Bataille’s book, THEORY OF RELIGION

Bataille self-identifies as a proletarian, by contrast with Nietzsche’s aristocratic self-identification. For him, “religion” invokes a mantra of destruction. One destroys the surplus provided by the Capitalist system whenever one is not working to reproduce that system. This everyday destruction of the commodity (through use), and of oneself (through festivals, including drinking) is the enjoyment of God on the last day of the week, having invented everything. Nietzsche saw “God” in the human consciousness and its capacity to create. Bataille adds a Marxist twist and sees “God” in his capacity to DESTROY.

Much of Bataille’s writing urges us toward a retraining of the Superego for nonconformity in the face of servitude and slavery. Transgression is not for its own sake, nor to indulge whims and desire. It involves a reorientation towards the world on the basis of one’s individual strength to do that which was previously forbidden for one to do.

Destruction is transgressive and therefore freedom-inspiring. It is undertaken between the individual and himself (formerly his society’s mores, that have been introjected as Superego). There is much at stake here — much to lose. But every gain is an improvement in the range and power of one’s will. The territory that one ultimately conquers is one’s self. (That is a beginning.)

Nietzsche has a similarly defiant relationship to his Superego. Zarathustra desires to break the law tables of “the good and the just”. Such principled destruction also requires transgression of the Christian value judgements that had commanded European society. These values would probably have been internalised by his intended readers, meaning that, in a way, to destroy the value judgements of the “good and the just” meant destroying themselves, and recreating themselves anew:

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!-NIETZSCHE, ZARATHUSTRA

Whereas Nietzsche self-identifies as an aristocrat and wants to overcome his limitations, Bataille sets the stage for revolution.

Terror as totem

Bataille ‘s writing suggests to me that if we establish a direct relationship with terror, we will be able to resist the imposition of terror from the outside. Alternatively, not to face the terror of life is to remain intoxicated by false assurances as to our ability to escape our own demise.   We all die. Also, when we are afraid, we find out what we’re really made of — what we are prepared to hold onto, and what we are willing to discard.

Marechera concurs by his rejection of the rest of humanity, to be alone with his own terror:

Nothing but blows and kicks
Greet the friendly eye of thought
Which bloodied muddied shakes the dust
To all humanity
And discovers terror the totem of truth.

Clarifying some concepts of INTELLECTUAL SHAMANISM

Not just writing, but self-awareness
… so despite that, he was more self aware?
Yeah, yeah, that is what I see, too
To see that this is not the case is difficult
It would wreck the psyches of most people
But I think you understand it
Yeah, yeah. It’s idealism
Nietzsche called it the ascetic ideal
I don’t fully understand what idealism is.
It’s a bit hard to explain
Yeah, good point
is this not anrachism?
I think it differs from anarchism although it is compatible
How does it differ?
…which is also the benefit of going mad
because you get back into that childlike condition of receptivity
“bourgeois perspective” – no idea what it is.
not really.
I think it did accelerate his destruction
Nietzsche seemed to think that it was both
Your preserve something, but you also lose something
Oh I had not seen your last sentence on self preservation.
I hope this makes sense
Sorry. “create”beyond themselves
What are the rules of nature?
any that can natural befall matter
Still don’t quite understand what you are saying
what your objection is
anything that naturally happen does so by force of rules of nature
Kind of, but nature is also pretty random
yes but the randomness is systematic
which makes it the rule
What is your objection concerning “nature”?
there are times what I see order in randomness
yeah, there is order in randomness, indeed.
so it probably does not explain Marechera
a matter of terminology
Being wild, living under the hibiscus bush
“unmediated” – means in both the virtual and the physical
To destroy your civilized mind with drugs and alcohol
of course!
So we will talk later
Can any one really seek this?
Answer next time

Wilfred Bion, Lacan and Bataille

Key to Bion’s work is the idea that people need to express what would become a “nameless dread” if it were to stay outside of the field of society and specifically, socially rendered intelligibility. Bion’s is a dualistic model of the mind, just as Lacan‘s is, but there is much more of a direct metaphysical continuity between Bion’s “unconscious” and the articulate, socially structured mind, than there is with regard to Lacan’s viewpoint.

For Bion, the unconscious is experiential reality that hasn’t been articulated. Indeed, the unconscious can never be fully articulated because it is multidimensional** (has, in effect, more dimensions to it than we can simultaneously process with our rational minds). Articulation, therefore, is always a process of simplifying (indeed, oversimplifying for the sake of managing) that which is irreducibly complex. From my reading of Lacan, there is a complete transition from the prearticulate level of the infant’s experience of the world, to the articulate social interpretation of the experience. His is a more complete mind-body dualism — dividing  the rational from the irrational aspects of experience, in a way that is designed to be practically impossible and thus makes place for the Catholicism of “sin” as an automatic part of the human experience, since we must all fall short of the Ideal.

But for Bion, the unconscious is the damming up of experiential reality, and the work to be done is in the further interpretation — the actually simplifying — of memory, to make it manageable, and to reduce the feeling of “nameless dread” (as it were, by giving the dread a name and a social context and meaning). The naming of the “nameless dread” is the social contextualisation of it by means of  an objectively recognised form (in words). This is like opening the floodgates to allow the water to go through the wall of the dam.

But we can see the role of the artist in all of this — to convert nameless dread into something that is socially meaningful. Thus the interpretive movement between the “paranoid-schizoid position” of disintegrated self and inarticulate experience, towards the “depressive position” (of simplified and linguistically reduced meanings, which, nonetheless “make sense” socially).

The Bion model is also shamanistic: the subject mediates between the multidimensional space of the unconscious field (in some senses the “spirit world”) and everyday, limited three-dimensional reality, which can be articulated and can be expressed rationally.

One might add to this understanding Bataillle’s perspective.  So long as one does not express oneself in language, one keeps hold of the unbroken whole of experiential reality:  this splinters as one speaks of it.

Bataille takes his understanding of the nature of subjective experience and its oftentimes antagonistic relationship to language from Nietzsche, who says:

*Actually this analogy is mine. Bion’s is that the mother of the infant initially is the one who acts to “contain” or hold the inarticulate emotions of the child, and thus she gives social form and shape to them. My analogy focuses on this “nameless dread” as if it were to occur outside of a defined social context, whereas Bion shows the way this “nameless dread” is generally diverted towards becoming meaningful social content.

**Godwin, Robert W “Wilfred Bion and David Bohm: Toward a Quantum Metapsychology. .” Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 14.4 (1991): 625-54

Shamanism and the reworking of memory

Utterly fundamental to understanding shamanism

1.  Shamanistic usages of language

Shamanisms learn to speak very indirectly about reality.  As Georges Bataille points out in his Unfinished System of Nonknowledge  verbal communication sets itself at odds with the physical body and its vicissitudes.   To communicate completely, one does not communicate with language, but non-linguistically.  “We feel each other through our wounds,” he said, thus suggesting shamanic access to  another dimension of knowledge, not through suffering as such, but through the internalization of knowledge as a result of wounding.  To draw a distinction here between two levels of communication is vital.

Crude psychoanalytic interpretations would tend to make out the shaman to be one who whines about wounding whilst justifying false ways of seeing the world, to make himself feel better.  So, psychoanalysts may set out to defeat what it sees as a competing system of interpretation of the world, by distorting its claims.  The willful nature of this misunderstanding is obvious because it does not distinguish between a wound and the person who has it.  Whereas psychoanalytic distortions would have the wound seem to speak for and on behalf of itself, in shamanism, the shaman masterfully speaks on behalf of his wounds and furthermore uses his incidental wounding and the understanding it brings to heal others.

In the case of Bataille’s form of shamanism, the “wounds” are the sexual organs, which he considered a wound to language itself, as a system that aims to be closed and complete, capable of accounting for everything and making all of reality seem rational.   The physicality of the body itself  prevents the formal dimensions of language to close the circle of meaning, in terms of giving a full account of everything in the world.

This suspicion of language is expressed in all forms of shamanism, which attempt to address the problems associated with the body in a more direct way than via language.   To the end of addressing the body and not the mind, language may be “twisted” so that the shamanic seer can use it to “look around corners”. Marechera uses this expression in The Black Insider, where he criticizes logical formulations for degrading the more human dimensions of reality.

