“Game Change”
Yesterday I posted this: “People’s life stories tend to be told as a series of big, “seminal events” and accomplishments that appear to have a direct logic between them. There is a sense of movement and distinct decision points. (I’ve made arguments about this view being fallacious and un-useful, so I had to kind of more »
“Escape Velocity”
In college, my roommates and I developed this idea of an event’s “escape velocity” in a life story. The idea is a simple one: People’s life stories tend to be told as a series of big, “seminal events” and accomplishments that appear to have a direct logic between them. There is a sense of more »
Superstars
Superstars are not by accident a conspicuous phenomenon in our culture, but inherently belong to a meritocratic society with mass media, free enterprise, and competition. To make this contention plausible I will use Caillois’s book, Man, Play and Games to compare the mechanisms underlying the superstar phenomenon with a special kind of game, as set out by Caillois. – Roger Callois, more »
Diplomacy with Foreign Minds
In this post, I’m rambling aloud about the human “parliamentary mind” and speculate about the intelligence of other arguably-sentient creatures. The Parliamentary Mind “Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it more »
UpWing/DownWing and Etherealization
An Overdue Clarification I should’ve written this weeks ago, to help me outline the direction of my thinking. This article on Aeon Magazine proposed a new political dichotomy based on (as ever) views of human nature and what kind of future we are prepared for. The new dichotomy: Green (or DownWings) vs Black (or UpWings). [As opposed to more »
Veillance [Sur- and Sous-]
Damn, it’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again. I discovered this because I started receiving drafts from old friends that used to do this kind of thing with me in grade school. I’m too busy <- that’s a terrible excuse and nobody believes you. It’s too late for me to start, I think, so maybe I’ll more »
“Driver Assist” [The Gradual Development of Driverless Cars]
Flipping back over to UpWing for a little while, throwing down some notes while it’s still fresh in my mind from recent conversations. A lot of these notes are based on your casual tech blog’s impression of the future and so they may be a bit more trite than DownWing thought seems to be. That’s more »
Hollow States (two kinds)
I don’t mean to make much of the Upwing/Downwing dichotomy. They can be understood in existing words but those words have a lot of political baggage. Better to use nonsense words if I’m going to imbue new meaning at all. And, frankly/uninterestingly, both “teams” will have plenty of objectively significant events to cherry-pick in the more »
More Mulling
Chris Matthews on “Up Late with Alex Baldwin” Something he said spoke to some half-ideas I began fielding in “Mulling Over“, when I was citing “What is Your Water Talent“. “You know when a small business guy is elected President, because he’s used to doing it all himself. Reagan was a corporate person, he more »
Oakeshott on Conversation and Play
I thought about shifting into pooling more New Age thought but the character of the movement kinda repulses me in some way. Perhaps that’s another reason to dig into it? Any, an unexpected detour prompted by a new Daily Dish essay. Another quote-heavy post, I’m more interested in reading than writing right now. A Californian whom more »