Evolutions
PBS Gleanings today:
According to mitochondrial research, we are all descendants of one African woman. For those of you who weigh purity based on the one drop rule, you should understand that you too are black.
Apparently, the paternity thing is not an issue among scientists.
~~~
“Least Respected Dog” is the title of the dog that pulls the most weight but is the lowest in the pack for the Inuit people.
These amazing sled dogs can run the equivalent of five marathons a day.
The sled dogs can fall into freezing water and get out without problem – water that would kill a man in about three seconds.
They can also fend off polar bears, even fighting them when necessary.
–from “The Rise of the Dog” on PBS
~~~
I’m thinking a bit about the public space of virtuality today. Or the virtuality of public space. Today. Looking over Charles Bernstein’s “Electronic Pies in the Poetry Skies” January 2001 post to the Electronic Book Review, I thought I’d post a few statements, pulled from a larger list, for meditation value tonight:
* In some ways, the intimate space of email discussion can leave one feeling more vulnerable to animosity than in “live” settings, where the presence of others serves as a buffer.
* Freedom is never free.
* The Internet provides new opportunities for rumor, gossip, exploitation, and innuendo.
* In some of the new Internet environments, there is a fairly high tolerance for flaming, ad hominen attack, libel, and diatribe, as if resentment is a measure of honesty.
* The Web necessitates ever more editing, more intensive intervention, lest our alternative spaces be rendered vacuous, or desperate, by default launching people into the official flows of information.
* Yet righteous outrage is as likely to shut down exchange as provoke it.
* Web space is not so much disembodied as differently bodied. And those different bodies can be as scary as the demons that haunt our dreams for human freedom.
* While the proliferation of unmoderated spaces does of course allow for some of the otherwise unheard to speak, in the resultant din it may be impossible to hear them.
* We remain vulnerable to destabilization by agent provocateurs but also by provocative agencies within ourselves, our desire for purification through self-immolation.
* It’s not technology that will change the possibilities for dialogue but politics.
* If the discussion is always starting from scratch, the participants with greater experience may drop away.
* Public space requires protecting rights as much as allowing access.
* The contribution of small press publications is that they articulate specific, not general, aesthetic values; that they do not allow market forces to be the primary arbiter of value; and that they provide sharp contrasts with the otherwise available literature of the time.
* It may be as useful to participate in a conversation “over your head” as “at your level.”
–excerpts from Charles Bernstein’s “Electronic Pies in the Poetry Skies”
~~~
Hey, did you get your daily dose of vote today? And did you see the beautiful company I’m in?!
~~~
11 Responses to “Evolutions”
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She co-edited with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edits the anthology series, Bettering American Poetry, and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
AMY KING 
April 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm eYou’ve pulled in to the lead. Must be that snazzy billboard.
April 29th, 2007 at 5:08 pm eHeh heh ~ thanks for the vote!
April 29th, 2007 at 8:22 pm eI refuse to officially concede yet, but I offer congratulations. It was fun.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:37 am eAnd congrats to you as well, Collin! You’re standing out strongly there too –
It was fun getting to check out new people and their blogs~
April 30th, 2007 at 3:22 am eAbsolutely. I’m linking you up on my blog.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:42 am eCongratulations Amy. http://helenl.wordpress.com/2007/04/29/amy-king-2007-poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere/ It was the billboard to be sure.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:18 am eWe have a winner. How do you plan to use your new title, Poet-Laureate-of-the-Blogosphere to change the world? I’m anticipating some sort of revolution. Or will you finally get around to feeding all those hungry kids in China my mom’s been telling me about? Don’t ever take that tiara off.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:07 pm eYou win, you win, you did it again
A success is what I would call it
Don’t let it be said, “Poetry is dead.”
Your victory, surely must stall it.
Congrats Amy, your victory was well earned and we shined a light on a few. I guess the billboard worked almost as well as mine http://www.lassiter.com/mov/jones.html
Enjoy!
April 30th, 2007 at 2:29 pm eOh, all right, I concede. lol Congrats Amy.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:56 pm eBravissima! Well done.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:57 pm eTada!