from my house…crazy #watertown ”

Such an inversion (further) blurs the traditional distinction between what is public and what is private. Indeed, when the front lawn of private homes becomes a theatre for military-like operations in a democratic country, two issues arise. First, the extent of a government’s authority into the intimacy of private lives become spectacularly visible. The fact that such an intervention is conducted for the population’s “own good”, as it was repeatedly argued in the past few days, does not invalidate the relevance of this observation. Second, it raises some questions regarding the democratic principle of the separation of powers.

Exceptional events such as those that have happened in Boston last week surely ask for an exceptional response from the government. However, when a state of exception is declared by a democratic government, a state of exceptional awareness should equally be observed by its population.

Which brings the question of the Emergency Declaration that was signed by President Barack Obama for the state of Massachusetts on April 17, 2013⁴. At the time of writing, there doesn’t seem to be much information available online about this presidential declaration. Mainstream media have been very generous in providing the public with various informations regarding the events, including extensive coverage about the lifting of the Miranda rule for the captured suspect in the name of a “public safety exception”. However, informed analysis about the legal aspects surrounding an Emergency Declaration are scarce. A couple of informative points relative to the exceptional character of the authorities’s response are worth highlighting.

Legally speaking, an Emergency Declaration is not a declaration of martial law. The expression “martial law” has no precise legal meaning in the United States⁵. That being said, it is commonly understood as the substitution of military authority to civil authority. The FEMA, which intervened in Boston after the bombings, operates under the direction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This department was specifically created after the September 11 attacks to work within the civilian sphere (as opposed to the Department of Defense). The investigation itself was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation⁶.

Although no official declaration about the city of Boston being placed under martial law was ever made, the presence of military personnel raises some legitimate concerns. The Stafford Act, which defines the parameters under which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can act in emergency situations makes only two mentions of the word “military”. On one hand, it specifies that the evacuation of civilian population should be “non-military”. On the other hand, it states that “passive defense regulations” can be prescribed either by military or civil authorities⁷. Interestingly, the Act also authorized the President to utilize the resources of the Department of Defense ―if he determines that such resources are needed― for a maximum period of 10 days⁸. This is especially important in the context of a manhunt directed against suspected terrorists. Since September 2001, the laws which applies in such a situation are dictated by various types of ongoing federal emergency acts: making sense of their legal implications is not always easy⁹.

A similar uncertainty presides over the use of the term “lockdown”. It was suggested (after the fact) that it may have been entirely voluntary and not legally imposed¹⁰. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick did indeed ask people “to shelter in place” without referring to the application of sanctions if the request was to be transgressed¹¹. However, that was not quite the impression conveyed by the constant and ominous repetition of the word “lockdown” by mainstream media. The strong presence of some 9,000 heavily militarized law enforcement units and vehicles in the street may have had an additionnal dissuading effect as well. Another way to present this problem is to ask whether it is necessary for military control to be legally declared in order to produce actual coercive effects, i.e. to make the population feel like it is under a military imposed lockdown.

The legal issues regarding the search of private residential properties seems to be similarly ambiguous. First it must be noted that there has not been any kind of massive outcries denouncing it. Instead, what was broadly reported was the sense of cheerful relief following the capture of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev¹². This relief was likely also associated with the fact that this capture meant both the release of the population and the withdrawal of armed personnels from the streets. In other words, it meant people could return to their normal life, as opposed to the exceptional situation they momentarily experienced.

Certainly, most of the resident spontaneously agreed for their home to be searched, wishing, undoubtedly, to cooperate with the ongoing efforts to locate and capture the suspect who was still at large. Some residents have even commented to the effect that the searches were conducted in a polite manner¹³. The relief from fear and the thankfulness felt once everything was over could very well legitimate, in the eye of the population, the exceptional measures that momentarily affected their lives. In his essay “The Remains of the Day” about the nature of the current response to terrorist threats, Brian Massumi made the following observation:

Once threat is felt and fear has taken us, the operative logic of preemption kicks in to make it a foregone conclusion that any action taken following that logic will have been right in any case. Whatever actions the police take will come across as justified, based solely on what was felt –the feeling of threat. Police actions are affectively pre-legitimated.¹⁴

Retrieved from The Chicago Tribune: People wave U.S. flags while cheering as police drive down Arlington street in Watertown, Massachusetts April 19, 2013. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton.

This alone could explain the perfectly honest and truthful cooperative attitude of the residents in Boston, as well as the equally genuine gratitude they manifestly felt once the capture of the suspect was made official (on the evening of April 19). On the other hand, there are reported cases were this willingness to cooperate seem to have been less spontaneous, maybe coerced¹⁵.

