| The Only Unpardonable Crime |
[Jul. 28th, 2009|03:37 pm] |
"I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul."
From Steven Fry's letter to himself, via Charles Miller
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| Sita Sings the Blues |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|08:39 pm] |
Sita Sings the Blues is a feature-length, animated film that I found unique and entertaining.
The creator, Nina Paley, wrote, animated, directed, and produced the whole thing. A film of this caliber could only have come from a Hollywood studio at a budget of million a decade ago. Now one (admittedly very talented, ambitious, hard-working) person can do nearly the whole thing herself.
It's licensed under the Creative Commons License. If you're not familiar with the CC licenses, recall the FBI warning at the beginning of most DVDs: it states that you'll go to jail if you give a copy of the movie to your friend, or show it to a group of people in a public place (a "screening"). Now, imagine the exact opposite of the FBI warning. That's the Creative Commons License. It encourages you to freely share, copy, and remix the work in any way you like.
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| Ritualized Violence |
[Jul. 25th, 2009|11:46 pm] |
"As a man, one experiences very heavy socialisation from an early age to constrain violent impulses. Agression is channeled out of us in every way (other than on the sports field) which is absolutely correct of course. Anyone who hits another person is a criminal. And all the more so with regards to girls – you never, ever hit girls.
[...]
In fact, spanking is okay (great!) because it is highly ritualised, that is, has associated codes and rules which define actions and limits (the key ones are bottom only + consensuality). It is okay exactly in the sense that other code-constrained violence, notably contact sports and martial arts are okay. These also allow and imply consent to violence-within-the-rules. The rules make the violence productive rather than destructive."
From How to get the spanking you want from Art of Authority
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| The Oceanic Feeling |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|12:01 am] |
"This dissolving of the ego is akin to what Freud, borrowing the expression from novelist Romain Rolland, called 'the oceanic feeling.' He described it as 'a sense of indissoluble union with the great All, and of belonging to the universal,' very much as a wave or a drop of water belongs to the ocean. Most of the time, this is indeed no more than a feeling. But occasionally it is an experience, and a powerful one - what contemporary American psychologists call an altered state of consciousness. [..]
There is nothing innately religious about the oceanic feeling. Indeed, my own experience of it is quite the opposite. When you feel 'at one with the All,' you need nothing more. Why would you need a God? The universe suffices. Why would you need a church? The world suffices. Why would you need faith? Experience suffices."
From The Little Book of Athiest Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville
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| Everyone |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|04:48 pm] |
"Many people would agree that drug culture reform is needed, but we must recognize that “the drug culture” now includes everyone. Modern life involves daily decisions about psychoactives. The option of caffeine use is encountered multiple times a day. It is rare to watch an hour-long television show without seeing an advertisement for a mind altering pharmaceutical or a legal recreational drug."
From Towards a Culture of Responsible Psychoactive Drug Use by Earth & Fire of Erowid
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| The Deal With Things |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|03:19 pm] |
When you try something new - like a new TV show or movie, a new food, or a new card game - and you decide you don't like it, there are two categories your judgement may fall into.
- One is that you just don't get its deal.
- The other is that you get it, but you don't like its deal.
Figuring out the deal is part of the fun intellectual stimulation of our recreational activities. A process of exploration and discovery.
Jerry Holkins puts it like this:
"It is my goal to play a game until I discover its thesis. [...] Essentially, I want to know a game's intention. That intention is surprisingly close to the surface in games most people consider to be of high quality, and so I don't need to play them very long to discern it. I will still finish games that I have come to understand, but a large part of my enjoyment is bound up in this interpretive process."
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| Flappers |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|08:10 pm] |
"These low-hipped gobbies never worry me,” she said. “I keep my cash straight and my decimal points in order. Furthermore, if some dumbbell starts hanging onto the cage I tell him to move on. They don’t block traffic outside my cell. Why, then, should they be starting all this plain-jane-and-no-nonsense business? They’ll be putting us in gunnysacks with nothing but our hands sticking out the next thing you know."
A quote in the San Francisco Chronicle from a female bank teller and self-identified flapper, circa 1922. She's fighting the power, vintage style.
From the Sparkletack podcast.
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| Hardy Souls |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|01:27 am] |
"By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls."
From The end of retirement
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| Argument |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|08:35 pm] |
The word "argument" has a fairly specific meaning, yet we're often conditioned to think of its negative connotations - husband and wife hurling dishes at each other, yelling and emoting, no real communication going on.
At another extreme is what critical thinking defines as an argument: an assertion based on a premise. This has nothing to do with people or emotions, but is a tool of logic and communication.
Thomas Jefferson purportedly would not abide in-person arguing. He had a rule for dinner guests: they may state their position, then he would state his, and then they would drop the subject. He felt that back-and-forth discussion was fruitless: it never changed anyone's mind, only further entrenched the preexisting beliefs of the arguers.
I disagree with Jefferson on this point. In-person argument is extremely healthy, done right.
The key to accomplishing healthy debate - as opposed to unhealthy quarreling - is that the advocates for each side have to avoid feeling personally tied to the point they are arguing. The arguers have to be free to critically attack the other position with full force. For a position to prove its merit, it must pass the gauntlet presented by a skilled, informed, and highly critical devil's advocate.
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| Neuroeconomics |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|02:36 pm] |
"Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to study how people make decisions. It looks at the role of the brain when we evaluate decisions, categorize risks and rewards, and interact with each other."
From Wikipedia. This is right up my alley.
"[Neuroeconomics] measures brain activity while experimental subjects make decisions. Because the brains of all animals are "economic," that is, they have limited resources to achieve necessary goals, neuroeconomics experiments are not limited to studies of human beings, but have also employed apes, monkeys, and rodents."
From Neuroeconomics Explained.
( Read more... ) |
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| Government is an Industry |
[May. 25th, 2009|04:23 pm] |
"Government is just another industry, where countries offer services to citizens, but it has some unfortunate features. It is a geographically segmented monopoly, and since all land is taken, the industry has an enormous barrier to entry. To start a new government you have to beat an old one, which means winning a war, an election, or a revolution. And it has very high customer lock-in: there are barriers to emigration and immigration, and switching countries involves both high financial and emotional costs. These characteristics result in a horribly uncompetitive industry, so it is no surprise that existing firms tend to exploit customers instead of innovating to attract them."
From Beyond Folk Activism by Patri Friedman
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