334 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2019
    1. Unilever cannot be faulted for its dedication and good intentions. And as long as sustainability equals efficiency, all is well. Both Unilever and the world benefit, exactly the way Paul Polman likes it. Reducing the use of pesticides is good for both the environment and the company’s shareholders. The more fruit a palm oil tree can bear, the less land will have to be cleared. But win-win scenarios are not often as clear-cut. Personal care product sales are up and while this means sustainability brownie points for Unilever, it also causes environmental problems in the emerging economies. And the Roundtable which was supposed to promote sustainability, has become a lightning conductor for an unsustainable production model. Unilever’s proud boast is that it has managed to ‘decouple’ or separate higher revenue from environmental impact. It is a first move towards the beacon of sustainable growth. A closer look at the company’s Sustainable Living Plan shows Unilever is on schedule in most areas (although deadlines are moved about), except when it comes to the environmental impact of consumer use. That is where the bullets on the sustainability dashboard turn an angry red. Greenhouse gas emissions ‘per consumer unit' went up eight per cent from 2010. That poses a problem, since two thirds of Unilever’s total CO2 emissions stem from consumer use. So the business is growing – but not in a very green way. People want to consume responsibly but not less. Authorities are willing to go green as long as the public purse does not suffer. And companies are no longer bogey men but part of the solution. Paul Polman is a welcome guest because his message is a comfortable one. As head of a transnational company he is making the world a better place. But unlike his idols Ghandi and Mother Theresa, the Unilever boss, while looking after People and Planet, must never lose sight of Profit, as the recent Kraft-Heinz takeover attempt attests.

      I think this is one of the most objective reviews of former CEO of Unilever, and is accurate about the current state of Unilever. I think we should always take what a company says about sustainability with a grain of salt because it is still trying to profit. But, we need people who care in business. Businesses contribute to pollution more than anyone else. Unilever is still kind of in a gray area, but I think their efforts still make them reputable overall, at least in the eyes of the public.

    1. Experts estimate that in Africa alone, conservation efforts have created 14 million "conservation refugees" since the colonial era. In this model, some of the indigenous people, if they were lucky enough, could work as park wardens, preventing their relatives from entering the protected zones.

      This adds to the conflicting reputation and credibility of WWF. I think that sometimes they put animals above people when, in reality, we need to honor both animals and people for sustainability. We're all part of the ecosystem. Having 14 million displaced people is not sustainable. WWF is very complicated; they seem to have great intentions but sometimes poor execution. It's hard to say whether or not to trust them.

    1. You might expect global food conglomerates to resist such a diversity push. But Dorothy Shaver, who is head of sustainability for Knorr, says the company wants to be part of this movement. She says the shift in the amount and types of food people eat is inevitable and will also open new markets. "This actually gives us a major opportunity to identify some of the flavors that people are missing out on," she says. "And then we can get them on people's plates. We can get people to switch out one of their white potatoes that they eat potentially four or five times a week with a purple yam. Or in Indonesia make it an Indonesian sweet potato instead of white rice." Shaver says doing this all over the planet would have an enormous impact on the environment. She says Knorr will try to mainstream 10 or 15 of these so-called future foods in its dishes. She says its popular cheddar and broccoli rice dish will soon have versions featuring black beans and quinoa instead of rice.

      Dorothy Shaver designed the report. This article shows she is personally committed to the cause.

  2. wwf.panda.org wwf.panda.org
    1. WWF wishes to convene stakeholders from across the food system and integrate decisions that will ensure human and planetary health. Together, we have the power to bring food to the top of the conservation agenda and help deliver tangible results which protect our future. Our goal is to create sustainable food systems that safeguard the variety of life on Earth while ensuring food security, now and in the future. To achieve this, WWF works to improve how our food is produced, to change the way we eat, and to ensure food goes in our bodies not in the bin. Together with others, we are focusing on three key outcomes by 2030: - Half of the area used for agriculture and aquaculture is sustainably managed, with no new areas being converted - Global food waste is halved and post-harvest loss is reduced - Half of food consumption is in line with World Health Organisation dietary guidelines in target countries:

      Still unsure how credible I find WWF but they seem to have good ideas about food sustainability.

    1. The unwashed masses will not be moved by this stunt which validates the idea that it’s okay to peddle fake news for a just cause. Sitting on the opposite end of the spectrum, Joseph Barratt, CEO of Mutant Communications lauded the campaign for the impact it had. “It provoked emotions and discussions in households and workplaces around Singapore in an area where it is typically difficult to break through the noise. The outrage at the faux business drove awareness with limited resources,” he said, adding: Any allegations that the campaign spread fake news is misrepresenting a real issue in the media today.

