The 5 best beaches near Orlando

Posted on by

Each of these five stellar beaches is about an hour from Orlando and has its own unique character and vibe, offering its own set of activities and amenities. Book your stayin Orlando and take a break from the city and theme parks to soak in the sun at the beach.

At Daytona Beach, one of Floridas most famous beaches, its impossible to have a dull moment. If you tire of swimming, surfing, paddle-boarding, parasailing, fishing, or just working on your tan, theres a water park down the shore. You can also venture a bit inland for go karts, pirate-themed mini golf, and even a flea market. When you get hungry, choose from many options including barbecue, Thai food, a microbrewery, and Pizza King on the boardwalk, where there is also a Ferris wheel and other fun. You can book your stay in the nearby city of Orlando using online booking apps and website and enjoy great deals.

Cocoa Beach has many famous features. You can fish from the 800-foot pier, which is lined with restaurants and shops and offers free musical entertainment. Cocoa is also home to the 52,000 square foot Ron Jon Surf Shop, known to surfers the world over. On the beach itself, surf, swim, or windsurf, with lifeguards watching over you between Memorial Day and the first week of August. Leave shore for a guided nature tour on an airboat or in a kayak.

If Daytona and Cocoa seem too busy for your tastes, Melbourne Beach is less crowded and evokes Florida from earlier times. Its all about the cinnamon-colored sand, lounging on the beach, water activities, and a dose of nature. Join Honest Johns Fish Camp to lure in some sea trout, or go for an airboat ride or golf nearby.

As a National Park, Canaveral National Seashore is the opposite of commercial. It has the longest stretch of unspoiled beach in Florida, actual campgrounds, and a mission to protect endangered sea turtles. Restrooms are the only amenities youll find, so bring your own bottled water, food, and anything else youll need.

Boating, fishing, and hiking the shoreline along the Turtle Mound Trail are possibilities, as well as seasonal waterfowl hunting. Airboats and jet skis are prohibited. Check the schedule for educational programs and photography opportunities. This is a beach geared toward those who want peace, quiet, and maximum nature.

Very close to Canaveral National Seashore is a whole other world in New Smyrna Beach. Its waves and white sand are well known to surfers, beachcombers, and surf fishermen. New Smyrna was voted Floridas best beach a number of times. You can drive on the beach in most areas, and you can bring your pet to some. If you feel hungry, a burger and seafood joint called Breakers is right on the beach. In the town nearby, there are many more eateries, along with a lively arts community.

Enjoy one or all of these Orlando-area beaches, depending on what appeals to you.

Follow this link:

The 5 best beaches near Orlando

Top 10 Secluded Beaches in the Philippines

Posted on by

Imagine yourself freely treading the turquoise waters and brushing your sole onto the fine sands of a beach thats hidden away from the stresses of the Metropolitan. Just think of having a little piece of shore all to yourself in your short vacation, wouldnt that be the grandest beach experience one could ever ask for?

Calaguas Islandby Allan Ascano via Flickr

Philippines has plenty of this unspoiled natures bounty and they are scattered all around the archipelago. Most remain undeveloped, which of course push you secluded beach seekers to really be excited. As these beaches are not developed yet, expect the most basic amenities offered by resorts available in the beach area.

So, what else are you waiting for, grab your swimming gears, and your beach loving spirits and experience the parts of the Philippine shores that still remains to be non-mainstream.

Mahabang Buhangin (photo courtesy of Oliver Bautista)

While CamSur is making its way to becoming a wakeboarding republic, Camarines Norte also is making noise among the beach loving people of the world. Cam Norte boasts a true beach gem- Calaguas Beach. Dubbed by travelers as My Discovered Paradise, Perfect Beach and The Ultimate Getaway, it has been drawing people to come and appreciate its beauty. People who come here would often compare it with Boracay Island. They say that if you want a total stress reliever, then come head to this island and surely the breathtaking view would wash away all those worries.

Related Article: Calaguas Island Travel Guide

Palaui Islandin Sta Ana Cagayan Valley

This small island of the Cagayan province is said to be among the most marvelous secluded beaches in the country. The beach is so secluded that in fact, an overnight stay here would mean a good old tent, a warm bonfire for the night, and some Kumbaya singing. If youre planning to stay for the night, you would need to secure the Local Governments permission first. Wouldnt it be fun to have peace and serenity by the beach front?

Related Article: Palaui Island Travel Guide

Read the rest here:

Top 10 Secluded Beaches in the Philippines

Astronomy – Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (13 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Tycho Brahe – Video

Posted on by


Astronomy - Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (13 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Tycho Brahe
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will some of the history, laws, and theories of Tycho Brahe. Next video i...

By: Michel van Biezen

Go here to see the original:

Astronomy - Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (13 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Tycho Brahe - Video

Astronomy – Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (14 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Johannes Kepler – Video

Posted on by


Astronomy - Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (14 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Johannes Kepler
Visit http://ilectureonline.com for more math and science lectures! In this video I will some of the history, laws, and theories of Johannes Kepler. Next vid...

By: Michel van Biezen

View post:

Astronomy - Ch. 4: History of Astronomy (14 of 16) The Giants of Astronomy: Johannes Kepler - Video

Wesleyan Hosting Free Weekly Astronomy Sessions In Middletown

Posted on by

MIDDLETOWN The Wesleyan University astronomy department for the spring semester is offering free public space viewing and science presentations every Wednesday night.

Wesleyan professors and astronomy students will guide the weekly sessions in an effort to make the complex world of space exploration and discovery more accessible to anyone interested in the subject.

"It's an opportunity for the public to learn about what's going on in space and an opportunity for them to interact with the people here at Wesleyan engaged in research," said Professor Meredith Hughes. "The audience is aimed at anyone interested in science and we want them to take away a new understanding about the science."