The tyranny of straightforward things is more oppressive and more degrading than such idle monstrosities as life and death, apartheid and beer drinking, a stamp album and Jew-baiting. One plus one equals two is so irrefutably straightforward that the unborn child can see that even if man was wiped off the face of the earth one plus one would always and forever-equal two.

The “unborn child” is one who cannot yet speak, who can be readily victimized by narrow forms of logic that would easily be able to erase humanity.  The “unborn child” is also the non-rational state of the shamanistic seer.   Huge aspects of reality are more readily observable when one has learned not to depend on language.

2.  When shamans work with “energy fields”, they are referring to the ability one needs to have to defend oneself against projective identification.  This term has gained meaning in psychoanalysis as implying that someone has injected their own needs and values into another person to get them to play a particular function on their behalf.   These functions are to express emotional attitudes that area already in another person but which he doesn’t have the confidence or the courage to express.

Shamans work to develop a strong “energy vest”  for the one who has become ill, to enable her to resist future attempts to control her.   A shaman’s incantations are sung to create a sense of wholeness about identity, defined as integral bodily sensations. Future assaults against the integral wholeness of the victim will from now on be understood by her in terms of what they are, and not being unconsciously accommodated.

Having developed a sense of energy fields, one is cured, since one now understands when one’s own energy field has been violated.   Should a “dart” be fired in one’s direction, one can choose to ignore it, or to return the dart to the original owner.  There is nothing mysterious about the fact that darts and energy fields exist, except for the terminology.  The means by which assaults take place, as well as their psychological meanings,  can be accounted for in the earlier mentioned term of projective identification.

Shamans take knowledge of energy fields a step further than others do in psychoanalysis, however.   An advanced shaman will conduct effective ideological warfare by observing another’s energy field and sending “darts” into the field of another to disrupt their mental ability to work. It was said that shamans used to lob mountains at each other.

Shamanic double vision & Nietzsche

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche writes:

Just a bit later on, he says:

Next:  Bataille’s non-knowledge as a form of shamanism

Morality and the shamanic void

In much of my experience, I haven’t been a “valid human being” at all. I think that is the starting point for shamanic initiation — where one recognizes that one is not a valid human being in some sense. Then one loses one’s humanity and regains it — that is the definition of initiation.

You have to enter non-being. Then, that kind of sticks with you, and you don’t employ moral categories so readily.  There are no longer any ““valid human beings”, just the totality of human experience, for better or worse.

A “valid human being”, for instance, is a moral category implying person-hood, with all that this entails according to people’s trained or educated notions as to what differentiates people from each other. So, on the basis of my education and training concerning “validity” I may come to certain conclusions about the kind of person who is valid, what characteristics they have, how they conduct themselves, their ontological status (as being redeemed by “God” or by morality, or by virtue of the state granting them their “rights”) or what have you. So, I’ll have a certain image of that person, perhaps very distinct, or perhaps rather fuzzy. In any case, I’ve created a categorical demarcation as to what constitutes validity in a human being.

This logically and practically also implies that I have it in the back of my mind as to what would make a human being “invalid”. So, maybe that kind of person would be immoral, evil, strange, not my color of skin, or whatever. In any case, I’ve set up a mental barrier that mediates my experience of the world on the basis of categories of “valid” or “invalid”.

For instance, like a certain male feminist writer does, I might mentally erect a category of oppressed people who have great validity as human beings. On the basis of that, I’d start to show great indulgence and forbearance in relation to these oppressed people. It may happen, though, that mediation of reality through defining a category of oppressed (versus less oppressed or not oppressed) means I can’t experience the shades of grey that make up the world as it actually is. There’s too much mediation of reality and not enough direct experience of it. That’s what moral categorizing does.

By contrast, entering non-being means we can open our minds a bit more, after we are not afraid of losing some structure and entering the void.

The meaning of amoralism, according to Nietzsche and Bataille is to become wilder, stronger in oneself, more independent and less tame. This is not a moral injunction that everybody has to do it. You can try it or not attempt it. It’s not even an issue of having the power of free choice. One can be seduced into trying shamanism, or one can avoid it. There are no transcendental principles governing this choice.

NOTE: Nietzsche’s amoralism is viewed most commonly as lauding the rights of the oppressors to oppressor whomever they please. But that view assumes a very morally delimiting perspective, as it makes it out that he was maintaining a moral position on who gets to oppress who. He isn’t.
Bataille’s dalliances with prostitutes have also been criticized for their immorality. But that was precisely the point of Bataille’s actions, to slip out of the grasp of morality.
Thirdly, the idea of renouncing judgement on people would need to acquire a moral motivation since it is a categorical distinction — i.e. that it is a good idea to renounce judgement on others.

Shamanism is not about establishing a moral position but about exploring a psychological void where making moral distinctions has not yet become automatic for you.

Missing from the machine of Western meaningfulness

Bataille had certain ideas about the parts of us that don’t fit into the Western social machinery. In particular, he thought these were decline, deterioration, degeneration, body refuse and non-verbal aspects of expression, such as laughter and tears. So he kept trying to reacquaint us with those aspects. On a serious note, his extremely odd views have helped me a great deal, because aging and deterioration used to frighten me. Now I see them as totally part of life. One does not understand what one has and its relative value, unless one juxtaposes it against its loss. The fact that we will lose our lives gives being alive its value. Failing to understand this, we would walk around like robots, moving from one state of being to another (life to death) but without the capacity for reflection.

The dangers of language

Bataille gets his lessons from language and the danger of too much consciousness from Nietzsche.

The shaman sees both sides of the psychological coin — the advantages pertaining to the early world of paranoid-schizoid consciousness, and those that pertain to the adult state of rationality.

Bataille’s approach, like all shamanistic approaches, seeks to draw dialectic of communication between the two.

 In the paranoid-schizoid state, there are only singularities, with nothing else sufficiently resembling each event enough to acquire the label of being “the same”. It is with this awareness in mind that Bataille rails against the limitations of the “I” that is adopted when we take up language.

The logic of language, which is the inductive method of knowing, makes him seem (to himself) to be one out of all too many human entities who have been linguistically reduced to conceptually simplified forms, rather than the singularity that he knows he is. He finds this “I” to be servile and lacking in the sovereignty that comes from being a singularity — a thoroughly individual self.

Bataille, however, is also keen to use language (the other way of formulating reality) effectively, to convey, if possible, this sense of lack he feels in having to imply that his identity is general and universalisable.

He also expects to fail in his attempt to bridge the two worlds that divide our self-identity, to the degree that we, as readers, lack the capacity to take in a point of view that does not depend on language.

Marechera’s Black Sunlight maintains knowledge of the two different modes of being, building a bridge between the paranoid-schizoid position and language.

Thus  Black Sunlight   expresses a shamanistic position that sees reality as having two very different sides to it.

European and African shamanistic philosophers/writers

I’ve virtually read every book in the house. That would be about 800 books.  Mike had his collection, which he shipped over from the US in sea bags.  I also accumulated mine, particularly as I wrote my PhD.

Mike’s books consist of heavy historical tomes describing and analyzing the nature of communism in the 20th Century and its shortfalls.    My books tend to be by Nietzsche, Bataille, Marechera and assorted other African writers who give a historical context to my thesis.   Mike’s literary interests include the Beat Poets and texts by classical Greek and Roman authors.   My interests are more contemporary, although I don’t read literature these days.   I stopped reading literature after Black Sunlight blew my mind.   Now I rarely read theory, either.

Theory has always held a fascination for me, but now I think I’ve reached it’s outer limits.  In truth, I felt that I was suffering from all the G-force I could take from theory as I approached the completion of my thesis.  I was applying my version of theory to go beyond my limits, opposing my own superego with all the force my mind could muster.  My emotions began to shatter as I made headway into the stratosphere.   My emotions and my will power became counter to each other.   I could barely keep it together as the external shell of the shuttle of my being began to quake.

Part of the reason was de Sade.  I say this now with some degree of certainty, having pulled his tome of collected works off the shelf.   I’d had to do battle with his elements in Nietzsche and Bataille, by trying to formulate a different attitude and solution, as per my “intellectual shamanism” than the woman-hating that the Nietzschean chain supplies.  Immersing oneself in the intellectual logic of woman-hating writers in order to understand them, and then attempting the difficult task of self-extrication from their zeitgeist, with a surge of woman-hating trolls forever on one’s back was not easy.   I determined, finally, that Marechera did have more insight into the psychological repercussions of woman-hating than either of these earlier authors.  In “The Alley”, a short play, he portrayed how wartime contempt for women made the self-image of the soldier as a valiant protector of women and children into a farce.

