It has been reported that John Holland has passed away.
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JOHN HOLLAND
It has been reported that John Holland has passed away.
What Mary Didn’t Know
If the title and the video has no resonance then check out Jackson’s later eponymously titled paper. For a conspectus of the industry generated by Jackson’s thought experiment see Qualia: The Knowledge Argument.
Most will probably know Dorian Electra from her video “I’m in Love with Friedrich Hayek” (see second vid): the Mary video is infinitely sharper, better executed and not at all cringeworthy. ‘Tis the season when they are parachuted into college for indoctrination so Kudos to the then 20 year old for her independent-mindedness and sense of humour standing out from the bleating fuckwittery of the instrumental-ideological flock.
Reggie Perrin writer David Nobbs dies
The man behind one of the great television satires The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, centering on the drudgery of suburban middle class Britain, has died. David Nobbs was prescient about the creeping banality and self-important and meaningless jargon of corporate culture and the dumbest of instantiations of consumerism with the luck of the market — Grot. In many respects, it was the precursor to The Office. Leonard Rossiter and John Barron ably supported by Geoffrey Palmer were all perfectly cast and hilarious with the most wonderful scathes, mixed metaphors, malapropisms, dundrearyisms and cliches. Every office has a David and a Tony – great, super, clichesville USA! Don’t bother with the remakes of either the two British versions (one with the original cast sans Rossiter) nor indeed of the American version — they fall flat. See the second vid about the making of the show — much of it reminds me of Ignatius at Levy Pants.
Varieties of externalism
Here’s a very useful close-grained conspectus sharing the same title of an earlier piece by Susan Hurley. Unsurprisingly, Hayek nor Simon are nowhere to be seen and surprisingly Heylighen et al are referenced.
Ancient town of Mishima
Nice piece especially if one is a Mishima fan and like me one has yet to visit Japan, Japan being one of the very few countries on my travel bucket list:
Perhaps this explains why the author Yukio Mishima took his pen name from the city, though the writer claimed that he just happened to be passing in a train while pondering a nom de plume, requisitioning the name on the spot.
In a previous post I linked to Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters but since the video has been removed, here is another upload:
David Pears
Born on this day — check out the obits along with Pears and Murdoch in discussion on the idea of freedom.
When his book Ludwig Wittgenstein was published in 1971, Igor Stravinksy wrote to congratulate Pears on the beauty of his writing, which, wrote Bernard Williams, “combines in a very pure form the more conversational and the more formal aspects of analytic philosophy (it is rather reminiscent of a certain kind of 20th-century French music)”. For Williams – they had given a fascinating seminar on identity together in the 1950s, which was described as “the high-point of philosophical activity of the time” – Pears’s questions and discoveries, which were often “deliberately, and realistically, vague”, were “constantly shaped … by a project of self-understanding”.
In Iris Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net (1954; he was the dedicatee of The Unicorn, 1963) the character of Hugo is partly drawn from Pears, and there’s also something of him in Dave, the freelance philosopher.
Curtis Mayfield – 10 of the best
A little bit of online filler concerning Curtis. Stevie Chick knows his stuff alright and however contentious these list-type articles inevitably are, if they serve to draw you into the genius that is Mayfield, well and good. I’d have “The Makings of You” and “Give It Up” on the list, two very bitter-sweet and tender songs. Stevie nails it . . .
Deploying sweet soul and blistering funk – and pouring his gorgeous, honeyed falsetto over it all – Curtis Mayfield veered between breezy optimism and hard-edged political commentary
Rick James
Remembering one of the great funk meisters (and of course notorious party boy) — the one and only RJ.
Aug. 8, 1969: Because of a hangover, skips a party at Sharon Tate’s house — and avoids being killed by Charles Manson’s followers.
1980: At a dinner party, a guest asks to sketch him on a napkin. It’s Salvador Dalí. James forgets the napkin is in his pocket, goes swimming, and ruins it.
and from the NYT
Toxicology revealed the presence of the following drugs: Alprazolam (Xanax), Diazepam (Valium), Bupropion (Wellbutrin), Citalopram (Celexa), Hydrocodone (Vicodin), Digoxin, Chlorpheniramine, methamphetamine and cocaine,” the coroner’s statement said. None of the drugs or drug combinations were found to be at levels that were life threatening in and of themselves.
Can Broadway pull off ‘Confederacy of Dunces’?
This in the New York Post
Last year, the Wall Street Journal called the book “the Big Easy slacker’s manual” and recommended it should be given to recent college graduates as “a comic and cautionary lesson in how not to get a job.”
Recent Engagements with Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment
Maria Pia Paganelli’s conspectus that includes mention of Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies on the Philosophy of Adam Smith.
manwithoutqualities 