Private property is an unalienable right in the United States guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of its Constitution. The search of a private property by executive authorities (law enforcement) usually requires a warrant delivered by the judicial branch of the government, once again assuring the separation of powers. However, various legal exceptions already exist which allow authorities to circumvent this rule and legally search a private property even if consent is not granted by the owner. Among those exception is the recognition of “exigent circumstances”¹⁶. The Emergency Declaration itself introduces no additional modification to those rules. It could very well be argued that such “exigent circumstances” indeed prevailed after the bombings in Boston. However, the search of private residences without court warrant appear to have been an exceptional measure which was momentarily normalized to entire suburbs. Just how many houses were search during those few couple of days is unknown:

The Watertown police spokesperson, Michael Lawn, wasn’t able to say how many homes had been searched, saying only it was “a lot.” When asked if that was because the FBI was leading on the effort, Lawn indicated that it was just because it was “hard to tell.”¹⁷

Maybe the most important aspect here does not lie in the exceptional nature of those measures, but in the way those exceptions are repeatedly called for and applied. The potential normalization of such exceptions through repetition is something to consider very seriously. It is worth remembering, for example, that the Proclamation 7463 ―the Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks― made by former President George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 has been renewed every year since it was first declared eleven years ago (last time by President Barack Obama on September 2012). That argument about the danger of repetition was recently expressed by Ross Douthat in a op-ed piece he wrote for The New York Times:

I agree that we aren’t likely to make a habit of it endlessly. But the pressure to do absolutely everything to stop a terrorist, and the sense in many quarters that the Boston lockdown “worked,” seems like it might inspire some genuine fiascos in a world where we suddenly had to adjust to a more frequent drumbeat of attacks.¹⁸

The Emergency Declaration signed by the President on April 17, 2013 may officially have no legal impact on federal constitutional rights. But the events of April 15 authorized in effect exceptional measures that tested the limits of those rights by creating zones of legal uncertainties: “We’re trying to get facts on the ground of what really happened,” Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, recently told The Atlantic Wire¹⁹. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, however, must not have been very interested in the details and uncertainties of what “really happened” when he explicitly declared following the bombings that the “interpretation of the Constitution […] have to change.”²⁰ In his seminal book on this issue, State of Exception, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote:

Faced with the unstoppable progression of what has been called a “global civil war,” the state of exception tends increasingly to appear as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics. This transformation of provisional and exceptional measure into a technique of government threatens radically to alter―in fact, has already palpably altered―the structure and meaning of the traditional distinction between constitutional forms. Indeed, from this perspective, the state of exception appears as a threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and absolutism.²¹

Writing about this “global civil war”, Giorgio Agamben explicitly refers to the work of Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt²². This concept also resonates, to some extent, with the way Jean-Luc Nancy is analyzing it in his work. In regard to the topic at hand here, this “global civil war” finds its expression in the internalization of the front line identified earlier. Such a coexistential dynamic points in turn to the establishment of an order which could potentially become a threat to itself²³. If such a “global civil war” has become (or is about to become) our prevalent mode of being-together, then the exceptional intrusion of military interventions inside civil society, as it was witnessed in Boston, is an exception that is likely to repeat itself.

The reality of our contemporary lives in common may well have in fact absorbed the surrealist quality of Martha Rosler’s photomontages. This makes it all the more important to think about the way “emergency declarations” and exceptional government measures affect and transform our democraties.

• • •

To learn more about Martha Rosler’s series Bringing the War Home, consider the following online resources:

• Martha Rosler official website
• The MoMA has a large collection of photomontages by Martha Rosler which extend beyond the series Bringing the War Home.
• freize: “Bringin’ it All Back Home” an interview with Christy Lange from issue 95, November-December 2005.
• The Worcester Art Museum: a press release (August 2, 2007, PDF) for the exhibition Martha Rosler: Bringing the War Home which brought together both the series from 1967-1972 and the new series from 2004.
• ARTPULSE: “Interview with Martha Rosler” by Paco Barragán, July 2012.
• The Museum of Contemporary Photography maintains a permanent page about the work of Martha Rosler.

• • •

^1.Army.mil: “Massachusetts National Guard supports Boston Police”, April 16, 2013. ↩

^2. A good introduction is provided by Matthew Carlton Hammond in his paper “The Posse Comitatus Act: A Principle in Need Of Renewal” (Washington University Law Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 2, Summer 1997). ↩

^3.On this issue, Hannah Arendt’s introduction to her book On Revolution (1963) is still highly relevant today:

(…) the fact that the seeds of total war developed as early as the First World War, when the distinction between soldiers and civilians was no longer respected because it was inconsistent with the new weapons then used. To be sure, this distinction itself had been a relatively modern achievement, and its practical abolition meant no more than the reversion of warfare to the days when the Romans wiped Carthage off the face of the earth. (New York: Penguin Books, 1963, p. 17; available at archive.org) ↩

