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2005-03-18 15:31
It is Casanova
at the execution of Damien!
(Like Mr C., I will refrain from giving details: the execution was
slow, and vair vair nasty, and the social event of the season.)
As these remarks could only give pain to the young lady, who listened
in silence, I changed the conversation to the enormous crowd which
would be present at the execution of Damien, and finding them
extremely desirous of witnessing this horrible sight I offered them a
large window with an excellent view. The ladies accepted with great
pleasure, and I promised to escort them in good time.
I had no such thing as a window, but I knew that in Paris, as
everywhere, money will procure anything. After dinner I went out on
the plea of business, and, taking the first coach I came across, in a
quarter of an hour I succeeded in renting a first floor window in
excellent position for three louis. I paid in advance, taking care to
have a receipt.
[...]
On March the 28th, the day of Damien's martyrdom, I went to fetch the
ladies in good time; and as the carriage would scarcely hold us all,
no objection was made to my taking my sweetheart on my knee, and in
this order we reached the Place de Greve. The three ladies packing
themselves together as tightly as possible took up their positions at
the window, leaning forward on their elbows, so as to prevent us
seeing from behind. The window had two steps to it, and they stood on
the second; and in order to see we had to stand on the same step, for
if we had stood on the first we should not have been able to see over
their heads. I have my reasons for giving these minutiae, as otherwise
the reader would have some difficulty in guessing at the details which
I am obliged to pass over in silence.
We had the courage to watch the dreadful sight for four hours. The
circumstances of Damien's execution are too well known to render it
necessary for me to speak of them; indeed, the account would be too
long a one, and in my opinion such horrors are an offence to our
common humanity.
Damien was a fanatic, who, with the idea of doing a good work and
obtaining a heavenly reward, had tried to assassinate Louis XV.; and
though the attempt was a failure, and he only gave the king a slight
wound, he was torn to pieces as if his crime had been consummated.
While this victim of the Jesuits was being executed, I was several
times obliged to turn away my face and to stop my ears as I heard his
piercing shrieks, half of his body having been torn from him, but the
Lambertini and the fat aunt did not budge an inch. Was it because
their hearts were hardened? They told me, and I pretended to believe
them, that their horror at the wretch's wickedness prevented Them
feeling that compassion which his unheard-of torments should have
excited.
Eugene "The Pious Aunt" Volokh would
be proud. Watch him licking his (undoubtedly very pious) lips
over the recent execution in Iran:
Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of
execution, I am especially pleased that the killing - and, yes, I am
happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly
proper act - was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging.
[...]
I should mention that such a punishment would probably violate the
Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. I'm not an expert on the history
of the clause, but my point is that the punishment is proper because
it's cruel (i.e., because it involves the deliberate infliction of
pain as part of the punishment), so it may well be unconstitutional. I
would therefore endorse amending the Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Clause to expressly exclude punishment for some sorts of mass murders.
We feel we wish to chant: FDR! USA! Once! Great! Nation!
We have a new slogan, incidentally: "Human rights are
twentieth-century rights!"
[Permalink]
2005-03-18 12:32
I made an order with Akademibokhandel online (some yummy
Althusser, hoorah!), and got a confirmatory email.
Then I waited, because this is after all Sweden we're talking about,
and then I waited some more, for much the same reason.
Then I received a "proforma" invoice.
I realise now what must have happened: my old bank card expired, and
I've got a new one. But Akademibokhandel's e-shopping interface
didn't mention this, or offer an opportunity to correct it.
Since I've now figured out that the Frenchy-French version of the
Althusser I want isn't out of print, but collected into an even better
value volume of �crits, I am tempted to just ignore A:handel.
But would I be risking even worse service (which is at least
mathematically possible) from them in the future?
[Permalink]
2005-03-18 09:40
My loathning, it is torn between the wretchedness of XHTML and the
smugness of its advocates.
I have used "semantic" markup for many years, Varied Reader, and I am
here to tell you it simply doesn't work.
Developing a useful, general framework for expressing the relations
among different types of entities (what philosophers call
``ontology'') seems intractably difficult. The main difference between
the confusion that existed ten years ago and the confusion that exists
now is that now a variety of inadequate ontological theories have been
embodied in a plethora of correspondingly inadequate programming
languages.
[It is SICP!]
These
ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those
which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia
entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote
pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging
to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens,
(f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present
classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very
fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water
pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.
[It is Borges!]
Now please give me back my <i> tag: I have some italics
belonging to the emperor to encode.
[Permalink]
2005-03-17 16:24
It is the lovely kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden in Straya, waving and
smiling for all she's worth to general
bewilderment:
Kronprinsessan Victoria vinkar och ler i Australien.
Men h�r vet ingen vem hon �r.
Kronprinsess Victoria waves and smiles in Australia.
But no�ne here knows who she is.
Is it easy being a prinsess? It is, we submit, not!
[Permalink]
2005-03-17 13:13
It is the Le guide du
routard: Barcelone!
This was our first field-test of a Routard guide, and we liked it a
lot. The Routards contain no fotos and are printed on rubbish paper,
so they are small and pocketable. Since we are generally appointed
navigator for any trip involving us (regardless of other parties
present) the size is a big win.
They are also very defaceable: they wear their date of printing on
their front cover, to encourage thinking of them as disposible, which
is the right way to think of travel guides. We splatted ours
liberally with highlighter.
To help keep them small they are also selective: an establishment
mentioned in the Routard is entitled to a (dated) plaquette to that
effect and they often show them proudly by the entrance.
And if you go round the Routard trail there's a fair chance you'll be
hanging out where the Frenchy-French touristes hang out, which after
all makes a change.
