"Never attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by stupidity" is a favorite aphorism of mine. In the context of this unusual and entertaining conspiracy theory as outlined in this video, I would modify the aphorism to read: "Never attribute to malice what can be more easily explained by bad writing." Not that the bad writing in Star Wars makes it a bad movie – oh dear, no! Sometimes, bad writing is what's needed.
Category: Found Online
Caveat: Unbuilding
This video shows a building being unbuilt.
Caveat: Useless Machine
This machine is useless.
I want one.
Caveat: Bracketology
I found this. It is cool: brackets of philosophers, by division (historical). So, who wins? Make your predictions…
Should I tell who won when I played it out, "team for team"?
I'll tell you my final four: Aristotle v Marx and Hegel v Foucault. You can learn a lot about me from that.
Caveat: Just Stay
What's with meditation, anyway?
Unrelatedly (or only semi-relatedly?), I have been thinking about that maxim that we should live each day as if it were our last, or live each day as if it were crucially important to us, and only be "in the moment." This isn't really such a good idea, though: if I lived that way, for example, I wouldn't really be very good at keeping a job. I wouldn't have savings for if I lost my job. I wouldn't have such intense loyalty to my friends while at the same time being so bad at staying in touch with them. It seems to me that existing only in the moment is a bit of a cop-out, vis-a-vis what the world is really about or for. And it feels like a recipe for flakiness. I'm enough of a flake without making it even worse.
Having said that, I think a constant evaluation of "what's really important" is perhaps crucial. So, for me, what's really important?
I once found (or perhaps myself invented) a counter-maxim to the "in the moment" maxim: Live each day as if you will live forever. This alternative maxim has complications and problems of its own, to be certain, and may be just as bad, as advice, as the other one. But I like to say it, because it forces people to consider all the possibilities.
Caveat: Sisyphus
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." – Albert Camus.
I'm trying.
Caveat: triteness and truth
"triteness and truth are keen companions." – Conor P. Williams
What I'm listening to right now.
Zambri, "To Keep Back."
Caveat: modernity causes suicide because it commodifies individuals
There's an excellent series over at the Ask a Korean website about South Korea's stunningly high suicide rate. The blogger there, known by the name "The Korean," generally starts in a humorous vein but his posts often pursue serious topics analytically.
His observation, that I wasn't really aware of, is that the Korean suicide problem is a recent development – very recent: post 1997 (which was a transformative date in Korean history because of the IMF Asian financial crisis of that year). Up until then, Korea's rate was lower than would be predicted based on other socio-economic factors. This is why, he eventually explains, culturalism is not a good explanation for the problem.
Considering that The Korean blogger is, in fact, a lawyer working in DC (according to his online bio), he makes a pretty trenchant observation:
"What
is it about modernization that causes suicide? Modernity comes with
capitalism and individualism, which travel hand in hand. Reduced to its
core (and thus risking gross over-generalization,) modernity causes
suicide because it commodifies individuals."
Caveat: Life*
I found this at MyModernMet. It's by a poster shop called Wordsbrand. Text:
Life*. Available for a limited time only. Limit one (1) per person. Subject to change without notice. Provided "as is" and without any warranties. Nontransferable and is the sole responsibility of the recipient. May incur damages arising from use or misuse. Additional parts sold separately. Your milage may vary. Subject to all applicable fees and taxes. Terms and conditions apply. Other restrictions apply.
Caveat: Apparently, Magenta Is an Imaginary Color
Watch this video, to understand.
I never understood this, before. But then again, I'd never tried to understand it, before.
Caveat: Frisco
An American named Satoshi Kanazawa blogs at the site Big Think about the need for a word that means an anti-shibboleth – meaning, I guess, more concisely than the term "anti-shibboleth" conveys. Rather than trying to explain, go ahead and read his article. To understand, you need to know what shibboleth means, too.
