07w40:3 A googolplex of megabytes Posted October 4th, 2007 by timothy. 0 Comments Goodreads | 2007 week 40 number 3(A googolplex of megabytes) The World of Star Trek: The Next Generation | Patrick Daniel O’Neill http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/stng/ “Perhaps the biggest change on the Enterprise is the sophistication of its computer. It has access to the entire library of recorded human knowledge (probably a googolplex of megabytes) and can present any desired information almost instantly upon request.” [emp mine]
07w17:1 Roundup Posted April 24th, 2007 by timothy. 1 Comment Good Reads Mailing List | 2007 week 17 number 1 (roundup) Hello. This is a roundup of some things I gathered in the weeks since I sent the last Goodreads. What else happened? I spoke at March’s Trampoline Hall on ‘Morality as a Form of Idealism’; I was a filler, since the first person scheduled got into an accident. This follows on me being on a panel discussion at the end of February when I was also made to feel like a filler, and so, it occurred to me last month that my career as a second-rate speaker appeared to be well under way. I hope to get up to first rate by the end of the year. If not, I’ll need to get a better agent. There was also a big ceremony marking the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. They couldn’t wait another ten years for a ceremony apparently, but they will obviously be jumping through those hoops again in a decade’s time. Now, a century marker, I could understand, by the 90th was just more propaganda to remind me that the Canada I knew and loved is being lost to patriarchal militarism and unquestioned loyalty to George Bush’s incompetent, ignorant, and colonial vision of global affairs. There was also Easter and stuff … and well, I’m drawing blanks. This wasn’t meant to be too long. A bit of second-rate fill to the real text that belongs here which is: Breaking News The announcements of kryptonite, and the discovery of an Earth-like planet, both occurred today. Just in time for the Globe & Mail’s redesign to make it look as it would have looked in a 1980s science-fiction movie set in the 21st Century, featuring headlines ‘Earth Like Planet Found’ or ‘Kryponite Discovered’ or ‘Alberta building rocketship to rape new resource’ etc. – Timothy ———————————————- Goodreads YouTube / GoogleVideo Compilations: Why We Fight http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/whywefight/ Fredric Jameson lecture, speaking in 2002 http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/jameson/ Adam Curtis’ The Trap http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/adamcurtis/ // Adam Curtis’ latest documentary was broadcast on the BBC in March and has since been posted on Google Video. I added these to the Adam Curtis compilation page already present on Goodreads, with links back to the Google Video source, where they can be watched larger and downloaded. I loved this series – since 2001 I’ve thought the rise of a interest in religion had a lot more to do with American propaganda for a war against believers, non-believers and evildoers and all that, but this makes me think the real reason is a backlash toward the simple-minded view of human beings as self-interested economic agents, which is how we were supposed to think of ourselves throughout the 1980s and especially 1990s. People understand they are more complex than that, and so far, religion has provided a framework to encompass an idea of ‘humanity’ denied by trendy theories. I would also argue that art and literature also provides a complicated vision of human beings, but since the Humanities have been turned into a linguistic mush of critical discourse and over-heated arguments of resentment, people are defaulting to religion for their models and answers and attempts at understanding. But here, I don’t want to say one is better than the other. From my own experience, I feel the worst of religion is balanced by the best of Humanities, and the worst of the Humanities is balanced by the best of religion creating a complimentary relationship with one another, and any attempt at understanding the complexity of humanity should take into consideration what the best of both traditions of the imagination have to offer. —————————– Recommended by Darren O’Donnell A Grammar of the Multitude | Paul Virno http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude3.htm Manuel DeLanda on Deleuze | Manuel DeLanda http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/manueldelanda writes Darren: “here’s an interesting video of manuel delanda taking a trip through deleuze and it’s not all that confusing.” —————————– Slow News Cycle Obscure Story Recycling: Parasite ‘turns women into sex kittens’ | Jane Bunce http://goodreads.ca/shorty/com/sexkittens/ // article date: December 26, 2006 compare with this article, posted in Goodreads 04w06:2 Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality | Jonathan Leake http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1161725.ece “They may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities […] Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the ‘sex kitten’ effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun-loving and possibly more promiscuous.” A cosmic hall of mirrors