Marechera has a kind of combativeness that uses psychological insights in order to overthrow attitudes he finds contemptible.   Hierarchical domination is precisely disliked.  One must be honest about one’s psychological states and not pretend that they are other than they seem to be, otherwise one does not face the fact that war inflicts trauma that requires healing.   Of course, the use of psychologically informed political tactics is not new, for they also form a large part of Bataille’s writing.  His predominant trope of facing death, for instance, is a double-edged sword, intended to push individuals to more extreme limits, beyond the circumscribing limits of bourgeois morality.   In Nietzsche’s writing, he offered that the noble elements of European culture were those most accepting of the need to sacrifice themselves; that is, those for whom “the preaching of death was most at home”.   The other edge of the sword is that the subjugated classes would become ungovernable if they effectively (in my terms) “shamanized” and had strange visions.   They could overcome their fear of death and therefore fear no punishment for their behavour.

If Nietzsche was defender of the aristocracy, Bataille wanted revolution for the working class.  Marechera was in some ways more extreme than either of these writers, more aligned with the lumpen proletariat, at least in terms of choice of lifestyle (vagrancy, petty crime).   For all that, Marechera was more deeply shamanistic in his insights — that is, more aware of the degree to which psychology can be used to manipulate political perceptions.    He was also a master of disguises in his own way.   He thought that one could simply become what one imagined being, for instance a Fleet Street photographer (you just need to wear a number of cameras around your neck and pass yourself off as one).

Marechera was also the least sadistic of the chain of writers.    He had no stake in maintaining any form of social hierarchy whatsoever, so there was no need to try to distort perceptions in any way.  He just had to show up the aspects of the psychologies of groups that they were trying to hide.   For instance, the cost of going to war is that one must live with the knowledge of what war does to women.

Although the European writers mentioned are sadistic, Marechera’s writing isn’t, at least it’s far from being so at bottom.   Despite this, his style finds its place in a historical continuum with Bataille’s perspectives.  That is, he uses politically motivated psychological writing in a surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness form.   His writing has the effect of making one feel like one has entered a privileged realm where one is aware of the glorious fragility of life and its sacred nature.

Even if you are atheistic, you can be in awe of what it means to live and breathe and have existence — life may be being squeezed out of you, but you are still here, to watch it and record it.   At this most reductive level, which is where Marechera takes you, there is the quintessence of life.

Such is the author’s shamanistic propensity, that we can eschew sadism from our psychological vocabularies, and still be sure to have adventures and dare ourselves.  Read, for instance, Black Sunlight.

Living the moment of dissolution

I’m reading Nietzsche’s ANTICHRIST again.  I find it perfectly logical.  What can make a difference is the perspective of the reader.   It takes a while to develop the capacity to read it without the lens of contemporary ideologies.   I remember being very much enmeshed in some of the contemporary era ideologies that were invented to smash the left.  You were either on the side of “civilization” or against it.   This kind of reading distorts Nietzsche’s writing so that instead of making logical points, he seems to be taking sides in a political struggle.  To read Nietzsche as making psychological observations, not political ones, gives coherence and intelligibility to his whole approach.

When I consider his opposition to the anarchists, I can reflect from the standpoint of today that I have met many left wingers who seem emotionally weak.  I’ve also met their equivalents on the right.   Nietzsche thought that the disruptive people, who looked to undermine society, were intent to undermine a structure which they could not enjoy anyway, due to their dependent natures.    It wasn’t the society that had something wrong with it, but these agitators themselves did.   Psychologically speaking, I have found this is often true.  It doesn’t work to condemn all agitators as weak personalities, though, because to generalize in that way is only possible by invoking metaphysical — that is theological — principles.   That’s exactly what Nietzsche’s writing wants to avoid.  Rather it seems one should exercise intellectual caution and view everyone on their own merits.

From my point of view, I find Nietzsche’s commentary on those who want to overthrow the established order to have incredibly complex ramifications.   Consider that I had barely become an adult, when my own established order was completely overthrown.   Almost nothing remained, except for a small core of agitators for the extreme right and another skeleton group taking refuge in denial within the protective bubbles of their Christian ideologies.   For me, life itself, in almost every sense that I had known it, had been completely overturned:

negate the rest of the work).[“will to chance,” Bataille]

I immediately saw through the ideological, defensive response, and I only considered the alternative — the hive of right-wing agitators — when the aggressive people of the left had begun attacking me too much.  Primitive emotional responses are common when a defeated enemy (me) is in your grasp.  They’re also common when the prior rulers realize they have been defeated and seek to take revenge for their humiliation.  I’ve experienced this aggression from both sides of politics.   Both have seen me, somehow, as their enemy — someone whom they need to pick on to score points, or prove themselves worthy of their particular political ideologies.

Undoing identity, undoing fascism

Fear and pride predominate at this level of consciousness.

Another trope of shamanism is boundary crossing:

Hell is crossing the railway line

In dark mood on a dark night

Nietzsche and Bataille: motifs of sacrifice

Bataille is a Western thinker, who he has a bit of the Catholic tradition in him, too. It isn’t easy to explain transgression, but it has to do with one’s relationship with one’s Superego. Bataille likens it to “sinning”. To try to give you some idea, if one just conforms with what one has been taught to do, since childhood, one can be very moral, but one does not encounter the sacred. To have a fresh encounter with the sacred one has to go against the grain of what one has been taught is right since childhood. It’s not a matter of going against one’s conditioned ethics on principle, or in the abstract. To the contrary, what one is really doing is challenging one’s limitations. It can be very easy to be “good” in a passive sense. But there is a kind of goodness that transcends this passive sense of being good. By being “bad” (that is, using active, rather than passive energy), one goes beyond all earlier, naïve conceptions of goodness — especially goodness as passive compliance to one’s authorities and their demands. One discovers a different way of looking at the world. The experience that allows the world to open up to you more than before is related to the sacred.

Georges Bataille

One aspect of his thought that seems to enrage a lot of people is his idea of mystical experience, which he expresses as a form of ‘non-knowledge” that nonetheless has a structure. He begins some of his papers with the suggestion that he will now proceed to talk about non-knowledge and that he will not be able to describe it in language, because language itself is about knowledge and what the non-knowledge conveys is definitively non-linguistic.
He says, “I have failed to convey my sense of non-knowledge all the previous times I’ve tried to explain it and I will fail this time, too.”
You’ve got to love the French and their sense of irony. There is nothing French without irony.
As I said, this kind of irony makes some non-French people very angry and also very suspicious. “What is he trying to do? Is he a crypto-fascist?” they murmur under their breaths.

ego reification

Nietzsche, Bataille and the philosophy of self-destruction

What shamanistic systems do that moralistic systems do not is to put you into a relationship with yourself. Moralistic systems are actually designed to avoid this, since they are constructed in order to prevent you from succumbing to harm/danger, but one cannot learn anything in relation to oneself without risking oneself.

You solitary one, you go the way of the creator: you will create a god for yourself out of your seven devils! You solitary one, you go the way of the lover: you love yourself, and on that account you despise yourself, as only the lover can despise. The lover wants to create because he despises! What does he know of love who has not despised that which he loved! With your love and with your creating go into your solitude, my brother; only much later will justice limp after you. With my tears, go into your solitude, my brother. I love him who seeks to create beyond himself, and thus perishes. [Nietzsche/Zarathustra (emphasis mine).]

In HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN, Nietzsche also says that intellectual truth has nothing in common with morality.  Group based morality preserves human nature, but it is intellectually in error.

 Is there a desire to transcend the human, here, and is it part of Nietzsche’s Icarian complex? To transcend one’s humanity is to destroy oneself.
Bataille was at least more explicit as to what his Nietzschean proclivities involved. To go against morality — to transgress — was explicitly to self-destruct. The fall from grace is forever. Bataille held that Nietzsche’s quest for self-destruction was indirect and thus unconscious  — an “Icarian complex”. Bataille’s philosophical paradigm makes out that self-destruction ought be undertaken in a way that is conscious and understands that human destruction is inevitable. Not only is it inevitable to the degree that we must necessarily transgress against morality in order to “find ourselves”, but it is also so in that we are mortal creatures, doomed to die. So, by embracing this reality directly (rather than indirectly, as Nietzsche does) we can — paradoxically as it happens, for human nature is contradictory and paradoxical — actualise our own natures more fully.

Common to both Nietzsche and Bataille is the following paradoxical understanding of human nature and philosophical dialectic:  conventional moral systems have a  preservative effect on humanity, but at the cost of truth as well as at the cost of creative self actualisation.  Not to seek to preserve oneself is, by contrast, the way to individual self-actualisation, but at the cost of admitting self-destruction.

Left fascism? My left foot!

The self-hatred of the lower classes is expressed in their desire for political self-transcendence. They do not want to be what they “are”, but what the ruling classes represent, to them. As Fanon saw, this higher level of being can be codified as whiteness. It can be codified in terms of certain kinds of upper class mannerisms, or what have you.

Since power is predominantly masculine in Western culture, Freud could codify women’s desire for power as “penis envy”. In any case, the desire for transcendence is the desire to be more (and, ultimately, different) from what one is.

That is why making libido connect not with transcendence but, instead, with immanence (as Bataille –whom Wolin mistakenly casts as a “left fascist” does) is potentially destructive of any hierarchical social order.

But perhaps I am reading too much into the mainly psychological musings of Bataille?

Concerning the future

If postmodernism is not a program for the future, then those who teach its ideas ought to be extremely aware of this. The future ought not to be left in the hands of those who do have a program for it, such as those on the extreme right.

What is good about Nietzsche is his injunction to “live dangerously”. Bataille, who in turn proclaims “I am Nietzsche” suggests that we depart from what we know into a realm of experience where nothing is decided. Bataille’s injunction, although mystical sounding, was for people to break out of the impasse made up of ideology and convention.

Postmodernism, although having links with Nietzschean “perspectivism” is devoid of the logic of the overall Nietzschean project, which was to create a different kind of human being for the future. It kids itself that it is revolutionary, whilst remaining in a Prufrockian bubble, separated from the realm of experience:

“Do I dare

Disturb the universe?”

By contrast, shamanism has the nerve to want to experience the “thing in itself”. This is impossible, according to Kant. But it is this very impossibility that is attractive and which somehow gives shamanistic practitioners their sense of meaning. There is a wish to explore “the abyss” and if necessary become wrecked within this void.

The spirit of shamanism and the spirit of postmodernism are almost opposite. The first is incautious, audacious and foolhardy. The second is accepting of convention, timid, and often moralising.

The dogma of "woman versus reason"

Our quintessential problem  is the way that the idea of “woman” as as such has been encoded, culturally and psychologically, by patriarchal systems. A lot of our rhetorical fire is absolutely wasted, just because of the reflex that patriarchy reproduces in people, that “woman = irrationality”.

Feminists can take a lot of time pointing out that woman are being treated badly, that our treatment is extremely irrational, but ultimately what registers in people’s minds is that the object, woman as such, is an irrational object, and hence that it is not logically possible to treat an irrational object in a rational way.

The reason patriarchies encode “woman = irrationality” is because of the relationship that males have with their sex drives. They must often experience the need to repress their sexuality in order to embrace “reason”.  From this, comes the feeling that sexuality is opposed to reason. Equating “woman” as such with one’s sexual feelings is a small leap for most men, leading them to the patriarchal conclusion that “woman” and “reason” are diametrically opposed.

Protest as we will, our criticisms fall on deaf ears. Those men who are imbued with patriarchal values and perspectives already implicitly understand that women are not treated in a rational or reasonable fashion. But they also take if for granted that it is simply not possible to do so, given the formula:  woman = irrationality/my sex drive.

Of course, the principle works in the opposite direction, too:  men who treat their sex drive as an irrational part of themselves will have difficulty finding willing sex partners or enjoying sex.

The Icarian complex

The Icarian complex involves a determination to reach the heights through moral transcendence. It is not a complex if it is balanced with an ability to stay “down to earth”, or to return there.  If not, however, it is very much a part of patriarchal religious measures.    Let me try to explain how.

One edifice of patriarchal ideology is the always indirectly stated notion on the part of a patriarchal male that “women are responsible for my thought processes.”  As a structure of thought, patriarchal thinking always that it remains itself forever impure because of this tacit premise: the patriarch asserts: “My masculinity would be more pure, more virile, if women were not interfering in my thought processes. Only then would the world really see what I have to offer to it — my magnificence!”

Patriarchal cultures therefore seek to purge, to cleanse, patriarchal society of this putative, insidious “woman influence”.

Various methods are tried, some with greater success at eliminating women than other methods have been. Shaming women, forcing them to cover up, treating them as if they were intellectual infants, killing them because one feels “shame” as a result of their attracting dishonour, forcing them into the house and into silence — all such methods are supposed to release the transcendental male spirit, so that we can see it once and for all.

Despite his often ferocious methods of trying to disentangle himself from his necessary social and historical contingency, which the patriarchal male associates with “femininity”, he is unable to purify himself using his chosen methods. He wants to fly up above the contamination of the fleshly body, but he is heading for a shock. This is because his impurity does not come from women, but from the his own mind, which projects non-transcendent aspects of experience outward and downward and appears to see them as if they came from there.  The insidious influences of life that lead to his sense of “impurity”come from himself alone.


"This plant is the 'laboratory rat' of the molecular plant world," says Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at QUT. "We think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties."

The researchers liken the plant to "nude mice". These are lab mice that have a genetic mutation that results in a greatly reduced number of T cells and therefore an inhibited immune system. This means the mice don't mount a rejection response when receiving different types of tissue and tumor grafts, making them ideals for use in medical research.

The team's discovery of the gene responsible for the plant's lack of an immune system means it is now possible to transfer this trait to other plants.

"Scientists can now know how to turn other species into 'nude mice' for research purposes," says Prof. Waterhouse. "So just as nude mice can be really good models for cancer research, 'nude' versions of crop plants could also speed up agricultural research."

The team's paper appears in the journal Nature Plants.

Prof. Waterhouse and lead researcher Dr Julia Bally explain the breakthrough in the video below.

Source: QUT


Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 14

Toyota’s power steering IC; silicon-on-nothing finFETs; nanowire FETs.

Toyota’s power steering IC

In automobiles, the EPS is handled by an electric control unit (ECU). It consists of a boost converter and a three-phase inverter to drive a three-phase brushless motor, according to Toyota. A switching power supply controller, which produces a gate drive voltage, is also required.

Toyota itself has developed a driver IC for EPS applications. The ASIC has been fabricated using an in-house SOI-BCD process, which can operate at the maximum voltage of 80V and at temperature from -40°C to 175°C.

The ASIC drives both the high- and low-side devices in the power-module. “The ASIC for the EPS application is integrated (in) the gate drivers of a boost converter and (a) three-phase inverter,” according to Toyota. “Each phase has a power terminal and GND terminal. The chip size of the ASIC is 3.8mm × 3.6mm.”

Silicon-on-nothing finFETs
IBM, STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries have developed several manufacturing techniques to enable a dielectric isolated (DI) finFET.

A DI finFET is basically a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) finFET. Two technologies—including a bottom oxidation through STI (BOTS) and a silicon-on-nothing (SON) process—can be used to fabricate DI finFETs. DI finFETs are also made on inexpensive bulk substrates, as opposed to a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate.

“Dielectric Isolated (DI) finFETs exhibit superior electrostatic control compared to bulk finFET without needing heavy sub-fin punch-through stop doping, which increases device variability,” according to a recent paper from the three companies.

In the BOTS process, a silicon fin is first formed on a bulk substrate. This is done using local oxide isolation, which partly fills the gaps between the fins. Then, a thin capping nitride is deposited on the sides of the fin and above the hard mask.

“After opening the thin nitride layer on horizontal surfaces with an anisotropic etch, local oxide isolation is removed and the exposed silicon is pulled-back laterally with an isotropic etch,” according to the paper. “Gaps between fins are filled with oxide–an important step for mechanical stability. The bottom of the fins are oxidized from two sides until the active fin is isolated from the substrate. Capping nitride and part of the oxide are removed, leaving the fin standing on oxide.”

Meanwhile, in the alternative SON finFET process, a fin is formed by etching a tri-layer Si/SiGe/Si stack instead of plain silicon. “Subsequently the gate and the spacers are formed, mechanically anchoring the fin. Selective etching with HCl removes only the SiGe but not the silicon, creating a tunnel between the active fin and the substrate. Finally, the tunnel is filled with dielectric material such as oxide. The final fin is electrically isolated from the substrate,” according to the paper.

Nanowire FETs
Nanowire transistors are one of the futuristic candidates in the next-generation transistor race. In some respects, nanowire transistors are 3D-like devices, in which the nanowires are stacked on top of each other.

Previously, CEA-Leti and others have demonstrated a uniaxially-strained, Ω-gate nanowire transistor. Using a strain silicon-on-insulator (sSOI) process for the NFET, researchers developed a device with 10nm gate lengths.

In its latest work, CEA-Leti, along with STMicroelectronics and Soitec, have advanced the technology. Researchers have developed an Ω-gate nanowire PFETs on a compressively-strained–SiGe-on-insulator (cSGOI) substrate. Using germanium (GE) enrichment techniques, researchers developed devices down to 15nm.

In the flow, the cSGOI process starts with the epitaxy of a 12nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) film on a 300mm blanket SOI wafer. Then, the device undergoes the channel formation process, followed in order by active patterning, gate stack (high-k/metal-gate), spacer one formation, in-situ boron doping of the raised source/drain, implant, anneal, and a compressively-strained step.

The cSGOI substrates are fabricated with a Ge content of 20%, according to researchers. The SiGe thickness under the HfSiON/TiN gate is 11.5nm. “The hole mobility improvement provided by the strong uniaxial compressive strain coming from cSiGe and cCESL leads to an ION current improvement of 95% at LG=15nm,” according to the paper. “SGOI nanowires based on a Ge enrichment technique show high-performance (ION=860μA/μm at IOFF=14nA/μm) with excellent electrostatics (DIBL=110mV/V).”


Recovering monitoring instruments from the sea-floor - without a diver!

On September 1st our Enterprise crew assisted Professor Kristen Davis of UCI and Geno Pawlak of UCSD in recovering their ADCP sensors from their positions at the ranch. They were collecting detailed data on current direction and magnitude from the bottom to the surface. This data was collected continuously from initial deployment on 5/17/2017. This 107 day deployment provides detailed information on the wave activity at the ranch, as well as indication of any potential impact on local currents the ranch may be having. Additionally, a vertical mooring of 14 oceanographic sensors (temperature, salinity, chlorophyll levels) was recovered.

The unique aspect of this recovery was the use of our BlueROV2 from Blue Robotics, without any assistance from divers. On past sensor recoveries the ROV would locate the target, and 3rd party divers would recover the hardware by attaching a lift line from the Enterprise crane. This time, a prototype spring-clip carabiner was brought by the ROV to the targets, both locating and capturing the device on a single dive. Check out the action below!


Questions To Ask At Bathroom Remodeling In New Jersey

Sticking out Bathroom Remodeling In New Jersey of the wall and that’s the wall you want to move this could be extremely costly and time-consuming so let’s just reiterate on if you really need to remove a wall or move it you know we have structural problems plumbing electrical pipes that could be in the way and it’s not going to be an easy an easy task most of the time now I do actually know of one person who removed a wall and made their bathroom a little larger and then took the other post section of the bedroom.

And made it into a master bedroom so a closet so they had a three bedroom house and now they have a two bedroom house one of these has in the master bedroom has a larger closet and on the other side of that they made the bathroom a little larger but at the same time this could affect the value of your home you can imagine selling a two-bedroom house or a three.

Three-bedroom house could be could cost you a little bit of money if you actually do something like that so just don’t forget about moving the walls with the problems I just said but if you do move a wall what are you actually doing to the other room you know if you’re gonna pop the wall out on the outside and build a room addition for something like that this would be different you’d be getting more living space but if you’re going to move a wall on the inside of the home you could actually.

Affect the space on the room on the other side and keep keep in mind that there are minimum requirements for building codes for certain room sizes tip number nine and here’s another one that can add a few dollars to your budget and that would be getting.


Data mining in organization: the concepts, tools and techniques, and the benefits

Essay add: 27-11-2017, 17:26   /   Views: 8

1. Introduction

Data is vital. It is the strength for organization success in today's modern organizations. Data comes in various sources and forms such as paper documents and electronic formats. And it is provide an imperative role in underneath decision making in many organizations as it crucial to lead to more productivity, faster problem solving and improved organizational performance. We will look further about data mining that is a relatively new portion of information management that offers immense guarantee for production sense of large data sets. Data mining is concern with determining new and meaningful information, so that decisions makers can learn as much as that they can from their data assets. As the result of rapid growth in data and database, there's a need to develop new technologies and tools to develop data into practical and valuable information. Therefore data mining has become importance debate in the area of research nowadays.

2. Data Mining and Data Warehouse concepts

Data mining is the process of using model identification technologies such as neural networks and inherent algorithm to establish actionable and significant patterns, profiles and developments by run through organizational data. Data mining also can be described as the hunt for priceless information in large amount of data. It explores for concealed relationship, patterns, connections, and interdependencies in large databases that may fail to notice in conventional information congregation techniques. In other words, data mining can be describes as automated recognition of relevant patterns in a database. Other author, Reeves (1995) identifies data mining as the method of pertaining artificial intelligence techniques to large data set in order to verify patterns in the data.

Meanwhile data warehouse are much related from database or can be considered as a huge physical databases that stored a large volume of information from a variety of resources. It is basically repository for relevant business data. Mattison described data warehouse as a database that prepared to provide as impartial data storage area as well as exploited by data mining and other applications. Besides that data warehouse assemble a specific set of business necessities and uses data that gather to predefine a set of business criteria.

Data warehouse is one of the important research areas related to data mining. Data warehouse was developed in purposed for evaluating business situations as well as aid in supporting decision making. Data warehouse consists of large volumes of information and data from variety of sources pertaining to organization and can be access in timely manner. In the meantime, data mining goes collectively with data warehouse to systematize past information gathered from major clients or server based applications. Therefore, data mining can add values to the information assets through successful orientation of large corporate data warehouse. The relationship formed between data mining and data warehouse improves the efficiencies and excellence of judgments permits by decision makers to influence their massive data assets (Baron and Smith, 1997).

In recent years, business databases have developed vastly, but the capabilities for analyzing such large amounts of data have not developed at the same rate as the capabilities of collecting and storing data. As a result, businesses are becoming increasingly concerned with the study of knowledge discovery methods. Data mining is an interactive process that involves assembling the data into a format conducive to analysis. Once the data are configured, they must be cleaned by checking for obvious errors or flaws and simply removing them. Once the data are mined to establish patterns or make predictions, the results must be tested and verified. This involves testing models on test data sets to see how well they match. If the data are verified, must then be put into terms that the business user can use easily.

Moreover one of the most important business goals of data mining is breakthrough or classifying new patterns within the data. Besides that data mining goals also is aim to offer client with a spontaneous, graphical tool for creating new scrutinizes and steer the data warehouse. Apart from that, it also aims to facilitate focal point of the user's analysis so that the relevant and important information can be acquired quicker and more effectively and efficiently.

Data mining characteristics

After discuss the concepts of data mining and it relationship with data warehouse we will move to the characteristic of data mining. The foremost characteristics of data mining are as follows:

* Data pattern determination. It is a data access language or data manipulation language (DMLs) which identifies the exact data that the users wish for to draw into the program for processing or display.

* Formatting capability. Data mining also has a sturdy formatting capability where it capable of produces raw data configures, database form, tabular, multidimensional display and visualization.

* Content analysis capability. It refers to in the term of facilitating client to process the provisions written by the end user.

* Synthesis capability. Data mining has a strong synthesis capability which it permits data synthesis to be well-timed executed.