He proposes the word "frisco" as the new term for "anti-shibboleth." As a born and raised Northern Californian, I understand his suggestion completely, and I like the repurposing of the word. So, whenever you need to say "anti-shibboleth" – and, c'mon, I know you say it often! – say "frisco" instead. I hope his terminological innovation catches on.
Caveat: acoustic gangnamstyling somewhere in Asia
What I'm listening to right now.
Some Girls in the Philippines (I think), "Gangnam Style – Cover."
I like this version better than the [broken link! FIXME] original, though it does rather interfere with the satirical intent. Or perhaps one could say that the layer of sincerity supplements the satire? Regardless, I'm most impressed with these young non-Koreans' mastery of Korean pronunciation – it's really pretty good. There are other remarkable non-Korean acoustic versions floating around the internet, too.
Caveat: Those Crazy French Drivers
This guy did a backflip in a MINI off a ramp.
Don't try this at home.
Caveat: Gravity is a mistake
"If anything, the mistake is in nature. Gravity is a mistake." – the guy in the ICR video (click picture for link).
Caveat: 50 States
This map is intended to be thought provoking and/or simply as art – it's not a real political project. But I really like things like this – I call this category of things "speculative geopolitics."
If I were doing this, I would take it another step, and imagine if the borders with Canada and Mexico didn't exist – if they were included and we could compose something taking the 96 North American 2nd order polities [51 (US States + DC) + 32 (Mexican States + DF) + 13 (Canadian Provinces and Territories)] and making them even by population or by land area: maybe 100 polities. What could be done?
Just daydreaming, I guess. Certainly not meant as a political project, either. It's just interesting.
Caveat: Perigrinations, Conspiracies and Consolations
I spent the day working on my reading. I'm getting ready to write some kind of a post about my efforts with trying to read Michael Nerlich's El Persiles Descodificado (which is the Spanish translation of his brilliant work in the original French, Le Persiles décodé). It's dense going – I can spend several hours on only a few pages of this book, which is about 700 pages plus indices and bibliography. I want to do something with it, though. I once noted that Nerlich's book was, in some respects, the PhD thesis that I was intending to write about Cervantes' [broken link! FIXME] Persiles before I dropped out of grad school. So I was relieved, in a way, to find that the book had already been written. It removed from me the burden to do it. Of course, there was a modicum of academic jealousy, blended into that. Is there name for that kind of emotion – relief and mild, intellectual jealousy? – there should be.
So what am I going to write, that will be more than what I just wrote? I want to try to write a summary of my thesis idea, maybe: as it's evolved in the last half decade, or so, since I last attempted to work on [broken link! FIXME] it in around 2005.
Meanwhile, speaking of conspiracies and apophenia (wait, I was speaking about [broken link! FIXME] apophenia?), I found this hilarious website that randomly composes conspiracy theories. I spent some hours on it, learning, for example, that the pope is involved in poisoning people using radioactive isotopes manufactured by IBM on secret bases in Roswell, New Mexico. Get it? It's not unlike the other random text generators I've [broken link! FIXME] found before – but because of the inherent incoherence of conspiracy theories, it works perfectly.
I spent the day having a kind of obsessively Radiohead-centered listening experience. I come away from that further convinced (as I've been convinced, [broken link! FIXME] before) that Radiohead is one of the awesomest musical groups imaginable. Not only is their music great, but they aren't pirate-paranoid – I can download whatever I like, easily. The consequence of this is that I've donated more to the group on their website, over the years, than I've spent on more locked-down music of similar quality. OK, that's enough of a rant, on that.
What I'm listening to right now.
Radiohead, "Karma Police." Multiple ironies. Yes.
The lyrics.
Karma police
Arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radioKarma police
Arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo
Is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her partyThis is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with usKarma police
I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payrollThis is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
This is what you'll get
When you mess with usFor a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myselfFor a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Caveat: قلب
The thing about computer programming languages is that they're all weird subsets of English, basically (BASICally?).