http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/18/9/3 the one above interviews one of the fellows who co-authored the below article, from the April 1999 Scientific American: Is Space Finite? | Luminet, Starkman, Weeks http://goodreads.ca/shorty/sciam/mirrorball/ and likely to show up again in the future: The universe is a string-net liquid | Zeeya Merali http://goodreads.ca/shorty/newscientist/net-string/ —————————– Week in Review April 16-22 2007 Nations’s Papers React to Getting Everything About … Backwards http://goodreads.ca/shorty/gawker/asshole/ Goodbye, Sanjaya, I Will Miss You! | Maureen52 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swCndDgiokE // One of the funniest things I’ve seen all week, and once again, a reminder of the obsolescence of video art and galleries in the age of iMovie and and YouTube. Sanjaya: Something To Talk About 4-17-07 Top 7 | American Idol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swCndDgiokE McCain ‘sings bomb iran’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAzBxFaio1I // If this counts as singing…what did he say after the edit? It seemed to be a way of re-phrasing the question, ‘when do we send an airmail message to Tehran?’ asked by a hawk in the audience. This past week the lastest version of Ubuntu was released, a Linux operating system gaining popularity. It was named Ubuntu after the African philosophy: Ubuntu | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(ideology) —————————– If you can carry it to the counter, you don’t need a bag to take it from the store, unless it’s like raining and you don’t want it to get wet Drop that plastic bag – go natural | Zou Hanru http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-04/06/content_844737.htm San Francisco to ban plastic grocery bags | CNN http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/27/environment.baggs.reut/index.html —————————– Do we agree? Pirates versus Ninjas | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_versus_Ninjas Convinceme.net http://www.convinceme.net/index.php —————————– Art-like stuff Andy’s Early Comics Archive – A History of Picture Stories | Andy Bleck http://andybleck.com/eca/earlycomics.html Restoring the home of Nicephore Niepce http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAcTHpuqQIs “It was in this house … that Niepce invented photography” // This ten minute documentary includes reattempts at the first photographs and I was fascinated to see the way archaeology was used to determine the exact position of the first camera to create the first images. How Art Can Be Good | Paul Graham http://paulgraham.com/goodart.html ‘They Don’t Know’ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2210845148378198004&pr=goog-sl&hl=en // what have you done with your hands lately? Black Tambourine | Beck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfUZCo-oLtM //Bad experiences with Beck fans has biased me against him for years, although I do have his first two albums. When I saw this video while channel surfing (which, is like, a miracle considering music-video stations never play music videos anymore) I thought maybe I was over my bias. Befriend an artist? Are you kidding? | Jonathan Jones http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/feature/0,,1991391,00.html Today’s critics have got too cosy with the artists they write about, says Jonathan Jones, kicking off a series of debates on the Guardian arts blog ‘My Generation’ | The Zimmers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqfFrCUrEbY China Provokes Debate in Africa | Walden Bello http://www.futurenet.org/article.asp?ID=1700 Ten Lashes Against Humanism | Jorge Majfud http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5033/1/249/ “Not long ago, Doug Hagin, in the image of the famous television program Dave’s Top Ten, concocted his own list of The Top Ten List of Stupid Leftist Ideals. If we attempt to de-simplify the problem by removing the political label, we will see that each accusation against the so-called US leftists is, in reality, an assault on various humanist principles. ” Confucius topples Harry | Steven Ribet http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=455372007 “It took Yu Dan only six weeks to topple JK Rowling and become the most successful author in Chinese history.But it wasn’t tales of wizards and magic that sparked hysteria in the world’s most populous country. The Beijing academic has managed to make the 2500-year-old words of Confucius, China’s most famous thinker, relevant in the 21st century. ” Dead Plagiarists Society | Paul Collins http://www.slate.com/id/2153313/ Bad Lingo: Blog-Media Cliches http://www.gawker.com/news/blogs/bad-lingo-blogmedia-clichs-222162.php President or King? | Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., and Aziz Huq http://goodreads.ca/shorty/law/kingpresident/ “Not even a seventeenth-century monarch was allowed to ignore checks on power the way President Bush has.” Plastic clogs disrupt machinery in Swedish hospital | The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2061288,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1 10 Most Bizarre People on Earth http://www.oddweek.com/item_65612.aspx —————————– CBC Ideas Podcasts In Other Words | CBC Ideas Podcast Have you ever read Don Quixote? There are several English