–Jean Baudrillard on Disneyland, Simulacra and Simulation (13).
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“This world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the ‘real’ world…”
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“It is true, veils hang at the entrances to the schools of literature, but they do not signify the prestige of the elite teaching so much as the covering up of error.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Book I, xiii (22). 
It was customary in the Roman Empire, when seeing a prestigious person, to pass through multiple doorways covered with curtains or veils. The more veils to pass through, the more prestigious the person. For Augustine, the school’s veils were not truthfully an indication of wisdom within but rather strategic ostentation. A similar metaphor appears in Ellison’s Invisible Man:
“Then in my mind’s eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding.” –p.36
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The life of a Shuttle solid rocket booster (SRB)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aCOyOvOw5c&feature=player_embedded
Can’t say it better than Luke McKinney: “Watch the video. There is nothing better you could do with nine minutes.”
“The only reason it won’t win Oscars is because we have to let people who only pretend to be awesome have their little prizes. In fact, this isn’t just special effects, this is an entire action movie. You’ve got the amazing kick-off scene, the unbelievable escalation of literally everything, the moment of crisis as the boosters break away from the shuttle (the heartbreaking sight of the shining Orbiter continuing on without you as you tumble through space kicks the emotional hell out of every romance, drama, and tragedy ever made), before the terminal action of plummeting through flames back to Earth”
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-real-science-experiments-clearly-designed-by-michael-bay_p2/#ixzz2U9bZvnmV
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“Spoken Latin has picked up a passel of words considered too casual for written Latin, and the grammar people use when speaking has broken down. The masses barely use anything but the nominative and the accusative … It’s gotten to the point that the student of Latin is writing in what is to him an artificial language, and it is an effort for him to recite in it decently.”
–Latin speaking pedant from 63 A.D.,
writing about an uncouth upstart of a vulgar vernacular that would become: French.
All in the TED talk “John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!.”
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First Publication of 2013: “Mereology”
2013 is my most successful publishing (getting-published?) year to date. Things move slow in print, so there’s the ever looming doubt of whether an “accepted” paper will actually make it through the “editing” and then the “printing” process without being cut. All I can say is, “so far so good.” The first assured “general public” print publication of 2013 by yours truly is the following:
“Mereology.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. Supplement 2012-2013: Ethics and Philosophy. June, 2013. Print.
ISBN 10: 1414482256 Gale-Cengage Learning
Here’s the Table of Contents (published version obviously) as proof!:
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Now, people look at it and say, “Oh what is the message that he’s half naked?” There’s no message. The message is that I was fucking tired.
–Slavoj Žižek (From an interview in Salon)
See Žižek in bed, actually making very good points about philosophy as a modest enterprise of meaning, rather than as idealized questions about absolute Truth. Interestingly, he is fully referencing Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics here–although he doesn’t cite it.
photo credit
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“I really don’t think of myself as depressed, so much as paralyzed by hope”
“…I’m still you know on some medication because I went through that dark time, my miniature hamster Benita passed on, she didn’t pass on, I returned her to the pet store, but she’s dead to me…” - An Evening With Dr. Katz
Maria Bamford makes the world simultaneously anxious and bearable, just like it is, but at least with her it’s hilarious instead of tragic. (/awkwardsmileyfaceorjustmariasfaceatanopportunetime)
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In 1976 the Richest 1% of Americans Took Home 9% the National Income; Today they Take 24%
The growing wealth inequality of American citizens in creative data accessible graphics:
-Thanks Marc for the link.
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PUT them in nature
It’s like the best short story ever. Give little Evie a TED talk already.
http://i.imgur.com/3xngl5v.jpg
P.S. Found this through reddit.
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“Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise”
“That violence often springs from rage is a commonplace, and rage can indeed be irrational and pathological, but so can every other human affect. It is no doubt possible to create conditions under which men are dehumanized—such as concentration camps, torture, famine—but this does not mean that they become animal-like; and under such conditions, not rage and violence, but their conspicuous absence is the clearest sign of dehumanization.” —Hannah Arendt, On Violence
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