^4. FEMA―Disaster Declarations: “Massachusetts Explosions (EM-3362)”, incident period: April 15, 2013 to April 22, 2013. This is far from being the first Disaster Declaration signed by President Barack Obama: see also at FEMA.gov Disaster Declarations by Year. ↩

^5. See the opinion of the Supreme Court in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304 (1946):

But the term “martial law” carries no precise meaning. The Constitution does not refer to “martial law” at all and no Act of Congress has defined the term. It has been employed in various ways by different people and at different times. By some it has been identified as “military law” limited to members of, and those connected with, the armed forces. Others have said that the term does not imply a system of established rules but denotes simply some kind of day to day expression of a General’s will dictated by what he considers the imperious necessity of the moment. […] In 1857 the confusion as to the meaning of the phrase was so great that the Attorney General in an official opinion had this to say about it: “The Common Law authorities and commentators afford no clue to what martial law, as understood in England, really is. […] In this country it is still worse.” What was true in 1857 remains true today. ↩

^6. Reuters: “Investigators scour video, photos for Boston Marathon bomb clues” by Mark Hosenball and Svea Herbst-Bayliss, April 15, 2013.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is heading the investigation with help from city, state and federal officials, FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers said at an evening news conference. ↩

^7. See Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as amended, and Related Authorities, FEMA 592, June 2007, Sec. 602. Definitions (42 U.S.C. 5195a), a.3.A-B. PDF. The 2013 version is available here. ↩

^8. Again, see the Stanford Act, Sec. 403. Essential Assistance (42 U.S.C. 5170b), c.1. ↩

^9. The question regarding the civil rights of a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorism are not perfectly clear. See for example The New York Times: “Senate Declines to Clarify Rights of American Qaeda Suspects Arrested in U.S.” by Charlie Savage, December 1, 2011. ↩

^10. TIME: “Was Boston Actually on Lockdown?” by Nate Rawlings, April 19, 2013. ↩

^11. BBC: “Stay inside, Massachusetts Governor tells Boston residents” video of the Governor’s official declaration, April 19, 2013. ↩

^12. See for example Boston.com: “Watertown residents cheer capture of Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon bombing suspect”, April 20, 2013. See also more recently, also from Boston.com: “Civil libertarians and local residents react differently to Tsarnaev manhunt” by Garrett Quinn, APril 23, 2013. Quinn writes:

During the course of my reporting, I was unable to locate a single Watertown resident that admitted to being uncomfortable with the government asking them to “shelter in place” while 9,000 armored police descended on the Greater Boston area in search of a single suspect. In my estimation, the support for law enforcement appeared to be nearly universal, with phrases like “110% support” and “they did a great job” thrown around by virtually everyone I interviewed before, during, and after the manhunt. As one woman told me, “If it were ever to happen again, I’d hope they take the same precautions.” ↩

^13. The Boston Globe: “When the SWAT team knocks” by Doug Most, April 19, 2013. ↩

^14. Histories of Violence: “The Remains of the Day” by Brian Massumi, article published on November 2012. ↩

^15. YouTube: “Police perform house-to-house raids in Watertown MA” uploaded on April 20, 2013 by user rambone5. ↩

^16. See for example Slate: “Can the Police Search My Home for a Bomber?” by Katy Waldman, April 19, 2013. ↩

^17. The Atlantic: “Boston’s Door-to-Door Searches Weren’t Illegal, Even Though They Looked Bad” by Philip Bump, April 22, 2013. ↩

^18. The New York Times: “Thoughts on the Boston Lockdown”, April 22, 2013. ↩

^19. The Atlantic: “Boston’s Door-to-Door Searches Weren’t Illegal, Even Though They Looked Bad” by Philip Bump, April 22, 2013. ↩

^20. Politicker: “Bloomberg Says Interpretation of Constitution Will ‘Have to Change’ After Boston Bombing” by Jill Colvin, April 22, 2013. ↩

^21. The State of Exception, tr. by Kevin Attell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [2003] 2005, pp. 2-3. ↩

^22. Hannah Arendt does not use the expression “global civil war” in her book On Revolution (first published in 1963). What she wrote instead is this:

But in our own century there has arisen, in addition to such instances, an altogether different type of event in which it is as though even the fury of war was merely the prelude, a preparatory stage to the violence unleashed by revolution (such clearly was Pasternak’s understanding of war and revolution in Russia in Doctor Zhivago), or where, on the contrary, a world war appears like the consequences of revolution, a kind of civil war raging all over the earth as even the Second World War was considered by a sizeable portion of public opinion and with considerable justification. (New York: Penguin Books, 1963, p. 17)

Similarly, Agamben suggests the expression “global civil war” appears the same year ―1963― in Carl Schmitt’s book Theory of the partisan: intermediate commentary on the concept of the political (first published as Theorie des Partisanen: Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen; see the translation by G.L. Ulmen). As it has been mentioned before, the expression was also used in a journal article Carl Schmitt wrote twenty years earlier, in 1943: “Die letzte globale Linie” (first published in Völker und Mere and republished in Staat, Großraum, Nomos: Arbeiten ausden Jahren 1916 – 1969, ed. G. Maschke, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 441-452). I couldn’t find an English translation of this article. Staat, Großraum, Nomos is listed in State of Exception’s bibliography.

