http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.openculture.com/2010/08/borges_the_task_of_art.html/borges-the-task-of-art-open-culture Jorge Luis Borges on The Task of Art: http://t.co/1RFPLaBK via @openculture ]]> Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:25:17 -0700 http://www.openculture.com/2010/08/borges_the_task_of_art.html/borges-the-task-of-art-open-culture http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article869724.ece Monsters demonstrate, monsters alert us: whether or not the etymologies relating the word to both “monstro” (I show) and “moneo” (I warn), are correct, monsters act as a moral compass. The physical prodigy becomes a test of ethics and, in the move between literal and figurative, displays the crucial role fictions play in the establishment of value and the common sense. Or, one might say in the era when the Humanities are under such stress, thinking with monsters shows how an understanding of Nature, and of medicine, law and custom is impossible without cultural expression. ]]> Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:33:07 -0700 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article869724.ece http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories Games don’t do storytelling well because they can’t deliver the four key components of story. There is no hero. Time is in the control of the player, not the creator. There is no inevitability or sense of being powerless. And the story cannot have the player’s full attention. So a videogame Hamlet is just a guy running around a castle flipping switches and collecting items to kill his uncle, the big boss at the end. All those speeches just get in the way. The player is not treading the boards at the Old Vic. He’s solving problems, taking action, creating… ]]> Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:53:57 -0700 http://www.next-gen.biz/opinion/opinion-games-cant-tell-stories http://www.scaryforkids.com/who-goes-there-by-john-w-campbell/ Who Goes There? is a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. In 1973, the story was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written, and published with the other top vote-getters in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two. The novella has twice been adapted as a motion picture: firstly in 1951 as The Thing from Another World and later in 1982 as The Thing. ]]> Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:46:00 -0700 http://www.scaryforkids.com/who-goes-there-by-john-w-campbell/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Galchen-t.html Little is quite as dull as literary worship; this essay on Borges is thus happily doomed. One finds oneself tempted toward learned-sounding inadequacies like: His work combines the elegance of mathematical proof with the emotionally profound wit of Dostoyevsky. Or: He courts paradox so primrosely, describing his Dupin-like detective character as having “reckless perspicacity” and the light in his infinite Library of Babel as being “insufficient, and unceasing.” But see, such worship is pale.

And problematic as well. More than any other 20th-century figure, Borges is the one designated — and often dismissed as — the Platonic… ]]> Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:17:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Galchen-t.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/04/25/separate_truths/?page=full It is misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom.

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to “All Religions Are One” (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism… ]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:55:00 -0700 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/04/25/separate_truths/?page=full http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/ A recent essay in the New York Times by Dennis Overbye has managed to attract quite a bit of attention around the internets — most of it not very positive. It concerns a recent paper by Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya (and some earlier work) discussing a seemingly crazy-sounding proposal — that we should randomly choose a card from a million-card deck and, on the basis of which card we get, decide whether to go forward with the Large Hadron Collider. Responses have ranged from eye-rolling and heavy sighs to cries of outrage, clutching at pearls, and grim warnings that… ]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:13:00 -0700 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/ http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/05/24/how_storytelling_and_cooking_helped_humans_evolve/ A few years ago Tufts philosopher Daniel Dennett opined that the idea of natural selection - proposed 150 years ago in Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" - was "the best idea anybody ever had." The flood of books published this year to celebrate the sesquicentennial would seem to prove Dennett right. The "idea of natural selection" is that changes in any organism's makeup or behavior will persist or not according to whether they make it more or less likely for that organism and its descendants to survive. What kind of changes, and where do they come from? Any… ]]> Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:01:00 -0700 http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/05/24/how_storytelling_and_cooking_helped_humans_evolve/