here comes the rain again ++




Vancouver in 2010 (Olympics):




Thanks, olo.

Time to rain on down a few things:

Quebec--The CEGEP teachers are upping province-wide strike action. I wonder how the CEGEP students feel, those who were on strike only a few weeks ago? Is there communication and support between teachers and students? We're certainly not hearing about this on the news...

I missed this from Tsotso on sonic writing.

Here's a good essay by Jeffrey Allen Tucker on Samuel R. Delaney. Here's Gunkanjima, an abandoned, man-made, Japanese island. Here's an instructor who got fired for giving students reading in a class on pornography that--the horror!--discussed, errr, pornography. It was his MA thesis. This is the anti-text. Here's someone who knows how to play the art-world: Michelle Kasprzak.

This be Graham St. John's edited volume on Rave Culture and Religion. St. John's work is fascinating -- from what I can tell he's an Australian and has been involved in the outback TAZ's since at least the early '90s. Yet another ex-raver academic. Well, here's ORAC, a favourite label of mine. Don't miss Toronto's techno journalist Amanda Connon-Unda -- and if she keeps writing like this, watch out.

So you all saw Derrida , eh? Well here's the next film on a (living) philosopher: Zizek! ++ I'm not sure what I think of this trend. On the one channel, it's media-live philosophy. On the other channel, I can just imagine the up-and-coming glut of documentaries, each with their own punctuation of difference: "Spivak;" / "Rorty." / "Habermas-" / "Kristeva..." / "Grosz?"

Princeton Streaking Club. Yah. If we do this at McGill, we will need electric-heated socks. Not for our feet. And call this guy. He'll give you a fortune if you say "Oh magic eight ball" or tell you how he smells if you say "smell update." And here's politic shirts and thongs and some naked.

Ubercoolische -- a soap opera with Richie (Hawtin), Magda and Ricardo (Villalobos). Techno-superstars in Berlin mouth postmodern journalese soundbytes from this article by Walter Wasacz. I want one of those t-shirts: "Make the Tea Magda." Almost as good as Tex Haper, German star of country new-wave.


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This is an article with a better title than substance:

"The Rush to Judgement: Binary Thinking in a Digital Age" by Peter Lurie:

Contrast is power. The greater the distinction between one position and another, the stronger its credentials. We have an atavistic impulse toward opposition: every analysis of a concept or thing reverts to a sketch of its converse. Since dualism is invariably invoked as a hermeneutic aid, we don't notice its role in structuring our thoughts, in shaping and finally constraining our understanding. After thousands of years of a binary approach to political, philosophical, economic and sociological problems, we have let our imagination ossify. We are three-dimensional beings imprisoned within a two-dimensional perspective.

--> I'm not sure about the "three-dimensional beings" bit. It seems that we are beyond any number of dimensions. Anyone navigating traffic understands this. Memory, thought and action, delay and deferral -- time -- etc., this far exceeds number as a system. It's somewhat ironic of Lurie to reject binary thinking (which implies yet another dialectic) in favour of only three dimensions. And to retain numerosity at that. The irony again is that while he rejects slogans he turns the "3" into just that. And says a number of things about dualism that are downright odd, like this: "Even the conflict in the Middle East has been perverted by dualist thought." Dualism is a perversion? From normal? Ok. You want to say something here. You say dualism is a structuring principle? Ok. A political tool (of oppression)? Ok. A semantic web or discourse which generates imbalances of power? Ok. A territorial marker of division? Ok. A reinforcement of sectarianism and the dominance of enclosure? Ok. Even a "problematic"? Ok. But a perversion? Huh?

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Someone leaves me with a plugged toilet this morning. No plunger. The slogan "Run to Rona" takes on a whole new meaning.


posted. Mon - April 25, 2005 @ 08:07 AM           |