You are browsing the archive for January 2009.
Responses to Vul et al.’s article on fMRI abuse, which proved as much of a “bombshell” as first predicted, are now too numerous to list. Needless to say, several of the authors of studies Vul criticized quickly responded with a defense [pdf] of their work, to which Vul in turn replied with a rebuttal of [...]
“The alabaster bosom that seventeenth-century poets celebrated in their poems was to be found only in dolls, whose fragility often cost them their existence.”
Walter Benjamin, “Cultural History of Toys” 115
Taken together, three short essays by Walter Benjamin on the subject of toys outline a novel approach to the cultural meaning of toys, [...]
On the subject of the development of the screen and interface, Virilio notes the strange, historical moment, now difficult to appreciate, when “the surprise effect came from the sudden appearance of pictures and signs on a monitor”, rather than from some kind of direct perception (War and Cinema 72). It is, then, only natural that [...]
Originally advanced by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in a 1982 Atlantic article, the “broken windows theory” — which claims “that a decrease in visible signs of public disorder would lead to a reduction in crime rates” — continues to be a source of debate. Though it “helped make community policing commonplace, sparked [...]
“I was convinced we’d have a revolution in [the] US and I decided to be its leader and prevent it. I’m a rich man too and have run with your kind of people. I decided half a loaf was better than none - a half loaf for me and a half loaf for you and [...]
Joanne Faulkner of What Sorts of People has a post up on what ought to now be known as the Gould affair, in reference to the well-known Sokal hoax — which continues to haunt the postmodern left more than ten years after its perpetration. Faulkner summarizes the turn of events thus far:
Keith Windschuttle, editor of [...]
Though little-known and only once republished, “A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World” (1674) by Nathaniel Fairfax, physician and fringe member of the Royal Society, remains a remarkable document, literarily and historically. Conceived at the apogee of what might just be the most awkward moment in English letters – when respected intellectuals [...]
A passage from Walter Benjamin, though from a different time, could just as well be said today of those who snicker at the ‘obscenity’ of social media.
“(In Moscow I lived in a hotel in which almost all the rooms were occupied by Tibetan lamas who had come to Moscow for a congress of Buddhist churches. [...]
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