Monthly Archives: January 2013

Egypt, Israel, and the Arab Spring (Scale)

Posted on January 31, 2013 by zjb

There’s an  excellent piece about President Mohammed Mursi of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi in the New York Review of Books. It reads very much like an insider’s view of recent events in Egypt going back to the elections that … Continue reading →

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A Muddy, Melting Mess (Sometimes I Couldn’t Care a Less About Technology) (…But Then Again)

Posted on January 30, 2013 by zjb

Was driving around campus tonight and tuned in to “As it Happens,” a Canadian news talk-show. There was some guy talking about Blackberry and some new launch and there was something about FB over at the Atlantic Monthly online the … Continue reading →

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Syria (Collapse)

Posted on January 30, 2013 by zjb

Listening to NPR on the drive up to Syracuse yesterday, the news was dominated by the most recent massacre in Aleppo, Syria, by the coverage of Egypt as society continues to come apart at the seams, and by Mali, another … Continue reading →

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A Note on Cybernetics and Religion (Norbert Wiener)

Posted on January 29, 2013 by zjb

Just finished Norbert Wiener’s1954, second edition of The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. The world view is based on probability being introduced into the study of physics, with a focus on incompleteness and contingency as a way … Continue reading →

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Bright Yellow Pollen Square (Wolfgang Laib)

Posted on January 28, 2013 by zjb

Wolfgang Laib’s big bright yellow pollen square now showing at the Museum of Modern Art is very cool, in and of itself, and apropos right after the Rilke “Bees of the Invisible” bit in the post just below. The intensification … Continue reading →

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Bees of the Invisible (Rilke)

Posted on January 28, 2013 by zjb

At the threshold between visibility and invisibility, earthly life and spiritual vistas, here’s Rilke in the famous 1925 letter to his Polish translator, Witold Von Hulewicz, about the material transformation of object-things into invisible form and, then back again, into … Continue reading →

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(Flow) I Am (Rilke) Sonnets to Orpheus

Posted on January 27, 2013 by zjb

Rilke is the poet of the Information Age, art nouveau its design culture. There’s no better articulation of the tensions between subjects, objecthood and mass. What is the status of the individual subjectivity in a world constituted as constant flux? … Continue reading →

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Forest (In Between New York City Greenspace)

Posted on January 26, 2013 by zjb

I like these New York City “Forever Wild” sites. I took these pictures in the bird sanctuary in Riverside Park between 116th and 124th (?). The little strip or slice of forest green space runs across the side of a … Continue reading →

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Night Drive (“Primitive Physical Delight In Motion For Its Own Sake”) (Serial Form)

Posted on January 24, 2013 by zjb

I like the night drive home going fast east on rt. 80 towards New York City. You’re joined up in the groove along a string of red light, with strings of red lights and strings of white lights zipping past. … Continue reading →

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Where’s the Center & Who’s Israeli & What Comes Next? (Israel Elections, 2013)

Posted on January 24, 2013 by zjb

I’m not sure what just happened in the Israeli elections except that the right-right wing got clipped on the chin by centrist Yair Lapid, a handsome man who seems to have captured the center of Israeli politics. Which means what? … Continue reading →

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