Any, Any, Any, Any, Any, Any, Any thing at all

28th of November 2009

“

Fate ne’er strikes deep, but when Unkindness joins. ”

—

Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, Vol. II

Not sure this is true, but interesting; but thus begins, I expect, a series of quotations from this lady as I write a paper on her.

25th of November 2009

<3 randall munroe

19th of November 2009

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman writes about climate bills.

13th of November 2009

“

But critics have questioned the project, saying the time frame is unreasonable and also where the money is coming from to finance the project. ”

—

“Space hotel says it’s on schedule to open in 2012”

(worst sentence ever, courtesy of Reuters)

29th of October 2009

digging to China

froufy:

I’m sure we’ve all heard the adage that, if you dig a hole big enough in your backyard, you’ll end up in China. Here’s the thing — you actually won’t. You’ll end up in the middle of an ocean. Your best chance of hitting land when digging from the United States would be to start in Honolulu, Hawaii, which lands you smack in the middle of Botswana.

Both China and the United States are in the northern hemisphere. Let us pretend that it is possible to dig all the way through the earth. Anyone who digs straight down through the earth, from the northern hemisphere, would have to come out in the southern hemisphere. Straight down, from anywhere in the continental United States, is in the Indian Ocean.

Most of the land area of the world is directly opposite water on the other side of the world. The biggest exception is Argentina and Chile, which are opposite China.
Why am I telling you this? Because I’m bored at work, and I’ve discovered a very fun mapping tool that allows you to find out exactly where you’d emerge if you started digging. Enjoy!

Also, dumbest name for a movie ever. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself, Kevin Bacon.

(quote via JimLoy.com; image via Amazon.com)

Northern New Zealand gets you to Spain!

That is all.

28th of October 2009

“

The nervous system is not contained within the body’s limits. The circuit from sense-perception to motor response begins and ends in the world. The brain is thus not an isolable anatomical body, but part of a system that passes through the person and her or his (culturally specific, historically transient) environment. As the source of stimuli and the arena for motor response, the external world must be included to complete the sensory circuit. (Sensory deprivation causes the system’s internal components to degenerate.) The field of the sensory circuit thus corresponds to that of “experience,” in the classical philosophical sense of a mediation of subject and object, and yet its very composition makes the so-called split between subject and object (which was the constant plague of classical philosophy) simply irrelevant. ”

—

Susan Buck-Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered”

bailiwick

 bailiwick
      n 1: the area over which a bailiff has jurisdiction
      2: a branch of knowledge; "in what discipline is his
         doctorate?"; "teachers should be well trained in their
         subject"; "anthropology is the study of human beings" [syn:
         discipline, subject, subject area, subject field,
         field, field of study, study, bailiwick]

27th of October 2009

"Gooseberries" by Anton Chekhov

19th of October 2009

Why did my books need to go from New Jersey to Kentucky before they could come to New York?