Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism, and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left

Althusser's pioneering concept of "ideological state apparatuses" is extended to the unique role of consumerism as a particular ideology enabling and supporting U.S. capitalism. It is argued that rising levels of worker consumption have functioned effectively to compensate workers for (and thereby allow) rising rates of exploitation and their negative social effects. For such compensation to succeed requires that workers embrace an ideology stressing the importance of consumption, namely consumerism. It is argued that the weakness of the US left (in labor unions, parties, and movements) stems in part from having endorsed this consumerism rather than undermining it within the framework of an anti-capitalist politics.Exploitation, Consumerism, Ideology, Althusser

MECHANICAL AND METABOLIC ENERGY ASPECTS OF DIFFERENT BINDING-BOOT SYSTEMS IN SKI-TOURING

The purpose of this study was to analyse the effect of different ski touring equipment on the energy cost of ski-tourers during uphill walking with skis. The material was studied both from a mere mechanical aspect as well as from a metabolic point of view. For the metabolic study a total of 16 subjects completed several uphill walks with skis on a treadmill inclined 15° and an average walking speed of 2.5 km/h. During these uphill walks the average oxygen uptake was measured by Cosmed K4b2. The mechanical study was carried out by measuring mass, points of rotation and center of mass and calculating the mechanical energy cost of the diverse binding-boot systems. The results of the mechanical study, as well as the metabolic results went into the same direction, though the differences in metabolic energy cost between the diverse binding-boot systems were more distinct. The differences in energy cost among the bindings were significant while the difference regarding boots was not. Taking the results in consideration, the use of specific ski-touring equipment can reduce the energy cost of a ski-tourer which allows him to complete an ascent faster or save energy for the downhill run

Policy Options For Improving Economic Opportunity and Mobility

America's economic recovery is finally taking hold and current deficits are down from the record highs during the recession. At the same time, far too many American families are being left out of the recovery, and our nation still faces an unsustainable long-term fiscal outlook. Lower unemployment and improvements in growth are fueling renewed optimism, yet the nature of the recovery is uneven and the longer term trends of income stagnation are of great concern. On everyone's minds is the questionable state of opportunity in America.In the interest of enriching the discussion on the state of economic opportunity in America today, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation asked two experts, representing different viewpoints, to recommend policy options to foster greater economic opportunity and mobility

Popular music and/as event: subjectivity, love and fidelity in the aftermath of rock ’n’ roll

This article concerns the usefulness of attaching a philosophy of the event to popular music studies. I am attempting to think about the ways that rock ’n’ roll functions as a musical revolution that becomes subjected to a narrative of loss accompanying the belief that the revolution has floundered, or even disappeared completely. In order to think about what this narrative of loss might entail I have found myself going back to the emergence of rock ’n’ roll, to what we might term its ‘event’, and then working towards the present to take stock of the current situation. The article is divided into three parts. Part One attempts to think of the emergence of rock ’n’ roll and its attendant discourse alongside Alain Badiou’s notion of event, looking at ways in which listening subjects are formed. Part Two continues the discussion of listening subjectivity while shifting the focus to objects associated with phonography. Part Three attends to a number of difficulties encountered in the Badiouian project and asks to what extent rock music might be thought of as a lost cause. All three parts deal with notions of subjectivity, love and fidelit

Three-dimensional memory vectorization for high bandwidth media memory systems

Vector processors have good performance, cost and adaptability when targeting multimedia applications. However, for a significant number of media programs, conventional memory configurations fail to deliver enough memory references per cycle to feed the SIMD functional units. This paper addresses the problem of the memory bandwidth. We propose a novel mechanism suitable for 2-dimensional vector architectures and targeted at providing high effective bandwidth for SIMD memory instructions. The basis of this mechanism is the extension of the scope of vectorization at the memory level, so that 3-dimensional memory patterns can be fetched into a second-level register file. By fetching long blocks of data and by reusing 2-dimensional memory streams at this second-level register file, we obtain a significant increase in the effective memory bandwidth. As side benefits, the new 3-dimensional load instructions provide a high robustness to memory latency and a significant reduction of the cache activity, thus reducing power and energy requirements. At the investment of a 50% more area than a regular SIMD register file, we have measured and average speed-up of 13% and the potential for power savings in the L2 cache of a 30%.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Comparison of x86 Computer Architecture Simulators

The significance of computer architecture simulators in advancing computer architecture research is widely acknowledged. Computer architects have developed numerous simulators in the past few decades and their number continues to rise. This paper explores different simulation techniques and surveys many simulators. Comparing simulators with each other and validating their correctness has been a challenging task. In this paper, we compare and contrast x86 simulators in terms of flexibility, level of details, user friendliness and simulation models. In addition, we measure the experimental error and compare the speed of four contemporary x86 simulators: gem5, Sniper, Multi2sim and PTLsim. We also discuss the strengths and limitations of the different simulators. We believe that this paper provides insights into different simulation strategies and aims to help computer architects understand the differences among the existing simulation tools

Multi-objective optimisation of many-revolution, low-thrust orbit raising for Destiny mission

This work will present a Multi-Objective approach to the design of the initial, Low-Thrust orbit raising phase for JAXA’s proposed technology demonstrator mission DESTINY. The proposed approach includes a simplified model for Low Thrust, many-revolution transfers, based on an analytical orbital averaging technique, and a simplified control parameterisation. Eclipses and J2 perturbation are also accounted for. This is combined with a stochastic optimisation algorithm to solve optimisation problems in which conflicting performance figures of DESTINY’s trajectory design are concurrently optimised. It will be shown that the proposed approach provides for a good preliminary investigation of the launch window and helps identifying critical issues to be addressed in future design phases