translations of it. Which Don Quixote was it? Or how about Anna Karenina? Unless you are fluent in the original languages in which these works were published, you’ve read them through the prism and sensibilities of that most underestimated of literary artists – the translator. Barbara Nichol discusses literary translation with some of its most gifted practitioners. Part 1 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070402_1888.mp3 Part 2 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070409_1889.mp3 Part 3 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070416_1890.mp3 Flesh and Stone: The Sociology of Richard Sennett The American sociologist Richard Sennett has had two great themes: the history and design of cities, and the organization of work. As a lover of cities, he has celebrated the expanded sympathy that urban life makes possible; as a student of work, he has criticized the fragmentation of time in the new capitalism; and as a writer, he has elevated sociology to a literary art. He talks with IDEAS producer, David Cayley. Part 1 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070219_1677.mp3 Part 2 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070226_1686.mp3 The Ideas of Jerome Kagan Harvard’s Jerome Kagan is a pioneer in developmental psychology. His specialty is studying children. He’s also a philosopher of his science. In a conversation with Paul Kennedy, Jerome Kagan reflects on nature vs. nurture, emotion and the quest for meaning. http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20070212_1652.mp3 // I especially liked Kagan’s breakdown of the rise of Freudianism in the first half of the 20th Century: Jerome Kagan: Freud made some very strong statements, for example: all children pass through three phases; an oral phase in infancy, an anal phase during the second year, a phallic phase, a genital phase … that all are neuroses, all are neurotic symptoms: insomnia, depression, fearfulness, they’re all a function of repression of our conflicted urges, primarily sexual. Now, none of that is true. So here’s the puzzle: why did so many (leave me out of it) why did so many brilliant, erudite, educated people not just in the sciences but in the humanities believe that? That’s the puzzle.And the only approach to an answer I can come to is that he spoke to the intuitions of Americans. I should point out that in the early part of the 20th Century, Europe was not very friendly to Freud, it was America and England. America and England were Protestant countries with a much more prudish attitude toward sexuality. And so here is my attempt at some sort of an explanation. The availability of cheap contraceptives toward the end of the 19th Century meant that young men and women could begin to think about sexual activity outside of marriage, otherwise you couldn’t, especially if you were middle class. So now you’re allowing these thoughts to bubble up, but there’s a lot of tension and shame and uncertainty about it. So it’s sitting right on the cusp of consciousness and creating a sort of tension and what I think happened was the tensions that are due to a sick child, losing your job, your parent having cancer, frustration with your boss … that all those tensions, which have nothing to do with sexuality were interpreted as due to the conflict over sexuality. That’s the only why I can understand why this idea – coincidentally, which I believed when I was 21 years old, I thought Freud was absolutely dead right …. dead right. Paul Kennedy: It would be hard to believe anything else because that was the orthodoxy as you say. Jerome Kagan: Yeah, but there was a minority of scholars who rejected it. I mean not everyone thought it was a good idea, but many people did. I’m sure the explanation I just gave can’t be all of it. There have to be other factors, but someone smarter than I will have to come up with it. But at least the explanation I just offered I think makes some small contribution. But it is amazing. —————————– Subsection on Cultural Memory Why do geeks have lust for ZFS? | Paulius http://tech.zamwi.com/2007/01/16/why-do-geeks-have-lust-for-zfs/ Scientists: Data-storing bacteria could last thousands of years http://goodreads.ca/shorty/computerworld/bacterialstorage/ Sparta? No. This is madness | Ephraim Lytle http://www.thestar.com/article/190493 ‘300’: Fact or fiction? | Victor Davis Hanson http://goodreads.ca/shorty/washingtontimes/300/ Das Google Problem: is the invisible mouse benevolent? | Tony Curzon Price http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/google_problem_4546.jsp We’re all ’80s kids now | Raju Mudhar http://www.thestar.com/artsentertainment/article/198191 —————————– The Disappearing Bees Why are Niagara’s bees dying? | Dana Flavelle http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/203818 Cellular phone uses linked to bee deaths | Dana Flavelle http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/204247 Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? | Geoffrey Lean http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece —————————– Paleo-Futurism Paleo-Futurism: A Look into the Future that Never Was | Matt http://paleo-future.blogspot.com ‘You Will’ Ads | AT&T (1993) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8 // concept videos for the present