The sublime network; painterly passage and materiality in the post internet era

This practice-led research project investigates painting in the Post Internet era. In the vast database of the Internet, paintings both historical and contemporary are distanced from their makers and contexts. Their diachronic position in a once considered "linear" historical model has been disrupted. The Internet fractures historical narratives, identities and oeuvres and makes them miscellaneous. Through painting I aim to communicate the paradoxical disparity and conflation that occurs between artworks, oeuvres and artistic identities online. Within the rhizomatic space of the Internet, I source and montage various digital examples of Romantic landscape painting into new mashed Romantic images that become source material for my paintings. Here I find synergy between the Post Enlightenment definition of the sublime and a contemporary fascination in the digital sublime - of which the Internet is champion. The project interrogates the Internet in a new and promiscuous way. I use the Internet to identify and disseminate what was once only trusted to the canonical archives of printed literature - the narrative of history

No Road, No Rage: A Forum on Expanding Bay Area Ferry Service, MTI Report F-02-01

As part of the Mineta Transportation Institute\u27s ongoing efforts to promote dialogue addressing surface transportation issues, it is my pleasure to share this edited transcript of No Road, No Rage: A Forum on Expanding Bay Area Ferry Service . As the title suggests, expanding water transit services has been proposed as one way to ease congestion on the roads. The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is seeking to expand ferry service for the Bay Area, and this forum offered an opportunity for interested citizens to hear more about the proposal, ask questions, and share their concerns and hopes. This event was the result of many people\u27s efforts, and I thank all those individuals and organizations referenced in the Acknowledgements section. I especially want to thank George Dobbins, Program Director of The Commonwealth Club, for working with MTI to sponsor this event; Senator Don Perata for being a leader in the legislature on this issue and also for being our keynote speaker; Tom Vacar for taking the time to be our moderator; and our panelists, Steve Kinsey, Russell Long, Cynthia Murray, and Gavin Newsom. The Mineta Transportation Institute has three primary functions: research, education, and information transfer. It is in this last role that we organized and presented this discussion. We hope that this edited transcript will contribute to an understanding of the issues and possible solutions, not only for those in our community, but also for anyone considering water transit issues

Technology appropriation in transnational networks of social activists : a study of the European Social Forum

Civil society organizations and other networks of social activists have gained significant importance in supporting citizens, as states are rolling back from their duties. In order to be an effective force, these networks have become transnational in their operations. These transnational networks are typically characterized by a lack of resources, an absence of formal hierarchical structures and differences in languages and culture among the activists. Modern technologies could help these networks in improving their working. Technology support for transnational social movements and civil society organizations is an important field of research not only due to the increased political importance of this sector in a globalizing world but also due to their organizational characteristics. In order to design appropriate technological support for social activists' etworks, it is important to understand their work practices, which widely differ from traditional businessorganizations. In this thesis, I present results from a long-term ethnographical field study of the European Social Forum (ESF), a network of heterogeneous political activist organizations. In this network different actors organize a periodic (biannual) event. During my data collection phase, the 5th and 6th European Social Fora were held in Malmo (2008) and Istanbul (2010), in which some 13,000 and 3,000 activists participated, respectively. I particularly focused on the usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in preparing and conducting ESF events and knowledge sharing practices during the transition phase. I specifically highlighted coordination and knowledge management practices to understand the potential for ICT support. The thesis describes complex social practice of organizing ESF events. I use the term fragmented meta-coordination to highlight coordination in this type of practice. Mundane ICT applications, such as a mailing list and a content management system, play a central role in enabling different aspects of fragmented meta-coordination. The findings also indicate how lack of resources, organizational distribution, and technical limitations hamper the preparation process and reduce transparency of political decision-making. I also present a specific type of knowledge, termed as nomadic knowledge. It is required periodically by different actors and travels along foreseeable paths between groups or communities of actors. This type of knowledge lets us question generally held assumptions about the way knowledge is enacted. Nomadic knowledge is a specialized type of knowledge, which is enacted in a discontinuous pattern by a changing set of actors and further flows on a defined trajectory. This knowledge is quite important but is required sporadically, so it has varying levels of importance for stakeholders at different instances of time. The limited interest of knowledge holders after the creation of knowledge makes knowledge sharing process complex. Furthermore, new actors overloaded by the tasks at hand often ignore the knowledge sharing aspect due to urgency. The thesis provides insights into the complexity of managing nomadic knowledge and implications for organizational processes. Moreover, the issues, which make the transfer of nomadic knowledge complex, are also discussed and the potentials for ICT support for management and transfer of nomadic knowledge are also highlighted. Moreover, the thesis provides a historic perspective on the evolution of ICT artifacts in the organizational boundaries. A user-centered evaluation of two technology artifacts (European mailing list and OpenESF) is also carried out to identify design improvements. The empirical findings highlight how the mailing list is used for a variety of different activities such as collaborative work, decision-making, coordination and information sharing. I discuss the findings with regard to the discourse on cooperative work and come up with implications for design. The analysis highlights central organizational and technological challenges related to ICT appropriation in transnational networks of social activists. As a next step it is important to design appropriate prototypes aligned with highlighted work practices to evaluate them in the field and realign if necessary. In order to better support this application domain universities and community-based organizations need to work jointly on action research projects to improve organizational processes of civil society organizations

