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Archive | February, 2012

Blue Octavo Wavelength

By on February 27, 2012 4

I’ve got two conferences coming up, and I don’t [have/get] to leave town for either of them.

Kafka's Castle?

First up (2-3 March) is the Auburn Philosophy Department’s annual conference; the topic is the philosophy of colour, and the speakers are some of the top names in the field. (I went to high school with one of them; he played my slave in Plautus’s Bacchides.) Poster here, other info here. The schedule hasn’t been posted yet, but sessions run 9-5 on Friday and 10-5 on Saturday, at the Auburn art museum.

Next (8-10 March) is the Austrian Scholars Conference; schedule here. I’ll be speaking on “Austro-Libertarian Themes in Three Prague Authors: Čapek, Kafka, and Hašek.” Czech your calendars!

Darth Who?

By on February 24, 2012 0

I saw The Phantom Menace in 3D. It wasn’t much different from watching it in 2D.

The post-credits Vader breathing that was in the original theatrical release but inexplicably removed from the dvd version is back in the new 3D release.

This time Ian McDiarmid (in Senator mode, not Sith mode) kept reminding me of Doctor Who. I realised it was because, both in his expressions and in his voice, he was a bit like Tom Baker, but mostly quite a lot like Sylvester McCoy.

Programmable Reality

By on February 22, 2012 10

Progress is a matter of the real world becoming more and more like the internet.

I glued my severed hand to my computer screen. Because I am just that cool.

That has the virtue of sloganesque pithiness and the vice of being subject to obvious counterexamples. But I think it captures an important truth. Anarchism, for example, in effect calls for the open-source abundance, multiplicity of choice, and non-hierachical flatness that characterise the internet to be extended to the realms of politics, economics, and law. (And 3-D printing does the same thing for production.)

At a less substantial level, this story about how customers may soon be able to determine which movies are playing at their local meatspace theatres is another example of the same phenomenon.

Border Solipsism

By on February 22, 2012 0

A carjacking incident in Mexico near the u.s. border results in 50 rounds being fired; one of these rounds crosses the border and hits a woman in El Paso. So everyone on tv is talking about how terrible it is that an American was shot; and they’re quite right, it is terrible that an American was shot.

But given that 50 rounds were fired, I assume that someone else got hit too too. Isn’t it also terrible that Mexicans were shot? Why are only American victims worthy of comment?

I’m reminded of the time a few years back when some jerk on the Weather Channel said that in a “worst-case scenario” the edge of an approaching hurricane might graze Florida or Texas, but luckily the worst part of the storm was merely headed toward Mexico.

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