Closing tabs from last year
You know the drill. I’m skipping the stuff that deals with Bush, Harper, or books, which should get their own posts. I had a weird fascination with Cass Elliot for a while there, primarily as a...
View ArticleSmart Things: Gene Wolfe Knows The Score
The Commercial vs the Artistic in writing – is there a genuine difference between these two philosophies or are they artifical attributes? Are they in opposition, and if so, can they meet? The...
View ArticleClosing the book-related tabs
And here we go again… I’ve been reading Jeff’s daily reviews of the books in the Penguin Great Ideas series. While I don’t think I’m interested in trying to read all sixty of them in sixty days...
View ArticleNoted Quotes
A couple of quotations from my web reading recently: “I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.” –U.S. Attorney General nominee Eric Holder (via) “Watch half a film. Ring someone up,...
View ArticleSF Writers Say Smart Things: WJW On Geek Fiction
I’ve never mistaken my hobbies for real life. I’ve always craved real life, even when I didn’t have one. I’ve sought out life, even when I didn’t know how. I’ve always tried to live real life, even...
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Let Us Talk Of Webcomics: Part 1, Dresden Codak.
I read a fair number of comics–you know the old school printed kind that one buys at speciality stores these days (admittedly some of them can be purchased at the larger bookstores as well,...
View ArticleToday’s Brilliant Quote
Spotted on Jonathan Carroll’s blog today: “The secret of life,” said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, “is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring...
View ArticleMonday Night Miscellany
Like real-time strategy games? Like science fiction? How about a real-time strategy game where you (and your units) can time travel. Imagine sending future units back to fight alongside themselves...
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Spun Sugar, Time, and Perspective
My pal Gwenda has a discussion going over at her place about future desserts in fiction. I’m actually not that interested in future food, per se, but my interest was caught by a different statement of...
View ArticleAside: What Grayling knows
“Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.” That’s one of many entertaining quotes from AC Grayling‘s...
View ArticleKeeping The Noggin Limber
OpenCulture has some interesting (and free) philosophy stuff to listen to. I love this kind of stuff, and it transforms time in the car alone from a chore1 into a chance to stretch your head. That’s...
View ArticleAside: A Koan Punchline
“My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink.” Yup, that’s a hell of a punchline. Tags: life, philosophy, satori
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How Peter Singer destroyed me in a couple of paragraphs
I like to think of myself as a fairly philosophical person, and a fairly rational one–that is to say, I like to think that I examine my life, my motivations, my actions, and my beliefs on a...
View ArticleSinger / Dawkins
It’s not often a YouTube video grabs my attention for the better part of an hour, but this did. I did want them to be a little less polite at a couple of points, but still utterly compelling for me....
View ArticleThe Artist’s Responsibility?
So, I took a quarter off from blogging. Yeah, that happened. Now back to it. To start back up, let’s look at something in the vein of pop philosophy–that way I can ease myself back into blogging with...
View ArticleQOTD: Kubrick does philosophy
Here’s a quote from Stanley Kubrick, in a Playboy interview, that captures a number of ideas I’ve liked for a long time (there’s echoes of Russell, zen, and Lovecraft in there) in a lovely formulation:...
View ArticleHe should have talked to Kubrick
I have just lost a couple of hours to a suicide note. And I barely dipped my toe in. Here’s the background on the young man who killed himself after spending a huge amount of time preparing a 1900+...
View ArticleAside: I learned a new thing
Now that I have learned of it, I will be desperately searching for appropriate places to work the phrase “if-by-whiskey” or “if-by-whiskey fallacy” into my everyday communications. Also, the canonical...
View ArticleBertrand Russell – Face To Face
The internet today brought me these three Youtube clips, which show old Bertie being interviewed in 1959 (and therefore at the age of 87) on a BBC show called “Face To Face“. I quite like his advice...
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