The concept of a “global war” is by no mean the monopoly of philosophers. The expression “global war on terror” was used by the Bush administration until it was changed by the Obama administration in 2009. See Washington Post: “’Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name” by Scott Wilson and Al Kamen, March 25, 2009. ↩

^23. I briefly discussed this a few days ago: see Earlier maps of worldwide telegraphic lines. ↩

☛ Boston Public Library / Norman B. Laventhal Map Center: “Carte générale des grandes communications télégraphiques du monde” (“General Map of Worldwide Telegraphic Communication”) by the International Telegraph Bureau (Bern, Switzerland), 1901. Call number: G3201.P92 1903 .B87x. A hi-res version can be downloaded at the link (7265 × 5119, 36.4MB).

• • •

From Jean-Luc Nancy’s book The Creation of the World, Or, Globalization:

Urbi et orbi: this formulation drawn from papal benediction has come to mean “everywhere and anywhere” in ordinary language. Rather than a mere shift in meaning, this is a genuine disintegration. This disintegration is not simply due to the dissolution of the religious Christian bond that (more or less) held the Western world together until around the middle of the twentieth century to which the nineteenth century effectively relinquished its certainties (history, science, conquering humanity―wether this took place with or against vestiges of Christianity). It is due to the fact that it is no longer possible to identify either a city that would be “The City”―as Rome was for so long―or an orb that would provide the contour of a world extended around this city. Even worse, it is no longer possible to identify either the city or the orb of the world in general. The city spreads and extends all the way to the point where, while it tends to cover the entire orb of the planet, it loses its properties as a city, and, of course with them, those properties that would allow it to be distinguished from a “country.” That which extends in this way is no longer properly “urban”―either from the perspective of urbanism or from that of urbanity―but megapolitical, metropolitan, or co-urbational, or else caught in the loose net of what is called “urban network.” In such a network, the city crowds, the hyperbolic accumulation of construction projects (with their concomitant demolition) and of exchanges (of movements, products, and information) spread, and the inequality and apartheid concerning the access to the urban milieu (assuming that it is a dwelling, comfort, and culture), or these exclusions from the city that for a long time has produced its own rejections and outcasts, accumulate proportionally. (tr. by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007, p. 33)

Following the recent Boston Marathon bombings, reactions of spontaneous compassion –not only officials one– were expressed in various parts of the world. On one hand, it is tempting for a moment to think that humanity has finally come together (as if it was its obvious destiny) and that “we” are one, stronger in solidarity. On the other hand, the bombing itself is the very expression of the fact that there is no such thing as a single harmonious “one”, that “we” are many and, as such, divided. Globalization is not equalization. It is possible that the very movement that allows people all over the planet to show compassion in unison is also the movement that intensifies violent confrontations. In his book La Communauté affrontée which he wrote a few weeks only after the events of September 2001, Jean-Luc Nancy opens with the following lines:

The present state of the world is not a war of civilisations. It is a civil war: it is the internal war of an enclosed city, of a civility, of an ‘urbanity’, which are in the process of fanning out to the very limits of the world [...] (“The Confronted Community”, tr. by Amanda Macdonald, Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, [2001]2003, p. 23)

• • •

The Norman B. Laventhal Map Center has 11 maps of telegraphic lines. Below in an even older map from 1871 showing “the telegraph lines in operation, under contract, and contemplated, to complete the circuit of the globe”. It was created by J.H. Colton & Co. for G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. (call number: G3201.P92 1871 .J53).

By J.H. Colton & Co. for G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. Call number: G3201.P92 1871 .J53. Retrieved from the Norman B. Laventhal Map Center

More similar maps can be found at Atlantic-cable.com which is a website about the “history of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications”

☛ “Commandments in the Atomic Age” by Günther Anders, in Burning Conscience New York: Monthly Review Press, [1957] 1961, pp. 11-12. PDF. First published as a separate essay in July 14, 1957 (see below).