      This article is interesting. I don't think in this instance that WWF was involved in spreading fake news, but it does show they are capable of devising plans that don't necessarily put ethics first. It's a good reminder that WWF is still involved in trying to market itself and get press. I think that WWF doesn't take a comprehensive approach to understanding the ivory trade, which is largely a result of poverty. This makes them a little less credible to me. Although, some people might find them more credible for going so far for a cause.

    1. A yearlong BuzzFeed News investigation across six countries — based on more than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents, including confidential memos, internal budgets, and emails discussing weapons purchases — can reveal:Villagers have been whipped with belts, attacked with machetes, beaten unconscious with bamboo sticks, sexually assaulted, shot, and murdered by WWF-supported anti-poaching units, according to reports and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.The charity’s field staff in Asia and Africa have organized anti-poaching missions with notoriously vicious shock troops, and signed off on a proposal to kill trespassers penned by a park director who presided over the killings of dozens of people.WWF has provided paramilitary forces with salaries, training, and supplies — including knives, night vision binoculars, riot gear, and batons — and funded raids on villages. In one African country, it embroiled itself in a botched arms deal to buy assault rifles from a brutal army that has paraded the streets with the severed heads of alleged “criminals.”The charity has operated like a global spymaster, organizing, financing, and running dangerous and secretive networks of informants motivated by “fear” and “revenge,” including within indigenous communities, to provide park officials with intelligence — all while publicly denying working with informants. { "id": 122412833 } Jorge Silva / Reuters World Wildlife Fund activists demonstrate on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change conference. { "id": 122247237 } WWF has launched an “independent review” led by human rights specialists into the evidence uncovered by BuzzFeed News. “We see it as our urgent responsibility to get to the bottom of the allegations BuzzFeed has made, and we recognize the importance of such scrutiny,” the charity said in a statement. “With this in mind, and while many of BuzzFeed’s assertions do not match our understanding of events, we have commissioned an independent review into the matters raised.” The charity declined to answer detailed questions sent by BuzzFeed News.

      Again, this is very hard to ignore. This is the biggest thing cutting into the campaign. It makes me suspicious. Even if everything WWF said in the campaign was true and ethical, I think it's a bad idea to work with a company that's involved in such abuses. Hopefully Unilever was unaware of these problems. If they had known and collaborated with WWF anyway, that would be a serious knock to their credibility and reliability.

    2. Shikharam’s alleged murder in 2006 was no isolated incident: It was part of a pattern that persists to this day. In national parks across Asia and Africa, the beloved nonprofit with the cuddly panda logo funds, equips, and works directly with paramilitary forces that have been accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting, and murdering scores of people. As recently as 2017, forest rangers at a WWF-funded park in Cameroon tortured an 11-year-old boy in front of his parents, the family told BuzzFeed News. Their village submitted a complaint to WWF, but months later, the family said they still hadn’t heard back. { "id": 122251936 } Tsering Dolker Gurung for BuzzFeed News People living near Nepal's Chitwan National Park. { "id": 122247237 } WWF said that it does not tolerate any brutality by its partners. “Human rights abuses are totally unacceptable and can never be justified in the name of conservation,” the charity said in a statement.But WWF has provided high-tech enforcement equipment, cash, and weapons to forces implicated in atrocities against indigenous communities. In the coming days, BuzzFeed News will reveal how the charity has continued funding and equipping rangers, even after higher-ups became aware of evidence of serious human rights abuses.

      This shows that WWF breaks its own rules. It makes me wonder if their partnership with Unilever is about sustainability or money. Unfortunately I think very few people know of this scandal, so it hasn't impacted WWF's reputation. But I think it could.

    3. WWF Funds Guards Who Have Tortured And Killed People

      This comprehensive article is the biggest blow to Unilever's campaign. WWF is one of the main partners who wrote the report. Although WWF has a history of doing good things for the planet, this article is very hard to swallow. It made me completely distrust WWF.

    1. The focus areas that were addressed in the methodology for this report were nutritional value, relative environmental impact, flavour, accessibility, acceptability and affordability

      This portion of the document explains every detail that went into picking each food. The process includes many different measures of sustainability and health. All of the science is current and accurate.

    2. REFERENCES

      This comprehensive list of varied references makes the document very reliable.

