Use antibacterial soap, or the terrorists win. (But don't enjoy it!)

From Publishers Weekly:

According to Ashenburg (The Mourner's Dance), the Western notion of cleanliness is a complex cultural creation that is constantly evolving, from Homer's well-washed Odysseus, who bathes before and after each of his colorful journeys, to Shaw's Eliza Doolittle, who screams in terror during her first hot bath. The ancient Romans considered cleanliness a social virtue, and Jews practiced ritual purity laws involving immersion in water. Abandoning Jewish practice, early Christians viewed bathing as a form of hedonism; they embraced saints like Godric, who, to mortify the flesh, walked from England to Jerusalem without washing or changing his clothes. Yet the Crusaders imported communal Turkish baths to medieval Europe. From the 14th to 18th centuries, kings and peasants shunned water because they thought it spread bubonic plague, and Louis XIV cleaned up by donning a fresh linen shirt. Americans, writes Ashenburg, were as filthy as their European cousins before the Civil War, but the Union's success in controlling disease through hygiene convinced its citizens that cleanliness was progressive and patriotic. Brimming with lively anecdotes, this well-researched, smartly paced and endearing history of Western cleanliness holds a welcome mirror up to our intimate selves, revealing deep-seated desires and fears spanning 2000-plus years.

From author Katherine Ashenburg, see also, How to Read an Ontario Town:

This is a lecture/slide presentation about the values and styles that determined the look of a typical 19th-century Ontario town. The colour slides, taken by photographer Brian Kilgore, cover the gamut of southern Ontario towns, and the talk has been given to historical and architectural groups as well as tourism professionals throughout Ontario.

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History

Can human beings, with the help of smart machines, not merely avoid “collective idiocy” (in Sandy Pentland’s words), but actually achieve a degree of intelligence previously unattainable by either humans or machines alone? Three panelists study the possibilities from different angles.

Collective Intelligence | MIT World

There is a commonsense notion today that 24 ... is a show that tells us something about contemporary life. ...

Is 24 a political show? If so, in what ways is it political?

...

24 is a political show, but for entirely different reasons than might be assumed at the outset. 24 is political because the show embodies in its formal technique the essential grammar of the control society, dominated as it is by specific network and informatic logics.

This essay is unfortunately burdened by academic jargon, but the ideas are of interest nonetheless.

See also, The Politics of the Man Behind '24', from The New Yorker earlier this year, about which Decius wrote, "This article is more important than it sounds."

24/7, 16.8: is 24 a political show?

Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software application that listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this data stream to interfaces called "clients." These clients are designed to animate, diagnose, or interpret the network traffic in various ways. Use CarnivorePE to run Carnivore clients from your own desktop, or use it to make your own clients.

Carnivore

"The Exploit is that rare thing: a book with a clear grasp of how networks operate that also understands the political implications of this emerging form of power. It cuts through the nonsense about how 'free' and 'democratic' networks supposedly are, and it offers a rich analysis of how network protocols create a new kind of control. Essential reading for all theorists, artists, activists, techheads, and hackers of the Net." —— McKenzie Wark, author of A Hacker Manifesto

The network has become the core organizational structure for postmodern politics, culture, and life, replacing the modern era’s hierarchical systems. From peer-to-peer file sharing and massive multiplayer online games to contagion vectors of digital or biological viruses and global affiliations of terrorist organizations, the network form has become so invasive that nearly every aspect of contemporary society can be located within it.

Borrowing their title from the hacker term for a program that takes advantage of a flaw in a network system, Galloway and Thacker challenge the widespread assumption that networks are inherently egalitarian. Instead, they contend that there exist new modes of control entirely native to networks, modes that are at once highly centralized and dispersed, corporate and subversive.

In this provocative book-length essay, they argue that a whole new topology must be invented to resist and reshape the network form, one that is as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network is in relation to hierarchy.

Alexander R. Galloway is associate professor of culture and communications at New York University and the author of Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006) and Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization.

Eugene Thacker is associate professor of new media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Biomedia (Minnesota, 2004) and The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture.

Galloway also wrote a chapter for Processing.

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks

Last month, RPI President Shirley Ann Jackson spoke at a tribute to MIT's new Green Center for Physics.

Jackson draws inspiration from MIT alumnus Vannevar Bush, who helped mobilize the best US R&D talent during World War 2.

Bush overcame scientists’ “skepticism and even antagonism toward the concept of federal funding,” says Jackson, promoting collaboration with the government. MIT Radiation Laboratory scientists helped develop electronic countermeasures for the deadly buzz bombs that terrorized Londoners during the war. In peacetime, Bush recommended to President Truman the continued marriage of government, industry and science -- weaving in the humanities and social sciences, too.

Bush believed the results of research could be “adapted readily to shifting national needs ... and could assist not only in national security but in general economic growth and quality of life,” says Jackson. Bush’s blueprint helped justify a massive infusion of federal money into R&D for many decades.

But today, this investment has shrunken to historic lows, says Jackson. “50 years after Sputnik,” she says, “we need to focus on another great global challenge: energy security and sustainability.” This is a “race against time,” requiring multi-sector collaboration, rooted in fundamental research, with no product in mind.

Jackson calls for a rejuvenation “on a massive scale” in basic research and education, comparable to the university-government-industry mobilization that began during World War 2.

Science, The Endless Frontier: The Continuing Relevance of Vannevar Bush

I covered the code back in May; now you can buy the highly anticipated book.

It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it's clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing, an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. "Extensions" present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.

For examples, see Ink Trails and Tendrils.

Processing

Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan expound on violence, alienation and the electronic envelope. The clash of two great minds. (1968)

Retro: Mailer and McLuhan

It's an extended riff on rap, in the style of Jessica Hagy at indexed, only made with Excel instead of index cards. PNSFW.

See also, Jay Z's Blue Magic:

When I start seeing rap stars flashing euros instead of U.S. dollars, I know our economy is in trouble.

rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs

Every Halloween, West 69th Street closes to traffic, and thousands of kids go trick or treating from building to building. This year, I set up my camera in one building’s lobby and photographed some of the kids in their costumes. I thought I’d share a few of the shots.

Ironic Sans: Halloween on the Upper West Side