The sessions will be held rain or shine every Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Van Vleck Observatory on campus on cloudy nights there will be no stargazing but presentations will still be held. There will also be special "Kids' Nights" on the first and third Friday of every month beginning on Feb. 20, where topics will be tailored for children.

Graduate student Jesse Shanahan will run the kids program, which will cover topics including the life cycle of a star, black holes, comets and an introduction to our solar system.

"Astronomy has an appeal for everyone because there's a fascination with stars, and people have a lot of questions," she said. "It's a great experience looking through a telescope at something that's very far away and seeing it up close."

The Wesleyan astronomy department already opens its doors to amateur stargazing groups like the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford, and holds monthly sessions for people to view the night sky through the school's telescopes.

Professor Roy Kilgard said the department's intent is to supplement its outreach to groups already interested and involved in science with new sessions for people who may not have a high level of knowledge about space and astronomy.

"We're really trying to grow it beyond looking through the telescopes," Kilgard said.

The department each semester has about 5 graduate students and 10 to 12 undergraduate students enrolled in astronomy degree programs.

Read the original:

Wesleyan Hosting Free Weekly Astronomy Sessions In Middletown

Environmental Education Center in Basking Ridge presents 'Astronomy Adventure,' Feb. 21

Posted on by

Environmental Education Center in Basking Ridge presents 'Astronomy Adventure,' (shown here) Feb. 21. (courtesy photo)The Messenger-Gazette The Naturalists at the Somerset County Park Commission Environmental Education Center will present "An Astronomy Adventure" on Saturday, Feb. 21, 6-7 p.m. at 190 Lord Stirling Road in Basking Ridge. Family & friends with children age 10 years and older accompanied by a parent will enjoy a presentation by Paul Cirillo, member of the NJ Astronomical Society, on the fascinating subject of Astronomy that will include breathtaking pictures of the Planets, our Galaxy, and beyond. Participants will learn about the latest exploration of Mars and the search for other planets. Information will be provided on the resources available that allow anyone to easily understand the night sky by identifying constellations and planets, seeing satellites, and more!

Fee is $6 per person and preregistration is required. Registration and payment may be made online at http://www.somersetcountyparks.org, in-person at the Environmental Education Center, via mail, or by telephone (if using a credit card) at 908-766-2489.

The Somerset County Park Commission Environmental Education Center is located within Lord Stirling Park, in the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township, and is nestled within 450 acres of the western portion of the Great Swamp Basin of the Passaic River. A swamp vivarium, and an environmentally based library are located within the Center itself.

Blue BOBO (Buy One - Bring One) Fridays bins now are located at the Environmental Education Center and Lord Stirling Stable in Basking Ridge, as well as at the Somerset County Park Commission headquarters at North Branch Park in Bridgewater. The public is invited to drop off canned food or personal-care items for donation to Somerset County food banks.

Information on this event and other Somerset County Park Commission activities may be found on the Internet at http://www.somersetcountyparks.org

Visit link:

Environmental Education Center in Basking Ridge presents 'Astronomy Adventure,' Feb. 21

Observatory in Charlottesville enters data-sharing agreement with Texas facility

Posted on by

Posted: Thursday, February 12, 2015 8:13 am

Observatory in Charlottesville enters data-sharing agreement with Texas facility The (Charlottesvile) Daily Progress Richmond.com

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville has agreed to share data with a similar facility at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

NRAO now has a memorandum of understanding the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy at UT Brownsville. Researchers are hoping to collaborate on a range of projects, including developing new techniques for locating and tracking spacecraft on interplanetary missions. The partnership also allows the institutions to hold joint workshops and educational initiatives.

An online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. You need an online service to view this article in its entirety.

BEST VALUE

Receive your newspaper every day and get unlimited digital access at no additional charge. You won't miss anything. Your digital package includes unlimited use of Richmond.com on desktop and mobile web, as well as our electronic replica edition every day.

Receive your newspaper Monday through Saturday.Your subscription includes popular sections like Weekend and Dining on Thursdays and Richmond Drives automotive on Fridays and Metro Business on Mondays. Plus get unlimited digital access at Richmond.com. $19 per month after six-month introductory offer.

Your subscription includes popular sections like Weekend and Dining on Thursdays and Richmond Drives automotive on Fridays. Plus receive unlimited digital access at Richmond.com. $19 per month after six-month introductory offer.

Your subscription includes popular sections like Metro Business on Mondays and Richmond Drives on Fridays. Plus receive unlimited digital access at Richmond.com. $19 per month after six-month introductory offer.

Read the rest here:

Observatory in Charlottesville enters data-sharing agreement with Texas facility

Exploring Exogenic Sources for the Olivine on Asteroid (4) Vesta

Posted on by

Lucille Le Corre, Vishnu Reddy, Juan A. Sanchez, Tasha Dunn, Edward A. Cloutis, Matthew R.M. Izawa, Paul Mann, Andreas Nathues

(Submitted on 11 Feb 2015)

The detection of olivine on Vesta is interesting because it may provide critical insights into planetary differentiation early in our Solar System's history. Ground-based and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of asteroid (4) Vesta have suggested the presence of olivine on the surface. These observations were reinforced by the discovery of olivine-rich HED meteorites from Vesta in recent years. However, analysis of data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft has shown that this olivine-bearing unit is actually impact melt in the ejecta of Oppia crater.

