Good for development, but you will lose everything you did, hours and hours and hours of work. No recovery. Seems their gimmick is maintenance: steady income having to ‘fix’ your site from their upgrades. It’s just awful. Had a gorgeous site built and it went to trash overnight after one of their upgrades.
EDUMA WORDPRESS THEME.DO NOT BUY.
Unless you want to perpetually pay them maintenance fees to fix your site after they destroy it. Doesn’t matter how tech-savvy you are, you will not be able to repair your Eduma site once destroyed. And you won’t hear from them to fix it unless you buy their fix.
My second added tool is a camera relegated to the archives, but I could not resist its price and condition. At under $250 in camera shop ‘Excellent’ condition was the Leica Digilux 3 body. This camera differs from the other fixed lens variety in the Digilux series by allowing interchangeable lenses, and it shoots in RAW. I like RAW for my own photo archives, though do not mess with it otherwise right now, nor have I much.
Apart from this machine being a Leica…its lovely if not rather blocky design highly reminiscent of a true SLR…I already own a 4/3 lens to fit. The Olympus Zuiko Digital 40-15mm f/3-5.4-5 fits my Leica perfectly.
So here are a few sample shots in this post from the LD3.
It’s been a while since upping my photography game, and it came down to buying desirable new equipment at a premium or retooling with a pixel upgrade and used gear. O chose the latter because it lets me use multiple machines with existing gear and a few interesting addons.
First up is the Canon 6D. Because I couldn’t bring myself to part with a few thousand dollars for a full frame mirrorless body right now for everything in one package, minus the expense of having to buy new lenses, etc. which is where the real spend can be, I found this yummy 6D in very good condition locally.
My existing Canon lens lineup is sufficient for me to run with this box, though I have a few additional lenses it will soon see. Suffice it to say that 20MP is ample for what I do, and at a cost under $600, it just made sense, especially since I found review of images from this camera to be superior to a lot of what I see posted in reviews of more expensive models. They retain that ‘photo’ look and don’t feel so digitized.
So here are a few sample shots in this post from the Canon D6.
So, I don’t remember what day it was, but that doesn’t really matter as I can check the timestamp on my images, but I won’t do that because it really doesn’t matter what day it was. It was a day I left the lockdown.
I don’t remember what month it was. I self-isolated around March 20, 2020. I say ‘around’ because I don’t recall the exact day, and I had to stick in a dentist appointment which meant that I had to start the lockdown countdown over again, but for the sake of brevity it was March 20. Or March 18.
All that really matters here is that I left the house and I took a walk. Not a long walk, but a walk around the block, though not the whole block because my house is in the middle of the block. So I left the rear exit into the alley with my camera, not sure what camera but the EXIF in my images knows. It was either the Nikon D200 or the D40, but most likely the D200, or it could have been the Canon SL1.
So, I’m no longer sure of the exact order of things, though my timestamps would know, and there’s a discarded peace lily story in here; the lily was shot either first or last, but I’m opting for last.
As I walked down the alley, it was only half a block, I started taking pictures. Though I speak of some plants and flowers with familiarity, there are many right within the neighborhood that I cannot identify, and that’s okay. What I miss not knowing in ignorance of their names is made up in the capture of their visual wonder. At least, that’s the plan.
Though perhaps a bit mundane, I start taking snapshots. Click-click-click-click…
I cross the street, for something has caught my eye…Isn’t that sweet! A young bird of paradise…?
Now I’m headed back home, while meandering down and across the street. There’s a lot to see, the choices are many, and varied. I’ve stumbled onto some hibiscus just begging for some attention.
Crossing the street to my house, I take a few last parting shots in the garden and up the walkway. I have no idea what these flowers are but they have a choreography that cannot be denied. They delicately dance on their stems, they dance in the shadows, they dance in the light. And if you seem to keep running into alliteration in these posts, it’s a deliberate dip in the dance.
Let’s face it. This wouldn’t be Savanna without the Spanish Moss and Resurrection Fern, but let’s not forget the Crepe Myrtle, popping up everywhere with punches of pink, lavender and magenta. While it’s not one of my favorite trees, perhaps because I am not a true Southerner, only mildly invested in the culture and cuisine, or perhaps because I greatly miss the purple haze of the Jacaranda; it is, nonetheless, a lovely, delicate display akin to Southern charm and hospitality.
Perhaps I digress, but from what might that be, seeing that my reflective essay is a contemplative one?
Oh, lo and behold, a crapload of caterpillars destroying whatever they’ve found. They’re so cute…
It was a lovely walk, perhaps only 30 minutes, but it got me out of the house. There were people about, unmasked, not in my immediate space. I took one more photo heading up my walkway. What can I say, but that it was a welcome reprieve, though a but unnerving with pedestrian traffic and nonchalance in the air while an airborne virus has begun its slaughter across the nation.
