here’s to you, Mr. Mohamed Sayed

Honest taxi driver returns my computer bag three days later with not a thing missing, though he lives in an impoverished area and might have been a bit tempted by all the equipment in that bag.

Better yet, he had to do some detective work to find me, because the bag wasn’t nearly as well-marked as I thought it was.

First order of business tomorrow morning is to go to the police station and clear this case from the books. We did have his name right, it turns out, and I don’t want him having any unpleasant run-ins. I want him instead to have a nice little vacation off the reward money I was more than happy to pay, without his asking for any.

My last computer bag was all marked up with contact information. I’d absentmindedly forgotten to do the same with the new bag. But luckily, I had left the business card of an Egyptian professional acquaintance in there for some reason, and by calling her they were gradually able to figure out whose it was.

Belgrade speculative realism radio broadcast

It aired in January, but only now am I able to listen to it (thanks to Ksenija Stevanovic for the sound file). The actors are very serious and talented.

pea intelligence

Michael Marder writes about it, HERE.

The most interesting point of the article is the notion that there may be different cognitive levels for different types of plants. One of the least credible aspects of all subject-oriented philosophies is their need for a magical jump from the non-human to the human, as though the human (along with perhaps a few smart animals) differed infinitely in kind from all else, and as if all non-intelligent life were of the same degree of non-intelligence.

The other interesting point of the article is the phrase “hard scientific evidence.” Real science has never had much to do with the sort of rigid scientism defended by certain bullying philosophers of science whose main point in life often seems to be telling other people to shut up. That’s not the spirit we find in the Bohrs and the Einsteins.

Documenta notebook now on Amazon.de

HERE. But the booklet is dual English/German.

It’s probably better to find it in an art museum bookstore somewhere rather than pay Amazon shipping charges for something that only runs for 4 Euros anyway.

I was also delighted to see that Sarah Rifky, who was a member of my first batch of Cairo students, has also published a notebook in the series. HERE.

I’m just starting to get to the stage of life where my former students are doing real adult work that shows up in the public sphere. There have been a number of other such cases in the past couple of years, where I’ve seen former students quoted in the New York Times, or other things of that nature.