The lack of widespread mantle olivine, exposed during the formation of the 19 km deep Rheasilvia basin on Vesta's South Pole, further complicated this picture. Ammannito et al., (2013a) reported the discovery of local scale olivine-rich units in the form of excavated material from the mantle using the Visible and InfraRed spectrometer (VIR) on Dawn. Here we explore alternative sources for the olivine in the northern hemisphere of Vesta by reanalyzing the data from the VIR instrument using laboratory spectral measurements of meteorites. We suggest that these olivine exposures could be explained by the delivery of olivine-rich exogenic material. Based on our spectral band parameters analysis, the lack of correlation between the location of these olivine-rich terrains and possible mantle-excavating events, and supported by observations of HED meteorites, we propose that a probable source for olivine seen in the northern hemisphere are remnants of impactors made of olivine-rich meteorites. Best match suggests these units are HED material mixed with either ordinary chondrites, or with some olivine-dominated meteorites such as R-chondrites.

Comments: 62 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables; Icarus, Available online 30 January 2015, ISSN 0019-1035, this http URL

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)

DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2015.01.018

Cite as: arXiv:1502.03189 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1502.03189v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

Link:

Exploring Exogenic Sources for the Olivine on Asteroid (4) Vesta

US becomes hot spot for aerospace manufacturing

Posted on by

SEATTLE: The aerospace industry is shifting more manufacturing investment to the United States after a decade in which production jobs in the sector flowed to China and other emerging economies, according to a new study.

Consultancy ICF International analyzed more than 2,000 investment transactions made since 2000, and found 28 manufacturing investments in the United States from 2012 to 2013, compared with eight each in China and Mexico, and four in Brazil. A decade earlier, Mexico led the pack with 10 investments, compared with just six investments in the United States.

ICF said its data show a strong flow into China, India, Brazil, Mexico and other emerging markets until 2012. In the last three years, investment has shifted toward the United States.

"The U.S. at this point in time has become the hot spot in aerospace manufacturing," Kevin Michaels, a vice president at ICF, said at the annual Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference this week. "Comparative advantage is a fleeting thing. Three years ago it looked like everything was heading to China. Now that's changed."

Commercial aircraft manufacturers are under intense pressure to reduce costs within the supply chain to offset falling inflation-adjusted prices for plane tickets.

U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co is moving more production in-house to U.S. plants, reducing the outsourcing used for the 787 Dreamliner. Rival Airbus is building an assembly line in Mobile, Alabama.

For example, Boeing found a 787 air duct made near Seattle was being shipped to Italy, reboxed and shipped to the 787 factory in Charleston, South Carolina, to be installed.

"We unwound that," Kent Fisher, vice president of supplier management at Boeing, said at the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference Wednesday. "Now we have a direct relationship and the part ships directly to Charleston."

Labor cost savings that prompted work to move offshore have narrowed as wages have risen overseas and companies in developed countries installed robots to automate production and reduce touch labor.

Different regions of the United States are stepping up efforts to win aerospace investments. This year, for the first time, a northwest Florida economic development group is the primary sponsor of the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference. Florida wants to recruit companies to build the aerospace industry in Florida, said Jennifer Conoley, economic development representative for Gulf Power Co .

Here is the original post:

US becomes hot spot for aerospace manufacturing

Regional Growth Fund Award to Boost Vector Aerospace Expansion

Posted on by

Vector Aerospace UK (Vector - http://www.vectoraerospace.com), a leading provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, is to receive a Regional Growth Fund award from the UK Government. The award was announced by the Rt Hon Matthew Hancock MP, Minister of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Minister of State for Portsmouth, when he visited Vector's Fleetlands site in Gosport, Hampshire today.

The award, totalling 2 million over two years, will reinforce the significant investment that Vector is making in the transformation of its Gosport business. A long established key supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence, Vector is now enhancing its capabilities and services, targeting new customers around the world.

This funding will enhance Vector Aerospace's UK design and aviation services portfolio, enabling the company to compete more effectively in global aerospacemodification and upgrade markets, both civil and military. There is already a coreteam in place at the Gosport site engaged in this important work and Vector Aerospace estimates the expansion assisted by the regional grant will create over 70 jobs during the next 10years, with a similar number being created in the supply chain.

Vector Aerospace UK Managing Director Michael Tyrrell said, "We are now in a position to progress our expansion programme for Design Services. This is excellent news, not just for our operation here but also the region, as Vector Aerospace is the largest engineering employer in Gosport. It will also help to strengthen the region's aerospace skill baseas it seeks to reduce its dependency on military work."

View post:

Regional Growth Fund Award to Boost Vector Aerospace Expansion

Posthumanism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted on by

This article is about a critique of humanism. For the futurist ideology and movement, see transhumanism.

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with five definitions:[1]

Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated:

Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism.[7]

This view predates the currents of posthumanism which have developed over the late 20th century in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity in society.[citation needed] Theorists who both complement and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Bruno Latour, N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers, such as Robert Pepperell, who have written about a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted for the term "posthumanism".[3][5]

Posthumanism mainly differentiates from classical humanism in that it restores the stature that had been made of humanity to one of many natural species. According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori. Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.[citation needed]

Posthumanism is sometimes used as a synonym for an ideology of technology known as "transhumanism" because it affirms the possibility and desirability of achieving a "posthuman future", albeit in purely evolutionary terms. However, posthumanists in the humanities and the arts are critical of transhumanism, in part, because they argue that it incorporates and extends many of the values of Enlightenment humanism and classical liberalism, namely scientism, according to performance philosopher Shannon Bell:[8]

Altruism, mutualism, humanism are the soft and slimy virtues that underpin liberal capitalism. Humanism has always been integrated into discourses of exploitation: colonialism, imperialism, neoimperialism, democracy, and of course, American democratization. One of the serious flaws in Transhumanism is the importation of liberal-human values to the biotechno enhancement of the human. Posthumanism has a much stronger critical edge attempting to develop through enactment new understandings of the self and other, essence, consciousness, intelligence, reason, agency, intimacy, life, embodiment, identity and the body.[8]

Some critics have argued that all forms of posthumanism have more in common than their respective proponents realize.[9]

Originally posted here:

Posthumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posthuman – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted on by

Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that literally means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept addresses questions of ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity. "Posthumanism" is not to be confused with "transhumanism" (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.

