crabs
Philosophy can be a demanding pursuit. Jean Paul Sartre describes some of its hazards. From Harpers Magazine
sartre: Yeah, after I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, [...]
freedom
The Office
From The Guardian
I remember when I first met David Brent. I’d asked XFM’s Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant to write some sketches highlighting the issues around exam pressure for a Radio 1 campaign I was working on in 1998. A number of the sketches featured a sweaty-palmed, socially inept man whose buoyant self-image was as [...]
slow motion heart
Peripetics by ZEITGUISED from NotForPaper on Vimeo.
I have seen a lot of video art. Much of it looks like the disappointing efforts of art school undergraduates trying to learn software that is too sophisticated for their drug addled minds to properly understand. There is a reason for this. Even at its best, you tend [...]
dollar driven
Here’s George Monbiot from The Guardian discussing the nature of research and new (bad) ideas government have about linking research to funding. Though, the specifics refer to Britain, its a philosophy that is increasingly prevalent around the world…
Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council [...]
good or bad
Imagine if you took all of the information in the world today, the stock market, the weather, shipping reports, economic data, the footy results, crop prices, rainfall, enviromental news, the progress of war and peace throughout the globe and then distilled that into a single understanding – either that today was a good day or [...]
cafe life
Personally, I hate Cafes. But then I’m a misanthrope. From the New Yorker |
The best thing I read this week was a blog post by George Jonas (…) comparing the literary cafés of pre-Second World War Europe to the Internet. The two, he argues, are not unalike:
A literary café was a cesspool, an insane asylum, [...]
existence
I’ve always wondered about the truth of free will. When, I decide to act, is it free will, or simply a continuous movement of circumstance? This story from New Scientist, gives me more reason to doubt…
WE HAVE all heard of experts who fail basic tests of sensory discrimination in their own field: wine snobs who [...]
monolithic
From Wired
The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the [...]