    3. n writing this report, Knorr, WWF and Adam Drewnowski are grateful for input and review from experts at Bioversity International, Crops For the Future, EAT Foundation, Edelman, Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), Food Reform for Sustainability and Health (FReSH), GAIN, Global Crop Diversity Trust, Gro Intelligence, Oxfam GB, SDG2 Advocacy Hub, Wageningen University and Yolélé Foods. This report ultimately reflects the views of Knorr, WWF and Adam Drewnowski.

      I believe that this makes Knorr Unilever seem reliable as a source as well as making the content seem reliable, and the author objective and understanding. This is because the 3 authors of the document collaborated with so many different sources to write the paper. It would seem that have a well-rounded grasp of the topic.

    1. In January 2017, corporate behemoth Unilever unveiled a new commitment to ensuring that all of its plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. The commitment was built on a recognition that the global plastics market was broken; nine months later, Blue Planet 2 aired, alerting the public to the environmental hazards of plastics.

      This article describes Unilever's plans to change the way it uses plastic. It shows that Unilever cares about sustainability because they are transparent about the economic benefits of being more sustainable as well as the benefits to the planet.

    1. The city of New York’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, Unilever and Green City Force came together to find a solution.Instead of trying to get fresh food in, they decided to grow it right where it was needed. By creating six urban farms, access to fresh produce in underserved neighbourhoods has increased, as has the knowledge of local residents about how food is grown, and healthy eating. This is community impact in action!Unilever have taken a step further, creating Growing Roots - an organic, plant-based food snack that donates half of its profits to urban farming programmes, whilst allowing others to join and dig in to help grow a better future for communities across the US.

      This is one part of Unilevers comprehensive website about sustainability. The site shows that Unilever frequently collaborates with sustainable organizations and that they care about many sustainable issues.

    1. r. Adam Drewnowski is a world-renowned leader in the study of obesity and social disparities in diets and health. He is Professor of Epidemiology and the Director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the School of Public Health. He is also the Director of the University of Washington Center for Obesity Research, which addresses the environmental, social and economic aspects of the obesity epidemic. Dr. Drewnowski is a Joint Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

      Adam Drewnowski is the main author. He not only has a degree in disease studies, he is the director of a public health center, director of UW obesity research, and a cancer research institute. These qualifications and experiences with a variety of educational and research institutions shows us that he throughly understands his topic.

    1. what really struck me is that, in the end, the outcomes of any story are conditioned by nature. And losing a piece of nature has an effect on each of us. As a photographer, the more I tell people and their problems, the more I realize I'm photographing nature "
    2. The goal is the realization of a collective photographic reportage that tells about positive human actions that express respect for nature and for the Earth.
    3. But you know, good projects are a bit like cherries, one leads to another. Thus the Lavazza Calendar 2019 (available online at lavazza.it) launches a photographic call to action to personally participate in the "Good to Earth" mission.
    1. The artistic interventions, seen through the lens of the famous American photojournalist Ami Vitale , support important messages to defend the planet, celebrating the places in the world where human intervention is bringing good news for the Earth. The care for our future, the fight against climate change and the protection of biodiversity thus become poetic images and at the same time a call to action for all of us.
    1. And it is also the reason why a "photo call to action" was launched, which invites people to take photos that document good practices with respect to environmental protection, which will then be posted on social networks with the hashtag #GoodtoEarth .
    2. In his long career, Vitale has told the most pristine corners of the world, with the aim, above all, of communicating how much the safeguard of the planet is fundamental for human life itself.
    1. The goal is the realization of a collective photographic reportage that tells about positive human actions that express respect for nature and for the Earth  
    2. The ambitious challenge of the 2019 Lavazza Calendar is to talk to the younger generations with an innovative visual communication language , to move them and to overturn the principle that "good news is not news".
    1. The care for our future, the fight against climate change and the protection of biodiversity thus become poetic images and at the same time a call to action for all of us.
    2. The artistic interventions, seen through the lens of the famous American photojournalist Ami Vitale, support important messages to defend the planet, celebrating the places in the world where human intervention is bringing good news for the Earth.
    1. in which are also represented the six site-specific installations and works of art of 'nature art', created with zero-impact techniques, from the six artists from all over the world.
    2. Nature, art and 'good news' for the Earth are the protagonists of the new Lavazza 2019 'Good to Earth' calendar: reforestation, protection of biodiversity, conversion of industrial areas into green areas, virtuous projects for sustainability and safeguarding of the territory seen
    1. instead, appears the portrait of a woman, perhaps a warrior, perhaps the last exponent of a primitive tribe threatened by deforestation , portrayed on plexiglass plates, a peculiar technique that allows her body to appear and disappear among the vegetation , as if it were actually there. Hidden and waiting to find out what will be of his future.
    2. a symbol not only of Lavazza , but also of the fact that our future belongs to us and it is up to us to defend the earth, even with small daily gestures.
    1. The launch marks the introduction of E.ON’s new global brand position which reflects its desire to deliver innovative customer solutions that help create a better tomorrow. E.ON has worked closely with global marketing services network, Engine, on digital content for the campaign which will transform E.ON’s social platform and website with dedicated content seeded across channels
    2. The film paves the way for unveiling of the ‘E.ON Kong Solar Studio’, a concept based on the band’s original Kong Studios, which offers a solar and battery storage powered creative space for music projects. Using the power generated by E.ON solar PV panels, Gorillaz’ Kong Studios 2.0 will come to life at night and provide aspiring music artists the opportunity to create new tracks which will appear on eon.com/gorillaz.
    1. Good news today - he continues - there is a great need: positive examples of virtuous behavior, stories of personal redemption and environmental redevelopment that we hope will infect people, especially the youngest, and inspire a direct commitment to safeguard our planet ».
    2. the Lavazza 2019 Calendar continues to focus on sustainability and power of the binomial art and social commitment
    3. 12 shots of virtuous projects that reach deep into the heart
    1. Perhaps most importantly, the campaign shifted people’s perceptions of E.ON from being a “boring utility company” to an “enabler of amazing energy solutions” by 94%.
    2. The campaign led to E.ON standing out from the crowd.
    3. In a notoriously low-interest sector, the aim of the event was to raise awareness of the new E.ON brand since its decision to sell off its power generation business and focus instead on sustainable energy options.
    4. To achieve this, E.ON and its agency WCRS partnered with the band Gorillaz, which was picked because of its technical innovation, creativity and collaborative style. To allow people to get close to the technology and physically experience it, the brand created Kong Solar Studios, a replica of Gorillaz’s original Kong Studios that was by day a fan experience and at night a solar-powered studio where up and coming talent could create music.
    1. Similarly, since the company has consolidated its UK marketing communications in 2015, their campaigns have been developing from fairly traditional formats of TV and radio (an example is for the Smart Pay As You Go meter product), to fully integrated influencer marketing campaigns, as Gorillaz themselves are very involved and conscious of green energy.
    2. The studio will further travel with Gorillaz on their world tour from this month until November, acting as the driving force behind the campaign aiming to show E.ON as a purpose-led brand
    1. This will be backed up by a future unveiling of the E.On Kong Solar Studio, which will be a solar-plus-storage-powered creative space for music projects.
    1. project represents not only quality coffee but peace and redemption for the local community.
    1. The Lavazza Calendar “Good to Earth” tells the story of the good example set by people who are committed to protecting the planet, in the form of photographs by Ami Vitale and six works of art set in the natural environment. Because, despite everything, there is goodness on Earth.
    1. That is why the positive art of Good to Earth works against the one-way narrative of the Earth as a sick patient and chooses instead to tell stories of virtuous behaviour and environmental requalification, which, it is hoped, will have an influence on people, and young people in particular, inspiring them to make their own commitment to protect the planet.
    2. In Good to Earth, nature becomes art to inspire behaviour that respects the environment It does so through a contemporary art form that is totally immersed in nature.
    1. The commercial tells the story of the journey that Lavazza’s new bio-organic coffee takes from its place of origin to us, through a series of videos that alternate between man and his environment in a natural and surprising way. The screens where different images chase each other and merge are the very hands themselves: different every time, belonging to men, women and children, they talk about life lived, dedication and experience.
    2. The Lavazza ¡Tierra! Bio campaign launch features hands as the main character of the communication: they are the ideal symbol for the ¡Tierra! Brand and sum up work and sustainability.
  3. Feb 2019
  4. Jan 2019
    1. Umarah Mubeen

      Brief Bio: During my masters I was fascinated by the upcoming research and developments in the field of micro-algal biotechnology. As an outcome of the preliminary studies to explore sustainable use of microalgae, I was among the 25 young scientists, recognized as Green Talents in 2013 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. To extend my skills in the field I pursued a PhD at MPIMP in the experimental systems biology group headed by Dr. Patrick Giavalisco. More here.

  5. Dec 2018
    1. New rules always create confusion but that is not a strong argument against them. The legal complexities of CC reflect the complexity of copyright. That the CC licenses are being used suggests that they are useful. The question is how? Claiming they are not useful is unlikely to be correct. Perhaps the usefulness is social not individual, so people are using them to do good. I take no position on this.

      This opinion/ editorial and the resulting dialogue adds some dimension to some of the pro and con arguments for adapting Creative Commons practices.

  6. Oct 2018
  7. May 2018
  8. Feb 2018
  9. Oct 2017
    1. In fact, members of the Long Now would have me say that it was founded in the year 01996, a way of writing dates that presently accommodates a further 97,985 years. To put this into perspective—50,000 years before the Long Now runs out of digits, Niagara Falls will have eroded its remaining 32 kilometers to Lake Erie. That communion will occur a full 30,000 years after, according to one lexico-statistical model, the point at which human languages will have retained only one percent of their present-day words. By the time the Long Now has a Y100k problem, the constellations you recognize will be gone from the sky. I lay this out to make the point that Long Now folks embed a puckishly provocative optimism in everything they do.

      Is it just me, or am I detecting an underlying disdain from the author towards The Long Now Foundation? If so, I would not blame her as the beliefs The Long Now hold appear surreal and unbelievable to me. I was unaware that their was a group that held such views.

    1. it does not finally matter who wrote what, but rather how a work is written and how it is read.

      I think that this is true to the extent that the content of the work is very important. Prestige of the author does not always mean that the work has importance. I believe that you can find merit in most work even if the author isn't well known as an intellectual or a scholar. I think Said is trying to emphasize the fact that we need to focus more on the content of the paper than the person who wrote the paper.

  10. Sep 2017
    1. Have you just arrived at our blog and you’re not sure where to start?

      Assumes that the reader wants to start travelling.

  11. Mar 2017
    1. I ~hould have preferred to be enveloped by speech, and carried away well beyond all possible beginnings, rather than have to begin it myself. I should have preferred to be-come aware that a nameless voice was already speaking long before me, so that I should only have needed to join in

      This narrative voice is interesting, considering the way he considers the problems of the author/narrator in the previous pages.

  12. Feb 2017
    1. Published in the days leading up to the 45th president’s inauguration, two new books purport to show a path forward for liberals in Trump’s America.
    2. In his introduction to “What We Do Now,” co-editor Dennis Johnson writes of the widespread “despair,” “grief” and “disillusionment” that followed the election.
  13. Jan 2017
    1. Belinda Cleary For Daily Mail Australia

      Who is this author? Does she have an area of expertise that's related to this story? How would you find out? What is this source and what are its biases? How would you find out?

    2. Leadership consultant Simon Sinek

      Who is Simon Sinek? What is the basis of his authority? What is a "leadership consultant"?

  14. Nov 2016
  15. Oct 2016
  16. libguides.colorado.edu libguides.colorado.edu
    1. A national system of electricity transmission could cut power-plant emissions by 80 percent.

      What does the sub-title tell you about the author's purpose?

  17. Jun 2016
    1. Reviewers who receive a paper from which the identifying marks have been removed will immediately put in place an (imagined) set of circumstances of exactly the kind they are supposedly ignoring. I

      creating an implied author in peer review

  18. screen.oxfordjournals.org screen.oxfordjournals.org
    1. can easily imagine a culture wherediscourse would circulate without any need for an author. Dis-courses, whatever their status, form, or value, and regardless of ourmanner of handling them, would unfold in a pervasive anonymity.No longer the tiresome repetitions: 'Who is the real author?' 'H

      Great epigraph for article on scientific authorship

      We can easily imagine a culture where discourse would circulate without any need for an author. Discourses, whatever their status, form, or value, and regardless of our manner of handling them, would unfold in a pervasive anonymity. No longer the tiresome repetitions: 'Who is the real author?' 'Have we proof of his authenticity and originality?' 'What has he revealed of his most profound self in his language?' New questions will be heard: 'What are the modes of existence of this discourse?' 'Where does it come from; how is it circulated; who controls it,' 'What placements are determined for possible subjects?' 'Who can fulfill these diverse functions of the subject?' Behind all these questions we would hear little more than the murmur of indifference: 'What matter who's speaking?'

    2. author-function' is tiedto the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine,and articulate the realm of discourses; it does not operate in auniform manner in all discourses, at all times, and in any givenculture; it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a textto its creator, but through a series of precise and complex pro-cedures; it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individualinsofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to aseries of subjective positions that individuals of any class may

      Four characteristics of the "author-function":

