there  could  be  snakes  in  here

who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you ... - ee cummings YES SURE MAYBE IT MIGHT One might spend one's life reading about living, without actually living. (Man.) The easy response is don't tell me what living is and is not, I can decide that for myself thanks. Maybe a lifestyle centred on reading encourages a false sense of superiority - or a false sense of the power of reason. (The original sin of philosophy: to mistake philosophy as essential to good action.) More generally, you might think of reading as parasocial , involving false, dubious interaction with someone you wouldn't much identify if you met them without the filter of composition. Or worse, a replacement for live discourse which hides the ad hoc, underdetermined, unpersuadable nature of even highly intellectual encounters. There's a Latin phrase I like a lot - Aut tace aut loquere meliora silencio , 'be silent or say something better than silence...

(c) Randall Munroe (2010) Model of romance for you. Say there are two functions: A(y) – how attracted person x is to person y, and R(y) – x's respect for y. Then, two composite functions with each other: R(A) - how much respect x has given a degree of attraction, and A(R) - how much attraction x has for a given level of respect. If we assume that they aren't symmetrical (that people can have non- monotonic functions), then romantically active people all fall into 2 or more of 8 exhaustive romantic functions: SUPPLY-SIDE [If A(y) goes up --> R(y) goes up]. R(A) is proportional: x is ruled by beauty's halo . (X is shallow.) More eye pop, swell chest [If A(y) goes up --> R(y) goes down]. R(A) is inverse: The mind's revenge. (X is sadistic.) More eye pop, shrink chest [If A(y) goes down --> R(y) up]. R(A) negatively inverse: Hm! (X is maybe insecure?) Less eye pop, swell chest [A(y) goes down --> R(y) down]. R(A)...

Sometimes I don't finish books because I've become someone else in the interim and don't share their goal of reading it. Any book that takes more than a week is liable to fall foul of young people’s mutability in this way. A lot of what we read is just to say we’ve read it - they are plugs for gaps in cultural armour. We fail to see these through because they are interminable – cf. Gibbons’ Decline and fucking Fall – and because our motive’s so base in the first place. The act of plugging could be noble – the will to improve oneself – but it's more often the ignoble fear of looking ignorant (rather than the excellent fear of being ignorant). The educated world keeps up an arms race in which indifferent bystanders are gunned down by fully-auto sneering, where books are secondary to the concept of themselves. This side of ‘literary’ culture, call it the consumerism of the immaterial, is scarcely different from more obvious consumerism about designer labels and very la...

The particular is much less good than the general: look how much smaller it is. Independence is necessarily nationalist. Independence is divisive. It can only put up arbitrary walls. Scottishness is an insular and bigoted thing. Very Scottish art - set here, with Scots phonemes and concerns - is insular and uninteresting. (Unlike British or Greek or Indian art, which can be universal.) Abandonment of Scotland is virtuous: it’s transcendence.* How we imagine our groups is irrelevant to improving the world. Nation is only a delusion.** Of course self-determination is secondary to welfare! The big one was my conflating an opposition to Scottish nationalism with a contempt for Scotland. It was also very stupid to overlook how self-deprecation – being an anti-Scotland Scot – tied in to a wider devaluation of Scottish things. This actually put me in line with the British elite, like so many other ‘individualist’ Scots in history. Overcompensating, á la Trainspotting . ...

Say you're a magician . Say you know that most things can be controlled with magic, but say each spell takes ages to learn - decades, say. What to learn first? How to produce  terrifying fireballs ?  immense speed ? understanding of aliens ? No: as every child knows, you wish for more wishes first. Immortality would be best, obviously, but no-one knows that one yet , so you take those cheap potions of minor  fortitude ,  recall  and wit that are around. At the same time, you target your own willpower ,  memory , reading speed , and read other wizards getting to the point of spell-books, saving years. Most of all, you learn the hard spell that makes you as right as you can be: strict conscious  and unconscious reason.

