On Sanctuary

The author reflects on a sanctuary site in Davao City, Philippines, where 750 Lumad—indigenous peoples from several mountain tribes of Mindanao—sought sanctuary from the violent, lawless forms of militarization and paramilitarization that overwhelmed their communities in 2015. Dizon weaves interviews done with Lumad at the sanctuary site with the Lumad’s long history of struggle against corporate globalization; and also with a summary of contemporary media artists from the Philippines and its diaspora who are working to document the vibrant resistance of Lumad to their violent displacement and dispossession. She reflects on her practice as a USA-based media artist from that diaspora, and on why she forges solidarities with those who are most vulnerable to the processes of globalization today.     

On salinology

A new field for the study of saline lakes called `salinology' is proposed. Salinology is a branch of applied science focused on the study of the chemistry, physics and biology of saline lake systems. The basic task of salinology is to study and explore the features of saline lakes, to provide a scientific and technological basis for the coordination between mankind and saline lakes, to promote the scientific management and rational utilization of saline lake, and to contribute to the sustainable development of saline lake agriculture, mining and tourism.     

On compartmentalization

The notion of a compartment is discussed in terms of the Markovian process. From the stochastic matrix (the elements of which are state transition probabilities between different states of a particle of a chemical element), one may find a (generally) nonstochastic matrix; the elements of this second matrix are probabilities that, starting from some initial state, the particle will reach another seleced state (W. Feller, 1962,An Introduction to Probability Theory). Forming equivalence classes of states it can be shown that the equivalence classes based on an equivalence relation, which holds for the elements of the above-mentioned nonstochastic matrix, are essential for the notion of a compartment. From this procedure it is also obvious that a rigorous definition of a physically realizable compartment is impossible. Some conclusions on the practical use of compartmental analysis are drawn.