In critical theory, the posthuman is a speculative being that represents or seeks to re-conceive the human. It is the object of posthumanist criticism, which critically questions Renaissance humanism, a branch of humanist philosophy which claims that human nature is a universal state from which the human being emerges; human nature is autonomous, rational, capable of free will, and unified in itself as the apex of existence. Thus, the posthuman position recognizes imperfectability and disunity within him or herself, and understands the world through heterogeneous perspectives while seeking to maintain intellectual rigour and a dedication to objective observations. Key to this posthuman practice is the ability to fluidly change perspectives and manifest oneself through different identities. The posthuman, for critical theorists of the subject, has an emergent ontology rather than a stable one; in other words, the posthuman is not a singular, defined individual, but rather one who can "become" or embody different identities and understand the world from multiple, heterogeneous perspectives.[1]

Steve Nichols published the Post-Human Manifesto in 1988, and holds a contrarian view that human beings are already post-human compared to previous generations.[citation needed]

Critical discourses surrounding posthumanism are not homogeneous, but in fact present a series of often contradictory ideas, and the term itself is contested, with one of the foremost authors associated with posthumanism, Manuel de Landa, decrying the term as "very silly."[2] Covering the ideas of, for example, Pepperell's The Posthuman Condition, and Hayles's How We Became Posthuman under a single term is distinctly problematic due to these contradictions.

The posthuman is roughly synonymous with the "cyborg" of A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.[3] Haraway's conception of the cyborg is an ironic take on traditional conceptions of the cyborg that inverts the traditional trope of the cyborg whose presence questions the salient line between humans and robots. Haraway's cyborg is in many ways the "beta" version of the posthuman, as her cyborg theory prompted the issue to be taken up in critical theory.[4]

Following Haraway, Hayles, whose work grounds much of the critical posthuman discourse, asserts that liberal humanism - which separates the mind from the body and thus portrays the body as a "shell" or vehicle for the mind - becomes increasingly complicated in the late 20th and 21st centuries because information technology put the human body in question. Hayles maintains that we must be conscious of information technological advancements while understanding information as "disembodied," that is, something which cannot fundamentally replace the human body but can only be incorporated into it and human life practices.[5]

The posthuman is a being that relies on context rather than relativity, on situated objectivity rather than universal objectivity, and on the creation of meaning through 'play' between constructions of informational pattern and reductions to the randomness of on-off switches, which are the foundation of digital binary systems.[citation needed]

According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."[6]

Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.[6]

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not necessarily refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other species who speciate from one another, both humans and posthumans could continue to exist. However, the apocalyptic scenario appears to be a viewpoint shared among a minority of transhumanists such as Marvin Minsky[citation needed] and Hans Moravec, who could be considered misanthropes, at least in regards to humanity in its current state. Alternatively, others such as Kevin Warwick argue for the likelihood that both humans and posthumans will continue to exist but the latter will predominate in society over the former because of their abilities.[7] Recently, scholars have begun to speculate that posthumanism provides an alternative analysis of apocalyptic cinema and fiction, often casting vampires, werewolves and even zombies as potential evolutions of the human form and being.[8]

Read the original:

Posthuman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Transhumanism | Posthumanism | Future For All

Posted on by

Okay, let me see if I've got this right. I could stay young forever? Groovy. A complete backup of my brain? Copy that. What's this? An estimate? I knew it sounded too good to be true.

As with previous medical breakthroughs, it is possible that future human enhancements, like brain-machine interfaces and longevity drugs, at least initially, may only be affordable for the wealthy. The well-to-do, well could be, the next big thing.

Some future forecasters point out that many medical products and procedures have been expensive when they were first introduced. Prices can drop through competition, lower production costs and after patents run out.

Medical enhancements, however, may encounter unique barriers to lower prices.

Cosmetic surgeries and implants, for example, have been available for decades. Visit Beverly Hills and you'll see more lifts than a crane operator, but you'd be hard pressed to find a tightened temple in my neck of the woods.

What obstacles, wrinkles if you will, face society in providing available and affordable transhuman technology for everyone?

Wrinkle #1 - In the year 2050, 'transhuman technology for all', would mean advanced medical technology for an estimated 9 billion people.

Wrinkle #2 - Medical insurance policies will probably not cover human enhancements.

Wrinkle #3 - The fewer recipients, the higher the value to the consumer. What fun would Jeopardy be if everyone had an encyclopedia implant?

Read more:

Transhumanism | Posthumanism | Future For All

Thoughts on Posthumanism | Larval Subjects .

Posted on by

Yesterday a friend of mine related a criticism of posthumanism often heard from colleagues: What is the point of posthumanism if the analysis is still conducted by humans? I think this is a good question. The term postmodernism is itself a highly contested term, meaning a variety of different things, so the question is difficult to answer in a way that will satisfy everyone. For example, there are the posthumanisms of the transhumanists that imagine fundamentally transforming the human through technological prostheses and genetics. More recently, David Roden has imagined a pre-critical posthumanism that entertains the possibility of the emergence of a new type of intelligent species altogether that would arise from humans, but would no longer be human. Such a posthumanism would be genuinelyposthuman.

