I don’t know whether to find this amusing or pathetic, but last night I dreamed that I was at a garage sale and found a miraculously cheap hardcover English translation of Wittgenstein’s Last Writings. After I bought the book and looked at it more closely, I realised it was actually a translation of Spengler’s Decline [...]
As discussed in an earlier post, there was an article written recently that (explicitly) challenges Stephen Jay Gould’s view that the evolutionary outcome of intelligent life is highly contingent: Simon Conway Morris, “Is anybody out there?”, New Scientist, 16 November 2002. Here are my thoughts on the article, which I am writing prior to reading the [...]
RE: The article “Riot Girls”, from Monday’s Guardian, reprinted in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. The theme of the article: there is a new punk trend in teen-pop, and it is good. Why is it good? Because now, the average “13-year-old girl feels compelled to take guitar lessons rather than dance classes”. But at a rough [...]
Yesterday, 37 black boxes were fastened to walls and girders throughout Union Square subway station in Lower Manhattan. Each box featured a single white word written in contrast with the black: fear. Within minutes after they were discovered (presumably, they were put there in the early morning hours), the subway was evacuated, trains were diverted, and [...]
I had read a lot about Stephen Jay Gould, but had only read some of his essays, and never one of his book-length works, before a few weeks ago I noticed a copy of Full House at a sale of old stock from the local central library. The press on Gould has been particularly voluminous this year, after he [...]
Visitors to an off-beat Berlin arts center thought a dead woman on the ground was a performance art act rather than a suicide, police said on Thursday. Authorities said the 24-year-old woman, who apparently leapt from a window, discussed suicide in a videotaped interview with a group of artists the day before. “A group of [...]