Science – Page 5 – the coffee philosopher

Just one of many things wrong with his books, I suspect. Not that I would know from experience. I’m not ashamed to say that I tend to avoid this kind of book. Though I did start (but never finished) Guns, Germs and Steel.

Posted on December 6, 2013December 5, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Weekend Reading – Naturally, Florida Gets Namechecked In Any Article About Terrible Trends

The decline of the humanities. More specifically, government support for the humanities. Apparently, it’s not worth it anymore. Ugh. And naturally, Rick Scott, Florida’s favorite governor/unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Medicare fraud case in human history, gets name checked for being a huge a–hole.

It’s an art and an industry. The pun is deliberate.

The scientist as Emersonian scholar-poet.

Rising like the phoenix.

Posted on November 27, 2013November 26, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting – CPA

Not ‘certified public accountant,’ ‘continuous partial attention,’ the internet affliction.

The god of writers. My totem would be an etching of the prophet Gad, one of the prophets who advised King David. He appears briefly in the Book of Samuel, but there is supposed to be a lost book called ‘The Book of Gad the Seer’ that is mentioned in the Chronicles, but which no one has seen since before… well, a long a freaking time. Gad stopped a plague once, apparently, but really doesn’t have much association with writing. Heck, we don’t even has his book.

We still don’t have a philosopher-king (or philosopher-prime minister, but that’s partly because we don’t have prime ministers in America, which, we possibly should, but that’s another discussion, the advantages and disadvantages of the parliamentary versus presidential systems; could one describe [depict?] Obama as a sort of philosopher-president; maybe, but, as much as he’s mocked as an egghead, he’s really more in the evangelical of the educated preacher, rather than the public intellectual; no, you’d have to go back to founding figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to find our philosopoher-presidents, I think). But I do remember reading Michael Ignatieff’s editorials. I don’t remember being impressed. If I recall, he had kind of a Thomas Friedman thing going on, and, really, for pundits, is there any more grievous insult than being compared to Thomas Friedman. I mean, without getting deep into the downright idiotic chaff, like Ross ‘the neckbeard’ Douthat or ridiculously stupid and offensive figures like Cohen.

A cri de coeur for a return to polymathy. No. Seriously. Which is cool, because I’m probably closer to being a polymath than I am to being a specialist.

Happiness sucks. There. I’ve said it.

I’m just getting started!

Posted on November 25, 2013November 22, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Monday Morning Staff Meeting – It’s A Comic Novel

Mental illness diagnostics as parody.

A conservative looks at the liberal critic’s critique of liberalism.

Ok, this is a rather neat bit of rambling, informal essay. An old fashioned sort of essay really. Sort of nineteenth century. But the idea of disassociation from process, which the author links to his relationship with music and the act of setting the needle on the record compared to the act of activating purely aetherially stored music on the world wide interwebs cloud.

Posted on November 17, 2013November 13, 2013 by the coffee philosopher

Has art become philosophy? And does that mean the end of art, in a certain sense (and the beginning of something else; the guy this article is about it all about Hegel, well not all about Hegel, but more about Hegel than most people are, which is a low bar, really, because how many people incorporate a lot of Hegel in their lives? Not even philosophers, leastwise, not philosophers in America, do that regularly. So… I don’t know. Take from this what you will. And by the way, Brillo Boxes is awesome. Thought you should know.)