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"As a professor (and even worse, a philosophy professor) I have become accustomed to people talking about the real world as a land far from the ivory tower in which I am supposed to dwell. Naturally I, and folks who are supposed to be like me, are not supposed “to get” how the real world works. Thanks to Sarah Palin and others, I have also grown familiar with the idea of a Real America, which is also presumably a place where I do not live. Not surprisingly, all this talk of the real got me thinking. When folks accuse me, as a professor, of not being in the real world I tend to smile a bit. After all, there is a certain irony in accusing a philosophy professor of being far from the real world or not “getting” the way the real world works. This is because, obviously enough, of Plato’s famous discussion of the distinction between the lovers of wisdom (philosophers) and the lovers of sights and sounds. For Plato, the true philosophers were the ones who deal with the real. The real for... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

"FriendFeed. You remember it, right? It was that awesome service that Facebook acquired in August 2009. It was a smart deal all around. Facebook got an awesome team of developers and product people, while FriendFeed got to translate some of what they were doing to a service with a reach as large as any on the web. Unfortunately, it was a somewhat raw deal for many of the people who actually used FriendFeed. While the team and Facebook said it would be staying up, many users left and for most it became a ghost town. Or did it?" - Ozgur Uckan from Bookmarklet

" But the best answer comes from Bret Taylor, one of the service’s co-founders, who is now the CTO for Facebook. “US usage has decreased significantly except for a small group of devoted users (many of whom are on this thread), but the site grown quite a bit in Turkey, Italy, and Japan. Turkey is now the largest user base by a decent margin, essentially compensating for the decreased US... more... - Ozgur Uckan

"Also, our own Mike Butcher uncovered the huge Turkish usage of FriendFeed about a year ago for TechCrunch Europe. As he wrote at the time, “As well as it’s fascination with Facebook, Turkish people have latched onto Microblogging in droves. But it’s not Twitter they turned to first. It turns out FriendFeed is the platform of choice.”" - Ozgur Uckan

"In Mr. Miller's (admittedly idiosyncratic) selection, the modern era in philosophy begins with the humane skepticism of Montaigne in the 16th century and culminates in the megalomania of Nietzsche, who styled himself a prophet and tried to blaze a path back to ancient grandeur. For these moderns, the challenge was to find a way for reason to co-exist with the confounding flux of life, what Mr. Miller calls "the protean and transient character of inner experience." Introspection and self-interrogation became the hallmarks of philosophical integrity. This inward turn is all the more reason, as Mr. Miller sees it, to examine the intimate details of the lives that these philosophers actually lived. We learn, for instance, that Rousseau, for all his moralistic pronouncements about the proper childhood education, had his own newborn children sent to a foundling home; that Kant, the stern advocate of disembodied reason, was something of a hypochondriac; and that Nietzsche, as he developed... more... - liberal from Bookmarklet

"Human rights—the notion that the protection of the immutable rights and freedoms of every individual on the planet supersedes all other concerns—did not always enjoy this prominent place in our political debate. Most historians have located the ideology's origins in previous eras, from the ancient Greeks and Hebrews to the Enlightenment to post-World War II. In his erudite new book, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Samuel Moyn proposes a more recent source. He argues that it was only in the 1970s, when other utopian ideologies—socialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-communism—fell by the wayside that human rights assumed its stature as the ultimate moral arbiter of international conduct." - M F from Bookmarklet

I don't know when it began but I know when I began to see it at work. That was in the late sixties and early seventies. Seems like it has now become only history once again. What a shame. - Charlie Barone

Another can of worms. I am aware that what might appear as an agenda promoting human rights from our perspective can also be seen as imperialistic interference from another perspective. Especially given our bad record of invading other countries to impose democracy and our values. Human rights should go hand in hand with self determination but that is often forgotten. - M F

"Disgusted with a perceived slackness and ineptitude in modern academia, Dr. Alan Sokal published a paper full of nonsensical gibberish in Duke University’s cultural studies journal Social Text. The same day the essay was published, he announced the hoax in the journal Lingua Franca. His use of recontextualized quotes is an affirmation of Derrida’s concept of iterability. The greatest value of the hoax is that it reinforces the tenets of deconstruction: to upset the places we feel are comfortable and safe, prompting constant re-examination of our aims and goals. Sokal’s hoax initiates a dynamic rethinking of the way we write and the way we read. Who are we writing for? How are we presenting our ideas? Do we understand what we are saying?" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Vatanen is sleepwalking through his everyday life, blind to the beauties of the wild, when a hare, "tipsy with summer," runs across the road in front of the car he is traveling in. In the wake of the resulting collision, Vatanen wanders off into the forest to care for the wounded creature. Soon he is drifting farther and farther away from what is commonly known as civilization, till finally he is living north of the Arctic Circle. [The book] reminds us that what seems so important in our daily lives may not be all that permanent or sustaining. The best resolution to make this New Year's Day might be to open your eyes to everything around you -- while also recalling that most of our lofty resolutions will ultimately come to naught." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Searle: "With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part."" - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Happy New Year ! - Adriano

