the morning after

The morning after reading Blackwood’s “The Willows,” it’s wearing pretty well. I still think the build-up takes a bit too long. But it is certainly an original weird environment… right in the middle of Europe, yet he makes it seem as remote as the middle of the Everglades.

Bristol

Only 36 days until Bristol. It will be a nice reunion of the 2007 Speculative Realism gang despite Meillassoux’s absence.

Rumor has it that Alberto Toscano may be speaking in some capacity, which is a remarkably good catch when you have some vacuum to fill (or indeed at any time).

But Iain Grant and John Sellars are the ones who will release any official information about the event.

among the ABC’s of ethics

Among the ABC’s of ethics is that private apologies are insufficient for public actions. I’m constantly confronting people who don’t seem to understand this basic point of behavior. It doesn’t mean public apologies are required; the goal isn’t to humiliate people. But some sort of beneficent public act is fairly obviously the admission price to forgiveness in cases where the act being apologized for was public.

An administrator once botched some paperwork in a way that caused public consequences for me. A few days later, under immense pressure from others, he finally gave me a signed apology letter. Yet he continued to miss softball opportunities to undo the public consequences in ways that would have caused him and his staff no embarrassment at all. This was an ethical failing on his part, and is the reason I’ve only partially forgiven him to this day. He is now retired and no longer in a position to counter what he had done, so he has seemingly missed his chance.

In general, you can’t have it both ways– you can’t amass “tough guy” points among your friends by taking public shots at someone and then grudgingly tell that person you’re sorry when your friends aren’t watching. It seems to me that humans ought to have an instinctive understanding of this unwritten rule, but I constantly encounter people who don’t follow it, and this is simply ignoble.

Private apologies for public acts: not accepted.

piling on

Though I know this has already been bemoaned by everyone, I guess I should add my own agreement that a £100 admission fee for a Communism conference is absurd.