While I am intrigued by both of these conceptions of posthumanism, this is not the way in which I intend the term. As I understand it, a position is posthumanist when it no longer privileges human ways of encountering and evaluating the world, instead attempting to explore how other entities encounter the world. Thus, the first point to note is that posthumanism is not the rejection or eradication of human perspectives on the world, but is a pluralization of perspectives. While posthumanism does not get rid of the human as one way of encountering the world, it does, following a great deal of research in post-colonial theory, feminist thought, race theory, gender theory, disability studies, and embodied cognition theory, complicate our ability to speak univocally and universally about something called the human. It recognizes, in other words, that there are a variety of different phenomenologies of human experience, depending on the embodied experience of sexed beings, our disabilities, our cultural experiences, the technologies to which our bodies are coupled, class, etc. This point is familiar from the humanist cultural and critical theory of the last few decades. Posthumanism goes one step further in arguing that animals, microorganisms, institutions, corporations, rocks, stars, computer programs, cameras, etc., also have their phenomenologies or ways of apprehending the world.

I think this is a point that is often missed about OOO. OOO is as much a theory of perspectives, a radicalization of phenomenology, as it is a theory of entities. While the various strains of OOO differ amongst themselves, they all share this thesis in common. There is a phenomenologyfor, notof, every type of entity that exists. One of Graham Harmans central claims is that the difference between a Kantian subject and any other object is a difference indegree, not a difference inkind. When Harman claims this, his point is that just as Kantian subjects structure the world in a particular way such that they never encounter things-as-they-are-in-themselves, the same is true for all other entities as they relate to the world. Atoms structure the world in a particular way, just as red pandas structure the world in a particular way. No entity directly encounters the other entities of the world as they are. InThe Democracy of Objects I argue that every object is anobserver or particular point of view on the world, and propose, following Niklas Luhmann, that we need to engage in second-order observation or the observation of how other observers observe or encounter the world about them. InAlien Phenomenology, Ian Bogost proposes a new type of phenomenology, not unlike Jakob von Uexkulls animal ethology, that investigates how nonhuman entities such as cameras and computer programs encounter the world. In The Ecological Thought, Timothy Morton formulates a similar idea with his account of strange strangers.

This is one of the things that makes the realism of OOO weird. Far from defending one true perspective on the world, OOO instead pluralizes perspectives infinitely, arguing that each entity has its own way of encounter the world about it. It is a radicalization of perspectivism. It is an ontology that is fascinated by how bats, cats, shark, tanuki, NASA, quarks, computer games, and black holes experience or encounter the world around them. The realism of OOO is thus not a realism that says this is the one true way of encountering things, but rather is a realism that refuses to reduce any entity to what it is for another entity. The tanuki or Japanese raccoon dog (right) cant be reduced to how we encounter it. It is an irreducible and autonomous entity in its own right that also encounters the world about it in a particular way.

Hence the all important distinction between phenomenology-of and phenomenology-for. A phenomenology-of investigates how we, us humans, encounter other entities. It investigates what entities are for-us, from our human perspective. It is humanist in the sense that it restricts itself to our perspective on the beings of the world. Though phenomenology has made significant strides in overcoming these problems, it is nonetheless problematic in that it assumes a universality to human experience. For example, this phenomenology tends to gloss over the worlds of autistics like Temple Grandin, blind people, gendered bodies and how the world is experienced differently by different sexed bodies, people from different cultures, etc. Even though it talks endlessly about perspectives (horizons), it nonetheless tends to universalize the perspective of its own lived experience. Luhmann explains well just why this is so, insofar as all observation is based on a prior distinction that contains a blind spot that is unable to mark what it excludes.

By contrast, phenomenology-for is a phenomenological practice that attempts to observe the manner in which another entity experiences the world. Where phenomenology-of adopts the first person perspective of how I experience the world, where phenomenology-of begins from the unity of that first person perspective on the world and what things are in the world for me, phenomenology-for begins from the disunity of a world fractured into a plurality of perspectives and attempts to enter into the perspectives of these other entities. In Luhmannian terms, it attempts to observe the other observer or observe how another observer observes the world. It begins not from the standpoint of the sameness of experience, but from the standpoint of the difference of experience.

The plate to the left drawn from Jakob von UexkullsForay into the Worlds of Animals and Humans gives a sense of this alien phenomenology. The top picture depicts how humans experience a field of flowers, while the bottom picture depicts how bees experience a field of flowers. Von Uexkull doesnt ask what are bees like or for us?, but instead asks the question what is the world like for bees? In other words, von Uexkull adopts the perspective of thebee and attempts to infer how bees experience the world. He is able to learn something of the experience of bees through a knowledge of their physiology and optics that allows him to infer what their vision is like, through observation of their behavior, through observation of their responsiveness in situations where we can discern no stimuli that they would be responding to (thereby allowing him to infer that theyre open to stimuli that we cant sense), etc. Alien phenomenology thus practices a different transcendental epoche. Rather than bracketing belief in the natural world to attend to the givens of our intentional experience alone, he instead brackets our intentionality, so as to investigate the experience of other entities. This is a practice that can be done with armies, stock markets, computer programs, rocks, etc.

It is natural, of course, to ask how this is evenpossible. Arent we still the ones examining the experience of other beings and thus arent we ultimately talking about the experience of ourselves and not the experience of other beings? To be sure, we are always limited by our own experience and, as Thomas Nagel pointed out, we cant know what it is like to be a bat. However, all this entails is that we cant have the experience of a bat, not that we cant understand a great deal about bat experience, what theyre open to, what theyre not open to, and why they behave as they do.

