2012 Edward Said Memorial Lecture

For those who missed the 2012 Edward Said Memorial Lecture in Adelaide, links below will direct you to the full lecture as presented on the ABC 24 Shortcuts program (Episode 71 Dec 16^th, 2012).

The 2012 Lecture was delivered on Saturday 22nd of September at Norwood Town Hall by Professor Ilan Pappé.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and socialist activist who is currently a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappé supports the one-state solution, which envisages a binational state for Palestinians and Israelis.

The Lecture was Sponsored by The Australian Friends of Palestine Association

Click below for the video:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/vodcast/qanda_2012_ep33.mp4

Congratulations to Obama

Congratulations to Obama outperforming Romney on questions of empathy - having voters nationwide virtually tied on the more direct question of who would better handle the economy and the budget deficit.

It has to be said his campaign withstood not only what hurricane Sandy threw at, a relatively week economy, a failure to express a second term agenda as well as, of course, the first debate. The campaign itself was resilient and I’m sure will form a template for good campaigns in years to come.

Kevin Gets Hitched In Riverdale

Jack Dikian

January 2012

The Australian Labor government agreed to a 2012 conscience vote to redefine the meaning of the word marriage to allow for same sex marriage. In the mean time, according to the ABC News (6 December 2011) public support is widespread, and polls show three quarters of Liberal/National voters back a conscience vote.

And, across the Pacific, without wanting to trivialize this subject in any way (I don't have a view one way or another) it seems now, according to BleedingCool the folk of Riverdale will turn out to celebrate war hero Kevin Keller's mixed-race marriage to his boyfriend Dr. Clay Walker in Life with Archie #16.

Following an injury in Iraq, Kevin meets Clay at a hospital's rehabilitation unit. While Dr. Walker helps Kevin regain his ability to walk, the two develop a friendship. Later at a chance encounter they start dating, which eventually leads to their marriage in Riverdale.

For those not familiar with the Life with Archie, this was (according to Wikipedia) a comic book published by Archie comics from 1958 to 1991. It featured Archie Andrews in various adventure stories. In 2010 it was revived as a magazine-sized comic devoted to stories that grew out of Archie Marries Veronica and Archie Marries Betty (Archie 2 loves).

So these series, which follows the lives of Riverdale High School students a few years after graduation focuses on Kevin and his life as a young adult in its January issue. The storyline sees Kevin and Clay tying the knot just as Archie himself is in the midst of separating from his wife Veronica.

When tennis is too fast

Jack Dikian

January 2012

Watching Nadal and Federer play the semi-finals at the 2012 Australian Open last night made me think about how much of their ball hitting has to be or an involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement.

If you consider, for instance, Federer serving at 200Km/hour, the ball would take approximately 0.4 seconds to reach his opponent. And that doesn’t even take account of trying to make sense of the type of serve coming at you namely; a flat serve, a slice, a kick, or topspin and the need to somehow anticipate all this in the little time.

This does demonstrate the difference between our reflexes and our reactions. Reactions are typically a conscious order that are made by the cerebrum and requiring millions of neurons and some time to process the voluntary response.

In contrast, spinal reflexes (almost subconsciously) occur much faster, not only because they involve fewer neurons, but also because message signals don’t have to travel to the brain and back. Spinal reflexes on the other hand need only travel to the spinal cord.

So if those players wanted to strictly rely on their reactions (that is make completely voluntary decisions) the ball would long be past them. For these players, conscious voluntary reactions are simply too slow.

Google's Data Liberation Front - our digital legacy

Jack Dikian

January 2012

Sometime ago I talked about our digital legacy - Those digital or virtual assets in the form of photographs, music, blogs, information, and other data that may be typically overlooked, intentionally left behind, and/or when removing them is impossible or at least too difficult when we pass away.

Digital Legacy has been described as ‘the birth of a new industry' as new companies are being created to hold secure encrypted access to digital assets, to be released upon the proof of a users death.

See

http://onsocialcomments.blogspot.com/2011/07/jack-dikian-july-2011-i-was-early-user.html

At the same time much is being said in regards to the consumers’ ability to have real control over data held in repositories such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. How easy is for example to the wipe the slate clean. Just today, I received an email from the Google with the subject header “Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service”. In it, there is a reference to Google’s new team “Data Liberation Front” whose "goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products."

The purpose of the Data Liberation Front is to ensure that data can be migrated from Google once an individual or company stops using their services.

It’s going to be extremely interesting to see how quickly Facebook, for example, will take to provide the tools enabling us to permanently delete our Facebook profile.