Spiraling Alphabets

The words HUTS, RUTS, ARMY, and DENE (British: valley ) have in common a property not too hard to discover. They are all transposable (HUTS = SHUT and THUS, RUTS = RUST, ARMY = MARY, and DENE = NEED). Suppose we replace ARMY with NAVY, so that our set of four words is now HUTS, RUTS, NAVY, and DENE. What more unusual, more difficult to discover, property do they now have in common

Some Neglected Ways of Words

Words have ways which are so numerous (accourding to some mystics) that they are transinfinite (greater than Aleph N). Only a few of these ways are wayworn, while some other ones are only wayward, and still others of them are never even noticed by the wayside, by the way. It is a profound understatement to say that the world will sleep forever through the aeons with never the utleast awareness of most of these ways, even as some of the dearest and most wanted children shall never be born

Mike Park Interview

2010 interview with Mike Park from Asian Man Records by Ben Roger

Sequels and SAMs: Re-contextualized Media and Affective Memory

Electronic media allows for the repetition of the audiovisual in new contexts. Bernard Stiegler argues that, as people are exposed to these contexts (television, commercials), consumer-based art threatens the singular, a connection to a particular aesthetic in a particular space. When art is repeated, films remember for the audience. This allows for history to be continually re-written according to dominant media institutions. While there are other ways to combat this grand narrative, I argue that there are memories that, like the singular, are not consumer-based. I refer to these as staple associative memories (SAMs). These are not memories of the audiovisual art but are associated with the social component attached to the viewing experience. Through the repetition of a temporal aesthetic, the narratives are expected, but the other elements or associations can create unexpected affectual memories. SAMs are valuable for increasing participation and for the creation of selfhood, but they are being threatened by the use of the sequel. I analyze Blade Runner 2049 as a representation of a sequel that reuses old scenes in new contexts. Because of the affectual elements of these scenes, the memory of the original viewing experience can be warped, changed, or forgotten. I finish by discussing the future of staple associative memories in the context of online streaming and augmented reality

How to measure good growth: some advice for Sadiq Khan

Sadiq Khan has committed to developing a new measure of good growth in London. Ben Rogers (University of London/ LSE Cities) sets out what the London Mayor will have to do to make sure that it is more than a communications exercise

Florida in World War II: Tourists and Citrus

As 1941 drew to a close, in many states of the Union com- placent citizens still argued that the war in Europe and Asia was none of our business, that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were insurmountable barriers which no enemy could ever cross. In the state of Florida, however, this was not so. Led by their irrepressible Senator, Claude Pepper, Floridians had long been deeply concerned with the rising tide of totalitarianism; the Gallup polls found Florida one of the most interventionist of all states. During the preceding years, moreover, there had been a tremendous expansion of Florida’s military facilities, and before the war was over, she was to play hostess to more than forty important military installations from Key West to Pensacola

The Role of Environment on the Formation of Early-Type Galaxies

(Abridged) We present a detailed study of the stellar populations of a volume-limited sample of early-type galaxies from SDSS, across a range of environments -- defined as the mass of the host dark matter halo. The stellar populations are explored through the SDSS spectra, via projection onto a set of two spectral vectors determined from Principal Component Analysis. We find the velocity dispersion of the galaxy to be the main driver behind the different star formation histories of early-type galaxies. However, environmental effects are seen to play a role (although minor). Galaxies populating the lowest mass halos have stellar populations on average ~1Gyr younger than the rest of the sample. The fraction of galaxies with small amounts of recent star formation is also seen to be truncated when occupying halos more massive than 3E13Msun. The sample is split into satellite and central galaxies for a further analysis of environment. Satellites are younger than central galaxies of the same stellar mass. The younger satellite galaxies in 6E12Msun halos have stellar populations consistent with the central galaxies found in the lowest mass halos of our sample (i.e. 1E12Msun). This result is indicative of galaxies in lower mass halos being accreted into larger halos.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Decoding the spectra of SDSS early-type galaxies: New indicators of age and recent star formation

(Abridged) We apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to a sample of early-type galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in order to infer differences in their star formation histories. Out of the first few principal components (PC), we study four which give information about stellar populations and velocity dispersion. We construct two parameters (eta and zeta) as linear combinations of PC1 and PC2. We find zeta to be most sensitive to recent episodes of star formation, and eta to be strongly dependent on the average age of the stellar populations. The distribution of the eta component of the composites appear to be indistinguishable between high and low density regions, whereas the distribution of zeta parameters have a significant skew towards lower values for galaxies in low density regions. This result suggests that galaxies in lower density environments are less likely to present weak episodes of recent star formation. In contrast, a significant number of galaxies from our high density subsample -- which includes clusters (both outer regions and centres) and groups -- underwent small but detectable recent star formation at high metallicity, in agreement with recent estimates targeting elliptical galaxies in Hickson Compact Groups and in the field (Ferreras et al.).Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA