- I am strangely fascinated by NASA’s book for the visually impaired, Getting a Feel for Lunar Craters. It’s sold out right now; they do have the text and an audio version freely available, but that seems like it misses the whole point of a tactile book. [via]
- Have we all been playing Monopoly wrong all these years? I like Waxy.org’s post about it, in which Andy Baio writes, “It’s interesting to see a commercial game see the same sort of cultural variation as other children’s folk games.”
- TV’s ‘Cash Cab’ kills pedestrian in Vancouver. Reality television is dangerous, people! [via]
- Can you survive Baltimore’s 5k run? Sounds like The Wire meets The Walking Dead. [via]
- And finally, the Empathic Civilisation [via]
philosophy
Dreamt of in your philosophy
A lot more of the same at work, trying to get a few things off my plate (or as close as possible) before leaving for a four-day weekend.
I took a short break for one of our semi-regular “brown bag lunches” at work, where they give us pizza or sandwiches and invite somebody in to speak. Today’s speaker was Simon Critchley, chair of the department of philosophy of New School and moderator of the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone. It was reasonably interesting, although maybe more about publishing (and his history as author with our company), and less about philosophy proper, than I had expected. Still, not at all uninteresting, and free pizza.
Meanwhile, I’m taking the four-day weekend in no small part because my parents are away, traveling to Ireland for vacation on a group tour. I didn’t get a chance to see them off this afternoon, but I spoke with them, and expect I probably will again tomorrow after they’ve landed and settled in. The dog stared wistfully towards the door all evening, and maybe whimpered and sighed a little more than usual, but I think he’ll manage.
And that was pretty much my…what was this, Wednesday? Yeah, that was pretty much it.
Wednesday various
- John Scalzi on Why Not Feeling Rich Is Not Being Poor.
- Meanwhile, he also shares the delightfully named Polemical Sparkle Ponies.
- Is most of Bono’s non-profit’s money going towards salaries and press kits instead of to the needy? [via
- The Fox News Enemies of America Venn Diagram
- And finally, this just seems weird:
The film [Alpha and Omega], directed by Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck, does have one innovation, an aural tic that sounds more bizarre each time you hear it: When the wolves howl, they do so not in animal tones but in the wordless woh-woh’s of bland ’80s R&B.
Wednesday various
- I think I’m going to make a movie called Vaguely Historical People Killing Things and Shouting at Each Other.
- You know, Jeff VanderMeer is probably right: “in another 40 years lots of folks are gonna be laughing at lots of stuff we think works just fine now.”
- John Seavey makes the argument that Heroes is actually the best Watchmen adaptation ever. Yeah, I’m just not seeing it.
- “French celebrity philosopher” (how’s that for a title!) Bernard-Henri Lévy has come under fire recently for quoting a philosopher who never existed. [via]
- And finally, I didn’t watch this year’s Super Bowl, not even for the ads nor the stirring triumph of the New Orleans Saints. So I luckily missed this Dodge advertisement, though I got a general vibe from the internets that there was sexism aplenty that evening. The internets, they did not lie. So it’s nice to see someone parody the ad so skillfully, simply by reversing the genders.