Environmental
“Did the Anthropocene Begin with the Nuclear Age?”
Lyn Ringenberg, “A Dramatic Doomsday Warning to the World.” The Doomsday clock has been moved closer to midnight.
Hyperarchival
Jill Lepore, “The Cobweb: Can the Internet Be Archived?”
Alexander R. Galloway, “Network Pessimism.”
A new semester has begun and I have a lot of exciting projects for 2015 that I am eager about, some of which I hope to report soon. But in the meantime, here are some links that have accumulated while the semester was beginning, while I was in Vancouver for MLA, and since. (Also, in mini-hyperarchival news, I just received in the mail today a 32 gigabyte USB drive to replace my almost full 4 GB drive. It feels good to be moving up in the world with regard to how much textual data I have/can produced/store.)
Environment
Trent Moore, “This Is the Final Video CNN Plans To Air When the Apocalypse Eventually Arrives.”
Out of the Woods, “Klein vs. Klein.”
Rebecca Solnit, “Everything’s Coming Together While Everything Falls Apart.”
Emily Atkin, “A Nuclear Plant Leaked Oil into Lake Michigan for Two Months Straight.”
I am sad to say that Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014), one of my most important teachers, has passed away. I have written a short remembrance of him that either will appear here or in some other form.
Tomaž Šalamun
Christopher Merrill, “Remembering Tomaž Šalamun.”
Andrew Epstein, “Tomaž Šalamun (1941-2014) and the New York School.”
Dalkey Archive Press on Šalamun.
And though I can’t read Slovenian, there is much here, including video of a television report.
I am looking forward to a fun, productive, and challenging spring semester at the University of Pittsburgh. I’ll be teaching three classes: two sections of Narrative and Technology (ENGLIT 0399; class blog here) and a course that is being offered for the first time, Interactive Literature (ENGLIT 1001; class blog here). I owe Mark Best considerable credit for Interactive Literature as I drew many ideas about organizing the course from the design of his initial proposal.
Nuclear
Matthew L.Wald, “Betting on the Need, Scientists Work on Lighter, Cleaner Nuclear Energy.”
US National and International
Patrick L. Smith, “We Are Fucking Sadists: We Are Not Decent, and We Are Not a Democracy.”
Moisés Naím, “The Cuba Deal: Why Now?”
Dan Froomkin, “Billion Dollar Surveillance Blimp to Launch over Maryland.”
I have been understandably busy with the end of a fun and challenging semester. So there are quite a few links that have built up.
Nuclear and Environment
William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “US Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms.”
Robert Burns, “Air Force: Hagel Departure Won’t Slow Nuke Reforms.”
Mark Memmot, “Nun Who Broke Into Nuclear Complex Gets 35-Month Jail Term.”
Barbara Starr, “Navy Investigation Under Way after Female Officers Filmed.”
Eric Holthaus, “Seventy–Seven Zero–Inches of Snow for Buffalo as Winter Overpowers America.”
I have had a great couple days listening to the boundary 2 conference. And after a productive and interesting week teaching Dear Esther (2012), Gone Home (2013), and Jennifer Egan‘s Look at Me (2001), I’m going to take the day to deeply immerse myself in football. So, I have a bit of time for some links.
Science and Environment
Rob Nixon reviews Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything.
Margalit Fox, “Jonathan Schell, 70, Author on War in Vietnam and Nuclear Age, Dies.”
Mark Landler, “US and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks.”
Geoff Brumfiel, “New Clock May End Time as We Know It.”
Annalee Newitz, “It’s Looking More and More Likely That We Live in a Multiverse.”
The extra hour today means I have time to post some links. There are many, as it’s been a while.
Nuclear and Environment
“Lockheed Announces Breakthrough on Nuclear Fusion Energy.”
Matthew L. Wald, “Calls to Use Yucca Mountain as a Nuclear Waste Site, Now Deemed Safe.”
Rizwan Asghar, “Illicit Nuclear Trafficking.”
“Emergency Agencies Practice Response to Nuclear Explosion in Times Square.” (Didn’t DeLillo have something to say about this kind of thing . . . ?)
Jonathan Tirone, “U.S. Said to Join Russia in Blocking Nuclear Safety Moves.”
“Notice to Congress: Continuation of the National Emergency on Russian Fissile Material.”
Darren Boyle, “Inside China’s Top Secret Nuclear Bunker: Cold War Relic Built into a Mountain to Fend off Soviet Attack Is Now a Tourist Attraction.” (Thanks to Terrence Ross for a lot of the above links.)
“Asgard’s Fire,” on thorium reactors.
Ari Phillips, “New Study Details Alarming Acceleration in Sea Rise.”
Hyperarchivalism
Jason Schreier, “It Took Two Years To Make Final Fantasy VII‘s Midgar in Minecraft.”
And more in huge fantasy worlds created in Minecraft: Laura Hudson, “How Fans Created Game of Thrones in a Minecraft Map the Size of LA.”
And I think this may very well be the death-knell of the age of superhero blockbusters (but also a megatext I’ll be writing about in, say, 2022): Dee Lockett, “DC Announces 10 New Superhero Films in Next Six Years, Including Wonder Woman“ (and Suicide Squad [!?] and Shazam [!?] and Cyborg [!?] . . . this can’t go well).
Hyperarchivalism and Big Data
Evgeny Morozov, “The Planning Machine: Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation.”
Nathan Jurgenson, “View From Nowhere: On the Cultural Ideology of Big Data.”
Cathy O’Neil, “Who Big Data Thinks We Are (When It Thinks We’re Not Looking),” a review of Christian Rudder’s Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking).
Julia Prescott, “We Saw the World’s First Throne Made Out of Jerry Macguire VHS Tapes.”
And Torie Rose DeGhett, “The War Photo No One Would Publish.”
The Hyperarchival Parallax 