life which wasn’t brought to us by AT&T Knowledge Navigator | Apple Inc (1987) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8 // a concept video produced by Apple in 1987 for an interface. —————————– France vote! France: The Precarious Generation: Au revoir job security | Charlotte Buchen and Singeli Agnew http://goodreads.ca/shorty/pbs/precarite/ France’s intellectual election | Patrice de Beer http://goodreads.ca/shorty/opendemocracy/france2007/ France’s Female Presidential Candidate Is Building a Political Machine I Stefan Simons http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,451566,00.html France, Land of Inequality | Der Speigel http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,456999,00.html —————————– WTF? Swiss man jailed for Thai insult http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6505237.stm Follow up: Man Pardoned for Insulting Thai King | Sutin Wannabovorn http://goodreads.ca/shorty/washingtonpost/forgiven/ also in the wtf? department: Complaints filed against Richard Gere http://goodreads.ca/shorty/com/gerekissykissy/ —————————————- Long links made short by using Shorty (http://get-shorty.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com
07w09:1 Chomsky, Hardt & Negri's Multitude, Poster Art and News Posted February 25th, 2007 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2007 week 09 number 1 (Chomsky, Hardt & Negri’s Multitude, Poster Art and News) Hello. I have some news. 1. A week and half ago I updated the Goodreads website to take advantage of a WordPress backend, so take a look around if you’d like. Much easier to find and browse the back issues for example, and to see the list of selected content, to which this posting is making some substantial additions. As well, the ability to comment is turned on, so if you have any thoughts, disagreements or whatever about the links, feel free to give me something other to process than comment-spam. 2. I was asked to be part of a panel talk on art criticism on Monday (26 Feb) at Gallery 1313 from 7-9. So come on by if you’d like. Special Content Today’s GR includes an article by Nadja Sayej on poster art that appeared in last weekend’s Globe & Mail. It is here for archival purposes since it’s something I both wanted to make available to future reference and to share with the mailing-list, since the G&M archives are both difficult to search and cost money to access. This Goodreads also includes a Google Video compilation page featuring Noam Chomsky’s 1988 Massey Lecture, Necessary Illusions. Basically, somebody videoed his talks by filming still images of Chomsky on their screen while Chomsky’s lectures play on iTunes. I guess we’ll take what we can get. I’ll admit that I put together this page rather quickly and haven’t yet sorted out whether the videos are in the correct order (I worked from how they were listed on Google Video) which is only to say that the layout may change a bit over the next few days. The Friday before last was Noam Chomsky day at work: as I typed away at my computer, I streamed audio talks available from chomsky.info and particularly appreciated his 2006 Amnesty International Lecture delivered in Dublin. However, for whatever reason, the original mp3s were cut up into sections (I guess for bandwidth consideration) so I decided to reassemble them to make available from Goodreads. Below is both an mp3 and an indexed AAC file. As well, the week before last I finished reading the Hardt/Negri book Multitude which I enjoyed far more than I expected to. Also available is an audio from Michael Hardt’s 2005 Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture Lecture at Toronto’s York University, The Politics of Love, Evil, and the Mulitude. Note that the clicking sound heard occasionally during the talk is of Hardt fiddling with his pen’s cap. – Timothy ———————-Poster Art———————- Making art that sticks | Nadja Sayej http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/nadjasayej/ ———————-Noam Chomsky———————- Necessary Illusions | Noam Chomsky http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/noamchomsky/massey1988.html The War on Terror | Noam Chomsky http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/audio/The_War_on_Terror.m4a (AAC) http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/audio/The_War_on_Terror.mp3 // Chomsky also appeared on a Dublin radio program after the lecture, and that conversation is available here: http://www.newstalk106.ie/podcasts/library/nced.mp3 The Life and Times of Noam Chomsky (Part 1) | Democracy Now! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpbBn_vznT4 The Life and Times of Noam Chomsky (Part 2) | Democracy Now! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWo_NhH4s6k The Foucault Chomsky Debate of 1971 | Google Video http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/noamchomsky/foucault1971/ And for something more interesting than vulgar politics: Linguistics and Philosophy | Noam Chomsky http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/audio/linguistics_philosophy.mp3 // I forgot where I found this originally, so I’m making a copy of my copy available rather than send you the unknown source. The website this is attached to, Radio Free Maine (obviously the orginal source from the audio’s intro) hasn’t been updated since 2003. ———————-Hardt & Negri’sMultitude———————- The Politics of Love, Evil, and Multitude | Michael Hardt http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/audio/michael_hardt_20050915.mp3 —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here
