February 2012
1 post
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me...
January 2012
3 posts
Wikipedia Blackout [SOPA/PIPA]
“We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet. We are shutting down for you, our readers. We support your right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of...
December 2011
3 posts
Helping a Cagemate in Need: Empathy and Pro-Social... →
“Rats can experience “emotional contagion”: when one rat is distressed, another acts the same way. But can a rat show a more nuanced form of empathy in which it acts to alleviate the suffering of another? To find out, Bartal et al. tested whether rats would rescue a trapped cagemate, without any obvious reward. The group found that rats would release trapped cagemates from restrainers, but...
November 2011
6 posts
Aristotle on activities and alien pleasures (or,...
“[5] And since our activities are sharpened, prolonged and improved by their own pleasure, and impaired by the pleasures of other activities, it is clear that pleasures differ widely from each other. In fact alien pleasures have almost the same effect on the activities as their own pains1; since, when an activity causes pain, this pain destroys it, for instance, if a person finds writing or...
October 2011
3 posts
Here rather than there, now rather than then
SN 1006 Supernova remnant. Source: Hubblesite.org
“205. When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here...
1 tag
September 2011
9 posts
2 tags
Shklovsky: On art and habitualization
And so, [without art], life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. “If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.” And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of...
El instante (Borges II)
¿Dónde estarán los siglos, dónde el sueño de espadas que los tártaros soñaron, dónde los fuertes muros que allanaron, dónde el Arbol de Adán y el otro Leño? El presente está solo. La memoria erige el tiempo. Sucesión y engaño es la rutina del reloj. El año no es menos vano que la vana historia. Entre el alba y la noche hay un abismo de agonías, de luces, de cuidados; el rostro que se mira en los...
Del rigor en la ciencia (Borges)
En aquel Imperio, el Arte de la Cartografía logró tal Perfección que el mapa de una sola Provincia ocupaba toda una Ciudad, y el mapa del Imperio, toda una Provincia. Con el tiempo, esos Mapas Desmesurados no satisficieron y los Colegios de Cartógrafos levantaron un Mapa del Imperio, que tenía el tamaño del Imperio y coincidía puntualmente con él. Menos Adictas al Estudio de la Cartografía, las...
2 tags
May 2011
3 posts
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
6 posts
January 2011
5 posts
November 2010
4 posts
aqualung my friend
[…and you snatch your rattling last breaths, with deep-sea diver sounds / and the flowers bloom like madness in the spring]
WatchRío Sumapaz Corriente, piedras Frente a la desembocadura del Río Panche Boquerón, Tolima, Colombia
6 tags
La desigualdad en Estados Unidos, visualizada
“Schweickart (2001) hace una ilustración interesante de la desigualdad en Estados Unidos. La idea es imaginar un ‘desfile de enanos y gigantes’ que dura una hora, y en el que cada individuo que desfila representa un hogar norteamericano. Como en 1999 había unos 100 millones de hogares, durante una hora marcharían unos 100 millones de enanos y gigantes, que representan a todos los...
October 2010
6 posts
Later: What does procrastination tell us about... →
“Procrastination interests philosophers because of its underlying irrationality.”