3. Data Mining Tools and Techniques

Data mining is imperative to organizations because it conveys a great prospective to aid the companies onto removal of concealed extrapolative information from large databases and make possible to focus on the most important information in their data warehouses. There a lot of data mining tools and techniques reviewed by other literature in the field. A number of authors prefer to use data mining tools while another number have a preference to identify it as data mining techniques, nevertheless in essence it is identical and not differentiated far from another. While converse about data mining tools and techniques it is essential to know that it can forecast future inclinations and behaviors hence allowing organizations to compose upbeat, knowledge-driven decision. By employing data mining methods to organizations it can bring knowledge workers to the next coherent step in data analysis by compliant even deeper insights than those presented by production reports, managed queries and executive information systems.

The explicit approaches of data mining steps however differ from one organization to organizations and researchers to another researcher. But generally there are three major steps in data mining. First is to prepare the data, then diminish the data and finally gazing for precious information. Examples below by Fayyad et al. (1996) suggested the following steps:

1) Regaining the data from a large database.

2) Choosing the appropriate detachment to work with

3) Deciding on the suitable sampling system, clean-up the data and commerce with absent fields and records.

4) Applying the right alterations, dimensionality reduction and ledges.

5) Fitting models to the preprocessed data.

3.1 Categorizing Data Mining Techniques

Various literatures have highlight many data mining that used in the many organizations. There are numbers of data mining techniques and system that have been developed and proposed and designed. Every single one of it can be categorizing and classified based on databases, the information to be revealed, and the procedures to be utilized. Chen et al. (1996) has outlined one of the classification techniques to classify data mining techniques.

· Based on database

A data mining system can be classified based on the category of database for what it is intended for. Organizations use many database systems to support their activities such as transaction database, multimedia database web database and many more. If data mining system determines knowledge from relational database then it is considered as a relational data mining system.

· Based on the knowledge

Data mining system can find out a variety of types of knowledge and also can be graded according to generalization level of the discovered knowledge. It can be classified into common knowledge, primal-level knowledge and compound-level knowledge.

· Based on the techniques

Data mining system can be classified by data according to its principal mining approach such as pattern-based mining, integrated approaches and other approaches.

3.2 Major data mining tools and techniques

Some of the tools used in data mining are straightforward, succinct and easy to employ algorithms that model non arbitrary relationship in huge amount of data. Stirred and aspired by diverse paradigms there is wide range of data mining tools. The most commonly used including Artificial Intelligence methods (Firebaugh, 1998), Decision Trees (Ginsberg, 1993), Genetic Algorithm (Koza, 1992), Back propagation (Wasserman, 1989), Rule Induction Methods (Michalski et al., 1983), Visualization, Hybrid Systems and Artificial Neural Networks (Vemuri, 1988; Chester, 1993).

Every each data mining tools share some familiar characteristics to one another although they approaches the data from different standpoint. Each adaptively progresses as the model gain knowledge from the data set and more knowledge is accumulated. Common characteristics are every techniques have a training phase (discover patterns and relationships hidden in historical data set) and followed by an implementation phase (model is executed). For the most part these techniques need more than an external knowledge of the raw data. This is essential in order to appropriately preprocess the data, decide the right technique for the organization and comprehend the results. A diverse range of data mining tools and techniques is now presented and used in common organizations for further understanding.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Techniques

This data mining techniques are broadly utilized in data mining. The techniques used in AI mostly related to the diverse progression steps in data mining such as pattern recognition, machine learning, neural networks, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and search. Case-based reasoning drawn chronological cases to distinguish patterns, meanwhile the intelligent agent approach utilizes a computer program to move through data are other AI techniques that can be exploited for data mining.

Decision Trees

Decision trees are three-shaped structures that embody set of decisions. It used a simple tree model where at every stem during tree growth the data set is deliberately separated into different classes and subclasses. It able to produce rules for the classification of a data set. And can be also used successfully to acquire a gut to sense the data when the knowledge hunter needs a fast and soiled exploratory partitioning of the data set. Decision trees are uncomplicated to understand, straightforward to construct and simple to clarify whereas it offer knowledge to user perceptive, high level and very understandable overviews of the structure and organization of their data set. Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and Chi Square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) are among the specific decision tree methods used for the classification of data.

Genetic Algorithm

The strong point of this technique are that it is an easy to clarify, robust, and by instinct interesting model which scrutinizes the search space with a broad encounter and can easily handle multidimensional problems. This technique was inspired from Darwin's theory of evolution and used optimization techniques in process such as genetic combination, mutation and neural selection. A pair of rules each representing a probable clarification to a problem is originally formed at random. Then the pairs of rules are merging to produce offspring for the next generation. A mutation processed is used to random modify the genetic structures of some members of each new generation then the system runs for dozens or hundreds of generations. The process is terminated when acceptable or optimum solution is found or after some fixed time limit. Generic algorithm is practical for finding solutions to firm optimization problems with respect to some computable criterion. One of the advantages of using this technique is that numerous possibilities can be recommended as solutions.

This visual data mining technique has demonstrated the significance in probing data analysis and they also have a good probable for mining large databases. Visualization is the process of clearly presenting the result found using data mining tools and the best approach of presenting complex interdependencies among various attributes for catching an intuitive feeling of the data and knowledge resulting from the analysis. It allows users to quickly assesses and make sense of the vast amount of data. Users can easily evaluate, rescale and get an overview when using this technique. These technique can be used standalone or in various combinations for visualizing multidimensional datasets (scatter plot matrices, parallel coordinates, projections matrices etc.) either in two and three dimensional images.

Rule Induction Method

This technique used statistical discovery method to expand system which depends on the occurrence of relationship, the rate of accurateness and the accurateness of calculation. Rule induction also is the mining of useful if then rules from data based on statistical significance. This technique is highly unsupervised, yet they do necessitate that the rules generated be assessed by experts. Besides that, this technique is frequently exploited when new rules need to be created. Firstly, simple rules are created based on set statistics, followed by more complex rules are formed and joint with old rules via standard rule combining techniques. As rule induction deems all possibilities, it requires continuous expert assessment of the rules generated by the system which can be a very lengthy and costly exercise.

Back propagation

It is based on the biological theory of learning and memory creation using a highly interrelated group of neurons (or nerves). Such models attempt to mimic brain activity by adapting the weights of the interconnections among the neurons in the network allowing learning and memory creation to take place. Back prop systems are highly supervised. The back prop neural network model is ideal for prediction and classification in situations where there are good deals of historic data available for training. The strengths of this technique are that it can grip multidimensional data, it is vigorous and it can handle noisy data.

4. Benefits of data mining

Data mining is now getting accepted and widespread use because of the solid reimbursement it offers such as the accurate credentials of buying trends and the accurate characterization of market segments. Data mining is important in particular to organizations that crave to develop outfitted and added accessible data to improve the excellence of decision making and increase critical competitive advantages. Data mining has given a lot of advantages to the organizations. Benefits to organization can be discussed in many aspects such as effectiveness, quality as well as the cost of employing data mining.

In term of effectiveness, data mining users can appraise it by testing it strength, determining the precision of the output and investigating its expounding power. An excellent method of data mining should be scalable, extensible and flexible to meet up the requirements of strategic development due to a continuously growing data mining as well as to new sources of outside data access.

The excellence, security, comprehensiveness, authority, reliability and relevance of the data in the warehouse influence a great extent on explanatory power and its accuracy. Therefore signify of the quality of data mining. The degree of the data quality plays a significant effect on the outcome of a model.

Knowledge worker also gain benefits in employing data mining in organizations as they improved relevance and flexibility of information due to both swift model development and the accumulated value of a continuously evolving model. Besides that, by using data mining in organizations, users can increase their efficiencies, productivity and the quality of decision making. The accurateness of prediction and overall decision making also becomes more effective and successful to the organizations. When talking about the overall cost of utilizing data mining is an expensive and long-term proposition it is a better alternative then embracing older technologies or doing nothing at all. Grasping the data assets to retrieve the highest possible payoff is worthwhile since even a little enhancement can turn out to be a significant benefit to the organization.

The application of data mining techniques to customer databases in organization also has directly impacted the area of marketing extensively. The most imperative impact has been the rise of database marketing. Managers nowadays gain benefits from it and now seeking ways to move their focus away from making the right products to targeting the existing product to the right customers. The tools are used to forecast customer actions by predicting which customer will be most responsive to promotional and sales campaigns hence increase the total revenue of organizations.

