migrated

OK, I just finished moving my email off of rinzai.com for various reasons, after a very efficient decade there.

My primary account will now be the gmail one, and friends who don’t have it yet… Remind me, and I’ll give it to you.

But the gharman@aucegypt.edu address is perfectly fine for everyone to use, too. I have it forwarding to my primary account. And rinzai will continue to forward to me too, just not forever.

call for papers

My former DePaul classmate Bob Vallier has asked me to post the following call for papers, and I am happy to oblige:

Phenomenology: Nature, Science and Technics

The theme for the 2010 meeting of the International Symposium on Phenomenology is “Phenomenology: Nature, Science and Technics.” The dates of the meeting are 12-17 July 2010 in Perugia Italy.

Today it is an opportune moment to re-investigate the ties that unite us with technics, to ask where modern science and technology are taking us. Inspired by Husserl’s and Heidegger’s critiques of modern science and technology, as well as Merleau-Ponty’s critical interrogations of the sciences of nature, the ambition is to create a dialogue between phenomenology broadly construed, the sciences, and technology. If contemporary science has changed the way we think of nature and of ourselves as an organism, species, or being, and if technology has changed the temporality of existence and the relation to space, then how does phenomenology respond to, and what does it become in light of, these developments? The phenomenological, the post-phenomenological, and even the non-phenomenological approaches to this network of questions are all invited to participate in this dialogue.

Among the questions we wish to address are the following:

— In a time characterized by an important, perhaps unprecedented, scientific and technological innovation, how does one reflect, beyond any technophobia or technophilia, on the relation of phenomenology to technics/technology in its plurality of expressions?

— What can phenomenology gain from a careful and critical attention to investigations conducted in the sciences? Conversely, what does phenomenology offer to the sciences?

— What are the philosophical and ontological implications of research in the sciences and developments in technology for the meaning of human being? Is human being alienated and de-humanized, or is it rather the case that technology open new possibilities to enrich our experience, give access to new dimensions of reality, and reconfigure the relations of the human to Being?

With these questions, then, we invite you to consider this Call For Papers. Anyone who would like to be considered for a presentation should send a short, paragraph-long description of current research on the theme to Bob Vallier at rvallier@depaul.edu no later than 1 March 2010. Those who might like to attend the Symposium may also send enquiries to Bob Vallier. A website is forthcoming.

sore winners

Graeme Wood forwards an article suggesting that FANS OF A TEAM THAT IS WINNING ARE MORE LIKELY TO BECOME VIOLENT.

It is notable that the site of the study seems to be Wales, because my previous sense had been that in most countries except the United States, fans were more likely to be violent after defeats. The great riots during my years in Chicago, however, were always after Bulls championships. There wasn’t the slightest disturbance after the Bulls were shocked by Orlando in the playoffs shortly after Michael Jordan’s 1995 return from retirement.

That heavy blow to Chicago’s gut has largely been forgotten, since the Bulls immediately came back to win three more titles from 1996-98. But at the time it stripped Jordan of some of his aura of superhuman invincibility. What really happened, in my opinion, is that the Bulls were simply too weak at power forward in 1995 following Horace Grant’s departure for– none other than Orlando. Horace ate his old Chicago teammates alive in the ’95 playoffs. And though JERRY KRAUSE is much and often deservedly maligned for his work as General Manager, he did take the necessary gamble on DENNIS RODMAN in the fall of ’95, which many believed would never work out. It worked out spectacularly well, of course, despite a few rocky patches.

It’s a bit of a digression, but I also think Krause deserves credit for one other decision at the time. He was known for giving a battery of psychological tests to all potential Bulls, and I like others assumed that this was mostly power-mongering sadism on Krause’s part. (“If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”, etc.) Rodman was widely considered out of his mind at the time. In fact, after the Bulls made the trade with San Antonio to acquire Rodman, a jilted JAYSON WILLIAMS joked: “The Bulls brought me in for three days of psychological tests, and the next day they took Dennis Rodman instead.”

At the time it was a hilarious one-liner by Williams. But not so funny these days, following Williams’s manslaughter charges, and reports during the trial that he had earlier gunned down one of his own dogs for no good reason. And meanwhile, to everyone’s surprise, Rodman has not retired into an endless series of “tragic” stories, but has mostly stayed out of the news. Rodman has turned out to be nothing more than an eccentric but likable attention-seeker, not a sociopath or even mentally ill, by any means.

In any case, my respect for Krause’s psychological tests skyrocketed following the Williams shooting incident.

The Bulls also had another brush with a strange story involving a power forward. That would be the remarkable Brian Williams, who provided vital assistance in the 1997 finals against Utah, and later changed his name to BISON DELE before disappearing at sea with three others in July 2002, all of them presumably murdered by Dele’s own brother– who later committed suicide.

Here is the ORIGINAL ESPN STORY reporting Dele and his girlfriend Serena Karlan missing, quite sad with the benefit of hindsight. (The third disappeared person was the French boat captain.)

the weirdest incident in U.S. history?

There are many candidates for the honor, but I’m inclined to vote for AARON BURR MORTALLY WOUNDING ALEXANDER HAMILTON IN A DUEL. Not sure why that incident is on my mind today, but it has been ever since early morning.

Burr was in fact still Vice President at the time (this was before his Alcibiades-like “traitor” phase), and even non-Americans may know that Hamilton is pictured on the $10 bill.

