ominous day for the ex-President

You don’t want to be mentioned in the same breath as Habib al-Adly by prosecutors:

“The three Mubaraks are faced with different sets of charges. The former president is facing charges with ordering the killing of peaceful demonstrators during the January 25 Revolution, in association with his former minister of interior Habib El-Adly.”

the word “process”

I only have time for a quick thought on the matter here. But consider the following statement:

“Everything that happens must be explained, in some sense, through the activity of individuals.”

Could Whitehead have said this? Yes. In fact, he does. It’s called “the ontological principle” in his work.

Could Latour have said it? Yes. The universality of actors in Latour speaks to this.

But try to imagine Bergson or Deleuze, or Simondon, making the statement above, and it’s simply unimaginable.

That’s why the attempt to lump just about everyone under the term “process” is a grievous philosophical error. The primacy of individuals, or lack thereof, is just about the most important decision you can make in metaphysics. If two groups of philosophers disagree on this very fundamental issue, then it is very hard to class them together, to say the least.

kitten athleticism

I don’t know enough about cat development to know if maybe there’s typically some sort of Week 8 Explosion, but Tamanya seems to be gaining new skills every day now.

What astonishes me most is her sheer athleticism. Today for the first time she’s jumping easily between the two rather distant beds in the guest room. She stalks me and attacks my hands from out of nowhere with long-distance leaps, so in a sense she’s actually a bit scary to have too close by at any given moment– always in striking distance if you can see her.

And she runs like the wind already. The days of her cute but awkward rabbit-hops down the hallway are long gone. She’s approaching something like complete physical control of herself now.

more Iceland ash problems for UK

Sorry to see this happen again, but glad it didn’t happen two weeks earlier for my own trip to the UK. I already lost a fun lecture in Amsterdam a year ago to Icelandic ash.

My office just awarded a grant yesterday to a Cairo colleague to give a lecture in London, and she just told me on the phone she’s already cancelling her trip, which was to have begun on Thursday.