PUBLIC MARKS with search states

Today the forced relocation of 120,000 innocent U.S. citizens to camps in seven states of the American West has been condemned as immoral and unconstitutional. In 1988 the federal government paid restitution to survivors and issued an apology, while official reports acknowledged that the policy arose from racism and irrational fear.

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. This principle can be modeled and has theoretical validity.[1] Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

The International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) was formed in June 2002 with a mission to "facilitate the international coordination and collaboration necessary for the development and deployment of the tools, systems and organizational structures necessary to enable the international utilization of astronomical archives as an integrated and interoperating virtual observatory." The IVOA now comprises 17 VO projects from Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Membership is open to other national and international projects according to the IVOA Guidelines for Participation.

karlcow said...

Fascinating and very interesting. I may add another law to your experiment, though it would have to be repeated again to see if it's working.

Law 3: A fractal pattern encourages participation.

A fractal pattern is simple enough that the gratification is direct. One can draw a small shape which already makes sense to the person. (I have participated!). But because of the self-structure of fractal pattern, one is participating to a bigger scheme. Sense of collective achievement with grand goals.

Once the structure is big enough, it becomes visible, organized and then it is an object of power, which in return is its weakness. (Colonial states versus Guerrilla/Terrorism). Wikipedia becomes so big that it fights for copyright or have editors censoring content.

Though I kind of disagree with the conclusion of blogs versus wikis. Blogs are indeed easier to maintain but would it be because wikis are not really object of the commons, aka, there is still someone owning the object, it is a property of someone in the end.

I wonder also if there is a density rule in action. A tribe in a large forest with free will to move as they please versus a piece of land with a lot of people. There is very little destruction when the space is infinite. Take the drawing above and imagine a space which is infinite (possible in digital space), would participant try to destroy the work of others or just go further away to do their own drawing?

May 20, 2009 1:50 PM

Trulia Snapshot allows you to browse photographs and details of properties for sale in the United States. Snapshot provides an alternative view of listings from Trulia and was developed in collaboration with Stamen Design. You can find more about Trulia and Stamen's work together in Trulia's new explore section.

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.

March 2009