Compare with what Hannah Arendt wrote in the prologue of her book The Human Condition first published in English in 1958:

We do not yet know whether this situation is final. But it could be that we, who are earth-bound creatures and have begun to act as though we were dwellers of the universe, will for- ever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do. In this case, it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the help- less slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is tech- nically possible, no matter how murderous it is. (London: University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 3)

Along with the essay “Über die Bombe und die Wurzeln unserer Apokalypse Blindheit” included in Günther Anders’s Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen published one year earlier¹, the “Commandments in the Atomic Age” was part of what Anders qualified as the “first phase of anti-nuclear movements”. In the 1982 introduction he wrote for Hiroshima ist überall² he explained how the events of August 6, 1945 plunged him into a stupor which took him several years to overcome. When he finally managed to write down his thoughts about the meaning of what had happened, it was mainly to come to the conclusion that we had become incapable of a clear understanding of what we were nonetheless technologically capable of producing. Our capacity of production has overwhelmed our capacity of representation³. I don’t believe this introduction has ever been translated into English. Here’s a relevant excerpt in its French translation:

Comme ce que l’on ne maîtrise pas par la langue, on ne peut le comprendre, non: même pas le signifier, non: même pas le percevoir correctement, je tenais le devoir de formulation pour un commandement absolu. Si ma tentative n’est pas restée complètement infructueuse, elle m’a tout de même coûté des années d’efforts. La stupeur dans laquelle m’avait plongé la fameuse nouvelle radiodiffusée du 6 août 1945, je n’ai pas pu, durant de nombreuses années, la surmonter ou m’en défaire par la parole. C’est seulement au début des années 1950, en 1952 ou 1953, longtemps après être rentré de mon exil américain, que j’ai réussi à franchir un premier pas mal assuré. […] Mais ce que j’ai alors rassemblé, certes d’une écriture fluide mais en traçant le moindre caractère avec hésitation, était à peine plus que la confession de mon incapacité, non: de notre incapacité à seulement nous représenter ce que «nous» avions là mis en place ou produit. […] C’est seulement quelques jours plus tard que j’ai entrevu ce qu’il y a de redoutable dans notre situation, à savoir que la possibilité, non: la probabilité d’un recommencement d’Hiroshima et Nagasaki, reposait justement sur ce décalage entre notre capacité de représenter et notre capacité de produire. (emphasis in the original, Hiroshima est partout, “Introduction de 1982” tr. by Denis Trierweiler, Paris: Seuil, 2008, pp. 36-37)

• • •

Günther Anders’s essay “Commandments in the Atomic Age” was first published as “Gebote des Atomzeitalters” in the July 14, 1957 edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung⁴. Although the publication is still activite today, its online archive only goes back to 1994. The original German text can nonetheless be found at Texte und Thesen.

In 1959, Günther Anders’s third wife Charlotte Zelka translated the “Gebote des Atomzeitalters” in English so Anders could send the text to U.S. Army Air Forces pilot Claude Eatherly with whom he had just started a correspondence. This correspondence (including the original German version of the essay “Gebote des Atomzeitalters”) was first published in German in 1961 as Off limits für das Gewissen. Der Briefwechsel zwischen dem Hiroshima-Piloten Claude Eatherly und Günther Anders with a preface by Bertrand Russel and a foreword by Robert Junkt (author of Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists in 1958). The American edition appeared the next year under the title Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his Letters to Günther Anders 1961 with an added postscript “to the American readers” by Günther Anders himself.

The entirety of Anders’s correspondence with Eatherly ―including preface and foreword― was later included in Hiroshima ist überall (C. H. Beck, München, 1982; see page 191 of the 1995 German edition). The collection was translated in French as Hiroshima est partout (Seuil, 2008): this is where French readers should look for a French version of Anders’s “Commandments in the Atomic Age”.

• • •

^1. “Über die Bombe und die Wurzeln unserer Apokalypse Blindheit” was translated in the French edition of Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen as “De la bombe et de l’aveuglement face a l’apocalypse”. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen has yet to be fully translated into English. However, a short excerpt of “Über die Bombe…” was translated as “Reflections On The H Bomb” in Dissent vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 1956 (pp. 146-155, PDF). At the time of writing, I believe the best way to stay informed about the availability of English translations for Günther Anders is through Harold Marcuse dedicated website: Günther Anders. That’s where I originally learned about the existence of “Reflections On The H Bomb”. ↩

^2. At the very beginning of this introduction, Günther Anders mentions a text published in 1959 titled “Thesen zum Atomzeitalter” (in French the title was translated as “Thèses sur l’âge atomique”). Although this text contains ideas similar to the ones expressed in “Commandments in the Atomic Age” (see Zeit.de: “Zorn der Vernunft” May 20, 2011) they are actually two different essays. ↩

^3. I wrote about this gap before (also quoting Günther Anders): On the threshold of knowledge: Pythagoreans, incommensurability and the experience of modernity.↩

^4. In Letter 3 of his correspondance with Claude Eatherly, Gunther Anders indicates that his “Commandments in the Atomic Age” were first published on July 14. However, in the “Preface” for the French translation Hiroshima ist überall, Jean-Pierre Dupuy suggests they were published on July 13, which is also the date provided by Text und Thesen.↩

“A dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over the Japanese port of Nagasaki, the result of an atomic bomb, the second ever used in warfare, dropped on the industrial center August 8, 1945, from a U.S. B-29 Superfortress.” Document no 208-N-43888, retrieved from Archive.gov

Images link directly to the content they illustrate. All those links were first collected on @aphelis (Twitter).

