et cetera

Neil Sinhababu, “Possible Girls“, in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 2, June 2008, pp. 254–260.

I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a trans-world relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn’t cruel to one’s otherworldly lover.

This is, easily, the funniest philosophy paper I have ever read. Some quotes:

In an impossible girl’s world, it can be true (and false) that she kissed me. In any possible girl’s world, and in my world, it is merely false that she kissed me.

I must leave girls of whom everything is true (and false) to boys with less conventional tastes than mine.

I’m interested in real girls, and if Lewis convinces me that some non-actual ones like me, I’m going to get excited about them.

The idea is simple. Find an object, any object, declare it a work of art, and it is a work of art. Art becomes truly objective, just an object, artistic techniques become unnecessary, and the seeds of “non-intentional” art are planted at the same time. This Marcel Duchamp principle, the “readymade” or the “objet trouvé is now recognized everywhere as a perfectly valid way of making art. A generation of Fluxus artists developed this point of view, John Cage adapted it to compose music through chance operations, and it is now quite natural that a composer or artist might choose to work with a found mathematical object, like Pascal’s triangle or the Narayana series or some automaton, just as well as with a urinal, a bicycle wheel, a comb, or a bottle rack.

Tom Johnson, “Found Mathematical Objects”, 2001. [PDF]

She’s ten miles of bad road for every hood in town. They say she kissed 2,000 men. She’s a one-mama massacre squad. She’ll put you in traction. She forced an entire lifetime of passion into one lust filled summer. Tonight she will love again and kill again. Her beauty is a dangerous weapon of war. Her passion for art changed the face of history. She’s brown sugar and spice but if you don’t treat her nice she’ll put you on ice. Mistress of the waterfront, she was too much for one town and no town would have her. No man could tame her. She’s a love-starved moon maiden on the prowl blasting Nazis on a bold commando raid and finding love in precious, stolen moments. As a lawyer all she wanted was the truth. As a daughter all she wanted was his innocence. She’s 15. The only adult she admires is Johnny Rotten. She Lives. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. She will find you. Could she kill and kiss and not remember? On the naked stage she has no secrets. When she shimmied, the whole world shook. When she sang, the whole world thrilled. She steals his car and his furniture. But can she steal his heart? She scorched her soul to save an American cavalry officer. Here she is. That eye-filling, gasp-provoking blonde bombshell. The man-by-man story of a lost soul. Every time she says, “I love you” she breaks the law.

From Brian Joseph Davis, “Voice Over”, 2006. Voice Over is a script composed from over 5000 film taglines [PDF], performed by voice over artist Scott Taylor [MP3]. (Taylor is only reading 6 pages. The original edit of the script is 23 pages).

The following quote is from Polly Wiessner, “Experimental Games and Games of Life among the Ju/’hoan Bushmen“, in Current Anthropology, Vol. 50, No. 1, February 2009, pp. 133-138.

To answer these questions, I asked Ju/’hoansi of Nyae Nyae to play two experimental games, the dictator game and the ultimatum game, at a time when they were very hungry and the money mattered.

Say what? I have some experiments I would like to perform with anthropologists.

A summary of the case histories published by Amatus Lusitanus (1511–1568) in his Centuriae, adapted from Paulo Fontoura, “Neurological practice in the Centuriae of Amatus Lusitanus“, in Brain, Vol. 132, No. 2, February 2009, pp. 296–308. [URI]