This was always both interesting and disturbing to me, as a linguist. I have been fascinated by the idea of possible alternatives to that Engish hegemony. Finally, someone is doing something about it – not that it will go anywhere. Some guy is making a programming language based on Arabic, called قلب [qlb i.e. qalab? = heart, core] – here's an article about it at The Reg.
This pleases me both as a linguist and as a former computer nerd. I wish this project the best of luck.
Caveat: Amazing Science!
Here's a graph that shows the true cause of global warming.
Brought to you by venganza.org, better known as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Caveat: Bluesky Results
I ran across this image at The Atlantic.
Our bluesky future, prefigured in Beijing – there's something bladerunnerish about it, innit? I think some of the crappy weather here in Ilsan has been a result of eastward-drifting Beijing smog – it's only a few hundred miles west of here, after all.
Unrelated, there's a website for a magazine called The Journal of Irreproducible Results
(which I'd never heard of before). A satirical work, no doubt. I'm
annoyed that they don't have more content online – subscribing to the
paper magazine seems way too old school for my current lifestyle. They
did have an intresting graph, called "All theories proven with one graph."
Caveat: Thou dissembling fly-bitten hedge-pig!
There is a doohickey out on the interwebs called the “Shakespearean Insulter.”
I recommend it most highly: get thee to that url post haste!
[UPDATE, 2024-08-18: I note that at some point during the intervening 12 years, the insulter ceased to exist. This is sad. Yay internet.]
Caveat: Subconscious Disconnect
SUBCONSCIOUS DISCONNECT from Ian Kammer on Vimeo.
What did you dream last night? How about some epistemological horror?
Caveat: Sometimes The Subway Is Too Slow, Right?
There’s a guy in Paris who decided to try something that everyone who rides a subway must have thought at one time or another… and he beats the train to the next station, on foot.
It’s a stunt, obviously. But he captures it with some cameras (including two strapped to his head), and it’s been posted on youtube.
I think this should be a new sport, as suggested by the Atlantic Cities post where I learned of this.
Caveat: Test Your Stupidity
This cartoon was making the rounds in facebookland, and I thought it was pretty funny.
What I’m listening to right now.
Junior Boys, “In The Morning.” The video is kind of weird.
Caveat: Turing Machine
If you have studied computer science, you know what a Turing Machine is. It's not something that's useful, as a machine – it's a theoretical construct that enables us to think about what it's possible to do with computers. So the idea of implementing and building an actual Turing Machine is a bit strange. All the better, then, to build one out of Legos.
Caveat: 가만 있으면 중간은 간다
가만 있으면 중간은 간다
wait there-is-IF middle-TOPIC go-PRES
If [you] wait [you] get halfway.
“Waiting will get you halfway there.”
This was actually very hard to translate or figure out. I still can’t really think of an English proverb that matches what I think it means, exactly. How about “waiting is half the battle”? Or even “patience is a virtue”? Then again, there’s the possibility that I haven’t quite got the meaning right. I only figured it out because I found a guy writing – in English – about the opposite proverb, “If you wait you never get even halfway” and he presented this Korean one as a contrast.
Either way, it brings to mind one of my favorite old tropes, Zeno’s Paradox. Do we get there by going halfway? Or do we get halfway if we have to go halfway to halfway first? Philosophers ponder, while Zeno’s girlfriend is stuck waiting.
Caveat: The Ascent of Zombiekind
This is pretty clever. In my notes for this, I called it “Zombies darwinizing,” which I thought could be the blog post title, but I didn’t use that.
This was found on a tumblr called xwidep. I have realized something: I look at tumblr a lot – but I don’t understand it. I guess it’s basically a blogging platform, but it seems to work differently from the blogging platform I use for This Here Blog Thingy™.
Caveat: Drawn by a tree
Trees doing art, as seen at MyModernMet.
Is this high concept art, or just weird? Or is it comedy? I incline to interpret it as pithy comedy.
Caveat: Metahop
Didacticism meets hiphop, and it all goes meta.