      1. "the 'author-function' is tied to the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine,and articulate the realm of discourses;"
      2. "it does not operate in a uniform manner in all discourses, at all times, and in any given culture";
      3. "it is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator, but through a series of precise and complex procedures";
      4. it does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individual in so far as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to aseries of subjective positions that individuals of any class may come to occupy"
    3. athe-matical treatise, the ego who indicates the circumstances of com-position in the preface is not identical, either in terms of his posi-tion or his function, to the T who concludes a demonstrationwithin the body of the text. The former implies a unique individualwho, at a given time and place, succeeded in completing a project,whereas the latter indicates an instance and plan of demonstrationthat anyone could perform provided the same set of axioms, pre-liminary operations, and an identical set of symbols were used. It isalso possible to locate a third ego: one who speaks of the goals of' his investigation, the obstacles encountered, its results, and theproblems yet to be solved and this T would function in a field ofexisting or future mathematical discourses. We are not dealing witha system of dependencies where a first and essential use of the Tis reduplicated, as a kind of fiction, by the other two. On thecontrary, the 'author-function' in such discourses operates so as toeffect the simultaneous dispersion of the three egos

      Hmmm. Argues for a "second self" in scientific writing.

      1. I'm not sure this kind of first person is that common (though it is common in literary criticism);
      2. If it is, I'm not sure there is a distinction between the author and some narrator-type figure or his third category (the person who speaks of the goals of the investigation (an implied author?)).
    4. ight object that thisphenomenon only applies to novels or poetry, to a context of 'quasi-discourse', but, in fact, all discourse that supports this 'author-function' is characterized by the plurality of egos. In a

      There you go: he means that grammar changes in all texts that support the "author-function". Somehow he distinguishes this from simply "poetic texts," but I'm not sure why or how.

    5. ave a different bearing on texts with an author and 23on those without one. In the latter, these 'shifters' refer to a realspeaker and to an actual deictic situation, with certain exceptionssuch as the case of indirect speech in the first person. When dis-course is linked to an author, however, the role of 'shifters' is morecomplex and variable. It is well known that in a novel narrated inthe first person, neither the first person pronoun, the presentindicative tense, nor, for that matter, its signs of localization referdirectly to the %vriter, either to the time when he wrote, or to thespecific act of writing; rather, they stand for a 'second self whosesimilarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerablealteration within the course of a single book. It

      Grammar has different meaning with fictional author and non-author texts: in the second case (not fiction), the grammar is deictic; in the former, it is literary.

      This is a really interesting point, by I think MF is confusing terms a little. the issue has to do with the deictic nature of the text rather than the availability of an author-attribution (unless he means "literary author of the kind I've been discussing as an author-function").

    6. ccording to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria:the texts that must be eliminated from the list of works attributedto a single author are those inferior to the others (thus, the authoris defined as a standard level of quality); those whose ideas conflictwith the doctrine expressed in the others( here the author is definedas a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence); thosewritten in a different style and containing words and phrases notordinarily found in the other works (the author is seen as a stylisticuniformity); and those referring to events of historical figures sub-sequent to the death of the author (the author is thus a definitehistorical figure in which a series of events converge). Alth

      Jerome's criteria that rule out an authorship attribution:

      1. Author as standard of quality (work is less good than you'd expect)
      2. Author is field of conceptual or theoretical coherence (i.e. this work disagrees with some other work by the person)
      3. Stylistic uniformity (written in different style)
      4. Temporal unit (i.e. written before or after the author's known life).
    7. There are, nevertheless, transhistorical constants in therules that govern the construction of an author.

      Argues that there are transhistorical contstraints on construction of author. Transgeneric as well?

    8. In addition, all these operations vary according to the periodand the form of discourse concerned. A 'philosopher' and a 'poet'are not constructed in the same manner; and the author of aneighteenth-century novel was formed differently from the modernnovelist.

      Argues that the construction and meaning of "the author" varies by time and genre.

    9. The third point concerning this 'author-function' is that it is notformed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourseto an individual. It results from a complex operation whose pur-pose is to construct the rational entity we call an author. Un-doubtedly, this construction is assigned a 'realistic' dimension aswe speak of an individual's 'profundity' or 'creative' power, hisintentions or the original inspiration manifested in writing. Never-theless, these aspects of an individual, which we designate as anauthor (or which comprise an individual as an author), are pro-jections, in terms always more or less psychological, of our way ofhandling texts: in the comparisons we make, the traits we extractas pertinent, the continuities we assign, or the exclusions we prac-tise.

