Austin, Oct 24-Oct 26, 2003
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Round here |
Fantastic restaurants.
A mecca to live music.
Home to
6th street
(wonderfully vibrant and sleazy
and safe) and the
moonlight towers
(a set of lights used in the 19th century
to light the city).
Big skies.
Heat!
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Capital |
Austin is the capital of
Texas and its capital building is a grand structure.
The old gold repository is the tourist information booth.
Helen found the capital building to
be monument to participatory democracy. I thought
different- like its architects were saying "there's
nothing to hide cause
there is nothing to see: government is mostly hollow empty space".
Inside its like giant doll house.
Escher-esque. Surreal.
Up is the hollow dome, hundreds of
feet about the ground.
Down is the seal of Texas
showing all the countries it has been part of over the years (Mexico, the south, the unified USA...)
Here, everyone can walk in to democracy. Into
the senate...
or the House of Representatives with its
curious Basketball like red score board above the speaker's chair.
I wanted to know-
during debates- does it strobe "DEFENSE! DEFENSE! DEFENSE!"?
No one could tell me.
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SLS |
Helen came to Austin this weekend for
SLS
(the annual conference of the
Society for Literature and Science). Its a large humanities conference
(but not as big as MLA)- attracts
a range of folks including Sociologists, English Profs, etc.
Helen's paper was on a panel about "Urbanization and Extinction".
I thought she kicked ass. The other two papers on her panel
were more fun, but they weren't
about anything that mattered. Helen's paper on the other
hand, was about structures that literally tear apart communities
(highways).
Her message was that the impact of
highways can be chosen, interpreted,
mitigated, improved. Her words were fuel for any revolutionary
social planner (er.. if any such exist). You go girl!
At Austin, Helen meet her co-authors on a forthcoming
DVD on bioethics.
Rob and Philip are so much fun to be around: sharp, happy, keen.
The three of them schemed and dream and
went "oooh aaah" over Helen's first prototypes (written in
Director).
When I grow up I want
to be just like Helen and Rob and Philip.
Computer scientists are
too bound down by the complexities and inherent
limitations of their creations. They are much too serious.
But English profs-
their field is an endless
supply of subtle jokes and absurdities that de-mystify
the world. Makes us all wonderfully fallible and flawed and comic and
approachable
and human.
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Bible |
The reception for the
SLS conference
was at the Austin Museum of Modern Art.
On display there
was one of the first products of the modern era: a 15th century
Gutenberg bible.
This thing changed the world. The technology used
to produce it (a movable lead type printing press) meant that
books could be generated orders of magnitude faster than ever
before.
Hence, the age of wide-spread
education and engineers and a revolution in literature.
Oh- and propaganda and advertising (damn it).