just received

The third and final proofs of The Prince and the Wolf. There should be almost nothing left to catch; shouldn’t take long at all to correct these.

They’re now saying April for publication, though the database says July.

good/scary headline

From Wired:

10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

speakers who change your mind in person

I’ve just been having a private email conversation with some of my friends about which speakers have impressed and dis-impressed us. Obviously some of that will stay private, but I think a few lessons can be drawn from the discussion. Not sure how much of this pertains only to me, and how much of it is universal.

I can think of two relatively famous speakersI saw who left me thinking: “I’ll never read another word by this person again.” Why not? Obviously not just because I didn’t like the lecture. Anyone can have a bad or boring night, and while we might be disappointed by that, we’re not going to write someone off forever for that reason.

No, the two people I really wrote off for good were unbelievably snotty and haughty in person in a way I never expected from their books. One of them was a snot directly to the audience questioners (including undergraduate students.) The other was more conspiratorial with the audience, with an attitude of: “All of us in this room know the truth, but most people outside this room are benighted idiots.” This person also singled out a few geographical regions of this globe where everyone is simply an ignoramus (it didn’t help that one of those regions was my own, but that was just the coup de grâce; he had already lost me forever well before that point.)

These two showed such horrible attitudes as human beings, in other words, that there’s no way it was just the product of a bad mood. They were clearly people with whom I would not care to have any further interactions whatsoever. My close friends know who I’m talking about, but it would be rude to post their names on a blog, especially since one is still alive.

Now, what about the reverse phenomenon– people you end up liking a lot better after seeing them perform in person?

It’s not just the reverse of the first case: seeing a really, really polite celebrity might be a nice spectacle, but it’s not necessarily going to leave you fascinated. Same thing if you just see them a good lecture: you might think “hey, that lecture was actually more interesting than their books,” but that would lead only to a temporary readjustment in your opinion of them.

No, I think there needs to be a certain compelling charisma to a personality such that the author becomes permanently more interesting to you on some sort of human level. Žižek’s the obvious case here: for me at least, it’s impossible not to wish the guy well in everything after seeing him in public a few times. He’s just such an irreplaceable character that you want him to have lots of good luck.

But in a more understated way, I had a similar reaction to Judith Butler, whom I somehow found profoundly sympathetic and likable on the human level.

I had a bit of that reaction to Habermas as well, but I’ve never actually seen him lecture, just met him in a residence one time. There was a lot of human warmth to Habermas, on that occasion at least.

alternative download site

Since re.press is still down due to bandwidth issues, a Nathan E. just sent me THIS LINK as an alternative download site. I can’t vouch for it form personal experience, but looks fine to the naked eye.

re.press still down

re.press is still down due to bandwidth limit being exceeded.

I didn’t hear this directly from them, but am still inferring the obvious: The Speculative Turn was a very popular download.

changed text on subscription button

The subscription button on this page used to say “Warning: many posts!” Contrary to what some people apparently thought, I put that warning there myself. I’ve now changed it to more neutral text.

fun time in the North

Fun time in the North today thanks to Cengiz, who BLOGS HERE, did his Ph.D. in the U.K. at East Anglia, and wrote THIS BOOK in English along with a couple of fictional works in Turkish.

We dipped into Northern Nicosia bohemia for a bit, then had a nice long meal in a village outside Kyrenia, then nargileh (a.k.a. shisha) at the Kyrenia waterfront itself. Lots of talk about the current state of SR.

It was nighttime, of course, but here’s how beautiful Kyrenia is by day. This is the waterfront where we smoked the nargileh.

border generosity

About to cross the border again (I’m sitting maybe 2 blocks from the crossing as I type these words), and just realized that it’s pretty nice of Northern Cyprus to let us cross free of charge. If they had a nominal charge of 5 or even 10 Euros, we would probably all pay without complaining. Indeed, we might even be led to stay a bit longer and thus spend a bit more after having made that nominal up-front investment. Maybe there’s some international legal reason why they have to make it free, or maybe they’re just being nice about it.

bandwidth exceeded

For awhile earlier today (I haven’t checked in a couple of hours) it was impossible to get the PDF of The Speculative Turn because the bandwidth was exceeded. I had no problems with other web pages, so I assume that means re.press was exceeding its bandwidth. That seems to be a good sign of public interest in the anthology.

I’m reading the chapters out of order as my mood strikes me, and since I was in a cafe this afternoon that meant that I read the ones with which I was already most familiar, since they take less mental energy to read on an iPad. So, I reread my exchange with Steven Shaviro, which is also good fun, as well as Levi’s piece which I already know quite well. The Introduction is also useful, I think.

crossing the border

I’m heading over across the border again today, this time to meet one of our philosophy blogger friends. Here’s what the border crossing is like when coming from the southern part of Nicosia/Lefkosia, where I’m staying…

Ledra Street, which is the main artery of the shopping district in the southern part of the city, leads straight into a checkpoint. All of the governmental facilities on both sides of the line are sort of like trailers, or like ticket windows for a theater or circus.

To your right is a Republic of Cyprus facility, but that’s only for when you’re coming back in. They don’t want to see your passport on the way out.

Then you’re in the zone for about 20 or 30 feet, and if you look left and right you can see plenty of damaged/abandoned buildings along the Green Line. The big conflict was in 1974, and I would assume that none of these buildings have been used for anything in 36 years.

Then, on your left, a Northern Cyprus trailer, white and with the image of their flag painted on it. You have to fill out a white visa form. They can’t stamp your passport because there are recognition controversies about the national status of Northern Cyprus. So instead, they stamp the piece of paper.

The northern side of Nicosia is rather different from the southern part. On the North it’s a lot like Turkey, unsurprisingly; the style of the mosques is the same, of course.

It’s also pretty easy to get lost in the northern part, though just like in Damascus you’ll eventually hit one of the old walls and be able to reorient yourself that way. But a couple of times, the twisty streets had me turned around so that I was shocked to come upon buildings that I thought were many blocks behind me. It had a sort of urban “Blair Witch Project” feel to it.

Neither the northern nor the southern part of the old city is especially large, but you can easily spend several hours wandering around the northern part.

When leaving, the Northern Cyprus authorities do ask to see your passport and visa. In most cases they type your passport number into a computer. They let you keep the visa, which is reusable for periods of, I believe, up to 3 months. They do stamp the visa upon exit, though, which would make me somewhat self-conscious about going in multiple times per day; as a result, I’ve only made one trip per day to the North.

The Republic of Cyprus trailer then appears 20 or 30 feet later, and they also want to see your passport and visa before allowing you back in. To my surprise, they didn’t check my rather large bag the first time. I had read that they are very strict about cigarette smuggling and so would examine any tourist bags carefully. That didn’t happen.

Since 2003 this has all been a lot less tense, apparently. My understanding (and this is just what I’ve heard) is that the only people who have problems crossing are the Turkish immigrants in the North who want to cross into the South. The original Turkish Cypriots reportedly have no problem.

I’ve wondered a bit if Nicosia was the inspiration for China Miéville’s much weirder divided place in The City and the City.