This post really doesn’t fit in with the rest of this site, but I couldn’t help it…. I found a video on YouTube that was just too cute for words. Watch it.
February 27, 2008
February 23, 2008
February 19, 2008
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense
By Friedrich Nietzsche, (1873)
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it so solemnly-as though the world’s axis turned within it. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.
February 12, 2008
The Power of Nightmares
There was a follow up post to The Century of the Self.
The Power of Nightmares is another documentary by Adam Curtis. I really need to find out more about Curtis’ stuff, these documentaries make your heart go pitter-patter…. They’re just so good.
Part 1: Baby it’s Cold Outside
Part 2: The Phantom Victory
Part 3: The Shadows in the Cave
February 9, 2008
Rhetoric 10
The University of California, Berkeley has started releasing recordings of lectures as podcasts. I’ve been following one of them closely.
Rhetoric 10: Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument
The syllabus and instructed readings for the class comes by the way of A Rhetor’s Life run by the class’ instructor, Daniel Coffeen.
Coffeen must be the most annoying, most interesting, most inspiring lecturer I’ve ever had the privilege of hearing. As an added bonus, both the blog and the podcast have rss feeds availible for those who use them.
The Century of the Self
This post is in reference to another. It deserves a repost.
The Century of the Self is a documentary by Adam Curtis about how public relations has been used to sway the minds of the public over the last hundred years, transforming culture into its present state.
Each episode is about an hour long, but they’re worth the watch.
