Total Eclipse

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 -December 31, 1980) “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. “

Reading Thomas Nagel’s seminal “What is it like to be a bat?” There is a mantra I find myself repeating: THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY. Some food for thought, emphasis mine. [There's a paper here, waiting to be written, about the relation of a presupposed subjective character of experience, the myth of the given, [...]

An interesting assortment of people died this past month; Influential anthropologist Clifford Geertz, American Filmmaker Robert Altman, Sophie’s Choice author William Styron, Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, and Literary-critic Richard Gilman. Am I the only one who sees a pattern? Each from their own perspective, worked for the interpretation and better understanding of society and [...]

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) “The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine. “

By Rudyard Kipling. If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in [...]

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) “There are no facts, only interpretations.“

SO, today is Blog Day, in which we ask ourselves, how has blogging been this year? I think this year has been the year of the real explosion. Blogging has been around for ages, and has constantly been growing, and with the advent and popularity of trackbacking, RSS feeds and smart web2.0 crap, it’s beginning [...]

So, I got an invitation for a (compulsory) 24 day vacation at a luxurious army installation, located somewhere in the south. This all-included package deal includes: shooting range; guard duty; active sweating; military food; and possible life-threatening adventures! SWEET. Naturally, this falls at the peak of my most difficult semester in my most difficult year of [...]

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. “

Upgraded to WordPress 2.04. Again, didn’t pass my JND threshold, can’t say I can tell anything’s different. I did get some MASSIVE spam attack on the site  (I’m talking hundreds of spam messages in my mailbox), all originating from the same ip address (71.246.58.139 in case you were wondering). After deleting a bunch of them, [...]