From Learning Adviser to Coordinator: A Professional Career Arc

A colleague and good friend once remarked to me that as a child, no-one ever plans to grow up to be a Learning Adviser. Indeed, our careers are often haphazard and ad hoc, but it is often easier to impose some semblance of order on them part-way through. A professional vision often has 20/20 hindsight, as well.University Writing Cente

Recognition and reconstruction of coherent energy with application to deep seismic reflection data

Reflections in deep seismic reflection data tend to be visible on only a limited number of traces in a common midpoint gather. To prevent stack degeneration, any noncoherent reflection energy has to be removed. In this paper, a standard classification technique in remote sensing is presented to enhance data quality. It consists of a recognition technique to detect and extract coherent energy in both common shot gathers and fi- nal stacks. This technique uses the statistics of a picked seismic phase to obtain the likelihood distribution of its presence. Multiplication of this likelihood distribution with the original data results in a “cleaned up” section. Application of the technique to data from a deep seismic reflection experiment enhanced the visibility of all reflectors considerably. Because the recognition technique cannot produce an estimate of “missing” data, it is extended with a reconstruction method. Two methods are proposed: application of semblance weighted local slant stacks after recognition, and direct recognition in the linear tau-p domain. In both cases, the power of the stacking process to increase the signal-to-noise ratio is combined with the direct selection of only specific seismic phases. The joint application of recognition and reconstruction resulted in data images which showed reflectors more clearly than application of a single technique

Truth, Art, and the New Sensuousness : Understanding Heidegger\u27s Metaphysical Reading of Nietzsche

This article takes a critical look into Heidegger’s reading of Nietzschean metaphysics in the context of art and finds certain discrepancies in Heidegger’s texts. Heidegger’s claim is that Nietzsche has had some difficulty in discussing the problem of truth, being, and becoming in terms of how the Western tradition of philosophy has understood it. In the context of art, Magrini traces the path that Heidegger took in understanding Nietzsche’s notion of nihilism and finds that Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is actually an attempt to elevate the latter as a timely philosophical force whose thought moves away from the rote and dogmatic tradition of Western philosophy. Magrini is also able to point out that Heidegger’s reading moves through the usual rational and structured philosophy via a sensuous use of metaphors that is much closer to life, which is a noticeable change in the writing style of Heidegger from his Nachlass lectures and his posthumous work the Beiträge zur Philosophie. Despite some misgivings, Magrini lauds Heidegger’s work as a strict close reading of Nietzsche that brings out the best of the thinker’s radical thoughts

Capitalist discourse, subjectivity and Lacanian psychoanalysis

This paper studies how subjectivity in capitalist culture can be characterized. Building on Lacan’s later seminars XVI, XVII, XVIII, and XIX, the author first outlines Lacan’s general discourse theory, which includes four characteristic discourses: the discourse of the master, the discourse of the university, the discourse of the hysteric and the discourse of the analyst. Next, the author explores the subjectivity and the mode of dealing with jouissance and semblance, which is entailed in a fifth type of discourse, the capitalist discourse, discussed by Lacan (1972). Indeed, like the other discourses that Lacan discerns, the discourse of the capitalist can be thought of as a mode of dealing with the sexual non-rapport. It is argued that in the case of neurosis the discourse of the capitalist functions as an attempt to ignore the sexual non-rapport and the dimension of the unconscious. Psychosis, by contrast, is marked by an a priori exclusion from discourse. In that case, consumerist ways of relating to the other might offer a semblance, and thus the possibility of inventing a mode of relating to the other. Two clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate this perspective: one concerning the neurotic structure and one concerning the psychotic structure

Connecting ICTs to development: The IDRC experience

Book ReviewAlthough the editors speciªcally deny that this book is a historical account, it only narrowly escapes that label. The book does attempt to consolidate some 15 years of International Development Research Centre (IDRC)–sponsored action research on ICT intervention projects undertaken in three main global regions, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. This “Herculean” (the editors’ words) effort does give the book the semblance of an epic, engrossing, all-encompassing exposition of the key concerns, actors, and events relevant to the IDRC’s ICT4D community. The book reports on the work of an IDRC-created thematic grouping identified as “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” (ICT4D), an acronym which has since gained widespread appeal in the academic research community (Heeks, 2006)

Playing with the future: social irrealism and the politics of aesthetics

In this paper we wish to explore the political possibilities of video games. Numerous scholars now take seriously the place of popular culture in the remaking of our geographies, but video games still lag behind. For us, this tendency reflects a general response to them as imaginary spaces that are separate from everyday life and 'real' politics. It is this disconnect between abstraction and lived experience that we complicate by defining play as an event of what Brian Massumi calls lived abstraction. We wish to short-circuit the barriers that prevent the aesthetic resonating with the political and argue that through their enactment, video games can animate fantastical futures that require the player to make, and reflect upon, profound ethical decisions that can be antagonistic to prevailing political imaginations. We refer to this as social irrealism to demonstrate that reality can be understood through the impossible and the imagined

Untitled variation set (The Egg and the Flower)

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston UniversityThis untitled set of variations started as sketches for viola and piano in the summer of 2012. I started the academic year planning to finish the piece by the end of the semester. I was informed shortly after the start of the semester, by Sam Headrick, of my tentative placement on the Allea III Young Composers Concert on February 6th, 2013- my priorities changed. The initial sketches for the viola piece became the seeds for this one but this piece bears little semblance to what the viola piece would have been. This piece is a series of five variations, the last serving as a sort of coda to the previous four. The subtitle, The Egg and The Flower, refers to opposing types of material in the piece; flourishing material used to close variations and pitch-organized material