The problem is not markedly different from that of understanding the experience of another person. Take the example of a wealthy person who denounces poor people as being lazy moochers who simply havent tried to improve their condition. Such a person is practicing phenomenology-of, evaluating the poor person from the standpoint of their own experience and trying to explain the behavior of the poor person based on the sorts of things that would motivate them. They reflect little understanding of poverty. They are blissfully unaware of the opportunities that they had because of where they are in the social field, of the infrastructure they enjoy that gives them opportunity, the education they were fortunate enough to receive, etc., etc., etc. All of this is invisible to them because, as Heidegger taught us, it is so close it is not seen at all. As a consequence, the wealthy person assumes that the poor person has all these things. However, we can imagine the wealthy person practicing something like alien phenomenology or second-order observation, thereby developing an appreciation of how the world of poverty inhibits opportunity. Prior to developing this understanding, the wealthy person behaves like the person with vision who berates a blind person for not seeing a sign.

Clearly there is a difference between the person who is completely blind to the experience of others, assuming their experience is identical, and the person who has some understanding of others. Take the example of the man who screams at his infant child for crying and beats her. If we look at this person with disgust and contempt, then it is not simply because this person beats the infant, but also because his abuse is premised on the idea that infants can understand screaming and yelling and modify their action accordingly. This person is unable to adopt the perspective of the infant and is unaware of how infants experience the world. As a result, he relates to the infant in brutal and cruel ways.

Link:

Thoughts on Posthumanism | Larval Subjects .

Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism …

Posted on by

'(fw0 @%IG_WkPL$)A#dr@I!)*y_fFR*tsc5I,rZ:Z1Y31?>PZ0f}=1bXHZ1ZVIRZZ-I6V=@ZBt$?:pRJ` BJVj]U2@(|h,,PR g r%^=gtf#!6dj14 R1dnRI&??-L UCX@{)x/^k^^^oyk-0/Mj0%5nsV."UWGl}pxXGk-[9bjwap+ -nf/+e!>Z6b8D$HNBP[CQe9]c!s3k4s2G(rakd !oxz5Lm]E %sV~(&URj(,2 ~[ WM~yf|bdWA>xbh^[v!56I600&90BBIJN~*k.yF|x:l22C?(yI=qn:OnXcGAxAs8?::xe_?:a,z*7Nqx+UEZ[wt; XE1(vWY$DN'Ccc!dlVDEx8={E+CrV9'U2*ts3o]F4j0^'fg*51.7W!t~6R[vqKb}j}3b Kk_3oUMQ=1e?~2{;^>*H FPvs&Wa-Hh$*SKFNSE# Ah-6fm.y|H.4Qoz*yr(JsU nsR@nl#u kO=+g|/~SRB|_fQIV//=@7{mR.=t`0R{])Qb"NBGb&naT|i1#JO6qX3 c. !D[[n -7N;x5heDzMvw1 $Hdey (`g4SFF_DI| C~ xP@ +*e^k+5CM#SSGcMbEr|2_WyAAZr.u^z5= s&F)X

6EF:!XCM~FjNmRoRw)DPVisE'te@Hgp4CGsa"`eqTQ@`QX=lqi3xt%9}Js+R`c$t"w[ZYi@i 6yio{u=?Wi[HJoI}C}~phfoqnSPcgjDpy^B*lsTCsY4RqMsZ`"hQ):(,vni$1@ (fL% } ^c ,9$) fT= RGRF4'- `~9[(YH-=) [mcNi;ALg1u5o[8De;los~. ^B+70YWNl4!8C 8AL`z]GD=Z8If] -^v="n:eWj,@E5*RW,bWe]Y9M4#2U:?-b1aoUnwUK;@O3hUuA'>h[..nLWK22|Xfb;eL:d=e%h f>O,rtC!q!V:sVlW}2GT&ubQ&|2bTK.$ 4hqp:2/C|jU68Zws]E].+8KKuNMc2YwsL[MB~GXo -W-C'O=`xxTPhZS'|E5KEb!vk}ZnjhS{:sRr>^>GD+'Z I8i{-*M034eI"hh'=h|,FMMAO m{9;>8>;q;#M. !m@A+$)B@DXJhu+@EmYNlG LlZN#s2m}}|u]ui(SX@;{)g`wOM525Th,Z,x:~3}-d+:3-+Uyxb lKv%{>%I@m[rsTJC*DZ/f-0TLqFgJUq$'X4BNI>rTPRh:sE-F4UIWR X^rSQV_lK6m5}8[k]Ug35Y>& =x%nX|MWRH_% SEjO (A8RG>]9h~rbG9CLa n,zmUw#-D-##1&N;]PYOThF}.kIc-txiK&kk~GuPFIhH(aSBr~`0Jar8vH@nK:]/7tNE%zuH^x{(pSew+fg3;YR+`OS)PeQ@qnqN egFb&DhLg$(f>rp]1lR/toS gfL6wPgJ| !k>rWX-f$EJPUT"? T6T,U`wFb[GVys|Wr:"sjYnd16bsK'PTiBu/KU)y7{MY,GGE#Si0Go]Yl~D7mzFsE5iFkcEjCeQr=umb]v[{Y3?yx@1R`l]BWG9KrHAlK T#. dK/ ,9 u>3#mW"MpNBcglfviz2E[J8hn0 mw&0#jU{piW?W3Vcv> l+sR}IwI{T)kFA6X2^O {cd~RXRfB4X(78 u(XC^k2^,%% m, FjRpHz#+5%":C6T RNDNMjDTE(J}chxo_qE,Yz$K,Ill+H|0#P'?NjHHOaH x) HJC[BLI4 !4'}![}v{}g?_*7,!F@T_)uijQP%fxa[3=M6kBQUB-wuky$2>}}:K{ig1m?# :va O;z! H$" eIxId#J*y8Up0TJ :Og%B@;CvETgc[Yk{/QIkE^.^]1vAScWNN)>}YwCN> 2W 9 R`(=8s!9!gy+2~?G(/K'r?/^?YTV[FvQlVTV&TDsCw-,L_TQ/anI/OxBS_SSF/rG(6GiEw,V=t=Y3u;|;=m]q-iV%&yjn83#

