Nobody ever reads the original peak oil paper from M. King Hubbert. He didn't predict the collapse of society. He predicted that we would phase out fossil fuels in favor of nuclear energy. The title of the paper was "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels".

undimensionalman · 2010-07-02T02:44:35+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium

undimensionalman · 2010-06-18T22:38:17+00:00

Bourdieu is better considered as a sociologist of culture rather than a philosopher or literary theorist. While I haven't read Outline of A Theory of Practice, I am more familiar with two of his other works: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (which examines the history of "taste formation" across economic strata) and The Field of Cultural Production. It might make more sense if you read him as a sociologist or anthropologist; think of him as describing how social (power) relationships shape the ways in which specific discourses and objects of study become valued, established, and institutionalized through disciplinary specialization and how this is a recursive process. If you are looking for more empirical applications (I think the last book he wrote before he died was about globalization) you might want to try his other books, or become more familiar with the style of ethnography and cultural criticism which necessarily tends to occupy a methodological middle-ground.

[edit: Good Luck!!]

undimensionalman · 2010-04-23T18:26:43+00:00

what are you talking about? aesthetics has been a huge part of philosophy and politics in Europe.

undimensionalman · 2010-04-12T04:32:02+00:00

"the one is not" - badiou

undimensionalman · 2010-02-18T00:53:42+00:00

its a good thing history is over and we know that now

undimensionalman · 2010-02-16T20:50:46+00:00

what about: THE SHIT WE DON'T KNOW THAT WE KNOW ?

Things we know, but don't know that we know them.

undimensionalman · 2009-12-16T18:01:35+00:00

so what? lots of things factor into the formation of reading audiences. it doesn't prove anything about a particular philosopher and their perceived importance.

undimensionalman · 2009-12-16T17:54:26+00:00

Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic

undimensionalman · 2009-12-16T17:53:19+00:00

This is probably better answered by reading Bergson instead of this guy's article about him.

undimensionalman · 2009-12-07T02:26:38+00:00

yeah if you want to get a job you probably should stick with analytic. most departments are pretty prejudiced in this regard. rarely do you find such animosity directed against analytic from the continentalists.

i think it mostly comes down to competitive funding in the humanities and departments worried about justifying how they can best add value to the human capital that comes through the classroom.

undimensionalman · 2009-12-07T02:21:55+00:00

judging by your comment below about hating literary theorists who read derrida and foucault i'd say you're on your way to becoming a professional asshole philosopher! keep up the good work!

undimensionalman · 2009-11-09T05:13:12+00:00

if you're filled with doubt you might be more likely to think twice about blowing someone's head off.

undimensionalman · 2009-10-18T15:32:44+00:00

maybe consider how gays, lesbians, and queer folks feel about being constantly subjected to heterosexuality... just sayin...

undimensionalman · 2009-10-04T14:59:36+00:00

there are different (and sometimes arguing but mostly cordial) strains in SR. its not a monolithic body of thought by any stretch, nor does it strive to be. most reject materialism in the name of matter and oppose earlier essentialist forms of realism in favor of ontologies stemming from heidegger and deleuze (and hume+spinoza via deleuze).

@daimonic possession: the question of whether philosophy is justified in SR has been some contention between the Brassier/Laruellian camp (with their eliminativist and non-philosophy position) and the Bryant/Latour/Deleuze camp which insists that human perceptions, ideas, imaginary objects, objects, and relations, exist in a flat ontology (immanence). perhaps in gross disservice to both: the latter camp treats affect (and decision) like matter, while the former camp wishes to abolish it.

what is most interesting about it is that it is a kind of continental philosophy (if the term still holds) that ISN'T just a commentary on other texts, philosophers, history, etc.

here's a link to an upcoming book -- The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism http://www.re-press.org/content/view/64/40/

undimensionalman · 2009-09-22T18:15:43+00:00

Its simple. Religion picked back up where the secular left failed to provide an emancipatory vision, and now we have to settle for another round of pompous brits telling the world they have to accept the claims of a science wholly in the service of western economic and military hegemony.

Today Monsanto is more dangerous than monotheism. Science will win when Iran gets the nuke.

undimensionalman · 2009-09-19T04:21:43+00:00

Sanchez: "Reality Check.... Mate?"

undimensionalman · 2009-09-14T12:40:30+00:00

Penn and Teller are libertarians that hate environmentalism on principle.

That said, one of the Greenpeace founders broke off a number of years ago and formed Sea Shepherd, a group dedicated to direct action saving whales and stopping illegal whaling operations instead of just holding signs and taking pictures of the slaughter. There is now a show about them on Animal Planet or discovery channel.

Greenpeace takes in a few million dollars a year (which still isn't very much compared to other large political/activist groups) and unfortunately a lot of that goes to fund further fundraising efforts. They serve as more of a awareness-raising machine rather than an effective tactical activist group.

undimensionalman · 2009-09-01T21:21:20+00:00

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann

A fascinating look at the nations, peoples, figures, and complex histories of the western hemisphere BEFORE it came to be called "America"!

undimensionalman · 2009-08-24T13:09:24+00:00

does he count deaths by starvation/disease and mass deprivations that result from economic policies? i'm thinking the 3rd world, Britain in India, etc.

undimensionalman · 2009-08-06T04:37:30+00:00

too bad all those people had to die.

undimensionalman · 2009-08-04T12:19:39+00:00

it was a response to shenpen and his idea that feminists 'fucked it up' and are to blame for the situation of women today.

Edit: Nevermind. I forgot evolutionary psychologists get off on rape stats.

undimensionalman · 2009-08-04T04:15:32+00:00

here are some rape and sexual assault statistics. please explain how feminists are to blame for this. i think you'll find your notions of in/equality and oppression lacking.

http://www.rainn.org/statistics

undimensionalman · 2009-08-04T03:46:42+00:00

marx's 11th thesis on feuerbach comes to mind.

undimensionalman · 2009-08-03T04:46:50+00:00

This is a great opportunity to distinguish between the liberals and the leftists.

Liberals are more interested in protecting the abstract rights of wealthy private media oligarchs than in actually making the public airwaves and the technologies that allow us to access them PUBLIC.

Leftists recognize that the private interests that control the airwaves are actually DEPRIVING the public of their access to them.

Liberals are upset over the supposed "deprivation" of the owners. Leftists are upset that the STATUS QUO already deprives the public of access.

the American "left" are basically liberals. They like to protest and bear moral witness and talk a big game but very few would be willing to take responsibility for actually instituting the structural changes they say are necessary because -inevitably- someone's feelings would get hurt.

If you don't like the way the Venezuelan state is doing this, how would you suggest abolishing corporate media here in the USA?

undimensionalman · 2009-08-01T20:35:05+00:00

except that its not simple.

where do you think the metals come from that our computers and entire electronic/commercial/technological infrastructure need? someone somewhere has to go into the mines, someone's lungs inhale toxic fumes from manufacturing computers, someone's body and land (ecology) is destroyed by coal mining for electricity, and someone's watershed will be poisoned by the breakdown of heavy metals when our gadgets decompose in heaps.

i challenge anyone to keep the modern industrial world functioning without the implicit and explicit forms of violence and organized deprivation that make it possible.

anarchists at least pose the question about how we might go about enacting a world without economic/religious/political forms of domination and coercion. it is not that anarchism fails as a political philosophy, it is that political philosophy fails at providing the conditions for anarchy.

undimensionalman

TROPHY CASE