Hogarth - March to Finchley

On Exactitude in Science

LA LA LAND: A LENINIST READING

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/la-la-land-a-leninist-reading/

Dofresh

Map of Australia by Sheep

Map of Sylvania

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Brecht's last poem

Tomislav Jagnjic

yo bro is it safe down there in the woods? yeah man it's cool

nope. wrong way, turn around

DYNAMICAL BIAS IN THE COIN TOSS

ZEN IN THE ART OF INSULT: NOTES ON THE SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF ABUSIVE SPEECH IN LATE MIDDLE CHINESE

Zephyr Press

http://www.zephyrpress.org/

Charles Bernstein In Particular

A black man waiting at a bus stop
A white woman sitting on a stool
A Philippino eating a potato
A Mexican boy putting on shoes
A Hindu hiding in Igloo
A fat girl in blue blouse
A Christian lady with toupee
A Chinese mother walking across a bridge
A Pakistani eating pastrami
A provincial walking on the peninsula
A Eurasian boy on a cell phone
An Arab with umbrella
A Southerner taking off a backpack
An Italian detonating a land line
A barbarian with beret
A Lebanese guy in limousine
A Jew watering petunias
A Yugoslavian man at a hanging
A Sunni boy on scooter
A Floridian climbing a fountain
A Beatnik writing a limerick
A Caucasian woman dreaming of indecision
A Puerto Rican child floating on a balloon
An Indian fellow gliding on three-wheeled bike
An Armenian rowing to Amenia
An Irish lad with scythe
A Bangladeshi muttering questions
A worker wading in puddles
A Japanese rollerblader fixing a blend
A Burmese tailor watching his trailer
An Idaho man getting a tan
A Quinopac girl with a bluesy drawl
An Arapahoe whaler skimming failure
An anorexic man with a remarkably deep tan
An adolescent Muslim writing terza rima
A Scots pipe fitter at the automat
A gay guy in tweed boat
A red man with green ball
A dyslexic sailor with an inconsolable grin
A Northumbrian flier heading for Tipperary
A Buddhist financier falling to ground
A curious old boy jumping into threshing machine
An Hispanic sergeant on lookout for a cream-colored coat
An addicted haberdasher eating soap
A Peruvian child chewing gum
A Sephardic infant on shuffleboard deck
A Mongolian imitating Napoleon
An anarchist lad with skewed glance
A Latvian miner break dancing with the coroner
A poor girl eating apple pie and cream soda
A Sudanese fellow with a yellow stroller
An atheist with a flare for pins
A Bahamanian on the way to inordinate machination
A stuttering Iranian in blue and gold fog
A tell-tale somnambulist rehearsing Gypsy
A homosexual child in a taxi
A Wiccan matron swimming in glue
A Moravian procrastinator practicing jujitsu
A Syrian swami on Lake Oragami
A flirtatious gentleman spinning wool
A colored youngster admiring a toaster
An Ojibwa pushing a button on the Trans-Siberian
A harried officer somersaulting on banister
A moldy Whig directing catfish
An agoraphobic professor on cruise control
A feminist in a rocking chair
A Burmese cook in bobby socks
A teenager infiltrating an air mattress
A pro-choice guy reciting rimes
A dog-faced Dane in shining car
A Pentecostal lawyer jogging in his foyer
A communist wearing a sad apron
A Canadian woman with a nose ring
A ghoulish girl dating a dentist
An idiot in a closet
A Moorish magician in her kitchen
A sorrowful soldier with a morose clothier
A dilettantish senior washing strictures
A socialite on routine imbroglio
A bicyclist hoarding hornets
A toddler pocketing the till
A hooded boy eating cheddar cheese
A balding brownnoser in tutu
A brunette chasing choo-choo train
An Argentine dancing on a dime
A bespeckled dowager installing Laplink
An australopithecine toddler grimacing in basement
A Nicaraguan pee-wee with preposterous pipe
A kike out cold on ice
A Hoosier off the booze
A swollen man with an impecunious grin
A Burmese fellow with face of terror
A lost poll in the forest
A dilapidated soul drinking rum
A pistolero with folded heart
A Shockwave momma hunkering down on puck
A vellobound baby two-facing the cha-cha
A postcolonial fiduciary eating a plumb
A maladroit Swede coughing bullets
A hexed Haitian on involuntary vacation
A Persian onconologist in metrical parking
A Peruvian French hornist shipping Pernod
A Terra Haute charmer with infinite capacity to harm her
A Mongolian chiropodist at a potluck
A Sao Paulo poet reflecting on deflection
A white man sitting on a stool
A black woman waiting at a bus stop