hUR JXQGweePPbY(gZl3b= HkJMGSH/#4/"f?eCeG!p6j7`|v^HfLk}h(3jWD"o HIPkEo%F/m+$nlZAGC-p9wTVo3pL/kd!I{rIP. PFOe#q3^>vG}C u73X>lW2vn{ .yqk@kpv"Co=:R3D=6r[{A3(,wi"lE+7ej@Nh'd Z ^d?"(A2`'7^Zi bn@ I>FctV>]; H/5b ;=i W}">XK|^S cqDM0 LPrOol7A/Cc5TW5V0^ I qHexsEX&j]o#1Z5urid b~3a(2,K$4)us]?>m,hLSufr8]kJUUNsG9}lm&3{'['!ac# *P`JTcc -ad074LhK;L:!k~if 0m26MJ!$}g}we95_}s^>H/ ay2w9u>Kp2"2JVB^,64{xny"Y.fzUVBoj+"FkxX` P#=GRE##=!us$HZiSj5Gh( 5~ W15`+Fp{8_G8EX[mE v[[~ nj>&8L'!$*,rDH9BBOF0f z;n-X~|82ba5dA0K1~=Bg UbV{6GN#'b!g"2kYmvFVUkBnzzz19rbyElTbsC2/D5RgX*vVadaM+JZqxx6kY$!HL5Seu)"^^,.9f NcG;|-or W9I>bVoq3sq>lnffy+I_:r:,{ JbtjAJNR,=GfxL:[|)MKfl.A2[dgLGz5_Mi?2; mR

See more here:

Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism ...

Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, prologue

Posted on by

"Too often the pressing implications of tomorrow's technologically enhanced human beings have been buried beneath an impenetrable haze of theory-babble and leather-clad posturing. Thankfully, N. Katherine Hayles's How We Became Posthuman provides a rigorous and historical framework for grappling with the cyborg, which Hayles replaces with the more all-purpose 'posthuman.'[Hayles] has written a deeply insightful and significant investigation of how cybernetics gradually reshaped the boundaries of the human."Erik Davis, Village Voice

"Could it be possible someday for your mind, including your memories and your consciousness, to be downloaded into a computer?In her important new bookHayles examines how it became possible in the late 20th Century to formulate a question such as the one above, and she makes a case for why it's the wrong question to ask.[She] traces the evolution over the last half-century of a radical reconception of what it means to be human and, indeed, even of what it means to be alive, a reconception unleashed by the interplay of humans and intelligent machines."Susan Duhig, Chicago Tribune Books

"This is an incisive meditation on a major, often misunderstood aspect of the avant-garde in science fiction: the machine/human interface in all its unsettling, technicolor glories. The author is well positioned to bring informed critical engines to bear on a subject that will increasingly permeate our media and our minds. I recommend it highly."Gregory Benford, author of Timescape and Cosm

"At a time when fallout from the 'science wars' continues to cast a pall over the American intellectual landscape, Hayles is a rare and welcome voice. She is a literary theorist at the University of California at Los Angeles who also holds an advanced degree in chemistry. Bridging the chasm between C. P. Snow's 'two cultures' with effortless grace, she has been for the past decade a leading writer on the interplay between science and literature.The basis of this scrupulously researched work is a history of the cybernetic and informatic sciences, and the evolution of the concept of 'information' as something ontologically separate from any material substrate. Hayles traces the development of this vision through three distinct stages, beginning with the famous Macy conferences of the 1940s and 1950s (with participants such as Claude Shannon and Norbert Weiner), through the ideas of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela about 'autopoietic' self-organising systems, and on to more recent conceptions of virtual (or purely informatic) 'creatures,' 'agents' and human beings."Margaret Wertheim, New Scientist

"Hayles's book continues to be widely praised and frequently cited. In academic discourse about the shift to the posthuman, it is likely to be influential for some time to come."Barbara Warnick, Argumentation and Advocacy

Read an interview/dialogue with N. Katherine Hayles and Albert Borgmann, author of Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium.

An excerpt from How We Became Posthuman Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles

Prologue

You are alone in the room, except for two computer terminals flickering in the dim light. You use the terminals to communicate with two entities in another room, whom you cannot see. Relying solely on their responses to your questions, you must decide which is the man, which the woman. Or, in another version of the famous "imitation game" proposed by Alan Turing in his classic 1950 paper "Computer Machinery and Intelligence," you use the responses to decide which is the human, which the machine.1 One of the entities wants to help you guess correctly. His/her/its best strategy, Turing suggested, may be to answer your questions truthfully. The other entity wants to mislead you. He/she/it will try to reproduce through the words that appear on your terminal the characteristics of the other entity. Your job is to pose questions that can distinguish verbal performance from embodied reality. If you cannot tell the intelligent machine from the intelligent human, your failure proves, Turing argued, that machines can think.

Continue reading here:

Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, prologue

Writer Rhiannon

Posted on by

Programs regarding sex and sexuality education in public schools have, until recently, only focused on abstinence. However, abstinence-only education did just that: it abstained from educating. With a lack of results from the abstinence-only programs many groups rallied for change. Thirty years after its introduction and no results later most people favor a more comprehensive sex education program. Abstinence-only programs did nothing to lower teen pregnancy rates and are therefore being replaced with a more comprehensive form of sex education. What is generally agreed upon as a comprehensive sex education program is one that emphasizes abstinence but also includes information regarding contraception. The new curriculum offers basic information regarding reproduction, birth control, disease prevention and (hetero)sexuality. Just as the abstinenceonly model did not work; the newer programs also fail to include necessary information concerning all sexualities (hetero, homo, and fluid). The new programs are heterosexually biased because they do not give information concerning non-heterosexual sex. The lack of information is both exclusionary and discriminatory.