USCID water management conference

Presented at Meeting irrigation demands in a water-challenged environment: SCADA and technology: tools to improve production: a USCID water management conference held on September 28 - October 1, 2010 in Fort Collins, Colorado.Includes bibliographical references.The Colorado Satellite-Linked Water Resources Monitoring System: 25 years later -- Using state water law for efficient water use in the West -- On-farm strategies for deficit or limited irrigation to maximize operational profit potential in Colorado's South Platte Basin -- Economics of groundwater management alternatives in the Republican Basin -- Effects of policies governing water reuse on agricultural crops -- Flow calibration of the Bryan Canal radial gate at the United Irrigation District -- Considering canal pool resonance in controller design -- Synthetic canal lining evaluation project -- South Platte Ditch Company: demonstration flow monitoring and data collection project -- The case for ditch-wide water rights analysis in Colorado -- Bore wells: a boon for tail end users -- Irrigation efficiency and water users' performance in water management: a case study on the Heran distributary, Sanghar, Sindh, Pakistan -- Initiating SCADA projects in irrigation districts -- Use of GIS as a real time decision support system for irrigation districts -- Interaction of Advanced Scientific Irrigation Management (ASIM) with I-SCADA system for efficient and sustainable production of fiber on 10,360 hectares -- Improving irrigation system performance in the Middle Rio Grande through scheduled water delivery -- Cost-effective SCADA development for irrigation districts: a Nebraska case study -- Accomplishments from a decade of SCADA implementation in Idaho's Payette Valley -- Critical success factors for large scale automation experiences from 10,000 gates -- Mapping ET in southeastern Colorado using a surface aerodynamic temperature model -- Alfalfa crop coefficients developed using a weighing lysimeter in southeast Colorado -- Turfgrass ET from small lysimeters in northeast Colorado -- Monitoring turf water status with infrared thermometry -- Training tool for on-farm water management using heuristic simulation software -- Water production functions for high plains crops -- Assessment of economic and hydrologic impacts of reduced surface water supply for irrigation via remote sensing -- Developing corn regional crop coefficients using a satellite-based energy balance model (ReSET) in the South Platte River area of Colorado

Imagining a Twenty-First Century Strategy

This dissertation argues that a diversity of epistemology within the field of rhetoric and composition can encourage Imagining as a strategy to negotiate the conundrums and binaries of the post-everything era, especially in negotiating the social presence of online learning. I trace Imagination from Enlightenment Pedagogy, which privileged the individual, unteacheable genius, to the conflation of invention and Imagination and the disappearance of both in current-traditional, modern, and postmodern pedagogy. Underlying this disappearance seems to be a distrust of Imagination, as exemplified by Kenneth Burke. I suggest that strategy of Imagining, rather than the faculty of Imagination, is needed—a move that is congruent with the active agency suggested by Marilyn Cooper. I also suggest that the theoretical basis for Imagining as a bridge can be found in the “Thirdness” of Charles Sanders Pierce. Following Coleridge, I suggest that four means of knowing serve as foundations for Imagining: the group, the text, knowledgeable others, and the spirit. These four means can give the field of rhetoric and composition a diversity of epistemologies, and these terms provide the means to more fully describe our complex, partial, and recursive ways of knowing in the twenty-first century. These ways of knowing are especially necessary in online learning where teachers and students may only “see” each other through their words. I argue that these means of knowing enhance Imagining and that a unsyllabus is a way to implement Imagining