Happy New Year, Amira. - Eivind

"Benjamin’s thought was essentially religious. It clung to the twin promises of redemption and transcendence. The man worked from the clearly Jewish intuition that justice cannot be derived from the world as it is. Justice is precisely that small break from nature instituted by the Law. Our problem is not that nature is sinful. Our problem lies with the fact that on its own, nature just isn’t enough. It needs to be transcended, if only just a bit. As his friend T. W. Adorno was fond of reminding us, the Talmud says that the redeemed world will be like this one, but a little different. And that tiny shift means everything." - liberal from Bookmarklet

Should be worth a watch. - futureseek

Holga 120CFN plus Polaroid back, Fuji FP 100C instant film, scanned...It was a lot of fun! - Ksana from Bookmarklet

"In the art of kung fu, there is what Herbert Fingarette calls “the magical,” but “distinctively human” dimension of our practicality, a dimension that “always involves great effects produced effortlessly, marvelously, with an irresistible power that is itself intangible, invisible, unmanifest.”" - Goran Zec from Bookmarklet

"We seem to know a great deal about attention spans, those constituents of character that have become the digital-age equivalent of souls. Everyone has an attention span. It can be short or long. Long is good. Good scholars, good citizens and good children have long attention spans. Attention spans used to be robust; now they are stunted. Technology — MTV, the Internet, the iPhone — shriveled them. Nicholas Carr, who argued in “The Shallows” that Web use practically causes brain damage, told PBS that technology is “pushing even more distractions and interruptions on us” and thus will never “return to us our attention span.” At the same time, there is a pro-technology view of attention spans — rarer, but no less confident. Science writers like Jonah Lehrer have pointed to studies that seem to demonstrate perfectly respectable attention spans in gamers and Web users." - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

At the same time, there is a pro-technology view of attention spans — rarer, but no less confident. Science writers like Jonah Lehrer have pointed to studies that seem to demonstrate perfectly respectable attention spans in gamers and Web users. And so polemicists of various stripes continue to calibrate the effect of technology on attention spans. But I’m surprised that anyone ventures... more... - Wildcat

So how did we find ourselves with this unhappy attention-span conceit, and with the companion idea that a big attention span is humankind’s best moral and aesthetic asset? In other eras, distractibility wasn’t considered shameful. It was regularly praised, in fact — as autonomy, exuberance and versatility. To be brooding, morbid, obsessive or easily mesmerized was thought much worse... more... - Wildcat

"Mary Midgley: “Selfish is an odd word because its meaning is almost entirely negative. It does not mean “prudent, promoting one’s own interest”. It means “not promoting other people’s” or, as the dictionary puts it, “devoted to or concerned with one’s own advantage to the exclusion of regard for others”. This being usually seen as a fault, the word serves chiefly as a term of abuse. And it raises a difficulty for theorists who want to say that self-interest is, in some sense, the core of all human motivation. We wonder how, if this is so, the word could ever come to be invented at all? Just as there would be no word for white if everything was white, there could surely be no word for selfish if everyone was always selfish. As things are, however, we notice that some people do consider others less than most of us, and we use words like selfish or mean to record this fact”. [Mary Midgley - above - is one of the world's most distinguished moral philosophers. The author of many... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

"Many scientists think that free-will is an illusion. That is, intentions, choices, and decisions are made by subconscious mind, which only lets the conscious mind know what was willed after the fact. This argument was promoted long ago by scholars like Darwin, Huxley, and Einstein. Many modern scientists also hold that position and have even performed experiments since the 1980s they say prove it. These experiments supposedly show that the brain makes a subconscious decision before it is realized consciously. In the typical experiment supporting illusory free will, a subject is asked to voluntarily press a button at any time and notice the position of a clock marker when they think they first willed the movement. At the same time, brain activity is monitored over the part of the brain that controls the mechanics of the movement. The startling typical observation is that subjects show brain activity changes before they say they intended to make the movement. In other words the brain... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