Data mining applications also has gain benefits in many areas such as finance, telecommunication, marketing and web analysis. The summarized benefits of data mining are as follows:

1. correct data identification and scrutiny improve the quality of decision making

2. strong direction-finding, calculation, synthesis capabilities make it possible to achieve critical competitive advantages

3. relevant information is acquired quicker and the time is used more effectively.

5. Conclusion

A rise to extraordinary new applications of customer information is just the effect of the boost database technology and just as the efficiency of mass marketing is declining. The processes of data collection and mining are multifarious but well valuable to organizations. The new technologies have had a massive impact on how businesses market products to customers. Data mining and data warehouse strategy in organizations is critical in realizing competitive advantages through the effective use of information. Knowledge workers must comprehend how the organization accesses and uses data and how business intelligence tools can be useful to attain organizational goals. Data mining and data warehouse alters data into information in a reliable and intellectual manner across organizations. It is importance as a major shared asset of the organization. Clearly, data mining will be one of the foremost competitive edges of organizations. Understanding data mining concepts and techniques are very useful and important in organizations.

Article name: Data mining in organization: the concepts, tools and techniques, and the benefits essay, research paper, dissertation


Monday, April 28, 2014

Social Media and Governance

Contrary to what may appear in the first view, social media is not and should not be regarded as an anathema to good governance. Good governance is about creating a public space which lends inclusion to civil society and provides for an effective interaction with the state and its various organs. Civil Society has the potential to drive the good governance agenda through communication, providing a balance between messages that have their origin within and without the government.
Social media has changed the landscape of social engagement. We are now in a hyper connected world - the ICT Facts and Figures (2013) show a continued and almost universal growth in ICT uptake. In 2013, there are almost as many mobile-cellular subscriptions as people in the world, with more than half in the Asia-Pacific region (3.5 billion out of 6.8 billion total subscriptions). Mobile-cellular penetration rates stand at 96%globally; 128%in developed countries; and 89%in developing countries. In 2013, over 2.7 billion people are using the Internet, which corresponds to 39% of the world’s population. These figures illustrate that online computing and communication have become ubiquitous, this unprecedented connectivity coupled with Smartphones and Tablets have revolutionised Social Media Consumption.
The Arab Spring in 2011 would probably be remembered as a landmark event – a signal of the enormous impact that social media could have by weaving together discrete events into a singular force which shook the middle east and caused long entrenched regimes across the region to fall. There were revolutions before, but this was the one which leveraged the power of new tools and the technology- of the internet and social media. In its most simplistic understanding of the entire series of events, social media helped save time by fostering quicker linkages between thought leaders and ordinary people to create a rapidly growing network of people willing to act.   A paradigm shift has happened since, it is not only the government of the day, or the big money which makes opinions and controls outcomes, but it is the new communities and groups- often linked up across national borders- which are in the position to call the shots as well.
The social media platforms are enabling in many ways and they have by making use of highly accessible and scalable communication techniques offered a voice to those excluded from the political discourse- the communication has now turned into an interactive dialogue. There is now a vast amount of user- generated content on social media platforms which express ideas, opinions and share hope in a global way. Many of these ideas and opinions articulate and identify the community’s needs and/ or measure the government’s performance. It helps improve the citizen’s understanding and awareness of their rights and augments their capacity to engage in public dialogue and public affairs. This, hopefully should translate into more transparent and a more responsive governance.
United Nations
The UN E-Government Survey 2012 notes the increasing role of e-government in promoting inclusive and participatory development has gone hand-in-hand with the growing demands for transparency and accountability in all regions of the world. E- government has strongly shifted expectations of what governments can and should do, using modern information and communication technologies, to strengthen public service and advance equitable, people-centred development. This report shows that with the right institutional framework, policies and capacity-building efforts, progress in enhancing the contributions of e-government to sustainable development is within reach. The report also observes that leveraging social media for the benefit of e-service uptake is another area where a greater effort can make a difference since currently only 40 per cent of Member States are using a social networking site.
The communication with citizens on social media platforms could be direct when expressed on pages/ forums owned by the government departments themselves or it could be facilitated through intermediary actors like the professional media on platforms hosted by them, but the latter would presuppose the presence of a self- regulated, active and a responsible professional media sector.
The widespread use of social media and its increasing importance as a tool for communication underscore the need to set up guidelines for social media interaction with government organizations to optimize its use as a tool to connect with citizens. The need to set up key signposts in any such interaction is identified as a requirement for corporations and other entities trying to use the social media platforms as well.  This has led to evolution of social media policies and as the study of one such social media policy database would suggests, there are certain core values like not divulging non-public information, taking non- partisan political stands, expectations of a basic level of civility etc. which find a reflection right through.
In India too, many government departments like the Ministry of External Affairs, Delhi Traffic Police etc. have engaged on social media platforms with the citizens. With this increasing engagement, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY) has in September 2011 laid down the approved social media policy framework  after due consultations. This framework encourages officials while commenting on issues to clearly identify her/himself in professional capacity, refrain from making personal comments or comments about draft legislations/sub-judice matters, emphasise politeness, not to reveal personal details of self or others and be open to both positive and negative comments though it may not be essential to respond to all of them.
Political processes are, essentially, communication processes, on-going dialogues between people, parties, pressure groups and governments. The political environment shapes the way in which communications work with regard to governance. Providing the right information is the key to fostering social awareness and facilitating democratic participation. However, it is never a given that the right or accurate information will spread automatically. State or non- state actors can as easily monopolise and manipulate communication to spread messages which provoke fear, violence and hinder development. This is latent threat of manipulation exists as much on social media communication as it does on more traditional means of communicating.
For the government, social media creates a means to improve governance by allowing information to rapidly transfuse; it opens up access to government officials, creates possibilities for new community based initiatives’ as well as saves time and money. For the citizen, it allows them to better public services and collaborate across government departments to bring change and highlight new imperatives for policy. Social media is not a homogenous, indistinguishable whole- these are user- centred organisations and self- organising networks and can be used to deliver public value effectively. The prerequisite is that the communication has to be put into the right social channel to target the intended clientele (for example LinkedIn will not carry a message to teens).  Social media strategy has to be a part of the overall communication mix and will require some reorientation and attitudinal changes to be effectively used by governments.

1 comment:


Author: J.D. Vance

Data: Harper, 272 pages, $27.99

The convoluted, rustic upbringing of author J.D. Vance is well chronicled in the pages of the best-seller “Hillbilly Elegy.”

The story takes place in part of the Rust Belt that includes southern Ohio and Kentucky, a region that had a great impact in our last presidential election. These two areas are where the author was forced to move back and forth during his childhood before joining the Marines after high school.

The frequent moves were caused primarily by his mother’s unstable married life, and allow the author to vividly describe the values and habits of the regions’ hillbilly existence.

A stint in the Marines puts purpose in the author’s life and allows him to see his recent past from afar. There’s an emotional scene he recalls in Afghanistan, handing out school supplies to children in a village. He gives out an eraser to a child and witnesses how ecstatic the child becomes when he receives it. This helps him realize that some of the negative thoughts he’s been having about his life back home are a waste of time, and allows him to focus on starting college when he’s discharged.

But perhaps the more timely prose comes from the descriptions of rampant drug use, unemployment and the erosion of families that act as a ball-and-chain attached to the Rust Belt population. There’s a belief of many that live there that the white working class has been wronged by the government. It’s this attitude, he argues, that is holding them back from escaping the hillbilly stereotype and moving forward with their lives, something the author eventually does.

There is also a certain pride that bonds hillbillies together, but it’s eroded by the lack of family stability. Many are forced to relocate but their difficulties following them from place to place. Political scientists seeking to understand why this sect of America voted the way it did in the last election might understand why white working class voters began leaving the Democratic Party during the Nixon era. It’s because they no longer felt the party reflected who they are.

The author concludes by offering no simple solutions. Instead, he suggests that well-intended government subsidies should instead realign themselves to better serve the Rust Belt population.

The book is a sharp first-person account of hillbilly lives, written by a living, breathing participant in their day-to-day existence. It gives a better understanding of what this group was thinking about when they went to the polls.

Ben Klemer lives in San Marco.


design challenge

During the minor Interface and User Experience Design I have worked, as a part of Team Hopscotch, on a project for the Dutch agency CLEVER°FRANKE. Against the backdrop of globalization, cities are increasingly challenged to maintain sustainable economic development and a livable urban environment that ensures quality of life for its inhabitants.

