I started by asking myself, “How is the story of Egypt abstracted?” There are many ways this can be done, some of them deeply personal or mystical. But in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to look at the story as the myth of a community repressed to its core and finding a spiritual liberation which allows them to externalize their identity into expression. I browsed randomly until I came...
A few thoughts on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Every culture has its ancestral story. This is one of mine. This is a story of survival. The Holocaust happened The Holocaust happened because of a world embedded deeply in antisemitism. It was embedded deeply with antisemitism because every country in Christendom had subjected Jews to second-class citizenship, to be denied, ransomed, evicted and...
Dear stranger, Down the road is a bridge over a cement creek. The waters are always very low, except when it rains, then it stays high for a few days. In the middle of the creek, to the side of the bridge, is a supermarket trolley lying on its side, half submerged. I walk over the bridge most days – to the train station, or the shops, or the library – and sometimes I see two ducks standing next...
Loc.2716 “Observation of Nature” C* starts seeking universals (and itself) in things, but this proves an endless task, so it limits itself to finding the essential properties of things. But these ‘characteristics’ also prove changing, and hence it must regard them as ‘vanishing moments’. Thence it seeks the law which underlies these universal yet changing characteristics. It does this by...
The description of the early analytic philosophers is that of a methodology, namely to analyze the world in terms of logical propositions. This is really a methodology, but I extract a metaphilosophy from it: philosophy seeks to (1) discover a method for describing the world (and its subjects) in such a way as to be informative (i.e. not mere tautologies nor contradictions), and then (2) to apply...
Kill Em All was Metallica’s first studio album in 1983. At this point, the lineup was Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton, and Hammet. The last famously replaced Mustaine, who was too much of an asshole for the band who had to be talked down to titling their debut KEM. Their original title would have been Metal Up Your Ass with complementary album art showing a hand stabbing with a dagger out of a toilet...
There’s a great new study that shows how similar vertebrates’ and insects’ brains are. The scientists conduct molecular, developmental, genetic, and structural/morphological, neurochemical, neurological, and higher-order function tests! So maybe that’s cool1, but no real surprise2 1. It’s actually super amazing cool. 2. Well, not to someone with a reasonable education in biology. But I think this...
The Bible Nut, whose given name was Joseph, had recently found out that between 7:00 pm and 7:30 pm each day the café across the road would sell their muffins at the reduced price of two dollars. Joseph’s permit allowed him to speak until 7:30 pm but lately, he had been stopping a little early to catch the sale. ‘And Jehovah called unto Moses, and spake unto him out …’ The Lord would forgive him...
Editorial notes: One of Shai’s unique talents was writing stories in the style of famous authors. In the story below, retrieved from his Google Drive, he convincingly imitates a vampire genre, Twilight-like movie script, as if it were directed by Wes Anderson. Scene 1: A fixed camera shows the following: A man (henceforth the “Father”) is waiting in the shade of his garden on a lounge chair. He...
A comparative review of a competitive NMDA receptor agonist and a film by award-winning Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii First off: spoilers. If this was the future that word would be flashing right now[1]. Some background to set the scene: Ketamine[I]: it’s a drug best known as “that horse tranquillizer”, and although still employed in human pain management it is no longer employed routinely for...
