Co-operatives and Liberation, not necessarily in that order
The Egyptians worshiped the open eye because they knew attention was redemptive – if you pay attention to things you can understand them and make things better. This resonates with us – we generally believe that paying conscious attention to things is the best way of achieving an objective grasp, a full understanding of what […]
Read More The Internet and Social (Network) ConflictIt has come to my attention that some people out there in the cyberworld, and also in my life of in-person human contact, find my photos decent. Personally, I like photography. I like taking pictures, I like editing them and I like the emotional responses they invoke in me when I look at them. But, […]
Read More Photo Set “A”After attempting to meet friends at Danforth Bowl, none of whom I could find, I find, I found myself at Danforth and Coxwall in East Toronto with nothing to do but take the Subway back to the Annex. Well, “rats to that”, I thought – and instead I decided to walk the 8km back to […]
Read More The DanforthThere will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will […]
Read More The Revolution will involve televisionRecently I was thinking about how future societies might look back at our period of history and conceptualize the structural causes which made climate change such a difficult problem to solve. Assuming we don’t rectify climate change, and all the predicted catastrophes go off as (un?)expected, scholars and pundits will be looking for interesting ways to blame […]
Read More Modern Science, Climate Change, and a four year old with a gunCanada’s new minister of the Environment minister of truth is already fully committed to repeating nonsense about the oilsands, hoping to prey on and bolster Canadians’ ignorance both of climate change and the local destruction reeked by the tar sands: Canada’s new Environment Minister Peter Kent says the oilsands have been unfairly demonized as an […]
Read More Canada’s new Environment MinisterJoe Sacco is a journalist who is also a cartoonist who uses the graphic novel form to convey his personal experience living in zones of conflict. His nearly 300 page work “Palestine” is the result of two months he spent in Israel’s occupied territories in late ’91 and early ’92. “Palestine” is a vivid and difficult to […]
Read More Book Review: Joe Sacco’s “Palestine”A cable leaked by wikileaks confirms what many of us already suspected about the intentions of Israeli officials towards Gaza. As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it […]
Read More Wikileaks on Gaza: “keep the Gazan Economy on the brink of collapse”“Values” is the central object of investigation for Harris’ book, so, hopefully he has something interesting to say about them. And the book as a whole certainly does, by bringing to bear neuroscience on moral issues. Harris case for evaluative values scientifically, however, relies on a specific comprehension of what values “actually are”: Defining goodness […]
Read More Harris Vignette #2: What are “Values”, anyway?In Sam Harris’ attempt to dissolve the distinction between facts and values one essential move is to claim that “beliefs” about facts and values inhere in the head. He does not deny the importance of culture, but encourages us to think about culture as a cause of brain development, rather than the other way around: […]
Read More Harris Vignette #1: Are Beliefs in the Head?
Only a Northern Song 