• • •

• Google Official Blog: “A second spring of cleaning” March 13, 2013.

  We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader.

  This announcement triggered a lot of reaction (online) by tech journalists and commentators. Alternatives to Google Readers already exist and more of them are expected to emerge in the upcoming weeks. On the relevance and usefulness of RSS technology, one can read “Why I love RSS and You Do Too” by Brent Simmons (March 14, 2013). Brent Simmons was the creator of NetNewsWire which was later acquired by BlackPixel. NetNewsWire was the very first RSS feed reader I used before switching to Reeder. Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi has put up a statement to the effect that Reeder will continue to work after July first.

  As always, Aphelis will remain fully accessible through its RSS feed. Posts are made available in full (i.e. not truncated) and since I do not use FeedBurner ―which is also owned by Google― I don’t have to worry about this service going down as well. Besides, the Facebook Page for Aphelis was specifically set up as an alternative notification system for those who do not like RSS feeds or do not know how the technology works.

  

• The LACMA blog: “What Do Cats Have to Do With It? Welcome to Our New Collections Website” by Amy Heibel, March 14, 2013. In March, LACMA launched its new collections website where, among many things, one can download over 20,000 high-quality images of art, a quarter of which are in the public domain.

  

• The Wall Street Journal: “Inventors Dream Up Machines That Exist Only to Turn Themselves Off; ‘Unspeakably Sinister’” by Abigail Pesta, March 12, 2013. If the link leads you to a paywall, try searching for the title in Google instead, or even searching for the link itself.

  He also dreamed up the useless machine, although the name he gave it was the “ultimate machine.” His mentor at Bell Labs, Claude Shannon, built one and kept it on his desk, where the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke spotted it one day. “There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing—absolutely nothing—except switch itself off,” Mr. Clarke later wrote, saying he had been haunted by the device. Mr. Shannon built a few more and handed them out to people at Bell Labs. Those versions used little doll hands to flip the switch, Mr. Minsky says.

  

• The Guardian: “Cyprus crisis: limits on bank withdrawals to last ‘about a month’” by Helena Smith, March 28, 2013.

  I posted many more links about the Cyprus crisis on Twitter during the past three weeks. Although feared bank runs didn’t happened and bank accounts under €100,000 were left untouched (for the moment), the situation is still dire. At the same moment in the United-States, the 13th largest city of the state of California was authorized by a federal judge to proceed with bankruptcy (see below).

  

• Reuters: “Court says city of Stockton, California may proceed with bankruptcy” by Jonathan Weber, April 1st, 2013.

  In a case being studied by other cash-strapped American cities including Detroit, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Klein’s decision was a setback for bondholders and insurers who had resisted the California city’s bankruptcy filing. Stockton is the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy.

  The crisis is just starting to unfold. The next problem is to know who will get paid between retired city workers (to whom a pension is due for work done) or the bondholders.

  

• University of Chicago Press: The Cruel Radiance. Photography and Political Violence by Susie Linfield, 2010.

  In 1846, Charles Baudelaire wrote a short essay called “What Is the Good of Criticism?” This is something that virtually every critic asks herself at some point, and that many have had trouble answering; it has been known to evoke hopelessness, despair, even self-loathing. Baudelaire didn’t think that criticism would save the world, but he didn’t think it was a worthless pursuit, either. For Baudelaire, criticism was the synthesis of thought and feeling: in criticism, he wrote, “passion… raises reason to new heights,” and he urged his fellow critics to eschew antiseptic writing that “deliberately rids itself of any trace of feeling.” A few years later he returned to the subject, explaining that through criticism he sought “to transform my pleasure into knowledge”: a pithy, excellent description of what criticism should be.

  

• University of Reading / Staff Portal: “Wittgenstein has personal profile on Facebook” January 14, 2013.

  As part of his research into the life and work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Dr John Preston, Senior Lecturer in and Head of the Department of Philosophy has collected a large amount of biographical material. So much material that he realised that he could recount the events that happened in Wittgenstein’s life day-by-day as they occurred one hundred years ago on a Facebook account

  See the webpages and the Facebook pages.

