Gary Hall in Amsterdam

A brief article on his May 19 talk can be read HERE. Gary is the co-founer of Open Humanities Press.

inept phishing attempt of the day

Some of them have become frighteningly slick lately.

But not this one. They sent me an email from “The University of Ammerica in Cairo” telling me I had exceeded my email quota and needed to enter a bunch of personal information on some website.

one month ago today

On April 23, exactly one month ago today, I adopted a certain little kitten who was crying in the alley outside my window. She’s given both pleasure and pain in the past month, but mostly pleasure.

The pain is almost entirely a question of her fondness for biting me very hard on the hands. And that’s why I’m headed over to Sami Pet Shop in awhile to ask Sami what he has available in the way of chewing items, stuffed animals, whatever. Anything to lower my hands on Tamanya’s preferred target list.

If any of us had her energy level, we’d be dangerous. It’s like she’s using crystal meth. She’s running around, attacking everything in sight. It’s worse when I’m on the computer like right now, because then she starts doing everything she knows I might not like in order to return to the center of attention. For example, right now she seems to think I will become very angry if she starts tearing tape off of boxes and attacking the tape. So I’m afraid I need to go and stop this madness.

also reading/listening to

Along with reading Joyce today, I also happen to be reading Brentano and listening to Beethoven string quartets.

I enjoy these sorts of random synergies, partly because I like the idea of experiencing conjunctions that few if any people have ever experienced before. Namely, it’s at least possible that no one has ever read Joyce and Brentano and listened to Beethoven string quartets. And if they have, you can always imagine some new additional condition– probably no one’s ever done it in Cairo before, for instance. It allows you to think that you might be catching sight of some previously unknown synergy in the universe.

That’s also why I used to take a Heidegger Gesamtausgabe volume along to White Sox games at Comiskey Park. You might only be able to read a page or two between innings, but at least I could think: “This is seeing Heidegger in an utterly new light. No one is likely ever to have done this before.” It would be hard to put my finger on any concrete insights unlocked by the Comiskey environment, but there may have been subtle atmospheric effects.

Google Books previews of my summer releases

I didn’t realize these were available, but the two Zero book are previewable on Google Books already. Thanks to Ryan for tipping me off.

Here is THE QUADRUPLE OBJECT.

Here is THE PRINCE AND THE WOLF.

There is no Meillassoux book preview up as of yet.

horrible tornado

89 people killed in Joplin, Missouri? The story is HERE.

I tend to suspect global warming has a role in these new super-tornadoes we’re seeing. Previously, all the huge death-toll tornadoes in history were in the days before metereologists and radio/TV could warn everyone to take cover. Now the warnings don’t seem to help much: we’re seeing more cases of tornadoes two miles in diameter, and other crazy things like that.

I grew up in Iowa, which was considered tornado country. Kansas was always #1 for tornadoes in those days, but we considered Iowa to belong to an elite group of victim states. However, I think that was more the case in the middle of the last century, and I was at the tail end of that period. These days it seems that most of the really destructive tornadoes are in the South: Alabama, Florida, places like that.

Iowa City was hit with a pretty bad one in the spring of 2006, though somehow only 1 person was killed, and not even in the city itself. Supposedly a tornado went directly over my hometown when I was in Kindergarten, but I wasn’t in school that day and have no memory of the incident.

The worst I ever saw was a funnel cloud outside Grinnell, while riding home from Des Moines one day. Never saw a full-blown tornado.

The way you know a tornado is coming, or at least the plausible folk tradition about it, is a strange color in the sky that’s hard to describe. Sort of a weird greenish tint with hints of luminescence. I’ve seen that tint many times, and though it’s been at least 20 years since the last time, I’d recognize it even now.

reading today

James Joyce

Hong Kong article

I’m afraid I can’t post it, since I’m now on the payroll of the South China Morning Post and they’ve chosen to make these articles available for subscribers only. It’s from Sunday, May 22, 2011.

But the title they gave it is: “Does China have the smarts to plumb IQ?”

The subheading says: “Free from the ghost of the Nazis, and with a cheap supply of scientists, an undemocratic state is heading into genetic territory the West cannot tread”

The bold-faced money quote they chose to highlight is: “To generate intellectual property where minds are cheap and sell it where knowledge is costly is crafty arbitrage.”

The topic of the article is a gigantic new genetics lab in Hong Kong where they’re trying to discover the “IQ gene.” The sheer scale of the operation would be unaffordable in the West, but qualified Chinese scientists are available within a much lower budget. Among other problems with this project, the “high IQ” pool they are using for their DNA samples seems to me like nothing but a herd of docile teachers’ pets: it’s basically straight A students, and let’s face it– many straight A students are unimaginative bores. Then again, capable but unimaginative bores may be exactly what the state apparatus most wishes to produce.

satisfying end to the administrative year

This year was my first time ever in control of a multi-million dollar budget, but somehow, in a year of Revolution and deficits, this office turned a surplus. We did it by being tougher on marginal requests, by tightening a few screws, and by being as efficient as possible.

And nonetheless, we still have far and away the most generous internal grants program for faculty and graduate students that I have ever seen. This is one of the very best features of the American University in Cairo. When I arrived to start this job in Fall 2000, I had a grand total of zero academic publications– not even a tiny book review anywhere. By now I have quite a lot of academic publications, and a great number of them are due largely or entirely to the unbelievable generosity of this university towards its faculty. In some ways I’m the poster boy for this internal grants program, so I guess it’s appropriate that I now run the whole thing.

What sorts of things can you do with this program? Well, if you have a good idea for a book manuscript, you can get $6,500 to go somewhere for a month and work on it. And you can do that each and every year as long as you’re producing something and not just frittering the money away without result. This is another reason I learned to write books so quickly, I suppose. There was always a big chunk of grant money available for the next one, as long as I was moving forward. Every book from Guerrilla Metaphysics onward has been partially or wholly funded by AUC. [ADDENDUM: This links to one of my favorite themes. As an intellectual you should not be an aloof cogito in sourpussed alienation from accidental circumstance. Instead, you need to figure out what the advantages of your accidental circumstances are and make the very best of them. Some people come to Egypt and whine the whole time about how far away they are from the elite centers of Western learning and complain that they deserved better. I learned to be an optimist about being here and focus only on the good things. Which is why I’m happy with this job.]

So, if there’s a job opening here next year in your field and you don’t apply, you’re being foolish. This is a fantastically interesting and supportive environment, and now Egypt is politically one of the world’s most intriguing places as well.

a post on writing

Intensive Thinking cites my views on writing and style in THIS POST, which is interesting more generally.