September 2008
31 posts
Feats of Strength Presents: Montreal 2008 →
Burn the music, print the art, and package yourself a fancy new compact disk. Or, just load it in itunes. 01 Valleys Killer Legs 02 Tune-Yards Sunlight 03 Paper Tiger Better Now 04 Mussaver f. RCG Daredevil 05 Elfin Saddle Kaila’s Song 06 Aww Shucks Tearin’ it Up...
American Presidential Debate #1 →
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stomach it. I had to stop watching the debate. Obama was playing it too safe, and as a result, was being overshadowed by McCains ridiculous talking points. Every time I heard Obama say “John’s right”, I felt a drop both in the polls, and in my hope for the future. Why was he being so accomodating? I expected fury - a presidential...
If you know me, you are probably aware of my...
Daily Show in top form →
I normally don’t push comedy, but this is genius.
Collider halted until next year
Collider halted until next year: “The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure.”
(Via BBC News.)
American Foreign Policy as Political Failure →
Older vid of Robert Kuttner, Founding Editor of the liberal American Prospect mag, discussing the failures of American foreign policy. If only he knew what the next two years would bring.
Simple Rules
I can’t remember where I gleamed this, but the sticky note has been sitting on my desktop for at least six months now. I’ve edited it over time, boiling it down to the essential. A little silly, but it certainly puts things in perspective for me when I’m feeling uninspired.
Consider everything an experiment
Find something to trust and then trust it for a while
There are...
Unnatural History of Wall Street →
The second episode of Concrete Jumble, a series of animations about the history of New York City, by Gary Leib.
Heidegger: The Essence of Language
“Language is the House of Being.” With this statement, the impression is given that Heidegger presents language as something more than an instrument of communication. What is it exactly that Heidegger trying to convey?
This paper focuses on language as found in Letter on Humanism. The Letter on Humanism articulates the metaphysical role of language in Heidegger’s thought, but it...
Nietzsche - "In Favor of Criticism"
A detailed analysis of aphorism 307, “In favor of criticism”, reflects an aggregate approach that intertwines scientific thinking, artistic energy, and practical wisdom. The aphorism relates to the themes of of science, truth, art, morality, and intellectual conscious as they are found in “The Gay Science”. The aphorism is in favor of criticism, and merits the method of critique as a...
Husserl - "Pure Phenomenology, it's Method, and...
“The Phenomenological” is widely referred to by philosophers of the Continental tradition. How ironic that its source of articulation was an analytic philosopher. This paper is a rudimentary introduction to the ideas and structures found in Husserl’s “Pure Phenomenology, it’s Method, and it’s Field of Investigation”. I’ll begin with context,...
Tiny 'Ships' Sail Bloodstream to Destroy Cancer |... →
Aristotle: Intellectual and Moral Virtues;...
Aristotelian virtue ethics is not just a theoretical discipline but also one that has a practical application: virtue ethics provides a blueprint for attaining happiness. According to Aristotle, the characteristic activity of humans is that of disclosure - the activity of making things known. To disclose with virtue is to disclose well. A habit of virtuous disclosure leads to perfection...
Aristotle: Deliberative vs Demonstrative Reasoning
The Aristotelian world is a bifurcated world of two realms: the non-Being realm of action and the Being realm of eternal truth. Logos is a type of reasoning that comes to speech, by way of language. Language converts the Eidos of Being into the particulars as they are evidenced in the real world. When speaking about universals vs particulars, it makes sense there exists two...
Aristotle: Choice and Voluntary
The voluntary is a decision made by a subject based on appetite; choice is a decision based on deliberation to achieve a desired end. Both are voluntary actions, but the distinction is between appetite and reason.
Aristotle described human life as end-directed, whereby actions are made to achieve ends. To achieve any end one must act, and the first principle of any act is a choice. ...
The Large Hadron Collider: 'Seeing nothing is not... →
All fired up and ready to go!
Foucault: Biopower
“It is in the practice of contemporary biopower that the figure of MAN is mutating: the human is not erased but transformed from ontological to artificial — in the sense of open to artifice. This is not a matter of our becoming “post-human.” It is merely another move in the games of truth, power, and ethics within which we have, historically, come to understand and act...
Repository of texts written by Michel Foucault →
WatchGet Your War On! The Cross.
Baudrillard
French postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that whereas modern societies were “…organized around the production and consumption of commodities”, “postmodern societies are organized around simulation and the play of images and signs.”
As such, in “…the postmodern media and consumer society, everything becomes an image, a sign, a...
Andre Breton on Surrealism
Defined in his manifestos, Surrealism makes the transcendent accessible by situating it within rather than beyond the self. Breton affirms that Surrealism is “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express…the actual functioning of thought…if the depths of our mind contain…strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface…then there is every reason…first to seize...
Reading: For an Ethics of Discomfort
This essay outlines the heart of modern philosophy as it pertains to Foucault - attempts to understand man and his relation to the modern world, in all it’s complexity. The prominent questions include:
“Who are we at present?”
“What are these very fragile times from which we cannot detach our identity and which will carry it along with them?”
“What...
Shooting War →
We are in what has been called a “comic book renaissance”. Apparently. I haven’t been concerned with comics since Wolverine #75. But recently I discovered the secret world of fan-scans. Graphic novels, available (illegally) for download. I personally believe this is great, for I was shut out of the comic-book world, but now have an easy access point for re-entry. Further,...