April 2010
46 posts
March 2010
43 posts
Anne Applebaum - I *almost* became the first lady... →
More fun stuff in the life of a foreign minister’s wife.
Fun, but another reminder that anything she writes about Russia should be interpreted as Polish propaganda.
Tiny Cartridge - I choose you, dad
Artist Maré Odomo posted a set of touching Pokémon-themed comics titled Letters to an Absent Father. The strips focus on the anime series’s hero, Ash Ketchum, as he writes brief but heartbreaking notes to his estranged dad.
Though his father was referenced in the show’s second episode and suggested to be a Pokémon trainer, he never appears on the program, and it’s assumed he has little to no...
“[T]he surest sign of false weariness is the snappy fellow who’s just waiting for...”
– Beijing Sounds 北京的声儿 - Only those you trust can bleed you dry
William Harris - A Requiem for Philology →
Like taxonomy, philology is a dying art. Perhaps it has too many lo sounds to survive? William Harris looks back wistfully at his teacher, Joshua Whatmough, then concludes,
The close-connected linguistic school of Philology still exists in a several universities with a few specializing students. Developing fast in the early 20th century, it has largely disappeared from the American college...
WatchNan’s blog had a link to a Boston Review article on Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini’s What Darwin Got Wrong. The point of the book is that there are basic conceptual confusions central to the project of Darwinism. That’s not to say that they deny that evolution happened and is happening. Rather, they dispute that we should say that “natural selection” per se is the driver of...
WatchPerfume - Polyrhythm
Via Marxy
1 tag
slacktivist - Lying your way to crazy →
This is the second post in a series on Slacktivist about how “bearing false witness” about others ultimately destroys one’s ability to know in a particularly insidious way. (Read the first one too.) I really like this post because it reinforces a lot of my thinking about ethics being a part of epistemology. Here’s a quote:
Once you choose to prefer manufactured perception to...
Farhad Manjoo - The one simple rule you need to... →
If you’re in a situation where you’d excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, you should also excuse yourself before reaching for your phone. Otherwise, go ahead without asking. Either way, don’t play with your phone longer than you’d stay in the bathroom.
— The Bathroom Rule by Marie LaFerriere
At this point, it’s basically a lame cliché to say one is addicted to...
Neven Mrgan - What's next? →
In the months leading up to June of 2007, the key players expected Apple to come out with a cellphone. Analysts expected it, journalists and pundits expected it, rumor-hungry Apple fans on forums expected it.
Soon after, iPhones in hands, the same bunch got excited about a possible Apple ultra-thin/netbook/tablet. The ultra-thin rumors were addressed partially by the January ‘08 release of...
“Meanwhile, the bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the...”
– Glenn Greenwald - Those authoritarian, torture-loving French (via llimllib)
“If the suggested revision is implemented anyone who is sad, fails to derive...”
– Allan Horwitz - DSM–V: Getting Closer to Pathologizing Everyone? (via llimllib)
WatchKorean middle school girl yodeling
Via white ninja
My theory is the song is in English, but who knows?
WatchDave Brubeck - Unsquare Dance
I don’t know why everyone seems to prefer “Take Five” to this. How do you get classier than this? Does anyone know if there are any hip-hop songs using this as hook?
Slate - Science won't tell us what to do about... →
A dangerous idea has taken hold in modern politics, and the sooner it is discredited, the better. The idea is that political disagreements can be resolved by science. Its basic logic seems sensible: As good children of the Enlightenment, we should turn to science to establish the facts about problems such as climate change before deciding what policies to implement. Yet the types of things that...
Matthew Yglesias - The Torture Party →
Why was the Bush administration initially so eager to cover up its torture, and conduct its abuses in secret? Once the truth about the Bush administration’s policy of institutionalized torture came out, it turned out to be something that the right thinks works for it politically and they like to brag. But back in the high tide of the torturing, they clearly understood that they were doing...
Tattúínárdœla saga - If Star Wars Were an... →
Earlier this week I was drawn into an enlightening discussion with my colleague Ben Frey about the complicated textual tradition that lies behind George Lucas’s “Star Wars,” which few outside the scholarly community realize is a modern rendition of an old Germanic legend of a fatal conflict between a father and his treacherous son. Below I present some remarks on the Old Icelandic version of...
Nimble Design - /the/path/of/most/resistance →
These days, [my] tech support calls [from family and friends] involve questions of how to do stuff these folks like to do. Because they can now actually use their computers instead of simply restarting them, I’m able to better see how they use them. And the one commonality I’ve seen is that no one knows how to use the file system.
Unfortunately for the average person, the file...
Siris - Feminism and Philosophy →
The charge against feminist philosophy:
Which brings us to the real sense in which it is bad for women to enter the pink-collar ghetto: It is bad for them because they are going to be encouraged to do less rigorous work than they should be doing in philosophy. It will be bad for their professionalism. Group politics will become the very stuff of their “work” and...
“in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The...”
– Maciej Cegłowski - Scott and Scurvy (an absolutely wonderful article via llimllib)
“What if Father Quinn had said, “Of course you’ll recognize
your parents in...”
– Barbara Ras - Washing the Elephant (This poem contains many true things.)
Friedrich Kittler - There is No Software →
An interesting article from 1995. A bit ponderous, but a good excuse to think about what computers are philosophically.
Software, if it existed, would just be a billion dollar deal based on the cheapest elements on earth. For, in their combination on chip, silicon and its oxide provide for perfect hardware architectures. That is to say that the millions of basic elements work under almost the...
“This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction
And still the sun shines,...”
– Charles Simic - Preachers Warn
Louis Menand - Head Case: Can psychiatry be a... →
A nice look at the promises and perils of modern psychopharmacology by everybody’s favorite New Yorker, Louis Menand:
The recommendation from people who have written about their own depression is, overwhelmingly, Take the meds!
…
What if your sadness was grief, though? And what if there were a pill that relieved you of the physical pain of bereavement—sleeplessness, weeping, loss of...
philosopher's stone - Aura and food production →
I’ve just been made aware that my friend Nan started a blog a while back. It looks worth following. Here’s one entry that stood out to me:
Look at this outrageous quote by Heidegger.
Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of...
WatchAttract Mode - Rhythm Game I is Donkey Konga 1000%
“If this is so, it might seem that science can be our only salvation from...”
– R. H. Blyth (via Leonardo Boiko)
