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…Wasn’t that what she lacked? She didn’t know. She simply followed Marcel, pleased...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:45:00 -0800

…Wasn’t that what she lacked? She didn’t know. She simply followed Marcel, pleased to know that someone needed her. The only joy he gave her was the knowledge that she was necessary. Probably he didn’t love her. Love, even when filled with hate, doesn’t have that sullen face. But what is his face like? They made love in the dark by feel, without seeing each other. Is there another love than that of darkness, a love that would cry aloud in daylight? She didn’t know, but she did know that Marcel needed her and she needed that need, that she lived on it night and day, at night especially — every night, when he didn’t want to be alone, or to age or die, with that set expression he assumed which she occasionally recognized on other men’s faces, the only common expression of those madmen hiding under an appearance of wisdom until the madness seizes them and hurls them desperately toward a woman’s body to bury in it, without desire, everything terrifying that solitude and night reveals to them.

Marcel stirred as if to move away from her. No, he didn’t love her, he was merely afraid of what was not she, and she and he should long ago have separated and slept alone until the end. But who can always sleep alone?

— Camus, ‘The Adulterous Woman’

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Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800

Let us imagine you are a doctor driving to a patient, a young mother who is about to give birth. It...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:50:00 -0800

Let us imagine you are a doctor driving to a patient, a young mother who is about to give birth. It looks like she will need a caesarian section. It is late at night and you come across a car accident on the country road you are travelling on. Two cars are involved in the accident and both drivers are unconscious and have visible injuries. One of the men is the father of the child you are going to deliver, and the other man is very old. You do not know the extent of their injuries but in your opinion, without immediate medical help, one or both may die. You as a Utilitarian are now faced with one of three possible solutions:

You help the young mother who is about to give birth.
You help the young woman’s husband.
You help the old man.

The outcome of felicific calculus would suggest:

Attending to the mother first is your primary concern as the doctor. The death of both mother and child is almost a certainty if you do not act now, whereas the death of the men is uncertain. Furthermore, the pain of the mother is clearly greater than that of the men at this time. There is a greater richness and purity in saving the life of a young child who has, in all probability, a long happy life ahead. Meanwhile the extent and duration of the utility created by these two people is a clear likelihood.
Attending to the young husband is the next priority. The pleasures of a new family — its intensity, duration, extent, richness, and purity — are all clear probabilities. If, as the doctor, you attend him first his wife and child would in all probability die. The man would then experience pain. The pain experienced by the widowed husband is likely to outstrip any pleasure to be gained from continued life without his loved ones.
Attending to the old man is the last priority. The duration and certainty of his future pleasure are questionable owing to his age — he has all but lived his life. This is sometimes known as the ‘good innings’ argument, according to which the older you are the less claim you have to life.

Certainly, the doctor should not be limited to the three choices, though the whole purpose of the exercise rests on it being a closed universe. To maximize the felicific calculus, he should try to secure external help by calling another doctor to help the mother, and by asking people nearby and the emergency services to deal with the accident.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:45:00 -0800

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0700

As Breton famously describes it in the first manifesto: ‘The value of the image depends on the...

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:55:00 -0700

As Breton famously describes it in the first manifesto: ‘The value of the image depends on the beauty of the spark obtained; it is, consequently, a function of the difference of potential between the two conductors.’

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Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:53:14 -0700

Gemischte Liste

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:00:00 -0700

One celestial body obscures another. Mugs of precious metals. Joined by the same curiosity that has us reaching for old notes in the street. Seasonal produce. Market dairy. Fridge for three. Dredging up the edges of something underwater, forgotten. Brutalist glassware, noir lighting, boiled wool. Reality, what can we do with it? Where is it in words? Faded maps, bed-linen. White ice cream, gold pearls. Caveside illumination, nocturnal foliage. Cotton on cotton. The impassioned systematists, the retired rationalists, the card-catalogue archivists. Soft pyrite, local flora. Trains sounding in the distance. When the sight communicates something to the stomach. Anchorage, aberration, black oaks, black hold. Passive text messaging. Used coffee filters. A spiritual power in repetition. We are that kind of architecture, or not. Demented experiments, internet printouts, vinyl piles. A shadow, a spill on the sleeves of this, indigo in the face of a thought-train, stopping. Stain, echo, scintilla, half-shape. October again. Namelessness.

— NL / D∆ remix

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Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:33:00 -0700

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Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:21:19 -0700

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Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:12:00 -0700

"The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for..."

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:21:43 -0700

“The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”

- Marcel Proust

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Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:45:00 -0700

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Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:36:49 -0700

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Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:49:34 -0700

A month in a moment, July — August.

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:28:00 -0700

A month in a moment, July — August.

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Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:27:00 -0700

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Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:28:27 -0700

How can we live without the unknown before us?

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:29:00 -0700

‘From the unknown – what is neither the pure unknowable nor the not yet known – comes a relation that is indirect, a network of relations that never allows itself to be expressed unitarily. Whether it be called the marvellous, the surreal, or something else…the unknown provokes – if in fact it is provoked – a non-simultaneous set of forces, a space of difference and a magnetic field always free of the itinerary it calls forth, embodies, and nonetheless holds in reserve…the future of surrealism is bound to this exigency of a plurality escaping unification and extending beyond the whole (while at the same time presupposing it, demanding its realisation), untiringly maintaining, in the face of the Unique, contradiction and rupture.’

— Maurice Blanchot, from ‘Tomorrow at Stake’