Category: Uncategorized
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Pain as a Propositionless Attitude
The argument for a separate status for the mental extends ultimately to the claim that there is something it is like to hope, believe, or experience redly, and that this likeness is irreducible to any other form of explanation that depends only on third-person arguments. In one form, this can be seen in Frank Jackson’s…
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Badiou and the Philosophy of Religion
Arts and Letters Daily has this piece on Alain Badiou. Badiou theorizes that there are four conditions of philosophy: science, poetry, love, and politics, and as many of his early adopters have pointed out, there’s a clear bias against theological or religious truth in his work. Mr. Badiou also took considerable interest in a question…
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Mike Davis speaks in tongues
BLDGBLOG recently interviewed Mike Davis. This quote, about the rise of Pentacostal Christianity in South America, fascinates me: Frankly, one of the great sources of Pentecostalism’s appeal is that it’s a kind of para-medicine. One of the chief factors in the life of the poor today is a constant, chronic crisis of health and medicine.…
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Gender-Sex Wars and Civil Society
The controversy over John Aravosis’s “big girl” comment reminds me of this book, by Didier Eribon. Aravosis argues that, amongst metropolitan gay men, these effeminate putdowns have no misogynistic overtones, and that, anyway, we should be worried about macropolitical action rather than the nuances of our insults. After all, it’s this sort of infighting that…
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if only…
“If only” is the frustrated utopian refrain of Oliver Ressler and David Thorne’s absurdly dysfunctional URL addresses collectively titled “Boom!”. Utilizing this ubiquitous textual format of the “new economy,” “Boom!” rehearses the defense mechanisms of the neoliberal imagination as it confronts its own internal crises. The acknowledged incompleteness implied by “if only” situates these texts…
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Another day in paradise
Here’s what we needed to know about the NSA wiretapping. 1. How it works. 2. How the telcos will try to get away with it. 3. Why they’ll fail. Thanks to MeFi and DKos for the links.
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What the hell is making me smile at 7:35 in the morning?
Have you seen this video? Watch it all the way through; it starts slow, becomes funny, gathers steam towards surreal, ends in tragicomedy. Plus, it’s got a catchy tune.
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What do we owe the worst-off?
SKates comments on Andrew’s post about anti-Spanish language sentiment among anti-immigrationists (and why haven’t they found a name that’s pro-something or other?): This policy in no way harms the quality of anyone’s life, nor does it judge anyone as lesser people. It does, however, ask people who are about to be gifted with alot of…
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Gov’t taps ABC to root out leakers.
This strikes me as very important, at least domestically. ABC’s calls are being tracked, or at least that’s the claim. We had all become comfortable with an uneasy cold war between the state and journalists, conducted with a string of double agents we called leakers and whistleblowers. The state was opposed to these unauthorized informants,…
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If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…the A-Team
Dear Bill Gates, Please hire these guys to intervene in Darfur. I’ll chip in. Best, Joshua PS- The article says that 180,000 have died, while 400,000 is more realistic. Hope that helps!