Author: manwithoutqualities

Browse by:
walker percy

Walker Percy, Philosopher (in press)

For Walker Percy, philosophy and fiction were both tools for diagnosing the human condition, just as his medical training had taught him about tools for diagnosing the human body. His aim was nothing less than trying to understand how we fit into the cosmos. This collection of essays is a fascinating and worthy exploration of…

comedy

Chico Marx

Born on this day: Chico’s on-screen persona was the prototypical “foreign man” to Andy Kaufman’s Latka character. According to his daughter Maxine, Chico’s off-screen character can be summed up as a . . .  Bon vivant, compulsive gambler, congenital liar, and faithless husband who, as manager for the Marx Brothers, steered them to phenomenal success from vaudeville…

walker percy

Walker Percy Wednesday 177

CULTURE AS A SUBJECT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD What happens when the functional method of the sciences is applied to cultural phenomena? Does culture lend itself to such an understanding? If there are difficulties in the cultural sciences, are the difficulties due to the complexity of the material, as is often alleged, or are the…

consciousness

LSD-induced states

Two recent articles: Journal of Neuroscience Results demonstrate first, that LSD reduced activity in brain areas important for self-processing, but also social cognition, second that change in brain activity was linked to subjective experience, and third that LSD decreased the efficiency of establishing joint attention. Frontiers in Neuroscience We have applied techniques from natural language…

john kennedy toole

The John Kennedy Toole Story

Several people have asked about my interest in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. It’s one of those novels that one typically either “gets” or one does not — the former group can be pretty obsessive and protective about it (if you are one of those dour, humourless, censorious, and perpetually seeking offence types…