      Version of the "Implied author"

    10. First, they are objects of appropriation; the form of propertythey have become is of a particular type whose legal codificationwas accomplished some years ago. It is important to notice, aswell, that its status as property is historically secondary to thepenal code controlling its appropriation. Speeches and books wereassigned real authors, other than mythical or important religiousfigures, only when the author became subject to punishment andto the extent that his discourse was considered transgressive. Inour culture - undoubtedly in others as well - discourse was notoriginally a thing, a product, or a possession, but an action situatedin a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and unlawful, reli-gious and blasphemous. It was a gesture charged with risks longbefore it became a possession caught in a circuit of property values.But it was at the moment when a system of ownership and strictcopyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenthand beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressiveproperties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the force-ful imperative of literature. It is as if the author, at the momenthe was accepted into the social order of property which governsour culture, was compensating for this new status by revivingthe older bipolar field of discourse in a systematic practice of trans-gression and by restoring the danger of writing which, on anotherside, had been conferred the benefits of property

      Importance of "author" for commerce and control. This is true of scientific writing, but in a slightly different way. The type of thing he is talking about here has to do with Oeuvre.

    11. nsequently, we cansay that in our culture, the name of an author is a variable thataccompanies only certain texts to the exclusion of others: a privateletter may have a signatory, but it does not have an author; acontract can have an underwriter, but not an author; and, similarlyan anonymous poster attached to a wall may have a writer, buthe cannot be an author. In this sense, the function of an author isto characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certaindiscourses within a society

      Very useful statement of where foucault applies in this case: to literary discussion, not advertising, not letters, and so on.

      Science would fall into the "not this" category, I suspect.

    12. We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves fromthe interior of a discourse to the real person outside who producedit, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts -separating one from the other, defining their form, and character-izing their mode of existence. It points to the existence of certaingroups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse withina society and culture. The author's name is not a function of aman's civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach,among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of dis-course and their singular mode of existence. C

      Again, an "Implied Author" type idea that is completely not relevant to science--although ironically, the H-index tries to make it relevant. In science, the author name is not the function that defines the text; it is the person to whom the credit it to be given rather than a definition of Oeuvre. This is really useful distinction for discussing what is different between the two discourses.

    13. The name of an author poses all the problems related to thecategory of the proper name. (Here, I am referring to the work ofJohn Searle,3 among others.) Obviously not a pure and simplereference, the proper name (and the author's name as well) hasother than indicative functions. It is more than a gesture, a fingerpointed at someone; it is, to a certain extent, the equivalent of adescription. When we say 'Aristotle', we are using a word thatmeans one or a series of definite descriptions of the type: 'theauthor of the Analytics', or 'the founder of ontology', and so forth.Furthermore, a proper name has other functions than that of sig-nification: when we discover that Rimbaud has not written LaChasse spirituelle, we cannot maintain that the meaning of theproper name or this author's name has been altered. The propername and the name of an author oscillate between the poles ofdescription and designation, and, granting that they are linked towhat they name, they are not totally determined either by theirdescriptive or designative functions. Yet - and it is here that thespecific difficulties attending an author's name appear - the linkbetween a proper name and the individual being named and the linkbetween an author's name and that which it names are not iso-morphous and do not function in the same way; and these dif-ferences require clarification.

      And, of course, it is an economic and reputational thing as well

      What is the purpose of an author's name?

    14. It is obviously insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the authorhas disappeared; God and man died a common death. Rather, weshould re-examine the empty space left by the author's disappear-ance, we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines,its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; weshould await the fluid functions released by this disappearance.In this context we can briefly consider the problems that ari

      It is obviously insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the author has disappeared; God and man died a common death. Rather, we should re-examine the empty space left by the author's disappearance, we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines,its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; we should await the fluid functions released by this disappearance.In this context we can briefly consider the problems that arise in the use of an author's name. What is the name of an author? How does it function? Far from offering a solution, I will attempt to indicate some of the difficulties related to these questions.

      Great epigraph for an article on scientific authorship. Also relevant, especially the bottom bit.

    15. Another thesis has detained us from taking full measure of the 17author's disappearance. It avoids confronting the specific event thatmakes it possible and, in subtle ways, continues to preserve theexistence of the author. This is the notion of icriture. Strictlyspeaking,.it should allow us not only to circumvent references toan author, but to situate his recent absence. The conception oficriture, as currently employed, is concerned with neither the actof writing nor the indications, as symptoms or signs within a text,of an author's meaning; rather, it stands for a remarkably profoundattempt to elaborate the conditions of any text, both the conditionsof its spatial dispersion and its temporal deployment

      écriture is a fasle way of stepping around the problem in literary criticism, because it simply defers the identity of the author, without stopping treating the author as a unit. But it might be a solution to science writing, in that a credit system, for example, doesn't need an author-function to exist.

