final cover for Meillassoux book

As you can see, it’s a very nicely designed cover. The version on Amazon looks all bleached-out for some reason, and omits much detail.

We’re less than two months away from the appearance of the book. There is already much interest in it.

Remember, it will be immediately available in paperback, so it’s much more affordable than is often the case with first-release philosophy books.

QMcover

a response I aspire never to make

If someone asks you “What is X?”, there is no excuse whatsoever for responding with: “You’ve never heard of X?!”

If they’ve just asked you, then obviously they haven’t. It is merely triumphalistic and selfish to make them feel ignorant simply for asking a question.

The asking of questions ought to be sacred ground. None of us knows everything, and when someone shows their ignorance to you on a certain point, they are by definition making themselves vulnerable in your presence. That’s not a fair moment to needle them about not knowing something.

gold

Will be writing an essay on gold for an anthology soon.

Verona

OK, Verona. That’s where Romeo and Juliet takes place. I wish I had remembered that when in Verona a few years ago. It would have added some color to the city.

I’m quite fond of Verona, though you need to get fairly far from the train station before you stop wondering if you made a mistake in coming.

collected works of Shakespeare

Looking over a big volume of Shakespeare, trying to decide if that’s the best thing to read while knocked out by the virus.

There are a few plays I’ve never read at all, but they aren’t major ones. Then I notice Romeo and Juliet, which I last read in Fall 1982 before many readers of this blog was born– I was forced to read it as a freshman in high school, and don’t remember it well. In fact, I can’t even remember which Italian city it takes place in.

Then The Tempest, of which I have fond memories, but I have read it since 1988, so that’s overdue too.

Of the major tragedies, I’m definitely a King Lear person, not a Hamlet person. At times he drives me up the wall, in fact.

Best staging of a Shakespeare play (or perhaps any play) I ever saw… Iowa City in 1985. The guy playing Lear modelled his performance after the increasing insanity of his own father which he had witnessed as a child, and the results on stage were great.

The stage set for all the scenes was an abstract gridwork of steal beams, and the Fool (with bells on his shoes) was climbing around on the beams for much of the play.

one of those viruses

It hit me at last night’s garden party, and has ruined the day today, though there’s something be said for a day left alone doing absolutely nothing once in awhile.

Symptoms of the virus: fever, body ache, lethargy. So lethargic I haven’t had the slightest interest in moving more than about 10 feet from where I woke up. Is the lethargy a strategy of the virus to keep you immobilized? Or (like fever) is it something your body does to fight the virus? I wish I knew, so I could decide accordingly whether to force myself to take a brisk walk.

other bets

Obama re-elected next year is at 61.3%. I know we’re early, but that’s still too low. Whatever you think about economy this or slight drop in the polls that, at the end of the day the Republicans still have to find someone who can beat him, and I’m not convinced they have such a person right now.

88.8% for the President of Yemen to be gone by December 31. That bet will surely win now, hence the high price.

Ahmadinejad out by December 31 is at 30.0%. I might make the bet at that price.

As for Qaddafi, they have him at 14% to be gone by the end of June, but 76% to be gone by the end of 2011.

looking for bets

Another Intrade bet. How about this one?

“Anthony Weiner to resign from the House of Representatives before midnight ET 30 Sep 2011

40.6% CHANCE”

In other words, if you pay $40.60, you get $100 if he does resign by September 30, and lose your whole $40.60 if he doesn’t.

Would you make the bet? I would. (Except that I don’t want to make any bets on that site. The last thing I need is for another website addiction to get started.)

First, Weiner has annoyed a lot of people, and there are a number of tools these people can use to get him out of Congress.

Second, if he’s the sort of guy who sends photos of his genitals to women on Twitter, there’s probably even more dirt out there than that. With the position he’s in now, even one more piece of new and dubious information will turn everyone in the Democratic Party even more aggressively against him, and that will be all. There will be limits for his staff staying on the job, eventually his wife could just order him to quit, etc. I can’t imagine his riding this out.

Gingrich staff quits

His entire campaign staff quit. It could now go either way. When Ross Perot’s staff quit in 1992, he withdrew. But John McCain, if memory serves, axed his top staff after a slow start and rallied to win the nomination.

But Gingrich has bigger problems with his candidacy, and I don’t see much chance he’ll be the nominee, even though he may be the smartest (though still among the most obnoxious) person they have.

Dallas 3 – Miami 2

Wow, Dallas is just about to finish off the Evil Heat, it looks like. One more win will do it.

I never thought Dallas had it in them to win a championship. Dirk Nowitzki had acquired a bit of a reputation as mentally soft in big games, Jason Kidd was getting pretty old for a guard, and Mark Cuban, though perhaps the most entertaining team owner in professional sports, often seemed more interested in generating entertaining distractions than actually winning a title.

And then there was the issue of the Lakers and San Antonio, teams in which we all had a lot more confidence than Dallas, for obvious reasons. As recently as a few months ago, some people were asking if this year’s San Antonio team would have the best record in NBA history; in the end, they didn’t get anywhere close to the Finals.

In any case, I’m not normally a fan of Dallas sports teams– I loathe the Cowboys in football and am bored by the Rangers in baseball. But I’ve always liked the Mavericks for some reason.