06w47:1 Cool Economics Posted November 20th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 47 number 1 (Cool Economics) As I mentioned in the Goodreads sent out on October 16th, I’ve prepared a transcript of the Ideas episode Economics and Social Justice, which was released today as a podcast. Despite Mr Sacco’s acceptably flawed English, I found this to be a remarkably good listen, and I especially liked his take on what the Toronto School would call the Economics of Positional Goods. By this I mean that Mark Kingwell has been known in the past year to talk of positional goods which is borrowing from the work of his fellow University of Toronto philosophy colleague Joseph Heath, who presented on his book, The Rebel Sell two years ago with his co-author Andrew Potter, a transcript of which I made available on Goodreads some time ago and herein again for obvious thematic reasons. In addition, because Sacco mentions in his presentation that there is a strong incentive in our culture toward stupidity, since it makes you a more pliable consumer, I was reminded of Alvin Toffler’s talk which was broadcast on TVO’s Big Ideas on September 30th. His talk was for his new book, Revolutionary Wealth where he argued that we have formed a new civilization, one I would argue which is unhealthily obsessed with the pursuit of a string of digits; Sacco would argue that we have tied our identity to these digits, administered by banks and governments, and see them as measures of our potency. Toffler argues that our society’s structures have fallen out of sync, where business is moving at an extreme rate, adapting readily to and creating change in our world but education is the dinosaur, not having kept up the pace and still teaching a curriculum designed to produce efficient factory and corporate workers. Sacco thinks we need to invest in ourselves – that is educate ourselves – in order to remove ourselves from the rat race of competitive consumption which is tied to what he calls the economics of identity. What’s a little shocking is how this new and cool theory of economics – the economics of identity – is really rather old school. In an essay found in his Collected Works (which I tried to get on Goodreads last year but they wouldn’t let me), Northrop Frye wrote: Still, the problem of leisure and boredom is an educational problem. Education may not solve it, but nothing else will. Schools, churches, clubs, and whatever else has any right at all to be called educational, need to think of educating for leisure as one of our central and major social needs. And education is a much broader business than studying certain subjects, though it includes that. Television, newspapers, films, are all educational agencies, though what they do mostly is more like dope peddling than like serious education. Education reflects the kind of society we have. If society is competitive and aggressive and ego-centered, education will be too; and if education is that way, it’ll produce a cynical and selfish society, round and round in a vicious circle. Intelligent and dedicated people can break this circle in a lot of places if they try hard. What makes boredom boring? It’s not just a matter of not being busy enough. Take a girl who’s dropped out of college because the slick magazines told her she wasn’t being feminine unless she threw her brains away. What with running a house and three children and outside activities, she hasn’t a minute of free time, but she’s bored all the same. Being bored is really the feeling that there’s something missing inside oneself. When someone gets that feeling, his instinct is to feel that something outside him can supply what’s missing. This is what inspires the chase for what are called status symbols. A man struggles to get an expensive car or a mink coat for his wife in the hope that people will judge him by these things instead of by himself. One trouble with these things is that they wear out so fast. In fact, our economy partly depends on their wearing out fast. As soon as anything is recognized to be a status symbol, it begins to look silly, and we have to start chasing something else. Suppose a man wants to collect pictures, not because he likes pictures, but because it’s an approved thing to do. He’s soon fold that certain kinds of pictures are fashionable and others aren’t. But as soon as he’s got his house filled with canvases a hundred feet square covered with red paint, the fashion changes to pop art, and there he is with last year’s model of status symbols. It’s the same with all the distracting activities. A man is bored because he bores himself. That was circa 1963. When Sacco speaks of ‘compensatory consumption’ he’s really talking about people trying to buy their way out of boredom. But, you know, we do buy our way out of boredom all the time: we buy computers to do websites and Goodreads with, and we buy books to read which stimulate and educate. An Educated Imagination is what Pier Luigi Sacco is really calling for, and to that end here is some content by which to further that pursuit. