There are so many things to say, each butterfly litters my awareness, distractions moulding themselves into the grain of passing time, and again, until all moments have become one, that single sphere of life in the past. Which is all very well, but things must be said if they are to avoid silence’s hollow reach into each and every nether corner (black stamps send blank letters along ghostly...
Editorial notes: Although Shai refers to Kant in earlier essays, this is the first where he is analysing Kant’s writing and philosophical approach by analysing his “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science” (definitely a mouthful, thus often referred to as Kant’s Prolegomena). Altogether, 23 essays are related to Kant. I severely want to re-read this...
Money dominates our reality When I think about what money really is, I’m neither surprised nor disappointed that we’ve become existentially dependent on it. If you follow backwards along the chain of causality, you may see that most-every reward can be a consequence of money. There’s no way that can’t change us as we live our lives enveloped by this net! We treat cannabis...
There are quite a few things I’d like to write about now if I could. It’s only a question of importance or priority. (I imagine a god creating a world with that attitude: In the beginning, God said, “Lemme start with…” – surely a better attitude than having a fill of an omnipotent omniscient appetite after a mere 6 days). Anyway, lemme start with… Near...
Not completely comfortable with the precise choice of that neologism. I’d have preferred post-scheduling or something. Although that is due to a difference in focus. In the original concept – from The Now Habit – the emphasis is on scheduling not-work, and filling in the blank spaces with work after each period. By contrast, I’m interested not merely in the category of “reduce...
I’ve rediscovered the value of local news channels. Via the Egyptian Ahram Online. In its capacity as a “local news channel” that I seek, I am looking for it to present its particular brand of foreignness (the type which knows that everyone else is foreign). Ahram Online achieves this via three means, each of which may be contrasted (partly for amusement’s sake) with...
Meta: Today’s entry begins as a diary’s; recanting previous efforts, describing occupying thoughts and intentions, as sitting on this higher perch with the hope of gaining a more accurate perspective of these written fields. Why not begin where yesterday ended. I had been in the process of exploring the sensation of a mental switch whose activation I’ve come to associate with a...
Has content become liberated from medium? The Walking Dead is an example that can be imbibed as either/all of comic (read), tv show (watch), or game (play). However, as an example it begs the question. After all, to what extent did the franchise retain its essence across the media? I choose that nasty scholastic term as an obvious provocation. It is obvious that some cases fail to promote the...
Meta: The first thing I’d like to note today is that yesterday’s meta-worries were both baseless and valuable. They demonstrated both these properties (virtues?) and in doing so characterised what is perhaps most valuable about this diary-style writing, namely, “try-it-and-see” and “learn-from-experience”. Yesterday’s example is perhaps in itself not...
This is a continuation of an effort to review Science 9 August 2013 Vol. 341 no. 6416. V. PubPeer is a nice, interesting, and new website, designed to allow readers to critique papers they’ve read. VI. P647, I read the full research paper, entitled Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment – basically about how knowing about aggregated opinions affects our own, albeit in...
