Eventive Thought

"Learning Something. Here’s a quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:18:25 -0600

“Learning Something. Here’s a quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts...

"Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:36:05 -0600

“Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up...

"Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:56:29 -0600

“Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of...

"The opening up of this new continent has induced a revolution in philosophy. That is a law:..."

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:34:00 -0600

“The opening up of this new continent has induced a revolution in philosophy. That is a law:...

"In a way, new technologies have made us all like Baudelaire. We are intoxicated by the multitude but..."

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:04:06 -0600

“In a way, new technologies have made us all like Baudelaire. We are intoxicated by the...

nonsenselab: High voltage dielectric breakdown within a block...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:03:25 -0600

nonsenselab:

High voltage dielectric breakdown within a block of plexiglass creates a beautiful fractal pattern called a Lichtenberg figure. The branching discharges ultimately become hairlike, but are thought to extend down to the molecular level.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
[photo: bert hickman]

newyorker: Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 Over...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:09:45 -0600

newyorker:

Postscript: Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

Over the course of his heroic, uncomplaining eighteen-month battle with the cancer, I found myself rehearsing what I might say to an obituary writer, should one ring after the news of Christopher’s death. I thought to say something along the lines—the air of Byron, the steel pen of Orwell, and the wit of Wilde.

A bit forced, perhaps, but you get the idea. Christopher may not, as Byron did, write poetry, but he could recite staves, cantos, yards of it. As for Byronic aura, there were the curly locks, the unbuttoned shirt revealing a wealth—verily, a woolly mastodon—of pectoral hair, as well as the roguish, raffish je ne sais quoi good looks. (Somewhere in “Hitch-22,” he notes that he had now reached the age when “only women wanted to go to bed with me.”)

- Christopher Buckley on his friend Christopher Hitchens: http://nyr.kr/u3IjyF

newyorker: Postscript: Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011 In a parallel...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:08:48 -0600

newyorker:

Postscript: Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011

In a parallel universe, in a luckier realm, Havel would have lived out his life as a Czech epigone of Ionesco and Beckett, a carefree son of privilege, free to write, to pursue his pleasures, to listen to the rock ‘n roll he loved. Instead, like a living figure from Kafka, he was born to a system where absurdity, not law, ruled; calmly, resolutely, he pursued a life of dissidence, led a revolution, and then assumed a home in the Castle, the seat of power in liberated Prague…

- David Remnick remembers Vaclav Havel: http://nyr.kr/vdUGhA

Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:08:28 -0600

thenewinquiry: by Amanda Rivkin Where are the great men? Are we beyond the point of elevating the...

"There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. As..."

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:41:03 -0600

“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s...

"JÉRÔME SANS: Faced with the plethora of possibilities, what game should we play? PAUL VIRILIO: Play..."

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:08:04 -0600

“JÉRÔME SANS: Faced with the plethora of possibilities, what game should we play? PAUL...

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an..."

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:11:33 -0600

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed...

Manet in Tunisia

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:51:54 -0600

thenewinquiry: Rue Mosnier Decorated with Flags, Edouard Manet (1878) Revolutionary art changes...

Wolves in Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:35:08 -0600

Derrida begins his brilliant last seminars entitled The Beast and the Sovereign, which have been...

nonsenselab: .085 HE KEXIN “From the singularity of 9/11 to the...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:34:47 -0600

nonsenselab:

.085 HE KEXIN

“From the singularity of 9/11 to the multiplicity of signs and their mutations that constituted the Beijing Olympic Games to the multitude that sought to contest a theretofore hegemonic truth. Two information bombs, one nuclear and one genetic, one primarily optic and the other primarily haptic. Where does the political take up from these new aesthetics? It is no longer simply a matter of tracing property forms and lines of ownership, nor a matter of developing a weapon to continue the political by other means. Can politics be resurrected in the liminality between the embodied everyday and the fractalization of space made possible by the camera and screen? If the contemporary condition of our grey ecology is marked by the finitude of extensive planetary space, the pollution of our lived distances by real-time transmission, and the temporary reprieve offered by the foldings and tremblings of the data-virtual, we can ask no less of a question today.”

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Smith, S. (2009). La bombe philosophique: An archaeology of the stereoscopic present (or, sporting through the shrapnel). In P. Virilio, H. von Amelunxen & D. Burk (Eds.), Grey ecology (97-113). New York: Atropos Press.

Musicality and Ecology with DJ Spooky

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:40:00 -0600

This post is inspired by some thinking I have been doing surrounding Paul D. Miller’s, aka DJ...

nonsenselab: Department of Biological FlowBall Bearings...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:37:40 -0600

nonsenselab:

Department of Biological Flow
Ball Bearings (Reticulated Foam)
silkscreened latex balloon installation
in process

- - -

Generally speaking, we might suggest it is the multiple Eye (and its interface with the touch of Skin) that governs the preparation for contagion, processing, incarceration and trauma found in late modern sport, while the Voice (and its interface with the touch of Skin) anchors its eternal recurrence of particular sporting histories in nostalgia.

Finally, we might suggest that the Flesh (and its interface with the touch of Skin) both implicates and is implicated by the now of consumption. It is here that exchange occurs, tempos slightly out of joint, though one hopes not overly so. It is here that we gesture towards new forms of encounter, new politics, new exchanges — in part through and with the Skin, but also by interfacing Flesh directly, in resonances of harmony or interference.

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sportsbabel, april 2011.

PhiloShrink Blogspot

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:02:31 -0600

PhiloShrink Blogspot: This is my friend and colleague, Vincenzo’s, blog. He is blogging about...

"Every abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are inseparably..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:59:07 -0600

“Every abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines, not only because they are...

"However, the relation between man and machine is always a singular event, that is, an event which,..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:56:35 -0600

“However, the relation between man and machine is always a singular event, that is, an event...