Not long ago I celebrated my birthday — my thirty-third to be precise. I have often joked that this is my Larry Bird Year, because of course, Larry Legend is the greatest #33 there is, and that is what the jersey number of the athlete has become for us: part of a densely packaged meme.

But this latest story takes the idea of the jersey number as identifier to a whole new level: a man in Oklahoma City has requested that his prison term be extended from 30 to 33 years to honour Bird, his favourite player.

And here I was discussing the link between jersey numbers and the carceral — how trite in comparison!

(via SportsFilter)

A sample from Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology":

Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth.

This prospect strikes us as strange, Indeed, it should do so, as persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously the simple question of what the name "technology" means. The word stems from the Greek. Technikon means that which belongs to techné. We must observe two things with respect to the meaning of this word. One is that techné is the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techné belongs to bringing-forth, to poiésis; it is something poetic.

The other thing that we should observe with regard to techné is even more important. From earliest times until Plato the word techné is linked with the word epistémé. Both words are terms for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing. … Thus what is decisive in techné does not at all lie in making and manipulating, nor in the using of means, but rather in the revealing mentioned before. It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techné is a bringing-forth.

Though I am new to Heidegger's work, reading this makes me think of Wark's concept of the hack. And that perhaps instead of considering the cyborg athlete as a hybrid of capital and labour, a more appropriate descriptor might be a hybrid of manufacturing and revealing.

The leading scorer of the Arkansas State men's basketball team is sitting out because he refuses to wear adidas shoes, which Indians players are obligated to wear as part of a school contract.

Resample:

What is dangerous in this scenario, however, is that we currently have very little control over the evolution of [the language of logos]. Copyright and trademark law essentially prevent us, via the threat of (legal) force, from attaching any meaning of our own to a particular logo. This is radically different from the usual evolution of a language through common usage of words and phrases; what was once a public good has reversed into a medium of private ownership.

In this case, Jerry Nichols wasn't even trying to attach his own meaning to the adidas logo. Rather, he was asking for the right not to speak — that is, not to communicate the controlled adidas language with his extended skin. And for health reasons, no less.