"Analysis of the controversy requires clear definitions of a few terms, which unfortunately are often used colloquially with poor precision. To a degree, such problems are inevitable. Nonetheless, operational definitions are helpful. Free will could be defined in various ways. Will is herein operationally defined here by such synonyms as intent, choice, or decision, and it can be... more... - Alexander Kruel

"Wired and others are reporting that Benoît Mandelbrot, the mathematician and father of fractal geometry, has passed away, just shy of his 86th birthday." \\ I was strangely notified by this retweet: "Thank God he wasn't murdered. It would have taken the cops forever to draw the chalk outline." http://twitter.com/Ihnatko... \\ death due to pancreatic cancer confirmed by NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2010... \\ will also be remembered for his contributions to the understanding of Lévy distributions. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"The dam is located on the Shoshone River in Cody, Wyoming." - MikeAmundsen from Bookmarklet

"Scientists in Germany unveiling the latest self-driven car Wednesday said the days of humans behind the wheel are numbered and that their technology can slash accidents and help the environment. "In the future it will be forbidden for safety reasons for people to drive cars," predicted Raul Rojas, professor at Berlin's Free University (FU). "The cars of today are the horses of yesterday."" - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet

"There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism." - Goran Zec

maznucu ti ovo - Cyber Wanderlust

"Malcolm Gladwell Is #Wrong" (by Maria Popova): "Perhaps, after all, his is a failure of recognizing not the sociology of activism but the psychology of altruism as a backbone of the social web's capacity for good." http://changeobserver.designob... - Goran Zec

"In his seminal book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argued that people are happiest when they can reach a state of "flow." He talks about performers and athletes at the height of their profession and the experience they feel as time passes by and everything clicks. People reach a state where attention appears focused and, simultaneously, not in need of focus. The world is aligned and everything just feels right. If we consider what it means to be "in flow" in an information landscape defined by networked media, we will see where Web 2.0 is taking us. The goal is not to be a passive consumer of information or to simply tune in when the time is right, but rather to be attentive in a world where information is everywhere. To be peripherally aware of information as it flows by, grabbing it at the right moment when it is most relevant, valuable, entertaining, or insightful. To be living with, in, and around information. Most of that information... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

"What do you call a lawyer who helps people share, cooperate, barter, foster local economies, and build sustainable communities? That sounds like the beginning of a lawyer joke, but actually, it’s the beginning of new field of law practice. Very soon, every community will need a specialist in this yet-to-be-named area: Community transactional law? Sustainable economies law? Cooperation law? Personally, I tend to call it sharing law. We need sharing lawyers to help people like Lynne: * Lynne lives in an urban cohousing community and shares ownership of a car with two neighbors. Every day, she fluidly shares, borrows, and lends (rather than owns) many household goods, tools, electronics, and other items. * She is a member of a cooperative grocery, through which she receives significant discounts in exchange for putting in a few monthly work hours. She grows vegetables on an empty lot and sometimes sells the veggies to neighbors. * She has a successful rooftop landscaping business, which... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

"Mughal miniature paintings of fantastic animals are mosaics of intertwined animal and human forms. In the Hindu tradition such paintings possibly represent the belief in the internal unity of all beings and illustrate the doctrine of the transmigration of souls through successive reincarnations. An effort was obviously made to stress the mystical and ambiguous relationship of man to the natural world. It is even possible that the Indian painters were trying to express a belief in metempsychosis." - Adriano

"An argument is often made that similarities between languages (so-called “linguistic universals“) provide strong evidence for the existence of an innate, universal grammar (UG) that is shared by all humans, regardless of language spoken. If language were not underpinned by such a grammar, it is argued, there would be endless (and extreme) variation, of the kind that has never been documented. Therefore — the reasoning goes — there simply must be design biases that shape how children learn language from the input they receive.There are several potentially convincing arguments made in favor of innateness in language, but this, I think, is not one of them.Why? Let me explain by way of a evolutionary biology:Both bats and pterodactlys have wings, and both humans and squid have eyes, but neither pair shares a common ancestor that had these traits. This is because wings and eyes are classic examples of ‘convergent’ evolution — traits that arose in separate species as ‘optimal’ (convergent)... more... - Wildcat from Bookmarklet

I will reshare :-) - Maitani

thks, its an important take actually and much related to my latest installment - Wildcat

"Since December, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been smashing particles together at record-setting energy levels. Physicists hope that those high-energy collisions could replicate the conditions seen immediately after the Big Bang, shedding light on how our universe came to be. Now, data from collisions that took place in July suggests that the LHC may have have taken a step toward that goal." - Spaceweaver from Bookmarklet