Image: Bookbinding by Pierre Legrain via Feuilleton.
LINK REMIX.
The first week of the New Year (as so defined by the Gregorian calender) has passed us by and it would seem Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s dictum still holds true: “If things are to remain the same, things will have to change.”
At Thinking Out Aloud, Lorenzo writes on Scepticism about our Knowledge of Causation :
David Hume’s sceptical argument about our knowledge of causation is the most important piece of reasoning in modern philosophy. Modern philosophy may be said to have started with Descartes trying to find a certain basis for reasoning – his cogito ergo sum – but his method turned out to be fruitless. It is Hume’s sceptical empiricism from which modern philosophy descends, with differing lines of philosophy deriving from different responses to it. (link)
At Spike Magazine, Hugh Graham writes on Rigour for A Dying World: Houellebecq and Gnosticism:
Once, very long ago, yet not far from our own moral circumstances, a kind of thinking loosely called Gnosticism dealt with the lone individual possessed of a spirit in a world of suffering, evil, and an absent god. Gnostic thought had its roots everywhere in pagan antiquity. It re-emerged in philosophies of individual existence in the 19th century and flourished in our own time as existential thought before being effaced by the triumph of the free market. The latter’s masquerade as a philosophy of life has indeed helped to discourage philosophy itself. But the old philosophy of man and his existence in the world is not dead; it is only asleep. (link)
On NYRB, Charles Simic has a poetic short essay: Winter’s Philosophers:
“Everyone who thinks is unhappy,” says Sergei Dovlatov in one of his stories. Some crows caw all day, some have nothing to say. I see one of them pace back and forth on my lawn the way I’ve seen Hamlet do on stage. Whatever is bothering him seems insoluble, too much for one crow to figure out on his own. Still, no harm trying, I suppose, even with the racket his relatives are making as they fly to and fro, as if the road they oversee is not covered only with fallen leaves and patches of ice, but also with fresh road kill. (link)
At Sentence First, Stan Carey says Omit Needless Criticisms of Redundancy:
Redundancy has a poor reputation in writing and editing. Its modern linguistic sense – which I think derives from information theory – has to do with predictability, but it is more generally associated with needless repetition or wordiness, and is therefore often automatically considered a failing in prose. This, however, is only part of the story. (link)
On NPR there’s a piece on Jay Rosen and American Media’s true Ideology: Avoiding One:
the “view from nowhere” too often limits political reporters to obsessing about winners and losers — who’s up or down — rather than the harder work of determining who’s telling the truth or the effects of the policies those politicians adopt. “Removing all bias from their reports is something that professional journalists actually aren’t very good at,” Rosen says. “They shouldn’t say that they can do this, because it’s very clear to most of the people on the receiving end that they fail at this all the time.” (link)
The Economist reviews Evgeny Morozov’s book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom :
In fact, authoritarian regimes can use the internet, as well as greater access to other kinds of media, such as television, to their advantage. Allowing East Germans to watch American soap operas on West German television, for example, seems to have acted as a form of pacification that actually reduced people’s interest in politics. Surveys found that East Germans with access to Western television were less likely to express dissatisfaction with the regime. As one East German dissident lamented, “the whole people could leave the country and move to the West as a man at 8pm, via television.” (link)
I watched a fascinating documentary on the Irish channel TG4 this week called The Lightbulb Conspiracy about the planned obsolescence of consumer products and its relationship to our world of economic growth for (it would seem) growth’s sake - but at devastating cost to our environment. No sign of an English-subtitled version on the web yet, though it will be broadcast in a few other European countries over the next couple months:
Planned Obsolescence is the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand. As a magazine for advertisers succinctly puts it: “The article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business “ - and a tragedy for the modern growth society which relies on an ever-accelerating cycle of production, consumption and throwing away.
TVE - Title COMPRAR TIRAR COMPRA Spain Jan 9, 2011 at 22:00:00 TSR2 - Title PRÊT À JETER Switzerland Feb 6, 2011 at 00:00:00 ARTE Title PRÊT À JETER France Feb 15, 2011 at 00:00:00 ARTE - Title KAUFEN FÜR DIE MÜLL Germany Feb 15, 2011 at 00:00:00 YLE Title PYRAMIDS OF WASTE Finland Mar 13, 2011 at 00:00:00.
(link)
Finally some music:
A (very) deep house classic, released on a 12” b-side in 2001:
Theo Parrish: Lost Angel ♫
Motown, mid-seventies, electro-progressive-funk (featuring, though too sparingly, a lovely little keyboard riff that was sampled in a song of recent times, the name of which escapes me now):
Mandré - Solar Flight (Opus I) ♫
And some laidback jazz:
The Hampton Hawes Trio : Sonora ♫
Take care out there ;)
Jamreilly, 08/01/2011.
