But like many an inarticulate young lover, I thought for a time that seduction was a matter of giving the right book to the right woman. In my case it was Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse: a meditation on Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther that catalogues the melancholic lover’s prized ‘image repertoire’ – the scene of waiting, the feeling of being dissolved in the presence of the loved being, the attraction of suicide – and thinly veils the author’s own life as a middle-aged gay man in Paris in the 1970s. This gift was always a prelude to disaster.
–
RB and Me: An Education is an essay by
Brian G. Dillon about his relationship with the books of French philosopher Roland Barthes. It's also a lovely autobiography of an awkward boy finding his place in life.
Dillon's website collects his essays, and is trove of interesting insight. Besides writing essays and fiction, Dillon is also the UK editor of Cabinet Magazine, and you can read a fair number of his
articles online, including ones on
Beau Brummel and the cravat,
hypochondria and
hydrotherapy.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 1, 2011 -
4 comments
TV Fact Checkers "Behind every smart TV show, there is a tireless script coordinator, technical adviser, researcher or producer who makes sure the jargon is right, the science is accurate and the pop culture references are on-point." This week, Wired "is speaking with fact-checkers behind the fall TV season’s geekiest shows."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 22, 2011 -
72 comments
Tabletop: Analog Game Design - A commons licenced book containing a series of essays about digital and non-digital games from some esteemed boardgame veterans:
"Much has been written about the videogame revolution, [...] In a scant thirty some-odd years,
we’ve grown from nothing to one of the world’s largest entertainment
forms, grossing tens of billions annually [...] Works that discuss the evolution of the game industry from an historical perspective generally talk about the connection between the pre-digital
arcade and the earliest digital games; I’ve even heard some claim
that “without the arcade, videogames would not exist.” This is, of course, bosh..." [more inside]
posted by Cogentesque
on Aug 24, 2011 -
36 comments
Bret Victor on WorryDream The power to understand and predict the quantities of the world should not be restricted to those with a freakish knack for manipulating abstract symbols.
When most people speak of Math, what they have in mind is more its mechanism than its essence. This "Math" consists of assigning meaning to a set of symbols, blindly shuffling around these symbols according to arcane rules, and then interpreting a meaning from the shuffled result. The process is not unlike casting lots.
posted by naight
on Jul 24, 2011 -
19 comments
Theta Music Trainer — Train your ear with fun music games. Sharpen your sense of pitch and tone. Unlock the hidden patterns in music. Strengthen your music theory skills.
posted by netbros
on May 25, 2011 -
13 comments
Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason,
readable online, is
an analysis of the physical mechanisms of hallucination, shamanic ritual, and expanded states of consciousness. By presenting these methods in physical terms, Psychedelic Information Theory offers a rational and objective model for shamanic transformation and therapy in modern clinical practice. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Sep 5, 2010 -
18 comments
The "
Benign Violation Theory" posits that for something to be funny, three conditions must be met. First, there must be a violation of the norm. Second, the violation must be perceived to be benign. Last, both these perceptions must occur simultaneously.
[more inside]
posted by cosmac
on Aug 27, 2010 -
106 comments
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the Aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he's trying to help the poorest countries grow rich—by convincing them to establish foreign-run "charter cities" within their borders. Romer's idea is unconventional, even neo-colonial—the best analogy is Britain's historic lease of Hong Kong. And against all odds, he just might make it happen. (via
cc)
[more inside]
posted by kliuless
on Jun 10, 2010 -
92 comments
British composer and TV presenter
Howard Goodall presents a documentary exploring the influences and theory behind the music of The Beatles, and the transformation of their sound over their recording career.
Part
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6 on Youtube.
But that's not all...
[more inside]
posted by Magnakai
on Sep 9, 2009 -
30 comments
The New Kaldor Facts: Ideas, Institutions, Population, and Human Capital [
pdf] - "For now, we think that progress is likely to be most rapid if we follow the example of the neoclassical model and
treat institutions the way the neoclassical model treated technology... Further out on the horizon, one may hope for a successful conclusion to the ongoing hunt for
a simple model [
1] of
institutional evolution. Combining that with the unified approach to growth outlined here would surely constitute
the economics equivalent of a grand unified theory..." [
2,
viz.
previously] This
might, as it were, be a subset of
collective cognition (or, possibly,
autism [
3]).
posted by kliuless
on Jul 14, 2009 -
9 comments
Back in the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation. That would be us. And that is why we carry rape genes today. The family trees of prehistoric men lacking rape genes petered out.
Newsweek's Sharon Begley examines evolutionary psychology and some of its most controversial theories (and how they are being rethought) in
Don't Blame The Caveman.
posted by hippybear
on Jun 25, 2009 -
92 comments
Driving Off the Map by James Clinton Howell is a formal analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2. If you played this game — even if you didn't like it (
especially if you didn't like it) — you need to read this to learn what you actually played. If you've never played Metal Gear Solid, it's still an excellent example of serious video game scholarship.
posted by cthuljew
on Dec 8, 2008 -
37 comments
"Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr.
Crespi and Dr.
Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the
autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing
schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression."
posted by grumblebee
on Nov 11, 2008 -
43 comments