17 translations of Pessoa's Autopsicografia

http://disquiet.com/thirteen.html




The poet is a fake.
His faking seems so real
That he will fake the ache
Which he can really feel.


And those who read his cries
Feel in the paper tears
Not two aches that are his
But one that is not theirs.


And so in its ring
Giving the mind a game
Goes this train on a string
And the heart is its name.


—Keith Bosley







The poet fancying each belief
So wholly through and through
Ends by imagining the grief
He really feels is true.

And those who read what he has spelt
In the read grief feel good--
Not in the two griefs he has felt,
But one they never could.

Thus to beguile and entertain
The reason, does he start,
Upon its rails, the clockwork train
That's also called the heart.

—Roy Campbell

Churchill: How to Play

Necromunda

Rain in Osaka

Jack's Back

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - annotated

http://threekingdoms.com/

Happy New Year

The Curious Expedition

Wittgenstein "If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him"

Two quotations clarify this koan-like remark.

First, from Philosophical Investigations #206:

Suppose you came as an explorer to a country with a language quite unknown to you. In what circumstances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, rebelled against them, and so on?

Shared human behaviour is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

And elsewhere in the manuscripts (MS 165, 97f):

What we call 'instructions', for example, or 'orders', 'questions', 'answer', 'describing' etc. is all bound up with very specific human actions and an order is only distinguishable as an order by means of the circumstances accompanying it.

Humans share both a perceptual and a conceptual apparatus. We also behave in broadly similar ways, i.e. we share what anthropologists call 'universals' and Wittgenstein calls 'forms of life'. Because we share all these things, we have language in common.

A lion doesn't share any of this with us. We have no idea what the world looks like, both literally and in a broader sense, to a lion. None.

Since, language depends, for intelligibility, on a common frame of reference, and humans and lions do not share a common frame of reference, we get: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

Philosophy Feuds: Camus vs Sartre

The Whitsun Weddings

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:

    Not till about

One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday

Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,

All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense   

Of being in a hurry gone. We ran

Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street

Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence   

The river’s level drifting breadth began,

Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept   

    For miles inland,

A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.   

Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and   

Canals with floatings of industrial froth;   

A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped   

And rose: and now and then a smell of grass   

Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth   

Until the next town, new and nondescript,   

Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise

    The weddings made

Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys   

The interest of what’s happening in the shade,

And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls   

I took for porters larking with the mails,   

And went on reading. Once we started, though,   

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls   

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,   

All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event

    Waving goodbye

To something that survived it. Struck, I leant   

More promptly out next time, more curiously,   

And saw it all again in different terms:   

The fathers with broad belts under their suits   

And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;   

An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,   

The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,   

The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.   

    Yes, from cafés

And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed   

Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days   

Were coming to an end. All down the line

Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;

The last confetti and advice were thrown,

And, as we moved, each face seemed to define   

Just what it saw departing: children frowned   

At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;

    The women shared

The secret like a happy funeral;

While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared   

At a religious wounding. Free at last,

And loaded with the sum of all they saw,

We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.   

Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast   

Long shadows over major roads, and for

Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say

    I nearly died, 

A dozen marriages got under way.

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side

—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   

And someone running up to bowl—and none   

Thought of the others they would never meet   

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.   

I thought of London spread out in the sun,   

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across   

    Bright knots of rail

Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss   

Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail   

Travelling coincidence; and what it held   

Stood ready to be loosed with all the power   

That being changed can give. We slowed again,

And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled

A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower   

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Stay On Target