"Too many goddamn echoes": historicizing the Iraq War in Don DeLillo's Point Omega

This piece provides a detailed engagement with Don DeLillo's depiction of the 2003 Iraq war in his latest novel, Point Omega. Framed through both formal aesthetic signposting of the interrelations between modernist and postmodernist practice and also through explicit thematic comparison between the conflicts, I trace DeLillo's treatment of Iraq in Point Omega back to his earlier writing on the Cold War in Underworld and focus upon the ways in which this comparative historical metaphor can be read with particular emphasis upon its implications for the nation state

My Journey through Writing (2019-2020)

In this student example of a critical evaluation we can see how DeLillo makes claims about how his writing works based on citing from his essays within CPN 100, as well as citing from instructor comments and peer review feedback. By using his own writing and feedback he received as “texts,” DeLillo’s critical evaluation offers an example of critical evaluation in the form of an analysis, where the object of study is his own writing in CPN 100.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/rhetdragonscriticaleval/1000/thumbnail.jp

Numerical conformal mapping methods based on Faber series

Methods are presented for approximating the conformal map from the interior of various regions to the interior of simply-connected target regions with a smooth boundary. The methods for the disk due to Fornberg (1980) and the ellipse due to DeLillo and Elcrat (1993) are reformulated so that they may be extended to other new computational regions. The case of a cross-shaped region is introduced and developed. These methods are used to circumvent the severe ill-conditioning due to the crowding phenomenon suffered by conformal maps from the unit disk to target regions with elongated sections while preserving the fast Fourier methods available on the disk. The methods are based on expanding the mapping function in the Faber series for the regions. All of these methods proceed by approximating the boundary correspondence of the map with a Newton-like iteration. At each Newton step, a system of linear equations is solved using the conjugate gradient method. The matrix-vector multiplication in this inner iteration can be implemented with fast Fourier transforms at a cost of O(N log N). It is shown that the linear systems are discretizations of the identity plus a compact operator and so the conjugate gradient method converges superlinearly. Several computational examples are given along with a discussion of the accuracy of the methods

Hybrid basis scheme for computing electrostatic fields exterior to close-to-touching discs

This paper presents a simple and effective new numerical scheme for the computation of electrostatic fields exterior to a collection of close-to-touching discs. The method is presented in detail for the two-disc case. The key idea is to represent the required complex potential using a hybrid set of basis functions comprising the usual Fourier–Laurent expansion about each circle centre complemented by a subsidiary expansion in a variable associated with conformal mapping of the physical domain to a concentric annulus domain. We also rigorously prove that there is a representation of the solution in the hybrid basis with a faster decay rate of coefficients than is obtained by using a nonhybrid basis, thereby providing a rationalization for the success of the method. The numerical scheme is easy to implement and adaptable to the case of multiple close-to-touching cylinders

"Death Itself Shall Be Deathless”: Transrationalism and Eternal Death in Don DeLillo’s Zero K

The status of human mortality in the face of rapid and overwhelming scientific and technological change is by no means a new topic in DeLillo’s fiction. For many critics, death fulfills a crucial function in the author’s work, its very possibility operating to maintain the boundaries of time and space that are otherwise under threat of disappearance in post war culture. Don DeLillo’s eighteenth novel, Zero K (2016), offers an augmented examination of this conjunction between death and technology, depicting an industrial and scientific landscape where fantasies of eternal life can be legitimately realized via radical advances in cryonic technologies. Yet rather than circumventing death and prolonging life as intended, this article argues that DeLillo instead presents cryonic freezing as a form of eternal death. Subsumed within the technological matrix, death’s ineluctability is disturbed and remodulated, meaning that temporal and spatial boundaries become violently unhinged and entirely immeasurable. This boundlessness becomes vividly mirrored in the architectural and temporal logic of the “Convergence” facility itself, a “transrational” space that unravels concepts such as time, space, language, and subjectivity

Baader-Meinhof

Med udgangspunkt i Gerhard Richters berømte billedserie om Baader-Meinhof-gruppen skildrer Don DeLillo i en kuldslået novelle, der oprindeligt blev publiceret godt et halvt år efter terrorangrebene den 11. september 2001, hvordan terrorens logik også kan gøre sit skræmmende indtog i privatsfæren

Visualization of target inspection data at the National Ignition Facility

As the National Ignition Facility continues its campaign to achieve ignition, new methods and tools will be required to measure the quality of the target capsules used to achieve this goal. Techniques have been developed to measure capsule surface features using a phase-shifting diffraction interferometer and Leica Microsystems confocal microscope. These instruments produce multi-gigabyte datasets which consist of tens to hundreds of files. Existing software can handle viewing a small subset of an entire dataset, but none can view a dataset in its entirety. Additionally, without an established mode of transport that keeps the target capsules properly aligned throughout the assembly process, a means of aligning the two dataset coordinate systems is needed. The goal of this project is to develop web based software utilizing WebGL which will provide high level overview visualization of an entire dataset, with the capability to retrieve finer details on demand, in addition to facilitating alignment of multiple datasets with one another based on common features that have been visually identified by users of the system

Helical states of nonlocally interacting molecules and their linear stability: geometric approach

The equations for strands of rigid charge configurations interacting nonlocally are formulated on the special Euclidean group, SE(3), which naturally generates helical conformations. Helical stationary shapes are found by minimizing the energy for rigid charge configurations positioned along an infinitely long molecule with charges that are off-axis. The classical energy landscape for such a molecule is complex with a large number of energy minima, even when limited to helical shapes. The question of linear stability and selection of stationary shapes is studied using an SE(3) method that naturally accounts for the helical geometry. We investigate the linear stability of a general helical polymer that possesses torque-inducing non-local self-interactions and find the exact dispersion relation for the stability of the helical shapes with an arbitrary interaction potential. We explicitly determine the linearization operators and compute the numerical stability for the particular example of a linear polymer comprising a flexible rod with a repeated configuration of two equal and opposite off-axis charges, thereby showing that even in this simple case the non-local terms can induce instability that leads to the rod assuming helical shapes.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figure

A Matter of Due Process: An Examination of How State Mandated Accreditation has Impacted Texas Crime Laboratories

Mandated accreditation of crime laboratories is a fairly new phenomenon. The state of Texas was the first to require that crime laboratories be accredited in order to be able to present evidence in a criminal proceeding. The laws that govern this are Texas House Bill 2703 and Texas House Bill 1068. The goal of this study is see how the enactment of these laws impacted crime laboratories. There are 42 crime laboratories that are accredited in the state of Texas. This study was conducted by the use of telephone survey interviews. Results indicated that mandated accreditation is a step in the right direction to ensure that objectivity is maintained during the processing and evaluation of physical evidence