Clarissa AL Lee's Lateral Worlds

I've spent more than three weeks reading a bunch of books that I hope to include in my exams reading list and also for research trip that I'll be making next month. Some research questions popped to mind and I am not sure if I'll make them part of my exams question. They will be refined and refocused along the way but I think I'll just post them as they are for now, and perhaps elicit some responses from some other people. In the meantime, I have to work on completing a still languishing assignment,heh. --------------------The questions--------------------------------- 1. Is there a point, or series of points, by which one can determine the separability between ontology and epistemology in physics proof? 2. We know that the inability of a physical epistemology to accommodate certain empirical evidences can lead to the formulation of other possibilities; whereby the possibilities could either consist of irremediable delimitations in the physics, or the insertion of ...

I haven't been getting to it as much as I could due to some other work that I had to finish since the ending of the Spring semester two weeks back (but I am happy to say that I managed to finish reading a book that gives one a good basic overview of the LHC, have managed to keep up with the research updates going on in CERN, especially where the Top quark is concerned) and am getting more into the technical details of the convoluted work involved. Of course, beyond reading and following the technical physics, I would have to spend time reading all the philosophical and sociology of physics work. I am excited at the prospect of being at CERN come early July. Prior to that, I am going to have to plan out my research program while I am there, not to mention the tonnes of reading I have to do beforehand, especially the three-volume history of CERN (I will write review on that once I can get through them, which I hope to do this summer) and also some other cool physics stuff. So this wo...

UPDATE: See live webcas t now before it ends in a few more hours. Perhaps even right now. It is scheduled for 7 am. I will know soon. Unfortunately, I could not access the site from my IP. Hopefully I can find some way to access the webcam images. At any rate, I'll be paying the physics building, HEP section, a visit tomorrow, on my way to class. Work is going rather slowly in this area, for the time being, because of so much other work (the fact I am still typing this in the office at 1:30 am when I should go home and sleep!) I'm excited though that I will have a bit time to talk about the simulation process when I do comparative study between the experimental processes involving the colliders and Monte Carlo simulation versus biomedical hospital platforms. Bringing another scientifc field into the investigation could possibly lend insight to my work (and gives me some time, on borrowed time, to think more thoroughly about how I am going to plan the next direction for my...

I wish fervently that there is a specific fund I can apply to where the jury that dispenses the fund will understand what I am trying to drive at with this project that I am doing with the LHC, high energy physics and basically comparative critical theory on science, gender and epistemic politics. I suppose I am beginning to despair slightly over ever getting funding to go to CERN this summer, especially after having failed in securing funding from one of the potentially biggest funder (this is not my lucky year as every place I've applied to seem to have more "eligible and qualified" applicants than funds. I am not sure if it's the economic downturn that's spurring this or there's just a sudden emergence of scholars. Being interdisciplinary and doing something that is potentially different also doesn't help. Maybe I need to sell my soul to corporations to get some money? It seems that those who critique the "corportization of knowledge" do not s...

At the reading group on phenomenology today, we were discussing Mark Hansen's latest work on ubiquitous sensations in talking about new media art, which attempts to interrogate the notions of the "atmospheric, impersonal and microtemporal" in media even as we are trying to make sense of Varela's project of using neuroscience to fill in the gaps of the Husserlian phenomenological model (I don't think we did much in making a connection of them). However, in talking about ubiquitous computing, the meaning of art and the productive (unproductive) intervention of phenomenology in the discourse on art (particularly of art taking place in a non-traditional or new medium), I want to point to the latest issue of the ACM on cloud computing/ volunteer computing in my attempt to draw a correlation between a form of relationality/interactivity mediated through technological hardware but going beyond that as the main players are the human agents who determine how and what they...

Yup, I paid another visit to the high-energy physics lab over here to have a pow-wow with one of the group leaders, so that I can get out as much of the FAQs as I could. Also of course, so that he could also ask me a bit more question about my intended project. I supposed first and foremost, I wanted to ask him to suggest some more general reading materials I could get through to help me sift through all the technical details in the journal papers that I attempt to read (not always most successfully). Or even to recommend some chapters I can read from books that I have since the exigency of the current-graduate studies system leaves you with little time to read widely beyond your immediate 'professional' requirements (note I did not say 'interest'). In the process of asking these questions, I learnt a lot more about the politics of specialization, where high energy physicists do not concern themselves too much with what goes on in accelerator physics beyond what is re...