This is not really recent news, but in the light of this week’s reading for my New Media class, I thought it might be worth a look: the Visible Human Project.
Archive | Dilettante
RSS feed for this sectionThis is what interests me, but what I don’t have much expertise in. Amateur.
More M$
Leave it to M$ to charge for services that they never provide. See Ed Foster’s “Your Loss, Their Gain” on InfoWorld. He states that “Acceleration clauses and other convoluted language in the 6.0 contracts regarding Microsoft’s license transfer policies can obligate divesting customers to pay early for services they — and the acquiring company — [...]
Khattam-Shud?
I re-read Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories over the break, and I realized how pertinent its messages still seem to me. The novel advocates communication — of making connections though dialogue and art. The act of engaging our fellow human beings takes center stage in Rushdie’s novel: as long as people have the [...]
Haraway Revisited
Reading Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” again gets me to thinking (again!) about the importance of language. While language has been important since “Aristotle still ruled,” it has taken on an increased significance since the beginning of the move from atoms to bits. The language of western civilizations has been interwoven with the dualities [...]
Leonardo, Machiavelli, and Modernism
What came out of this tradition during the Renaissance may be illuminated by the great “renaissance men” of the time like Leonardo, who, in his Notebooks, suggests a new art based on the pragmatic and verifiable, i.e., “true science” away from the religion and superstition of the Christian middle ages to observable, empirical truth and a trust in the capacities of humanity.
Essay on Critical Man
With this conclusion in his Essay on Man, Pope’s Essay on Criticism seemingly becomes irrelevant. I am interested here in how Whatever is, is right relates to criticism and writing. Rather than negating criticism altogether, Whatever is, is right only supports the critic’s endeavor further.
Poetics and Purgation
Plato’s banishment of the poets in his Republic is based upon an ideological and moral accusation: poets are imitators of things removed from reality and they cater to the emotions: the irrational nature of pity and fear.