    16. en now, when we studythe history of a concept, a literary genre, or a branch of philo-sophy, these concerns assume a relatively weak and secondaryposition in relation to the solid and fundamental role of an authorand his works

      On extent to which we assume the author is real and solid even if we are doubtful about the nature of the field in which the author is working.

    1. "It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling" Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story's hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman?

      Interesting that the prompt is gender fluidity.

    2. THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / ROLAND BARTHES

      Barthes, Roland. 1967. “Death of the Author.” Edited by Brian O’Doherty. Translated by Richard Howard. Aspen 5+6 (Fall/Winter): Item 3. http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes.

    1. The standard model of scholarly publishing assumes awork written by an author. There is typically a single authorwho receives full credit for theopusin question. By thesame token, the named author is held accountable for allclaims made in the text, excluding those attributed to othersvia citations. The appropriation of credit and allocation ofresponsibility thus go hand-in-hand, which makes for fairlystraightforward social accounting. The ethically informed,lone scholar has long been a popular figure, in both fact andscholarly mythology. Historically, authorship has beenviewed as a solitary profession, such that “when we picturewriting we see a solitary writer” (Brodkey, 1987, p. 55). Butthat model, as Price (1963) recognized almost three decadesago, is anachronistic as far as the great majority of contem-porary scientific, and much social scientific and humanistic,publishing is concerned.

      On "standard model" of authorship: lone authority and responsibility; how this is anachronistic.

  19. May 2016
  20. Apr 2016
  21. cervantes.tamu.edu cervantes.tamu.edu
    1. me

      The "implicit narrator," not to be confused with Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the historical author of the book.

  22. Mar 2016
  23. Jan 2016
    1. massive advances in Open Educational Resources

      Some may be surprised to hear about OERs in a post about proprietary technology, especially since this was before iBooks Author allowed the creation of ePUB3 books.

    1. The *.iba file is completely transparent and accessible.

      Oh? Knew it was somewhat similar to ePub in structure, but thought it was the Office-style “open but not quite” format.

    2. multi-touch format books

      Ah, therein lies the crux of the problem. “Multi-touch” is what sets iBooks apart from other formats (despite the fact that the ePub format allows for the same exact type of interaction).

    3. the iBooks Store can be thought of as a feature of iBooks Author

      Not so sure everyone thinks of it this way. Aren’t some publishers converting their stuff from other formats to iBooks without using iBA?

    4. deconstructed and re-created

      Sounds like a time-consuming process, but maybe there’s value in chunking the content to be adapted to diverse contexts.

    5. Deliver functionality allowing “backward-compatible” EPUB conversion of existing multi-touch format books. 

      May be challenging because of the restrictions placed on ePub, but it’s an interesting thought.

    6. a consistent high-end user experience for multi-touch format books created by iBooks Author

      aka ePub3?

    7. as the software that defines digital content creation for the next decade.

      Nostalgia for Aldus/LaserWriter phase of the DTP Revolution?

    8. unlike Adobe DPS, Inkling, or some other would-be competitors…it’s free.

      And unlike Calibre, it’s “free with purchase” and not “free as in speech” or even, really, “free as in beer”.

    9. was such a zealot that he single-handedly forced the shutdown of a would-be iBooks Author competitor.

      Oh? Sounds anticompetitive…

  24. Nov 2015
  25. Oct 2015
    1. No joke is funny unless you see the point of it, and sometimes a point has to be explained.

      Sounds logical, in the abstract. But the explanation is often known to “kill the joke”, to decrease the humour potential. In some cases, it transforms the explainee into the butt of a new joke. Something similar has been said about hermeneutics and æsthetics. The explanation itself may be a new form of art, but it runs the risk of first destroying the original creation.

  26. Jul 2015
  27. Mar 2015
  28. Jan 2015
    1. )
    2. };
    3. A reactive value could represent: * The currently selected item in a table in a user interface * The result of a database query (changing whenever the underlying information in the database changes) * In a web browser, the current size of the browser window, or (in a browser that supports the HTML5 pushState API) the current URL * A string such as "5 minutes ago" or "last Tuesday" that gives the difference between a particular time and the current time

      markup error

    4. is added or deleted

      is edited, added or deleted

    5. // Efficient code says: No pizza for you!

      I think this implies the previous value was "pizza". Perhaps there should be an extra line in the block above:

      var data = new ReactiveDict;
      data.set("favoriteFood", "pizza");
      
    6. Just made up the term "property selector" to differentiate from "field selector" (or "field specifier" in the docs); open to suggestion

      left-over comment?

  29. Aug 2014
  30. Feb 2014
    1. J USTICE B REYER delivered the opinion of the Court.

      Author of the opinion is Justice Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States