Cole Tucker recently tweeted a link to an article published at Scientific American, and I thought I’d share it here – with some additional context. Here’s a link and a snip: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot. When it comes to sex, we put this capacity to very good—or at least, very frequent—use. In a now-classic, pre-Internet-porn (I’ll get to that later on) study by British...

Several months ago, while drafting my proposals for grad studies, the concept for a bibliophile-centered series first crossed my mind. When I reflected on how I might personalize the series (i.e. aside from reviews), I thought it might be useful for tracking how our home library would grow over the year – or be impacted by grad studies. I wondered which sections would expand most, for example. This month’s instalment of Dead...

1844: (more…)

“The writer umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a...

Every action – and inaction – of our lives is political. From the purchases we make, beliefs we act upon, and fears we internalize, we are inescapably political animals. In spite of this unavoidable social reality, various institutions and agencies claim ‘objectivity’ and ‘fairness’ are subverted by political biases, and encourage us to adopt ‘post-ideological worldviews’. News outlets try...

This month’s adoptions follow a familiar pattern of punctuating significant events and taking advantage of good deals when they present themselves. However, there was a bit more foot-work involved this month than typical, as we adopted texts from more places than usual: The Banyen, Chapters, the Vancouver Public Library, and the University of British Columbia. ...

1800:...

Numerous institutions, traditions and prejudices function as modes of oppression and prevent us from collectively addressing the tragedy of the commons. Acts of legislation arbitrarily prohibit and criminalize our actions, schools indoctrinate us with a tacit deference to authority, and our interpersonal relationships are prone to crystalizing vicious spirals of interaction. Taken as a whole, they manufacture a society in which...

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and...

Noam Chomsky-BBC InterviewUploaded by...