Zizek on actual politics

See here for latest call for sensibility (with only a touch of heresy).

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those…will be the days?

Given the current state of the world (shambles), I feel like emitting a Pantisocratic sigh. Coleridge serves well: On the Prospect of Establishing a Pantisocracy in America Whilst pale Anxiety, corrosive Care, The tear of Woe, the gloom of sad Despair, And deepen’d Anguish generous bosoms rend;– Whilst patriot souls their country’s fate lament; Whilst [...]

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SOPA and more

In light of the recent protests to SOPA, see Mattermorphosis for a passage from a book which speaks to the unnerving tendency of the American legal apparatus to patent and thus transfer into private ownership knowledge which should remain free.

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sayings from St. Anthony

Today is my first saint’s day since entering the Orthodox Church, and so I figured that sharing some sayings from St. Anthony which I read today would be appropriate. May St. Anthony keep us all in his prayers! 3. Someone asked Abba Anthony, ‘What must one do in order to please God?’ The old man replied, [...]

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Zbiginiew Preisner’s ‘Lacrimosa’ & the unfathomable grandeur of cosmic architecture, from Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’

I can’t help it. It’s beautiful.

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unfortunate america

See here for an Orthodox blogged version of a Washington Post article on, well, the authoritarian police state known as America.

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Zizek on “choice” and belief

“[T]he moment a woman wears a veil as the result of her free individual choice, the meaning of her act changes completely: it is no longer a sign of her direct substantial belongingness to the Muslim community, but an expression of her idiosyncratic individuality, of her spiritual quest and her protest against the vulgarity of [...]

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Milliner on Postrel on the importance of liberal arts for the economy

Check out Matthew Milliner’s recent mention of Virginia Postrel’s Washington Post article on the importance of arts for the economy. Take that, ye reductive Thatcherites!

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pre-digital books at UVic’s DHSI

I’m quite excited to be participating in University of Victoria’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) this coming June, especially because I’ll be taking a class that involves traditional materials: books! See below for the description, and see here for more. Understanding the Pre-Digital Book Helene Cazes, Adriaan Van der Weel, Iain Higgins, and Erin Kelly [...]

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Farha on material legibility

A talk by Eighth Day Institute’s owner Warren Farha on the significance of material books over and against the digitization of textuality rampant in both academic and popular cultures. Not that I’m a card carrying Luddite, but seriously….Farha has done his research. Check it out here.

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