Ever since Ken Hudson Campbell, playing a jaded but well-meaning Santa (-in his first role, it turns out), put out his butt and pulled up his beard to accommodate one last request (in Home Alone of course), I, and perhaps every adult American my age, have been uniquely attuned to Hollywood’s penchant for ironizing — prematurely, [...]
There are, it would seem, two kinds of novelty: the one that breaks from tradition, ushering in a new order, and the one that perpetuates the same under the guise of change. The latter, associated with fads and trends, marks the logic of consumption, whereas the former, querying the new and indeterminate, suggests a revolutionary [...]
(via Somatosphere) American medical education: anthropological approaches (towards a reading list) Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work anthropology bibliography The Body In and Out of Social Theory [Syllabus] Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work anthropology Syllabus Anthropology of the Body [Syllabus] Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work anthropology Syllabus [...]
Jo Guldi of Inscape has a provocative post up describing how she used available web-based tools to produce a rather sophisticated analysis of the use of the word pseudoscience in Wikipedia entries. Her hypothesis, to paraphrase, is that “pseudoscience” is less a rigorous, ‘scientific’ term than a discursive ‘marker’ for attempts to delegitimize opposing arguments. [...]
Greg Mankiw, the well-known Harvard economist, mentioned in passing in a post today that as a freshman at Princeton more than thirty years ago he had the good fortune of taking an introductory philosophy course taught by Richard Rorty. The lessons learned have stuck with him. In a post honoring Rorty’s recent death, Mankiw recounted [...]
Every Valentine’s Day, it seems, we are subjected to the same old top ten lists and gushing silver screen memorials to the greatest, most memorable kisses to light up the screen. Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic, and now Spiderman and Brokeback Mountain are the familiar finalists — but none, I think, compare to that of The [...]
David Kishik of Notes from the Coming Community (and author of Wittgenstein’s Form of Life) has up on his blog two music videos mashed-up by the video artist Kutiman (aka Israeli musician Ophir Kutiel). But in what way, exactly, are Kutiman’s works mashups? The prevailing theories — Vague Terrain, Eduardo Navas, Remix Theory, the whole remix/copyleft [...]
Who knew that between his early run of physical comedies — What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), Sleeper (1973) — and his long run of New York dramatic comedies — beginning with Annie [...]
Philosophy Language Log » Subjects “The police use of subject is missing from the OED entry, suggesting that it’s either American or recent or both. Curiously, the use of subject in general reports of human research is also missing, except for this curious residue of late-19th-century cultural preoccupations [...]” The Splintered Mind: What Is an [...]
Now that I’ve switched from Comcast to AT&T, and seem to only watch pre-recorded programs off the DVR, I’ve become a little more attuned to the importance of the commercial break. We may say we hate it, but when it’s gone, or artificially eliminated rather, it’s hard to shake the feeling that something important is [...]
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