Mary Ann McClure, Ph.D.

Feminist critics of science have argued that Newtonian science reflects a conceptual framework that is fundamentally gendered. This mechanistic world view grants permission to dominate and control both women and nature. Evelyn Fox Keller and Donna Haraway have sought to construct alternative epistemologies that break out of this patriarchal framework. The concept of nature and inquiry suggested by them finds many parallels in chaos theory. They, as well as chaos theory, attribute agency to nature, conceive of inquiry as fallible and advocate a methodology that attends to difference and is nonreductionistic. Chaos theory thus gives a voice within science to feminist concerns. Furthermore, the application of chaos theory in the practice of public administration allows for the realization of feminist values in the public realm.

I remember learning in one of the study groups of my youth that capitalism will destroy itself – self implode – and eat its young.

Mexico has become a colorful mural of this sentiment — painted in oils and clay. Its’ speedy embrace of “neo liberal economics” (a very common term here which I think means advanced capitalism) has resulted in massive privatization of land and experiential corporate growth. And today, Election Day, one can feel the popular discontent of Mexico’s leaders, especially the former Coca Cola executive, President Fox. In the last 14 years Mexico’s main product has been instant billionaires and massive growth of unemployed and underemployed workers and peasants.

Kalevi Kull

There are many processes in organisms which can be described using semiotic terminology. However, it is not always clear whether all these processes indeed have a semiotic nature, whether, e.g., DNA is a set of signs or not. It is possible to see an increase in semiotic freedom when moving from the level of automatic copying (which may not yet be seen as a genuinely semiotic process), via the processes of correction and editing, to biological translation and the developmental processes of organic systems (which seemingly are genuine semiotic processes). Using a set of dual oppositions, several differences between the natural scientific biology and semiotic biology are compared, showing that the latter is a generalisation of the former. In this way we may be able to make a step further in the methods of semiotic analysis of living systems, which at the same time can demonstrate how semiotics may be useful to make biology more scientific in its understanding the living process.

By Brian Russell

Have you heard of this concept called network neutrality? Its basically
the principal that all information, no matter who made it or what its
content is, should be allowed to freely travel across the Internet without
interference.

This term confuses the hell out of people, because the popular use of “liberal” is often confused with what some of us might call progressive. We watch football; the rest of the world watches soccer (which they CALLED fooball first). The rest of the world also knows what neoliberalism is… because much of the world suffers from it in ways often more terrible than many of us can imagine. Neoliberalism is the current FORM of US imperialism. Inside, I have linked to MRZine, where Sasha Lilley interviews radical geographer, and author of a book called “A Brief History of Neoliberalism,” David Harvey — a very good primer for folks. Enjoy.