katekat1010

I'm having these intense urges just to dig in stubbornly and do nothing.  It's my reaction to having too much to do, and not having enough time to do it.   And I'm conquering the urges, mostly, so it's not like it's the end of the world.

( however, my to do list )

Now that it's all out there I think I'm going to be ok.  I really do.  But wow.  It's all a matter of seeing what's on the list and getting it all done one by one.

And I don't think I mentioned it but the best part of going to the conference was that I figured out what texts I'm going to write my master's thesis on.  ( for the curious... like three people )

I did it!!!  Conference 1 = ROCK.  Unfortunately it also included six hours of driving getting to Huntsville and back, and I'm one tired monkey (well, tired from that and from all of the nervous excitement before and after).  But the presentation??  I was great!  (quote from my prof, not self-aggrandizement, promise)

( you want the more than one paragraph version )

We were very responsible pet people and took the stray kittens that decided our house was great to the animal shelter today - this way they at least have a chance at a good home, since we can't adopt any more pets and they deserved it - but it was one of the hardest things I've had to do in a long time. 

My last goals today?  work on:
x gilesxander 's giles/xander fest postings
x roshomon translation
x abstract for the Thesis

• Weird article by David Wall:  "Cybercrime and the Culture of Fear: Social Science Fiction(s) and the Production of Knowledge about Cybercrime"
  
  Without reading his paper (but hey, i'm a grad student, i'll make summary judgements from the summaries), it sounds like he's made two errors:
  
  1) not giving enough weight to his examination of the culture of fear that the news media use to get more viewers ... about everything - cybercrime, medical crime, incest scandals, etc.
  
  2) by implying that it's in cyberpunk that these characters originated it's excluding the idea that the baddies come from other literary tropes..
  

• spaceless.com with extra spicy article action:
  
  'Better than (Real)Life': Cyberspace as Urban Space
  
  Virtually There:  The social construction of computer mediated identity 
  
  (and a listing of all of their papers up to yr 2000)

The Cyborg DB (from a UCSC class, haha), it has no content at the moment, but should be pretty interesting and worth looking at later.

And here's the Cyborgology 101 (from SJSU '06) that's got all kinds of academic sources on cyborgs and a nice little summary of Haraway too.

The IO9 "Where are my cybernetic implants" where they claim "Full disclosure - I'm a cyborg.  I wear corrective lenses and shoes that modify my feet appropriately for an urban evnironment.  It's not exactly Robocop, true, but according to the loosest definition, most of us already have a complicated relationship with technology blurring the line between "me" and "stuff"

first off, I had no idea this existed:

ISBNdb.com
Yep, for all of your ISBN searches.  It's slow, but ... it's there.  And I'm kind of stoked.  In a completely nerdy way.  So of course I immediately look for Japanese science fiction. 

( Now for the books )

* I'm starting to actually do research this semester.  And sadly, I already have a massive, overwhelming list of bookmarks... so it's not really constructive of me to keep everything there.  Instead I thought I'd put them in my LJ, that way I have a chance in heck of remembering what I found and why it's important.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll try to put everything behind a cut so no one is bombarded with long lists.  And who knows?  some of you might like this stuff, right?

( round up- searches for Japanese Sci Fi )