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More Heidegger Controversy

Interesting turn of events. I mentioned recently a post about eBook anxiety, which ended with the author Adam Robinson saying tongue-in-cheek he wanted to seclude himself in the Heimat of Heidegger somewhere online. As sometimes happens, he had a drive-by shot of lulz in the comments when someone asked why bother [...]

Helpless for Attention?

It’s all around us this market changing world of ours.  Or is it?

A couple of hundred years ago our dear forebears of English went ice cold thick banana-whips (to quote Douglas Adams) when Parliament forgot to renew the monopoly of the Stationer’s Company and people were able to print whatever they [...]

Pasternak's Refusal

Yesterday the Guardian reprinted from its archives an original note from 1958 about Pasternak’s refusal to leave the Soviet Union to receive his Nobel Prize.  It’s terrific newspapers take the time to sometimes show their historicity (even if a lot of it is pre-conceived).

Webster's Dictionary Awareness

It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, provided that we respect language’s own nature. In the meantime, to be sure, there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting of spoken words. Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in [...]

The (Un)surprising Social Construction of Publication

As a student — maybe at any age — it’s really hard to determine the end point of an historical movement to understand what followed. This is a concern because ultimately one wants to know what is going on “now”, and what will be next. An example most young writers have [...]

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1909-2009)

Historical note today with the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1909-2009).  A detailed obit in the NYT helps summarize his impact on Western culture as an academic.  Le Fig has a better review en francais with some video interviews.  The SLOG is more succint.

Narratology For Your Wall

Today’s XKCD reminds us all of the legacy of scientific interpretation.  Hermeneutics has finally come full circle into everydayness.

Munro must have spent some time obsessing over those films. I wonder which axis gave him the most trouble. Maybe choosing the legend, and thus the vocabulary, was the hardest exercise.  Another famous height creation [...]