Whether big or small, it will be ‘smart cities’ making the difference in the future. Part of these smart cities will be sensor networks that continuously monitor the quality of the environment. The goal of our assignment was to design how environmental data could influence when and where people go for their outdoor activities. This case study I will explain the the process and my role in it.

How could environmental data influence workouts?

An essential part of the process was the research phase. To tackle this complicated challenge we used various methodes to get to know the context and the audience. We spoke with experts from different kinds of organizations en we interviewed sport app users. To validate our insights we conducted desk- and literature research. All these events led to insights which we formulated in Insight Cards.

Exploring the user journeys

To explore as much of the possible solutions we chose to formulate three seperate directions for the concept tackling different needs of the users. So concepts focussing on influencing where, when and how to complete the outdoor activity. To make a decision which concepts suits the user the best we interviewed several users and discussed our insights with the client. Read the user stories of the concepts below. After validating them with the client and the users we chose the concept focussing on when to go for an activity. The most important reason is that the time aspect ensures significant differences in air quality, while the location based concept would not be able to show significant differences in advice.

This concept is based on the need of users to start an activity from home. The function will be visible when the user has already decided to go for, for example a run. Beforehand the app gives you a direction to go to based on environmental data.

This concept allows users to have a laid-back attitude towards environmental factors influencing their health and activity. You will receive a route based on your preferences and past runs from other users.

Who should we design for?

The key moment in the process was the realisation that we should design for an audience that is really affected by the most basal environmental data. Aspects like temperatures, humidity and air pollution do not influence the average people's breathing that much. However for a Asthmatic or anybody with lung issues it could trigger breathing problems. This is how we decided to focus our product on Asthmatic people. This choice and change of focus had a lot of impact on our concept, as well as our process. We needed to go back in to our research and replete this with more knowlegde about our target group and their disease.

So, to compose an accurate and personal index based on the individual user, we defined a formula in which we consider the completed intake and the current data. Besides the general limits, which apply to everyone, the formula formulates personal limits for each aspect. There is for example an recommended limit of PM10 exposure of pollution for everyone, but when the user is more sensitive the limit will be adjusted.

* Data from World Health Organisation

So let's present Coach:

The Intake

Getting to know each other

As an Interaction Designer I had a part in trying to make the intake as fluent as possible. With the trend of Conversatonial Design coming up, we figured this would be a great way to engage the user to our service from the first moment.


Lilian van eyken homeopathy

Homeopathy is a method of healing which has been around for years, and is based on the principle of treating ;..‘like with like’...

what that means is, that if you have certain ailments or symptoms, there is always something in nature that matches those symptoms.

What is important in homeopathy, is that you take the totality of symptoms, in other words, not just one detail, or one symptom.

Thats why when you visit a homeopath, you will be asked questions about your physical, emotional and your spiritual wellbeing.

The homeopath then creates an image of a total being, as i always say to my patients,it is like a jigsaw.; then the homeopath will find a homeopathic remedy that matches your unique pattern, and will look for remedies in either the plant, animal, mineral kingdom.

By giving a remedy  that is a total match , you actually activate the person’s own healing energy, because the remedy works like a key in a lock...

And because  we only use remedies that are diluted and potentised [energised],they are very safe, and with no toxicity.

And can be used for a newborn baby and older person !!

lilian van eyken, a classical homeopath with 30 years of experience.

Lilian was trained in holland and qualified in 1982 from the dutch academy for natural medicine.

she also studied chinese medicine and acupuncture in belgium.

And spend some time in Dharamsala, Northern india, studying tibetan medicine.

She has run a full time practice in moycullen, county galway, ireland., for the past 25 years.


Since the Shadow Brokers released the zero-day software vulnerabilities and hacking tools – allegedly belonged to the NSA’s elite hacking team Equation Group – several hacking groups and individual hackershave started using them in their own way.The April’s data dump was believed to be the most damaging release by the Shadow Brokers till the date, as it publicly leaked lots of Windows hacking tools, including dangerous Windows SMB exploit.

After the outbreak of WannaCry last week, security researchers have identified multiple different campaigns exploiting Windows SMB vulnerability (CVE-2017-0143), called Eternalblue, which has already compromised hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide.
I have been even confirmed by multiple sources in hacking and intelligence community that there are lots of groups and individuals who are actively exploiting Eternalblue for different motives.

Moreover, the Eternalblue SMB exploit (MS17-010) has now been ported to Metasploit, a penetration testing framework that enables researchers as well as hackers to exploit this vulnerability easily.

Cybersecurity startup Secdo, an incident response platform, has recently discovered two separate hacking campaigns using the same Eternalblue SMB exploit at least three weeks before the outbreak of WannaCry global ransomware attacks.

So, it would not be surprised to find more hacking groups, state-sponsored attackers, financially motivated organized criminal gangs and gray hat hackers exploiting Eternalblue to target large organizations and individuals.

The two newly discovered hacking campaigns, one traced back to Russia and another to China, are much more advanced than WannaCry, as sophisticated hackers are leveraging Eternalblue to install backdoors, Botnet malware and exfiltrate user credentials.

According to Secdo, these attacks might pose a much bigger risk than WannaCry, because even if companies block WannaCry and patch the SMB Windows flaw, “a backdoor may persist and compromised credentials may be used to regain access” to the affected systems.

Both campaigns are using a similar attack flow, wherein attackers initially infect the target machine with malware via different attack vectors, then uses Eternalblue to infect other devices in the same network and finally inject a stealthy thread inside legitimate applications, which is then used to achieve persistence by either deploying a backdoor or exfiltrating login credentials.

Russian Campaign: Credential-Theft Attacks

Secdo discovered that attackers are injecting a malicious thread into the ‘lsass.exe’ process using Eternalblue.

Once infected, the thread began downloading multiple malicious modules and then access SQLite DLL to retrieve users’ saved login credentials from Mozilla’s FireFox browser.

The stolen credentials are then sent to the attacker’s command-and-control server via the encrypted Tor network in order to hide the real location of the C&C server.

Once sent, a ransomware variant of CRY128, which is a member of the infamous Crypton ransomware family, starts running in the memory and encrypts all the documents on the affected system. According to Secdo, “at least 5 of the most popular Next Gen AV vendors and Anti-Malware vendors were running on the endpoints and were unable to detect and stop this attack. This is most likely due to the thread only nature of the attack.”
This attack has been traced back to late April, that’s three weeks prior to the WannaCry outbreak. The attack originates from Russia-based IP address (, but that doesn’t mean the hackers are Russian.

Chinese Campaign: Installs Rootkit and DDoS Botnet

This campaign was also seen in late April.

Using Eternalblue, a malicious thread is spawned inside of the lsass.exe process, similar to the above-mentioned credential theft attack.

But only instead of remaining purely in-memory, the initial payload then connects back to a Chinese command-and-control server on port 998 ( and downloads a known rootkit backdoor, which is based on ‘Agony rootkit’ to make persistent.

Once installed, the payload installs a Chinese Botnet malware, equipped with DDoS attack functionality, on the affected machine.

“These attacks demonstrate that many endpoints may still be compromised despite having installed the latest security patch,” Secdo concluded.

“We highly recommend using a solution that has the ability to record events at the thread level in order to hunt, mitigate and assess potential damage as soon as possible.”

These malicious campaigns went unnoticed for weeks because unlike WannaCry, the purpose of these attacks was different, holding affected systems for a long time by achieving persistent and stealing credentials to regain access.

The recent example is of “Adylkuzz,” a recently-discovered stealthy cryptocurrency-mining malware that was also using Windows SMB vulnerability at least two weeks before the outbreak of WannaCry ransomware attacks.

These attacks are just the beginning, as attacks like WannaCry have not been completely stopped and given the broad impact of the NSA exploits, hackers and cyber criminals are curiously waiting for the next Shadow Brokers release, which promised to leak more zero-days and exploits from next month.

Since the attackers are currently waiting for new zero-days to exploit, there is very little users can do to protect themselves from the upcoming cyber attacks.

You can follow some basic security tips that I have mentioned in my previous article about how to disable SMB and prevent your devices from getting hacked.

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