It’s almost like the Death Angel roaming the streets of Egypt, looking to snatch some unwitting soul who dared depart from the blood-covered doorway that Passover eve, only this time extending those icy fingers far beyond that singular historical moment, across all the streets of America. We’re forced to draw our lines between practicality and paranoia. Yet, surely, this, too, shall pass.
I knew that when I would get home, I would not walk like this again, Not for a while, a long while.
On the balcony… I brought back this lonely lily from trash in the alley maybe two years ago, not knowing what kind of plant it was. Someone had thrown it out, yet it was green and seemed worthy of rescue. I put it on my balcony with a poinsettia rescue I have yet to see bloom. It turns out this was a peace lily, as it’s blooming like crazy now. The poinsettia may bloom this winter, I hope, and perhaps the confederate jasmine will, too.
I’ve religiously been twisting the jasmine vine, only recently learning that the entire plant seems to carry strychnine 😬 up and over the railings. I’ve only ever seen one flower on it, but the vine is now about 25 feet long and, since this type of jasmine blooms from December to May, I expect it to really perform this year. I love the smell of this jasmine. It’s like the night jasmine that intoxicates you for block after block as you ride with the top down nights across Ventura.
Mediated image manipulation, archiving, and sharing are all critical technological aspects of Western culture and postmodern civilization. Consequently, creation, identification, dissemination, and proliferation of powerful images across media channels indicate a burgeoning area of inquiry for information technologies.
While words alone may be capable of conveying adequate information across media channels, the news industry crafts around the dual enterprise of joint word and image. Audio-visual supports of these communication devices constituting new media are standard means of rhetorical expressions in acquiring and sharing information in daily life. Media images previously bound by the constructs of analog technologies have taken on new dimensionality through participation and promulgation within — and without — media outlets of digitality. This new digital territory for the iconicity of images changes the way cyberspace adopts an icon, and the way humanity avails itself of it.
The rhetorical elements that contribute to raising media to an iconic level are countable and accountable attributes. Overwhelming sensory experiences and responsibilities associated with broadcast media ensure neither (1) time to study individual factors that render media as iconic, nor (2) interest in interpretation of such dynamics prior to public release. Yet, iconic media has a scope of inherent rhetorical wonders, threats, and dangers that beg serious academic, and professional, study and interpretation.
While this leads to deeper issues of access, privilege, and motive, only through serious scholarly inquiry can we gain understanding of rhetorical roots and expressions of the diverse entities producing the media that eventually becomes iconic. Iconic media may be global in distribution; yet, a simple, local systematic approach to dissemination of the rhetorical devices used in its construction and proliferation may help it become the seed for all future inquiry into such dynamic rhetorics.
Difficulty is not in identifying problems, but providing practical solutions. While the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly had much to say on their subject of rhetoric, other scholars have appeared, and still must appear on the media scene capable of considering the aspects, complications, and impacts of iconic media development; however, while providing a safe but creatively stimulating, new systematic approach to rhetorical construction and media messaging for a fully digitized world.
While use of the noun ‘icon’ may be similar to use of the word ‘iconic’ as a noun, their correlative relationship is included here because icons as iconics are imperative to understanding the evolutionary process for traditional icons in cyberspace, and because iconics are intermediaries— the glue, actually — between the traditional icon and today’s iconetics. Consequently, removing the noun ‘iconic’ from this volume would be partly self-defeating since the familial relationship cannot be ignored or stifled.
None of us, as a child, has a history without a pair of biological parents. It would be difficult to tell the important story of the critical growth of those people as parents if their children did not assume their respective relative roles at times, especially when the story is going to end with the noisy grandchildren taking over the family name and its responsibilities. As the traditional icon stands its hallowed ground, icons in cyberspace have been registering as iconics, largely through media proliferation of terrorist images in an entirety in digitality, and iconics collectively, in gestalt, have been living out their virtual presence as iconetics impacting artificial intelligence, robotics, humanity, and the Internet appliance with prospective agency that is capable of affecting…and infecting…digital cultures and societies.
Content from my “Rhetorics of Iconics: Terrorism, Media Informatics, Autopoiesis, and Agency in Cyberspace” dissertation, wherein this abstract is adapted and updated to reintroduce the gestalt phenomenon of Icons | Iconics | Iconetics: a book trilogy in search of a permanent publication home.
Cover images below are sample screenshots as placemarkers, and are not intended to suggest final use.
FIGURES
ICONS: The Tetragrammaton rotated 90° CCW forms ‘Adam’ (Katz, 2003)
One of the most disconcerting and pernicious changes to society over the past four years has been the rise of the ignoramus et ignorabimus, a Latin maxim for “we do not know and will not know.” Reportedly posited by German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond in closing comments of his keynote address, “Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens” or “The Limits of Science,” to the 1872 Congress of German Scientists and Physicians, du Bois-Reymond’s contested maxim referred to unknowable aspects of science. His skepticism was not without validity, though met with due opposition by other great thinkers of his day, some who successfully turned his maxim on its head; in a sense, rendering it impotent.
