November 13 in Lisbon

The lecture announcement is HERE.

Great discussion in Bonn last night.

photo from August at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, by Gabriel Yoran

speaking in Bonn tonight

It’s at either 6:00 or 6:15 (I’ve heard it both ways), but as far as I know there is no live feed.

Maurizio Ferraris and Markus Gabriel will be on hand to respond. I’ve been having a great time with the most recent books of both.

Ferraris’s is the newly translated Documentality. Though documents are the major theme of the book, the first chapter contains a full-blown ontology, and the entire book is pleasurably witty. Ferraris is a former Derridean who went realist but still likes Derrida.

Gabriel’s new book is the German best-seller Warum es die Welt nicht gibt, a book every bit as warm and energetic as Gabriel is in person.

I have many agreements with Ferraris and Gabriel. Presumably the biggest point of disagreement is that both of them are inclined to treat the human subject as different in kind from anything else, whereas I am adamant that the human-world relation is not ontologically different from the fire-cotton relation or any other. Perception and knowledge are forms of causation for me. That’s one possible topic for the post-lecture discussion, and indeed the dinner discussion thereafter.

The schedule has gotten a bit crazy now. Over the next week I will be in Bonn, Ankara, Dubai, Lisbon, and Melbourne.

Morsi trial set for tomorrow

The deposed President of Egypt will appear in court tomorrow for the first time. I’d say that tomorrow is likely to be a troubled and turbulent day in Egypt.

It’s hard to imagine a more polarizing issue. For some, Morsi is a democratically elected leader ousted in an illegal military coup. For what seems to be a larger number of others in Egypt, Morsi himself is the architect of an unconstitutional coup and the figurehead of a shadowy pan-Islamist clique that needs to be smashed as a terrorist group. There’s not much middle ground in Egypt on this question.

live stream of today’s conference

“Curating the Curatorial,” hosted by the School of Visual Arts. There’s a nice roster of speakers, and you can watch the live stream HERE at 9:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time (I’m not really sure why we’re still on Daylight Time on November 2, but it ends tomorrow).

I should be speaking at 10:30.

Architecture at Syracuse

We had a great panel discussion this morning at the Syracuse University School of Architecture (which is on Madison Avenue between 31st and 32nd Streets, not upstate in Syracuse itself). The topic was the impact of object-oriented ontology on architecture.

My formal lecture there will be tonight at 7 PM, though word is the seats are already taken and there’s a waiting list of close to 200. Architecture is perhaps the biggest area for OOO right now.

another weird cell phone conversation overheard in New York

On Madison Avenue, I waited at a stoplight with a guy wearing a baseball cap and speaking with a very thick New York accent.

“No, I’m not interested. She’s sweet, and she’s pretty. But her profession’s a bit shady, and she’s too little. I have enough of my own problems. I don’t need yours.”

It would be fun to know the back story to this one, but it’s far from THE BEST cell phone conversation I’ve overheard in New York.

brain scientist discovers his brain is that of a psychopath

HERE.

It’s a fascinating story. Scanning the brains of psychopathic killers, Fallon discovers that he has a psychopathic brain as well. He’s no killer, but candidly admits to getting a kick out of charming and manipulating people into doing dangerous things. His brother says that hanging out with Fallon is more dangerous than his time spent in the Vietnam War.

No doubt, any of us will have encountered a number of full-blown psychopaths along the way, and it’s an intriguing game to play: pick out the psychopaths we’ve met. I’d have to say I’ve met three in academia, two male and one female. They weren’t entirely worthless people, but did seem to function according to a completely different set of rules that didn’t match the normal standards of humanity.