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Economics and Social Justice | CBC Ideas http://goodreads.ca/economics_socialjustice “Pier Luigi Sacco teaches the economics of culture in Venice. He’s interested in concepts of post-industrial economics, co-operative enterprise and game theory. In a discussion recorded in Vancouver, he and social commentator Avi Lewis, talk about changing theories of economics as key to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.”Podcast link:http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/ideas_20061120_1221.mp3 The Rebel Sell | Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/rebelsell/ “So the desire to conform, this idea that we’re all trying to conform, fails to explain the compulsive nature of consumer behavior, why we keep spending more and more, even though we’re all over extended, even though it doesn’t bring anybody any happiness in the long run. So the question is why do we lay the blame for consumerism on those who are struggling to keep up with the Jones’? Because the fault would actually appear to lie with the Jones’. They’re the ones who started it all, by trying to one-up their neighbors. It’s their desire to stand out from the crowd, to be better than everyone else, that is responsible for ratcheting up consumption standards in their community. In other words, it’s the non-conformists, not the conformists, who are driving consumer spending.” Revolutionary Wealth | Alvin Toffler http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIAlvinToffler092806.mp3 “The co-author, Alvin Toffler, came through Toronto recently promoting the latest book in which the Tofflers again divine the shape of things to come. The book’s title is Revolutionary Wealth and is an attempt to show how our traditional economic categories are subject to changes wrought by digital technologies. If you suffer from future shock already, this talk is not likely to assuage it.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Monday 20 November 2006 @ 10:15 PM
06w21:1 Forgeting the Soil Posted May 24th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 21 number 1 (Forgetting the Soil) Last night I caught the CBC1 Ideas re-broadcast of the 2004 symposium held to discuss Jane Jacobs’ last book, Dark Age Ahead. Toward the end of the program Nobel-winning economist Robert Lucas presented a picture of things being great just as they are. According to Lucas, the movement away from ‘the idiocy of rural life’ (a phrase he credited to Marx) was a good thing and nothing to be concerned about. I was dumbfounded to hear this, questioning the limits of his imagination. If everyone moved to cities, where would our food come from? What then followed was a presentation by Norman Wirzba, who brought up my concerns with an eloquent speech on this basic problem, which is one of ignorance about the cycles of life. This ignorance is encouraged by city-living and tempts us to believe that we live in a post-agrarian age. His point is that we do not, nor could we realistically. His talk was so good that I contacted him after the broadcast to request a copy of his paper to post on Goodreads. He got back to me this morning and it can now be found at the link below. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The Forgetting of Soil: A Response to Dark Age Ahead | Norman Wirzba http://goodreads.ca/normanwirzba/ “The steady migration of people from farms or rural areas to cities or suburbs, a migration pattern now being replicated across the globe, means that very few of us have any realistic or honest idea of where food comes from, and under what conditions it can be expected to be safely and reliably produced. Food is conveniently and cheaply purchased at the store. […] Given the important insight that culture is not primarily transmitted through the written page or computer screen but rather that ‘cultures live through word of mouth and example,’ (5) a fundamental question emerges: does the victory of urbanization over agrarian life nonetheless signal a long-term defeat if it means the loss of living, concrete examples of sustainable engagement with the land? Who in our society, what face-to-face apprenticeships, will pass on the wisdom we need to live well in bodies that are themselves dependent on the health and vitality of other biological bodies and systems?” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 24 May 2006 @ 2:45 PM
04w18:4 Party Hardy Posted May 10th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 18 number 4 (party hardy) ——————————————————————– The rise of (p)arty monsters | R.M. Vaughan http://tinyurl.com/29rpm “‘While the social aspect of displaying art has always been an important part of the process, the rise of art spaces that are more like hipster Romper Rooms makes many in the art community nervous — is their work becoming mere decoration for an inattentive crowd of fun seekers? And what happens when the party winds down? Does anyone even remember the work? Ottawa-based artist Eliza Griffiths worries about the decline of conversation at openings — even in Ottawa, the capital of chit-chat. ‘It’s not as bad here as Toronto, yet, but I’ve noticed this party atmosphere happening more and more in Ottawa. And I love to party, but in a club or somebody’s home. These party-openings do a disservice to the art, and for the actual artist, it’s sometimes a letdown, because when you show new work you want to hear feedback, watch people’s reactions, eavesdrop, but now you don’t get that because people are there for the event. Call me old-fashioned, but I like talking about the work. I can go to a club for music and dancing.’ ‘” “Islets” and Utopia | Nicholas Bourriaud http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/bourriaud.html “‘It is not for the artist to determine the modes of application of the spaces they build: they do nothing more than build ‘models’ which are either realized or not. (…) This time does not lack political projects, only the means by which to implement them. The dominant form during the French Revolution was the ‘assemblee’, and during the Russian Revolution, the ‘soviet’. Then there was the demonstration, the sit-in, etc. Our time lacks the forms necessary to express our political projects, or to even bring them forth. Today’s dominant form -which is not political – is that of the ‘free party’ or ‘rave’, that of a spontaneous and momentous assembly of individuals around the same goal, who occupy a place not envisaged for that purpose’.” Translated from French by Timothy Comeau. Original article here. —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself from this list, email subscribe@goodreads.ca http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Saturday 01 May 2004 @ 4:54 PM
04w16:1 Denis Young's 'About Painting' Special Edition Posted April 13th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 16 number 1 (Denis Young’s ‘About Painting’ Special Edition) I sent this out a couple of days ago, but anti-spam measure being what they are, I have reason to believe that some of you may not have gotten this one. So I’m sending it again to those who I feel may have been affected. If I am wrong in this, and you’ve gotten this twice, please let me know. – Timothy ——————————————————————— About Painting, The Old Paradigms: Are they still with us? | Denis Young http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/denisyoung/aboutpainting.html “So: are the old paradigms still with us? Obviously, some survived, somewhat transformed, throughout the modern period and some did not […]Their history may be seen as that of the rewriting of earlier achievements in new terms — terms which, once established, modified the template taken for granted in the production of paintings, the template of what was ‘given’. […]Once the implications of this were understood some 50 years later, it became possible for philosophers like Arthur Danto to declare the history of art to be over, and all the old paradigms thus made available, if only through a rear-view mirror in a Looking-Glass world ruled by irony. […] But the paradigm changes that were once called ‘progress’ can equally be seen as the creation of an expanding universe of texts, all ‘nuanced reruns’ from the past (there really isn’t an alternative to that): a view that still leaves viable the old formula ‘instruction and delight,’ that does not limit the scope of painters to raise our consciousness of some issue, private or public, with enough freshness, subtlety or éclat to hold our attention; nor limit intellectual enterprise, or forthright, hedonistic works — though there, of course, the painter, skating around obstacles of taste, between high art and kitsch, will find thin ice.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@goodreads.ca emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 13 April 2004 @ 7:47 PM
04w16:1 Denis Young's 'About Painting' Posted April 11th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 16 number 1 (Denis Young’s ‘About Painting’) ——————————————————————— About Painting, The Old Paradigms: Are they still with us? | Denis Young http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/denisyoung/aboutpainting.html “So: are the old paradigms still with us? Obviously, some survived, somewhat transformed, throughout the modern period and some did not […]Their history may be seen as that of the rewriting of earlier achievements in new terms — terms which, once established, modified the template taken for granted in the production of paintings, the template of what was ‘given’. […]Once the implications of this were understood some 50 years later, it became possible for philosophers like Arthur Danto to declare the history of art to be over, and all the old paradigms thus made available, if only through a rear-view mirror in a Looking-Glass world ruled by irony. […] But the paradigm changes that were once called ‘progress’ can equally be seen as the creation of an expanding universe of texts, all ‘nuanced reruns’ from the past (there really isn’t an alternative to that): a view that still leaves viable the old formula ‘instruction and delight,’ that does not limit the scope of painters to raise our consciousness of some issue, private or public, with enough freshness, subtlety or éclat to hold our attention; nor limit intellectual enterprise, or forthright, hedonistic works — though there, of course, the painter, skating around obstacles of taste, between high art and kitsch, will find thin ice.” —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@goodreads.ca emailed by Timothy on Sunday 11 April 2004 @ 11:50 PM