Nearly 150 years later, du Bois-Reymond’s contention bears new consideration concerning the realm of science; yet, nowhere near its original intent. Rather than a learned observation from within the ranks of the academy, today’s attack is from outside those ranks and in far greater numbers than du Bois-Reymond was able to conjure. This immense assault is not only being successfully waged against science, but against scholarly expertise throughout the intellectual realm, from university campuses, thinktanks, and institutes to corporate boardrooms and media networks. Suddenly every professional proclamation is suspect to credibility, and the more prominent or pronounced the source, the greater the opposition to the validity of its message. How has this come to be?
Today’s rise of the ignoramus and ignorabimus is politically, culturally, and socially rooted in left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative nomenclature and ideology. While the primary assault is against liberal entities, powerful conservative forces spin it to include themselves as victims through rhetorical devices that usurp popular media channels and platforms they own and have put in place to amplify their grievances. Distractions, deflections, and diversions are tools they use to deflate the bleating urgencies of the Other. These tools are deployed top-down across willing media channels while the complementary forces of the ignoramus and ignorabimus are deployed bottom-up. Both meet in a middle ground of reinforcement.
Blue-collar knowledge is now superior to white collar because it finally won something, a seat at the table, and can lay claim to holding the highest position in the land today.
Effectual political spin from the top down has been readily evident for several decades now. What we are witnessing for the first time in American society is a rip-roaring rise from the bottom to converge with those at the top. It’s the elevation and legitimization of those persons at the individual level to a corporate body level of what they “do not know and will not know.” These are mostly illegitimate voices that can legitimately challenge the media, scholars, and all opposing forces now because those experts are being criticized successfully at the top. Blue-collar knowledge is now superior to white collar because it finally won something, a seat at the table, and can lay claim to holding the highest position in the land today. Before taking umbrage at use of the term ‘illegitimate’ hear me out.
Every voice is legitimate and should be proffered as viable to the conversation. With that said, not every voice holds validity in the conversation. If I attend a conference of nuclear scientists, my voice will hold no credibility in the actual physics surrounding nuclear fission and scientific proliferation, despite my brief experience decades ago managing the Radiation Department for the shutdown of Unit Two at Three Mile Island, or despite someone’s heavy activism in the realm of nuclear opposition. We’re limited in knowledge and can bring no actual expertise to the discourse unless queried on what we truly know.
But that’s not true for a large segment of American society that believes it is now entitled to a seat at any table no matter the subject or required level of expertise because they are following in the footsteps of a president who does this exact thing. Further giving the uninvited ignoramus et ignorabimus reason to join the conversation, this president uses his position and media presence to dethrone the experts. What we all see on a daily basis now is someone who ‘knows better’ than everyone else about everything out there. There is no need for expertise, experience, or knowledge at all, just an overarching reach of power. Even a charlatan with immense power is beloved when he’s your immensely empowered charlatan.
That overarching stretch is relegated to all who will subscribe to it. It’s ‘free’ and it’s yours if you’re a follower and the Other who is not like you is in your sights for assault, because the message from the top down is that everyone not on board is fair game. The number one attack I get online without fail is the spiteful, “Oh, you’re a professor…blah blah blah!” Everyone’s an expert now on everything because the rules have changed: winners take all and they finally won something here so get out of their way, their word is the final word. Yet, it’s just a lie. One more propaganda tool. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking there is not a gestalt that takes place as one more damaging and dangerous rhetorical device gets added to the unwieldy arsenal of the ignoramus et ignorabimus. Lest the awful day come when we choose to absorb their ignorance out of fear, frustration, and eventual forfeiture.
Emil du Bois-Reymond concerned himself with what he saw as relatively immutable limitations to science. We must concern ourselves with how we stand against the continual onslaught from unlearned masses of people who think they know better than we do, better than science. In reality, they know little to nothing, but they do know how to use the simple media apps at their disposal and have been granted legitimacy to do so. Arguing with them is not the answer. Letting them know they don’t need to be jealous because it’s never too late to get a proper education can do wonders. Most importantly, and subject to attack as elitist…though we may rightfully earn such privilege, and despite the juvenile name-calling it provokes out of anger and envy…we should know that intellectuals are being confronted mostly by a bitter society that does not know and will not know, and truly despises smart people for all they’ve learned to know.
Happy to have worked with so many authors from around the world to complete my third edited volume. And happy to have had a say in the cover, which, I’m comfortable saying is mine by choice. Thanks to my publisher, IGI Global, for approving the final concept and making it the official book cover. Feel free to recommend this book to your university library. I’m showing it off here, so, please enjoy, maybe leave a comment? More to come on the book at a later date.
