http://www.thewherewithal.org Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:07:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The day after the British government raised the UK terrorist threat level to severe, foreign secretary David Miliband came onto the Andrew Marr show to tell him that—in respect of the threat posed by Al-Qaeda ‘the danger remains very real’. He went on: ‘You’ve seen this week that the Home ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2010/01/25/when-miliband-met-massumi/ Interesting to note the rise of credit card liabilities as a potential major issue for US financial services companies. Bank of America's recently announced figures reveal that it is the credit card division that has trumped other losses in the business - including that incurred by having to pay back ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2010/01/20/bank-of-americas-credit-card-liabilities/ Just a quick addition to the previous reflections on topology. I have just been rereading Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual, and his distinction between Euclidean and non-Euclidean topological forms seemed particularly appropriate to the differences between networked and recursive topologies. The following passage, from a section titled 'Notes on ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2010/01/15/massumi-on-topology/ Important looking event being advertised over at Socializing Finance: http://socfinance.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/conference-announcement-reembedding-finance/ http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/12/16/reembedding-finance-workshop/ Just got back from the excellent ATACD Cultures of Change conference in Barcelona. The conference explored the possibilities opened up by thinking of the social world along topological lines. In that respect, most interesting for me were those approaches that tried to take on the challenge posed to thinking about social ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/12/15/reflections-on-topology/ If you have a working knowledge of either Spanish or Catalan, you would do well do check out this Network & Matters blog, which addresses many things relational. My sources tell me that there may be some English posts too in future, so keep an eye... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/12/15/networksandmatters/ Opening up another front in the battle to replace bothersome cash with a form of e-money, mobile phone provider O2 ('powered by Natwest') has launched a new pre-pay Visa card aimed at teenagers, the Guardian reports. The card will be available for those aged 13 and over and some safeguards in ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/07/19/o2s-new-pre-pay-visa-cards/ Have just come across these irresistable 19th century reflections on the over confidence in reality that accompanies some altered states of mind. By pragmatist philosopher William James, in his essay 'The Perception of Reality': One of the charms of drunkenness unquestionably lies in the deepening of the sense of reality and ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/07/18/william-james-the-utterly-utter-reality-of-drunkenness/ In our everyday journeys through public space, I was reminded recently that, when it comes to walking, it’s not simply where that matters, but how. The ‘how’, I will return to – the ‘where’ in this instance was the gleaming air conditioned interior of the new Heathrow Terminal 5. It came ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/07/09/the-mundane-politics-of-ambling-an-encounter-in-terminal-5/ Was today struck by the parallel's between Latour's and Sloterdijk's attention to 'what it means to inhabit a place' and Vonnegut's to what it means to de-inhabit one, with the aid of too well designed 'artificial weather'. Writing in Slaughterhouse-Five: The colonel asked old Derby how he had been captured, and ... http://www.thewherewithal.org/2009/04/21/vonnegut-meet-latour-and-sloterdijk/