(c) Roddy Macfarlane (2012)  Beauty... You came back. But I didn't notice. I was too busy defining myself . - Carter Ratcliffe Five years in Aberdeen; I was transformed here. It's enough to make you grateful for the pathologically dark cold, the fish stink, and those that fled sinking economies for this raft of fossilised sun-sludge. Aberdeen is a test of character. There are so many cliches about why it's a shit place that valuing it, choosing it, does say something about you. Everyone grumbles about the town - its insane weather and uniform architecture, its oilmen and lack of clubs. The difference between you as incomer and you as settler is if you see past this to quieter facts: the pride and persisting difference of the place. You earn your affection. If you disagree, go watch this and then talk to me. (Anyway towns are like multiplayer games - their worth depends more on who you're playing w...

(c) Beatrice Warde (1932) What's the Hamlet of scifi? (Not the 'greatest and most complex work in its field': the book which earns you disapproval if you admit to not having read it.) Brave New World ? Do Androids Dream? Dune ? Gravity's Rainbow? It's hard to imagine anyone making fun of you for not having read 2001 . So, is scifi less centralised and hierarchical, then? Maybe. Maybe the scifi world is just yet to have its Robert Hutchins , the fossilising stipulation. Maybe I've just not spent enough time around the geek equivalent of academic snobs: convention attendees. ***************************************************** Scandinavian countries are the least violent places in the world, all hovering around 0.5 murders per 100,000. But their crime fiction - unusually pessimistic, lonely, and depraved even for crime fiction - has been taking off like nobody's business. How long will it take for the entire population to be fictionally murder...

(c) Jenny Morgan, 'Midsummer Hare' It may be that curiosity comes at the expense of commonality. *********************************************** We need a term for high-IQ people who are, nonetheless, idiots. I suggest 'arch-idiot'. Usage: "Almost the entire field of financial economics was composed of archidiots." Taleb uses nerd as a technical term for this; Marx, ein Fachidiot . The culture at large uses savant, but this is not quite right and would stick the boot in to autists yet again. We also say book-smart, but that's anti-intellectual: our problem would not cease with the banning of all poncey books, since our problem is with those that abuse the poncey books. Archstupidity (n.): The presence of strong abstract reasoning in the absence of emotional intelligence, empirical feedback, or actual  rationality . Leads to the ubiquitous, dangerous assumption that since one understands one c...

(c) Rubens, 'Pastoral Scene' (1638) Prune back your long hopes. As we speak, envious time is running away with us. Pluck the ripe day! Trust the future as far as you can throw it. . - Horace 'Coy mistress', sir? Who gave you leave To wear my heart upon your sleeve? Or to imply, as sure you do, I had no other choice than you And must remain upon the shelf Unless I should bestir myself? Shall I be moved to love you, pray, By hints that I must soon decay? No woman's won by being told How quickly she is growing old ... - A.D. Hope People who say "Carpe diem!" mean well. (We are running out of time, after all.) But you have to wonder if even the urgent affirmation of good life justifies the associated YOLO crap and emotional blackmail. Premise : [Action x] looks pretty stupid . Premise : But you'll die some day! Conclusion : You may as well [x]. or, less ignobly: Premise : Life is transient. (Memento mori) Premise : You're in yo...

(c) Arcimboldo (c.1570) "Spring and Summer" Deciphering corporate language: "Manager" = Controller .  "Executive" = Controller controller / King Simpleton  / Capital's Metatron "Administrator" = Cartesian demon. "Supervisor" = Guard labour . "... Officer" = Desk ballast. "Analyst" = Cherry-picker . "Advisor" = "Yes" Man. "Consultant" = "It'll cost you" Man. "Assistant" = monkey. "Intern" = monkey's monkey. "Technician" = nerd monkey. "Programmer"= Code monkey . "Developer" = Programmer. (OK, so job-title inflation is an understandable process - you're trying to convince people that what they do is important - but you're doing so without changing their work or working conditions.) ************************************************ Here is the great joke of the humani...