It would be weird enough to imagine Joe Biden going off into the woods this afternoon and killing Robert Rubin with a pistol over an unretracted insult, but even that wouldn’t quite capture the strangeness of it, since neither of these two are of comparable stature in U.S. history to Burr and Hamilton.

“Jesus was rich”

Sounds like an Onion article, but it’s real. An Arizona church says that Jesus was in fact not poor as commonly believed, but filthy rich, and that the faithful will be rewarded with money.

“That’s so pathetic, to say that Jesus was struggling alone in the dust and dirt,” Anderson says. “That just makes no sense whatsoever. He was constantly in a state of wealth.”

new pages added

As you can see, I’ve added two new pages to the top of this blog.

“Books” is fairly self-explanatory. But I should mention that I’ve added links to the titles of the four already published books, and those links will take you to the affordable prices of those books at the pages of the publishers. The three from Open Court are often listed at utterly ridiculous prices on Amazon.

I’ve explained the story before, but here it is again… All of my Open Court books are sold out. And Open Court has wisely decided to enter the new era by printing new copies on demand, rather than via a large 2nd printing. But Amazon apparently doesn’t list print-on-demand prices unless the publishers agree to use Amazon’s own print-on-demand service. Open Court doesn’t use it. And that’s why the gouging third-party sellers are able to price, say, Guerrilla Metaphysics as high as $220 sometimes. (I will scream if anyone actually paid that much, though I strongly doubt anyone did.) So, interested readers are probably better off getting my Open Court books directly from Open Court.

“Coming appearances” is perhaps even more self-explanatory. There are currently three on tap for Spring Semester: Dundee, Amsterdam, Atlanta. And that’s probably as many as I can handle this semester, given my new range of interesting activities at the American University in Cairo.

By the way, that DRIFT festival in Amsterdam is run by the students. And one can have nothing but praise for the philosophy students in Amsterdam. When I arrived there in Fall 2007 as a visiting faculty member, I was stunned to learn that they had 140 freshman Philosophy majors. Even more amazingly, they didn’t seem to see it as that big a deal. I was mostly hearing comments like this: “Well, a lot of it is just fashion right now. It won’t always be 140 every year.” Ha! Yeah, maybe once the fashion wears off it’ll drop to 95 students. Don’t you just hate those superficial philosophy fashions that sweep like wildfire through the populace?

But DRIFT is a wonderful event. I happened to catch it last year by accident, and was stunned by how well organized it was. Essentially, the students take over a large multi-story building, not too far from the Vondelpark, that may even be a squat. They set up multiple rooms, some of them containing lectures, others housing live musical acts. There is of course food and drink as well. And it runs possibly all night long; I had to leave at perhaps 11:30 PM for reasons of travel itinerary, and it was still booming. I saw at least 5 faculty members there joining in the fun, and there may have been well more than that. (The Department is so huge that I never managed to meet even half of my colleagues there.)

Bruno Latour was also a visiting professor in Amsterdam, in around 2005 I believe. And he told me in advance that the students there are smart as heck, and he was right. It’ll be good to see them again in April.

bad passenger

[ADDENDUM: When I made this post before going to sleep, it sounded like an “idiot prankster” story. Now it is being called AN ATTEMPT TO DESTROY THE PLANE.]

Beyond all eye-rolling:

“A passenger set off fireworks Friday on a flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan, a Delta Air Lines spokeswoman said.”

The passenger may have been unaware of how harshly the legal system is likely to view this incident. How forgiving would you be if this were your flight? The interior of aircraft is not a preferred site for slapstick practical jokes.

But I do remember a worse and perhaps even funnier incident reported in the media during my undergraduate years. One of the flight attendants on a flight into New York, I believe, told her colleague: “I smell ether.” (Another of those sentences rarely uttered in English before.)

They eventually determined that the “smell of ether” was coming from one of the lavatories, and proceeded to break down the door. What they discovered was two passengers attempting to freebase cocaine with the use of a blowtorch.

they always make my day

Christmas festivities for me were in El Rehab for the second consecutive year. When entering the neighborhood I always make sure to walk along a certain back path that is almost guaranteed to have several hoopoes on it. And today I did see one in flight, from up close, and as always it made my day. They are spectacular birds.

Others told me today that they can be seen in Zamalek too, but mostly inside the Gezira Club, an expensive country club in the center of our island. It makes sense, because what they most need are low-cut lawns for feeding purposes, and the Gezira Club 9-hole golf course would be just the place for them to feed. I’m tempted to join just so that I can watch them with binoculars, even if I do nothing else out there. They are pretty much my favorite living creature at this point.

K-Punk

“A merry Christmas to all readers, especially to the trolls and grey vampires, who need the good cheer more than most…”

I second that. Merry Christmas to the trolls and grey vampires.

Jarry without Socrates

Shaviro writes in:

“Just a brief remark re your ‘Socrates Without Socrates’ post. The proto-Surrealist writer Alfred Jarry has a chapter in his book Exploits and Opinions of Dr Faustroll Pataphysician which consists entirely of such quotations, in Greek, from Plato’s dialogues (e.g., yes, quite so, indeed, yes….). I can’t find the book on my shelves at the moment (it is probably either in a box somewhere or in my office) so I cannot be more precise.”