Ground water and surface water under stress

Presented at Ground water and surface water under stress: competition, interaction, solutions: a USCID water management conference on October 25-28, 2006 in Boise, Idaho.Includes bibliographical references.The A&B Irrigation District in south-central Idaho supplies water to irrigate over 76,000 acres. The district's 14,660-acre Unit A is supplied with water from the Snake River. Unit B is comprised of 62,140 acres of land irrigated by pumping groundwater from the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer (ESPA) using 177 deep wells. Pumping depths range from 200 to 350 feet. Water from Unit B wells is distributed to irrigated lands via a system of short, unlined lateral canals averaging about 3/4-mile in length with capacities of 2 to 12 cfs. During the period from 1975 to 2005, the average level of the ESPA under the A&B Irrigation District dropped 25 ft and as much as 40 ft in some locations. This has forced the district to deepen some existing wells and drill several new wells. To help mitigate the declining aquifer, the district and its farmers have implemented a variety of irrigation system and management improvements. Improvements have involved a concerted effort by the district, landowners, and local and federal resource agencies. The district has installed variable speed drives on some supply wells, installed a SCADA system to remotely monitor and control well pumps, and piped portions of the open distribution laterals. This has permitted farmers to connect farm pressure pumps directly to supply well outlets. Farmers have helped by converting many of their surface irrigation application systems to sprinklers, moving farm deliveries to central locations to reduce conveyance losses, and installing systems to reclaim irrigation spills and return flows

Ground water and surface water under stress: competition, interaction, solutions

Presented at Ground water and surface water under stress: competition, interaction, solutions: a USCID water management conference on October 25-28, 2006 in Boise, Idaho.Includes bibliographical references.Overview of the Pecos River basin -- Integrating water management in Egypt: from concept to reality -- Evaluation of the Pecos River Carlsbad Settlement Agreement using the Pecos River Decision Support System -- Collaborative solutions to complex problems: a Pecos River basin, New Mexico case study -- Development of replacement water supplies by the Lower Arkansas Water Management Association -- Integrated water management in the Bear River basin -- Looking for trouble: anticipating impacts of changing allocation of irrigation water -- AgriMet: a tool for irrigation water management -- Application of MODIS and Landsat based evapotranspiration for western states water management -- Calibrating satellite-based vegetation indices to estimate evapotranspiration and crop coefficients -- Reducing Ogallala withdrawls by changing cropping and irrigation practices in the Texas High Plains -- Evaluating cotton yield potential in the Ogallala aquifer region -- A fully automated center pivot using crop canopy temperature: preliminary results -- Deficit irrigation in alfalfa as a strategy for providing water for nonagricultural uses -- An infrastructure management system for enhanced irrigation district planning -- Gila River Indian Community Water Resources Decision Support System - a modeling system for managing a multi-source conjunctive use water supply for long-term sustainability -- Groundwater analysis tool: a component of the Water Resources Decision Support System for the Gila River Indian Community -- Effective water management through farmer participation -- Improving canal water management through participatory approach: a case study on secondary canal (Potho Minor), Sindh, Pakistan -- Groundwater management improvements to mitigate declining groundwater levels - a case study -- An on-line advisory program for optimum irrigation management -- Institutional reforms in the water sector of Pakistan -- Matching irrigation supply and demand in Egypt -- Drought risk management for irrigated potato production in Idaho -- Case study - statistical forecasting techniques for evaluating an interruptible supply contract -- Managing across groundwater and surface water: an Australian 'conjunctive licence' illustration of allocation and planning issues -- Decentralized flow monitoring in Egypt -- High rate irrigation for groundwater recharge -- Impervious synthetic lining of deteriorated concrete canals - what are the real cost and benefits to irrigation districts? -- Design and installation of a flume to monitor spring discharge at the headwaters of the Verde River -- Optimal allocation of limited water supply for a large-scale irrigated area -- Assessment of the environmental sustainability of irrigated agriculture in a large-scale scheme - a case study