Our hotel was 30 EUR a night for a (small but clean) single room with
off-suite facilities (just a basin in the room), and our food was
generally excellent whether expensive or cheap. (And they went out of
their way to suggest suckling piglet, yum yum.)
We'd go with a Routard again, for sure, although when our German is
better we'll surely reopen enquiries.
[Permalink]
2005-03-17 10:23
It is kronprinsess Vickan of Sweden, and she can dress
herself and everything!
-Nu v�ljer jag mina kl�der sj�lv. Det viktigaste �r att de �r snygga
och att jag k�nner att de passar f�r mig. Sen m�ste ju plaggen vara
anpassade f�r r�tt tillf�lle, s�ger hon.
"Now I choose my clothes myself. The most important thing is that they
are good looking and fit me. Then must the clothnings be fitted to
the right occasion", she said.
And what clothes would you wear for an upsidedown samwidgetable? It
seems to us that stuff is very likely to fall off: we'd wear a nice
sou'wester, if we were a prinsess. And a tiara, natch.
There won't be any $3000-a-head dinners at swish harbourside mansions
for Princess Victoria. Instead she gets to preside over a smorgasbord
luncheon.
It is like a home from home!
[Permalink]
2005-03-16 17:07
It is Kronprinsess Vickan and a koala!
Sorry Daniel, Victoria har en ny k�rlek.
I Australiens vildmark f�ll hon f�r den h�riga koalan Ash som
�ver�stes med pussar.
- H�r �r min nye pojkv�n, utbrast hon glatt.
Sorry Daniel, Victoria has a new love.
In Australia's wilderness she fell for the hairy koala Ash which she
somethinged with kisses.
"Here is my new boyfriend", she utbrast happily.
Prins Charles, of this parish, only wanted to marry a divorcee and he
got a tonne of grief: Sweden is, as usual, more progressive.
[Permalink]
2005-03-16 12:01
An exercise in this week's OU chapter asks and also enquires:
Do you think a TV a "luxury" or "a necessity" in the contemporary UK?
We don't got no teevee, of course, but we were nonetheless disposed to
line dutifully up with the mandated answer, but then they remark:
You may have answered, no, a TV cannot be a "necessity" because one
can stay alive without a TV. But what about living a human life, with
enough sociability to make life worthwile?
Thanks an arsebunch, OU! Few things cheer me up more than being told
I'm an subhuman loser whose life isn't worth living, that's for very
sure...
[Permalink]
2005-03-16 09:23
A pot is a pot,
It int'rests me not,
And here is a thing which should not be forgot:
That which you've got
When what you've got is a pot
Is just a container or vessel.
[Permalink]
2005-03-15 15:56
It is Noam "Chomp-Chomp" Chomsky and Jacques
"La-La-Land" Lacan:
Later Lacan scandalised everyone during a lecture at the
Massachusetts Instititute of Technology by the way he answered a
question about thought put to him by Noam Chomsky. "We think we think
with our brains," said Lacan. "But personally I think with my
feet. That's the only way I really come into contact with anything
solid. I do occasionally think with my forehead, when I bang into
something. But I've seen enough electroencephalograms to know there's
not the slightest trace of a thought in the brain." When he heard
this Chomsky concluded that the lecturer must be a madman.
Lacan gets a hard time from persons who think that things should make
more sense than none at all, but that doesn't especially include us:
Lacan was a surr�aliste, and we, for one, like that stuff.
[Permalink]
2005-03-15 12:04
It is Steven
"Cyborg" Rose being reviewed!
The brain is commonly treated as some kind of computer or information
processing system - a bit of machinery that can be tinkered with once
we have the blueprint of its circuits. However, Rose argues that the
brain is something organic, holistic, a living system. So it needs to
be explained in terms of theories that deal explicitly in meaning and
mindfulness, such as, for example, the "autopoietic" or self-making
approach advanced by the Chilean pair of Humberto Maturana and
Francisco Varela. An autopoietic system is one organised to respond to
the world. Prod it and it will react homeostatically, striving to
reach a new accommodation that preserves its integrity. There is a
global cohesion - a memory of what the system wants to be - that
reaches down to organise the parts even while those parts may be
adding up to produce the functioning whole.
We call that "teleonomy", of course, and we are in both the habit and
custom of resenting the habitual use of computer systems as the
standard metaphor for inflexible predictability. There is of course
no good reason to think an "autopoietic" system has to have a meatware
substrate, regardles of "Barking" John Searle.
We (i.e., personkind) don't know much about implementing "intelligent"
teleonomic systems on 'puters, but then we (i.e., still personkind)
don't know all that much about spicy brains, either.
[Permalink]
2005-03-15 09:22
It is no secret that I support Челси
Foopball Club. Челси are not the only
foopball team around, of course: there are other foopball clubs in
Engerlund, to say nothing of Yoorp in general. In fact, if there were
only one (1) foopball team, there'd be no one for them to play, and
little point supporting them.
Some of these other foopball clubs also have supporters, although none
of them are me. As a foopball fan, I am a relativiste: I mostly
concede in my brief lucid interval that there is no principled reason
why allbody should support Челси.
But I still support Челси: a part of my
emotional life is bound up in their many successes and occasional
failures.
Exactly this logic scales up unchanged to the wider problems that the
foundationalistes are in the habit of accusing relativistes as being
likely to have. A lack of a valid chain of reasoning from explicitly
stated principles does not, in fact, in any way, shape or form imply a
lack of commitment to a position: foundationalisme is a
scare-mongering irrelevance.
[Permalink]
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