  

• Sign Painters is a 2013 documentary film directed by Faythe Levine & Sam Macon.

  There was a time, as recently as the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and paint. But, like many skilled trades, the sign industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper. The resulting proliferation of computer-designed, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers has ushered a creeping sameness into our landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.

• 507movements.com is an online edition of the classic technical reference from 1868 Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements by Henry T. Brown (see “About”; get a free copy of the book on archive.org).

  This site contains the original illustrations and text from the 21st edition of the book, published in 1908. It also includes animated versions of the illustrations, and occasional notes by the webmaster. The animated versions are not yet complete. They are identified by color images in the thumbnail pages.

  

• Backdoor Broadcasting Company: “Catherine Malabou – From the Overman to the Posthuman: How Many Ends?” March 22, 2013.

  In this presentation, I will read and discuss Derrida’s text The Ends of Man (Margins Of Philosophy), and ask what remains of the notions of The Human, Humanity, and Humanism after deconstruction. To what extent are we still allowed to elaborate a notion of the “proper” of man? This will also be a reflection on Nietzsche and current biology.

  Catherine Malabou wasn’t able to attend the event and her text was read by Professor Jon Goldberg-Hiller. Audio only, which can be played online or downloaded.

  

• The New York Times: “Death Penalty Is Sought in Shooting at Colorado Theater” by Jack Healy, April 1st, 2013.

  James E. Holmes deserves to die for killing 12 people in a storm of bullets inside a packed Colorado movie theater last July, prosecutors said in a hearing here on Monday.

  

• TorrentFreak: “Game of Thrones Pirates Break BitTorrent Swarm Record” by Ernesto, April 1st, 2013.

  With a million downloads on BitTorrent in less than a day, the season premiere of Game of Thrones is breaking records on multiple fronts. Never before has there been a torrent with so many people sharing a file at the same time, more than 160,000 simultaneous peers. Data gathered by TorrentFreak further shows that Australia has the highest piracy rate of the popular download destinations, while London tops the list of pirate cities.

  

• New York Times: “Unemployment in Euro Zone Reaches a Record 12%” by David Jolly, April 2, 2013. Get the original news release from Eurostat: PDF.

  The jobless crisis is hitting hardest in the south of Europe. Eurostat said Greece, with its economy in free fall, had the euro zone’s highest unemployment rate ,at 26.4 percent in December, the latest month for which data are available. Among Greek youth, the jobless rate has hit a staggering level, 58.4 percent.

  

• The Beauty of Letterpress is a brand new website dedicated to the art of letterpress printing:

  The Beauty of Letterpress is brought to you by Neenah Paper featuring Crane® Papers as an online resource and showcase, featuring the best and most innovative letterpress work in the industry today. In addition, the community will be assisting the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in their efforts to relocate and effectively salvage a priceless piece of letterpress history. There will be monthly issues curated by prominent designers, highlighting their favorite projects on the site. (read more)

  

• Centre Culturel International de Cerisy: “Gilbert Simondon et l’invention du futur”, April 5 to April 15, 2013. Program with abstracts. Found via 10 Secondes Tigre.

  Récemment redécouverte, l’œuvre de Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) inspire désormais de nombreux travaux novateurs en France (notamment à l’Atelier Simondon) et de par le monde. Une nouvelle génération de philosophes et de chercheurs en sciences humaines s’attelle non seulement à commenter cette pensée encyclopédique, mais aussi à la réactualiser en l’appliquant aux problématiques contemporaines.

  

• Pinyin.info: “danger + opportunity ≠ crisis: How a misunderstanding about Chinese characters has led many astray” by Victor H. Mair, September 2009.

  There is a widespread public misperception, particularly among the New Age sector, that the Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of elements that signify “danger” and “opportunity.”

  

• Fujifilm Global: “Discontinuation of Motion Picture Film production”, April 2, 2013.

  As previously announced, Fujifilm has stopped production of the majority of Motion Picture Film products by March, 2013. […] Products in discontinuation of manufacturing: Color Positive Film, Color Negative Film, B&W Positive and Negative Film, Intermediate Film, Sound Recording Film, High Contrast, Panchromatic Films, Chemicals (Japan only).

  

• The New York Times: “The Joke’s on Louis C.K.” interview with Dave Itzkoff, April 4, 2013.

  So how did Woody Allen approach you?

  It just came out of nowhere. I got this e-mail: Woody Allen wants you to come in for something. I’ve been waiting for that e-mail my whole life.

  

• Roger Ebert’s Journal: “A Leave of Presence” by Roger Ebert, April 2, 2013.

  Thank you. Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967, I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show, my books, the website, the film festival, or the Ebert Club and newsletter. However you came to know me, I’m glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for.

  American film critic Roger Ebert died two days later, on April 4th, 2013.

