I believe I’ve said somewhere else that I really only discovered a “fecundity” of thinking in myself* when I started listening to audiobooks while walking. You know how you need to justify reading to yourself as an activity that isn’t just “wasting time” (stupid American “values”)? Maybe you don’t, but something in me, still, even [...]
Tag Archives: reading
Think On’t
Here’s an issue for the mind awash in the digital image and it corresponding “emotional” content: As the mind receives this content it is acted upon by it and it responds in kind. There is no deliberation. We have no time to think but instead we are thought. In the time before writing and speech [...]
Well, What Would Jesus Do?
As a reader and writer, talker and walker I “do” mostly with my mind with a little work for those reliably real metas, carpal and tarsal. Those actions largely comprise the me that comes to this space and pecks at keys; the me that makes pancakes for kids in the a.m.; the me that squats [...]
Go Fetch!
In Greece in the mid-90s when I was there, plumbing lacked pressure and one could not as a rule flush tissue paper. Because of this the bidet was common. Paper was for drying, not for wiping excrement. At the same time homes where I visited, both in Athens and in smaller towns like Markopoulo and [...]
Facilitating First Impressions: Education and theTechnological Teat
A book will “drop” at the end of the month called “Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World,”. At the link is a brief interview with the author where he makes one point that must be clear to us by now, “first impressions” are of questionable merit, at best, “dangerous” and damaging at worst. [...]
In the Midst of Apocalypse: Tom Friedman Is a Weathercock of Irrelevance
Look, no listen, no hear… The world is riven. More and more we strike epiphanic notes. Aha, the world is run by the few at the expense of the many. Aha, utility privileges the few and makes quantification of “the good” a measured excuse. Aha, capitalism floats the boats of the wealthy in any country [...]
Reading Is (and Is Not) Power
Historically, reading is power. Rather, reading was an activity limited to those in power. The Catholic Church refused to allow the Bible to be translated from the Latin (a Power language of the church) to vernacular English. Even once translated the Church forbade women and servants from reading. A quick backwards glance will easily illustrate [...]
Human Potential, Time Discipline and Post-Edenic Mind
There is only rendering, the rendered, upon which there is thought. This is the basis of our understanding of mind. Ruskin, Freud, Proust…Bernays, Goebbels, Gossage and so on. In one sense there is an undiscovered country which is not death, but memory in as expansive a form as you can imagine. We can seek to [...]
How to Blind Justice
Greenwald’s new book (With Liberty and Justice for Some) arrived yesterday. As is my, er, usual practice, I repaired to the water closet for a prefatory inspection. I will offer the full amount of the text I read before I solved all the problems of our legal system: Introduction As a litigator who practiced for [...]
Articles
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The Chaos of Monoculture
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The Custom House: Louis Agassiz with Christoph Irmscher
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The Errant Goes Audible: The Custom House on WFHB