While the format of abstinence only sex education has been deemed ineffective on many fronts, Hazel Glenn Beh, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii, and Milton Diamond, professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii, linked the program to increases in non-heteronormative sex. They claimed one particular problem was that young adults were engaging in non-coital activities in efforts to remain abstinent. They support the facts that not only were abstinence education programs not working but claim that they were driving adolescents to riskier behaviors. Beh and Diamond state:

adolescents who have undergone abstinence-only education and who later engage in coital and non-coital activity, as most will prior to marriage, are ill-prepared to protect themselves; they may not use a condom because they do not know how or because they mistakenly believe that condoms are ineffective, may be unaware of the risks they experience when engaging in non-coital sexual activity as a strategy to remain "abstinent," and may be more vulnerable to adverse consequences of unprotected sex because they have not rehearsed and otherwise prepared for the contingency that they will not always be abstinent. (Beh, Diamond).

In 2002, Lambda Legal produced a toolkit Tell Me the (Whole) Truth. This was the first action-oriented resource specifically addressing the anti-gay aspects of abstinence-only programs and their effect on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth (New Toolkit).

Beh and Diamond missed the fact that not all adolescents identify themselves as heterosexual. The assumption of their behaviors as risky because they are non-coital is off the mark. The risk factor lies in the lack of information as to how they can adequately protect themselves against diseases while engaging in non-heterosexual sex. Lambda Legal begins to offer information to non-heterosexual adolescents in its 2002 toolkit, but it focused on abstinence-only programs, and would need to be updated in order to be effective in the new programs. A majority of Americans believed that teaching abstinence-only until marriage was a disservice to our youth and have embraced the new comprehensive programs. However, some of these new programs fail to fully address the wide spectrum of sexual identities and needs associated with each. I will address the faults of a heteronormative program and offer solutions for inclusion of all sexualities. I will also show results that could be attained by following or incorporating aspects of the Dutch model of teaching sex and sexuality education. I will also offer suggestions for ensuring incorporation of a non-heterosexually biased sex education program.

A contributing factor to the problem of teen pregnancies was that the abstinence-only programs provided false information about the effectiveness of condoms (if they provided any information at all). This combined with a shifting definition of abstinence among teens may have lead heterosexual young adults to engage in alternatives such as oral or anal sex. This raised concern and was seen as risky behavior. However, sexually active homosexual teens would engage in these acts and need adequate information regarding disease prevention.

There is no need to fully scrape everything when forming a new program. A non-biased program could draw from the previous abstinence model. The program holds valid points. The abstinence-only education programs were born out of an eight point definition based on religious idealism. Unfortunately, the comprehensive programs are essentially incorporating the same standards with the addition of information regarding heterosexual sex, specifically STD and pregnancy prevention. I believe half of the abstinence only programs outline should be saved and incorporated into new sex education programs, while the other half cannot be incorporated into any program that wishes to include all sexualities. The points that should remain are backed by science, not religious ideals. The expectation of marriage draws attention to the obvious exclusion of large groups of sexually active people. Laws regarding same-sex marriages support this point. The expectation of sex occurring only in marriage excludes not only pre/extra-marital heterosexual sex, but any and all non-heterosexual sex. I believe these aspects constitute indoctrination into religious ideals and a heteronormative culture without regard to nature or science. In order to fully educate our youth about sex and sexuality, we must rely on facts and proven effective programs, not standards of religion.

The report "Births: Preliminary Data for 2006," prepared by CDCs National Center for Health Statistics, and are based on data from over 99 percent of all births for the United States in 2006, shows that between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for teenagers 15-19 years rose 3 percent, from 40.5 live births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 years in 2005 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. This follows a 14-year downward trend in which the teen birth rate fell by 34 percent from its recent peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991 (Ventura). So not only is the problem not being solved, its getting worse. Birthrates are actually rising rather than falling among teens. These statistics have proven the ineffectiveness of abstinence only programs in regards to not decreasing the rate of teen pregnancy, but the focus on this aspect alone shows the heteronormative bias of expectations. With pregnancy being an obvious result of heterosexual sex, the focus on these statistics draws attention from other sectors. While pregnancy may not be as pressing of an issue for lesbians or gays as it is for heterosexuals, disease prevention most definitely is.

After an anti-choice, anti-sexuality education and anti-family planning Bush administration, The Obama administration has promised change on many political fronts, sex education included (Osher). In his inaugural address he specifically stated that he will stop funding education programs that dont work. This would obviously apply to unsuccessful abstinence only programs. Obama has a record of working toward more comprehensive sex education programs. In 2007, as senator, Obama co-sponsored the Responsible Education About Life Act, which would have provided grants to states to provide abstinence-plus education(Yoder). Abstinence-plus education would still emphasize abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy and STDs but it would also educate students about contraceptives and their proper use. Unfortunately, this bill, along with the Prevention First Act died in subcommittee.

When we begin to outline a new all-inclusive sex education program for the United States, we need to look to other programs that have succeeded. A great model that the United States could look to would be the Netherlands. I believe that the open forum of discussion about sex and sexuality as represented in the Dutch model is the framework that will lead to educated, healthy, wise-decision-making young adults. An open-talk curriculum has been embrace with great results. One example of a class exercise for twelve to fifteen year olds is: How would you react if your boyfriend refused to use a condom? How do your friends feel about condoms? Write down what you think they will answer and ask them if you were right (Guss). The program ensures that all students engage in the activities regardless of their sexual identity. For example, both males and females would have participated in the previous questions.

Follow this link:

Writer Rhiannon