  

• YouTube: “The World According To John Coltrane” a 60 mins documentary film directed by Robert Palmer and Toby Byron and released in 1990. See Wikipedia for more information (it is not listed on IMDb). Watch it below:

☛ Pilote: “Fille à soldats” by Fred, no 6, Hors-Série, November 1974, p. 33.

The image reproduced above comes from an old Pilote issue I still cling to.

French cartoonist Theodor Friedrich Otto Aristidès, aka Fred, passed away Tuesday [April 2, 2013] in a Paris hospital at age 82. He was best known for Philémon, his surrealistic comic about a French farm boy who fell down a well into a fantasy world akin to Wonderland. Fred was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 1980, and had been the oldest living recipient. (CBR: “Comics A.M. | ‘Philémon’ creator Fred dies at age 82” by Brigid Alverson, April 3, 2013)

Last February, Dargaud had just released the 16th instalment of Philémon, “Le train où vont les choses” (2013).

Illustration by Fred for the ‘Philémon’ comic book series. First published on the cover of Pilote no. 487 (1969). Republished as the fourth instalment of the ‘Philémon’ series (Dargaud, 1973)

I remember reading Philémon comic book series in various public libraries when I was quite young. At the time I was almost exclusively reading Franco-Belgian BDs or bande-dessinées: Tintin, Astérix, Lucky Luke, Spirou. What I discovered when I started reading Philémon was that comics or bande-dessinées were far from being limited to the same content and form. I became aware of the fact that comics could have wildly distinct, surprising styles.

There isn’t much resources in English about Fred online. Below is what I could find, including a couple of obituaries from French media.

• Comiclopedia: “Fred Othon Artistidès” updated on April 3, 2013. A short, but good introduction in English to the career of Fred, along with a nice set of illustrations properly identified.
• Ma Galerie à Paris, a blog about illustrators, uploaded a couple of drawings from its personal collection. They are all drawings by Fred published in various newspapers.
• Les Inrocks: “Décès de Fred, le père de Philémon : “Pendant toute l’éternité je dessinerai”” by Anne-Claire Norot, April 3, 2013.
• Le Monde: “Fred, le père de Philémon, est mort”, April 3, 2013
• Le HuffPost/AFP: “Le dessinateur Fred, père de “Philémon”, est mort” April 3, 2013 (presented along with three videos).
• Libération: “Fred, le créateur de «Philémon», est mort” April 3, 2013.
• Le Figaro: “Fred laisse Philémon orphelin”, April 3, 2013.
• Télérama: “Mort du dessinateur Fred : Philémon, fin d’un “mouvement perpétuel”” by Laurence Le Saux, updated on April 3, 2013.

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Previously: French illustrator Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius Dies (1938-2012)

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Illustration by French illustrator Fred from a page of ‘Simbabbad de Batbad’, the sixth instalment of his ‘Philémon’ comic book series (Dargaud, 1974)

☛ The New Yorker: “March to April”, cover art by Saul Steinberg, March 26, 1966. © Condé Nast.

This illustration is not the only one Steinberg did on the theme of seasonal transition. Two years later, in 1968, he created an illustration about the transition from February to March (see previously here: “February to March” by Saul Steinberg, 1968).

The New Yorker cover featuring Steinberg illustration is reproduced in Steinberg at the New Yorker edited by Joel Smith in 2005 (p. 99; Amazon). It appears in a section titled “Cat People” where are gathered examples of Steinberg’s drawings featuring cats. The following explanation is provided:

“I am a cat,” Steinberg replied, when asked why his cats resembled his people as well as himself. In his art, the feline is no animal but humanity discreetly masked, with all the confident self-absorption of a dignified species. […] The cat implacability and focus make it an apt figure for the onward push of time, as on a cover published in the spring of 1966. February is an iceberg melting on the forgotten horizon, summer only a vague promise on the page ahead, but here and now March passes vividly into April as a cat rides a bicycle over a wandering stream. (Harry N. Abrams, 2005, p. 94)

“March to April” is also reproduced without the New Yorker cover design (illustration only) in the book Saul Steinberg edited by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978 (New York, with text by Harold Rosenberg, p. 132; Amazon, used copies are easily found online at very reasonable prices). I found a large format reproduction of it at Being Akin (posted online on April 1st, 2011):

“March to April” illustration by Saul Steinberg, 1966 © The Saul Steinberg Foundation. Reproduced in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s catalogue ‘Saul Steinberg’ ( Alfred A. Knopf, 1978, p. 132). Reproduction retrieved from Being Akin.

Finaly, there also seems to exist an earlier, slightly different version of “March to April” made in 1965. It was once auctioned on Artnet where only a thumbnail image of it is available (notice the color of the clouds). This earlier version was titled “March-April V”.