Stung Eye

The eye of the bee holder.

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Patterns of Culture

I've been working on a site redesign. I've also been putting together a design portfolio.

I need your help. Check out the new template I've been working on and let me know if it renders properly for you. The HTML and CSS are standards compliant, but you can never be too careful with CSS based designs.

If you're still rocking 8-bit colour, the text should render in black and white.

If your browser support alternate style sheets - like Foxfire - there are three sheets available; the default texture skinned template; a simplified colour template; and the 8-bit minimal colours template.


(Follow the head to view the template rendered with Firefox 0.8 in Windows 2000.)

Launch

Winnipegforums.ca is live. McMayor even makes an appearance. We spent the evening postering around town.

(Side note: Postering was nearly made illegal (or highly restricted) in Toronto.)

So, if you live in Winnipeg and want to discuss politics, join Winnipegforums.ca.

Thanks to all who came out postering and to Open Door Press for the print services.

***

David Chalmers has compiled a list of philosophical weblogs.

Notes and Observations on T. S. Eliot's Early Poems.

God Checker.

They Cover Walls

The Chef is attempting to combat voter apathy [pdf] here in the Peg. I helped by designing these posters.

While searching for inspiration I stumbled across these poster sites:

Via Lorbus:

Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries. Boo corporate power. Boo.

Twenty mp3 lectures available from The University of Minnesota for the course: Studies in Narrative: Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Via Beautiful Stuff)

Home of Purple City

Are bloggers becoming instant pundits? (Related: Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit)

Today I received an email from an associate producer from the CBC. Someone must have googled their way to my post on Sleep Paralysis, while researching an upcoming feature for Nerve.

A snippet from the email:

"Right now I'm in the process of trying to put together a piece on sleep paralysis and I'm trying to locate people--in Canada and between 16-23--who have experienced sleep paralysis. I'm hoping they can talk about it on camera and shed some light on the experience for our viewers. Our show doesn't have a host and there are no producer voice-overs, meaning stories are told entirely by the people in the stories themselves.

I'm getting in touch with you because I'm hoping you might know of someone who fits this description or that you can point me in the direction of someone who can."

I replied to express my interest in participating, even though I exceed the age-range by 3 year.

If you fit the description, email me () and I will forward your info to the CBC.

***

Similar correspondences have occurred in the past few months. Bill Werde from the New York Times and Douglas Wolk from the Village Voice contacted me during Grey Tuesday. I was also recently approached by The Museum of the National University of Colombia to be part of an online Processing exhibit.

If you blog it, they will come?

***

While exploring the Nerve site, I came across a short movie on Purple City [quicktime]. I first heard about Purple City in grade 7. I made a visit soon after. That was over 13 years ago. The tradition continues; handed down verbally, bored teenager to bored teenager. Is Purple City unique to Winnipeg?

Also found on Nerve:

Grammar for two, please.

Language tugs back.

drawn in

"Writing, like talking, is the art of expressing thoughts in words.... But there is, necessarily, a vast difference between the oral and the scriptural use of words. When we talk, we have for our ministers not words only, but also gesture, play of feature, modulation of the voice's tone, and regulation of its pace, whereby we may subtly temper or accentuate the words themselves, and fit them, be they never so carelessly chosen, exactly to our meaning. When we write, we have nothing but words, words, with those little summary and meagre things whose hard office is to ape the variable pauses of the human voice.... Thus is style in the modern sense a far more complex thing than style in the eighteenth century's sense. To express through printed words all the little side-lights of thought and fine shades of meaning that are in him is the task of the modern stylist; and the tricks and formalities which must be gone through in accomplishing that task carry him further and further away from his ordinary manner in colloquy. It is that very manner which he is trying to reproduce; but the only medium for its reproduction lies leagues away from it. Modern prose style is further removed from colloquialism than was the prose style of the eighteenth century, for this paradoxical reason: that colloquialism is its model."
Max Beerbohm, letter, quoted in David Cecil's biography, p.146
via Geoffrey Nunberg's Leaves from a Language Commonplace Book.

Found near-by: Found adjacent to: appealing:

Democracy:Good - Fascism:Bad

From George Orwell's 1946 essay on Politics and the English Language:

"The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.' The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."

A half of a century has passed. The rhetoric of Western foreign policy continues to focus on the proliferation of freedom and democracy.

Meta

Steven Johnson, pop-science author, majored in Semiotics as a Brown undergrad. His latest blog entry deals with this "theoretical education" and lead me to Paul Greenberg's article on the Brown Semiotics major.

Greenberg states that "semiotics is about how we derive meaning from context." He goes on to explain the Ferdinand de Saussure, who coined the term, "posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a 'signifier', i.e. the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the 'signified', or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued 'sign'."

Having often pondered the role of context, analogy and symbolism in Memetics, Semiotics could prove to be a fascinating tool.

Some online Semiotics resources:

Interestingly enough, Magritte's Pipe is a common signifier for the field of Semiotics, because of course, it isn't a pipe.

Also of interest, is the Wikipedia entry on the Philosophy of Perception.

Digital Memory

Whereas the last post dealt with books, this post will highlight what is keeping my mind busy online.

Natalie Chicha's new blog, Another, provides "an online space for [her] thoughts on depression and literature." Two interesting posts:

The editorial board of Cognitive Science has made available 10 classics from their archives.

Unheard-of Curiosities is a collection of writings by Umberto Eco. A Rose by Any Other Name, deals with the problems of literary translation.

Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them. A look at straight and crooked thinking by Robert H. Thouless.

A musical ebook series: Form, Counterpoint, Harmony and Artistic Orchestration.

Some chapters from the 2002 revision of The Social Life of Information are available online.

Paul Graham's essays touch on everything from hackers and painters to personal taste.

Finally, the coolest way to fold a t-shirt, ever. [Quicktime]

Paper Memory

I'm addicted to information. Books have always been my favourite knowledge narcotic. My search for used books to fuel Glutton University was successful this month:

  • Language Truth and Logic - Alfred Jules Ayer - Read the condensed edition here. (Related: More Squashed Philosophers)
  • Intro To Logic - I. Copi & C. Cohen - A first year philosophy Logic textbook. (Related: How to tell a logical story [pdf])
  • The Basic Writing of C. G. Jung - It's about time I read some Jung.
  • The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes - The introduction of which can be read here.
  • An Anthropologist on Mars - Oliver Sacks - Seven paradoxical tales of neurological disease - Excerpt here: The hug machine.
  • On Writing Well - William Zinsser - Excerpt here: Clutter.
  • The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants - P. Prusinkiewicz & A. Lindenmayer - Can mathematical L-Systems define the structure of plants? (Related: L-System java applet)
  • Images of Medicine - Edited by Jim Harter - 4800 historical medical engravings. (Related: The medical images of the Clendening library)
No more than 4 dollars was spent on each book. Avoid Amazon, support your local (used) book stores and your public library.

A Stitch In Time

Back in November, I posted some snapshots of a Winnipeg winter. It is now mid-May, and again, winter visits our little prairie town.