signalnoise

Hey there. How's the HP been treating you lately. Other than the loud neighbors, it's been pretty good to me. Had me some Harold's the other night, so that's going well.

I lived in Ukranian Village for a year. Moving back to the HP was actually a real treat. As scary as 53rd St. can be, there's a lot of great places to grab some grub. It's nice to be so close to that. Close enough to walk to work too, with pretty things to look at along the way.

Have you ever seen the crazy umbrella guy?

think this has anything to do with mom & dad's inablility to say no?

you guys gonna go to the SGB chicago this year?????

we are

Cool. Good luck with the exam. Some friends of mine just took them; I've never seen them so frazzled.

are you still alive? where are the daily academic soliloquies?

so it's down to what, a pleasant 95?

Re: the heat. I hear ya.

Re: the comps. I hear ya, also. Just remember that we theorists keep ourselves in a job by saying relatively straightforward things in REALLY roundabout ways. Best of luck with it, of course.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm feeling better. I just get hit with a case of the misses every now and then. But I hung out with a bunch of SG Ohio people last night and it was totally good times. Plus I met some cool kids on Friday night, too.

I hope you and the wife are doing well.

<----Pirate training for our sailing trip.

Ugh, guns are bad. I'm sorry, but sub-machine guns and machine guns have no practical purpose other than killing several human beings in as short a time as possible. These manufacturers mack profits off of the blood of the peopel killed by thier arms. Any act of Congress that protects these money grubbing bastards rubs me the wrong way too.

pseudo-random: I like your user name, signalnoise

Mom is already showing improvement. I'm very, very happy about it.

loopy double post

[Edited on Jul 22, 2005 8:01PM]

Thanks. Do I look older?

thanks.

i'm glad to see that the simple things in life make you so happy.

True. What Would Charlie Sheen Do will do little to point you in the correct direction.

Well, I'm currently being told by one of my students that I HAVE to watch Raouri Kenshin (sp?), but I'll put Name of the Rose on my Netflix list (I want the rest of Ghost in the Shell:Standalone Complex first, though, despite a noticeable aspect of crimefighting monks).

Re: Eco's other books. For me, nothing beats Name of the Rose. I haven't read the new one (though I probably will), but it does sound neat. I'd say read Foucault's Pendulum. Neither Island of the Day Before nor Baudolino are a waste of time, but I wouldn't recommend that you rush out and read them, either.

Re: your housesitting place. My friends J&L were housesitting in Kalorama (a pricey neighborhood) here, and would bust out with things like, "and then today, I found *another* Picasso, in the bathroom."

My freinds all did a mass-exodus out of that neighborhood in the last three years. You aren't the only one that really can't stand the way it has changed.

Don't forget about other great contributions from monks such as cognac, brandy, and ale!

Re: my post. I agree with you that the study isn't POINTLESS (and I say so). Knowing more about the physiological side of desire is inherently valuable and interesting. However, what raised my ire (and many people's) was the claim (made both by the scientists, and many who picked up their work) that their study "disproved" the existence of male bisexuality, which strikes me as a thoroughly wrongheaded understanding of sexuality.

Re: your post. I've heard good things about The Historian - maybe once I finish my current project (the 9/11 Report) I'll pick it up. And I LOVE The Name of the Rose (but then, I'm into that theology junk) - but I've never seen the movie. Have you read any of Eco's other stuff?

Good point about the Republican grassroots...

this past weekend i was waiting in a hellish line at 6 flags. my friend and i got into a discussion about how possible it is to change the current political system.

i went through the whole "start from the bottom up" and he countered with "you start from the top down becasue there is *already a movment that people can see".

what do you think?

Yes, what you said.

Oh yeah, who the fuck is a Hobbesian, anyway? I would love to meet someone who introduced himself as such. But I wouldn't want to be alone with him. Paranoid freak.

I'm going to Cali for a wedding. Two of my best friends in the world are getting hitched. It should be a totaly blast! Unfortunately I only have time for 3 days, but I'm going to make the most of it.

Good luck with Montesquieu. Just thinking about that book makes me tired.

See, that's why I teach (taught!) analytic philosophy.- Feinberg may not be any more exciting than Montesquieu, but at least he has short paragraphs and the occasional bullet point.

I went back and read your last post. Hmm. Much as I hate to tilt to the jingoists, I think you may be giving the hippy-dippies a bit too much credit on some counts.

As you point out, most active terrorists are wealthy(er) and (more) educated. And, in fact, I was just reading an interesting discussion of a couple studies that dispute the link between terrorism and poverty.

What the studies *did* show, apparently (haven't yet paid to get a full copy from the publisher, so I'm irresponsibly speaking off the executive summary) is a statistical link between terrorism and political disenfranchisement, and economic stagnation (rather than absolute economic well-being).

The problem for the HD approach is that, yeah, while these are non-military problems, they're ones that mere aid isn't going to solve. Stagnation can be helped by 'priming the pump' with aid in some circumstances, but it's as much a matter of corruption and mismanagment than anything else (e.g., Burma should NOT be poor). And enfranchisement requires (of course) structural political change, too.

But this is dangerous territory. I just got an email off an academic listserv saying that we should have just funded "nonviolent pro-democracy groups" in Iraq rather than invading. That sounds all fine and good, but most regimes generating terrorists aren't going to sit nonviolently by while democracy and anti-corruption movements build. And then what? We *could* resign ourselves to isolation, and maybe be less of a target - but if we want to take an active role in thwarting these ideologies, we're going to need a big stick pretty often, I think.