Boyinaband, "Tutorial."
It's not like I'm planning on taking up music composition, but the current "state of the art" in electronic music fascinates me.
Caveat: Best Animation of a Snail Race, Ever
From the reliably entertaining series, "Simon's Cat."
In other news… I went to work early, but I still didn't get the things done that I needed to. This is starting to feel mighty elbridgey.
Caveat: Andilar
I can't figure out what Andilar is. It doesn't seem to exist on the internet, except in the context of this song, and some city in Turkey. Did the songwriter, Townes Van Zandt, simply make it up? He also mentions Valinor, which is a name from Tolkien's mythopoesis, but I don't think it's meant to be the same Valinor, as Tolkien's is a beautiful, Edenic place, like heaven, while in this song it's described as "the lifeless plains of Valinor." Hardly the stuff of Eden.
What I'm listening to right now.
Townes Van Zandt, "Silver Ships of Andilar."
The lyrics,
Of those that sailed the silver ships
from Andilar I am the last
The deeds that rang our youthful dreams
it seems shall go undone
North for the shores of Valinor
our bows and crimson sails were made
Our captains were strong, our lances long
and our liege the holy kingThe hills did turn from green to blue
and vanish as on the decks we watched
But every thought in that noble company
was forward bound
To the lifeless plains of Valinor
where reigns the dark and frozen one
And with tongues afire and glorious eyes
we pledged our mission beThe clime from mild to bitter ran
the wind from fair to fierce did blow
Oath and prayer did turn to thoughts
of homes left far behind
Longed every man for some glimpse of land
and the host that did await us there
But each new day brought only a sea
and sky of ice and grayThanks give no word can drag you through
those endless weeks our ships did roll
Thanks give you cannot see those sails
and faces bleach and draw
Ice we drank and leather did chew
for the oceans are unwholesome there
The dead that slid into the seas
did freeze before our eyesThen a wind did fling the ships apart
each one to go her separate way
The sky did howl, the hull did groan
for how long I do not know
And what men were left when the winds had ceased
grew dull and low of countenance
For soldiers denied their battle plain
on comrades soon must turnSo one by one we died alone
some by hunger, some by steel
Bodies froze where they did fall
their souls unsanctified
Until only another and I were left
then just before his flame did fail
We shone ourselves brothers-in-arms
to serve the holy kingPerhaps this shall reach Andilar
although I know not how it can
For once again he's hurled his wind
upon the silver prow
But if it should my words are these
arise young men fine ships to build
And set them north for Valinor
'neath standards proud as fire
I like this singer a lot. His biography is interesting, too. Well, interesting in a depressing sort of way, a la William S. Burroughs, maybe. Here are some other songs of his:
Townes Van Zandt, "Sanitarium Blues."
Townes Van Zandt, "Big Country Blues."
Caveat: oOoOO
I’ve commented on the amazing greatness of this band’s name before.
What I’m listening to right now.
oOoOO, “No Shore.”
In other news… well, I’ll get to it later.
Caveat: Democracy Demo
This is such a phenomenally awesome video that I had to post it immediately having found it.
데모그라시:데모, from studio shelter.
It’s a little bit “late” – the South Korean elections have passed. It’s intended to be a sort of “get out the vote” thing, I think, showing how relevant and important the elections were.
I laughed a lot at the bit where ghost of Park Chung-hee (the game lists his character as Takaki Masao, his Japanese name, which is symbolically very significant) throws the baby off the tank and the baby becomes Park Geun-hye (the new president-elect, now).
Caveat: Cold, Colder, Coldest
Try walking home for 30 minutes in the -15 C (5 F) cold, and then finding and reading a well-written, deeply moving article found online about freezing to death. You will shiver at the thought of your own mortality, and huddle close to your little portable heater.
What I’m listening to right now.
Depeche Mode, “Insight.” Listening to it over and over, obsessively, I might add – what’s with me and my periodic Depeche Mode revivals?