Actually, this might hold some interest for me, but I'm wondering if you or someone else can outline the general topics under discussion in Being and Time (more specifically than "being, and time")?
Ogged, fantastic... I m just ploughing my way through "Sein und Zeit" in German for the second time. I'd leap at the chance to do a prose seminar online.
Count me in, if you can cope with scientists with no formal training.
This is great, because I was already planning on starting it in a few days, as my friend has fallen in love with it. My only concern is that as an undergrad I don't yet have enough background (Husserl, Nietzsche, whoever) to be jumping into it.
I had been planning on reading "Godel, Escher, Bach," this summer, because I started it last year and then couldn;t concentrate on it when I got wrapped up in law school. Any interest in that one, or people who want to dissuade me from reading it? Not as a substiute, just in general. The parts I got through seemed pretty fun, even if quite a bit of it is under-argued.
Wd, That book was the fashion accessory nr 1 for all wannabe theoretician sin my first undergraduate (freshman, right?) at college. It certainly is fun and it certainly seems very clever. In the end though, it is like junk food: Sits heavily for a while and then you wonder why you ate it.
It is difficult in the sense of being clever. There are harder subjects that are less showy, I suspect.
Don't get me wrong, Wd, I think the book is great fun and I bloody well wish I could think up something like that. I just suspect we'll get more as a group out of ogged's project (no, that is NOT sucking up, I think)
GEB is worth it for the brilliant dialogues, the lucid explanation of Goedel's famous results, the remarks on how layers of abstraction arise in complex systems, and the shish-kebabing of Searle's and Penrose's theories of transcendent meat. If you study formal systems for a living, or if private languages and beetles dwell in your fever dreams, a lot of the material will seem old hat to you. But it's a great bit of popular logic and philosophy.
The idea sounds like fun but Heidegger would not be my choice.
I know ogged isn't trying to pick a philosopher to be popular, he's just offering us the chance to participate in his decisions to catch up on his heidegger, but I'd echo the earlier request for Hegel or Kant or, since it's summer reading, even someone with a sense of humor -- say Kierkegaard.
Well, there's one joke that could be made by ignoring the comma at the end, and another about whether a plot is required. Or are you thinking of something else?
Re Enten/Eller: in my edition of "Or" there's a footnote which runs, in its entirety, "As a cloud upon Semele, as a rain upon Danae". Best found poetry ever?
I'm going to have to beg off, unfortunately. Or I'm most likely to have to beg off--I may lurk. I need to spend the summer writing lots of papers and getting ready to teach new courses (and moving--breaking hiatus to come in and reserve my U-Haul). And I should be learning about vagueness and formal epistemology a bit too--not sure I can take on another unfamiliar area of philosophy. That's the problem with making it your profession.
If John Emerson ever finds this comment he is totally going to give me a swirly.
But that person would be the BKT or TKB or whatnot killer. I think the reason it's not redundant is that "BTK" doesn't stand for "Bind Torture Killer", but rather "Bind Torture Kill".
41: There's picky, and then there's picky. I hold my unfoggerel to a pretty high standard, and it surprised me that I'd catch heat for a syllabic insertion that didn't bungle the meter.
But ya can't sing it trippingly to the tune with that extra syllable. The stress SB suggested - which is necessitated by the extra syllable - makes it clumsy.
And ghod knows, we wouldn't want a ball song to sound odd...
DE, I think you're misreading my meter as iambic, instead of trochaic with an initial "grace note". That would really mess things up, I agree. Or possibly you don't like my nonstandard fell-a'-ti-o'. But honest, you can sing it trippingly. Does it look any better to you if you move the "or" to the end of the previous line?
Maybe this will be clearer. The stresses on "Can you twist" and "rhyme it with" correspond exactly. As do those on "its sense to mock" and "fellatio". The unstressed "or" slips in nicely, completing the half-trochee "mock". Please don't make me come find you and sing it for you. Because, um, that would be a lot of work to justify some garbage I posted in a Heidegger thread.
Too bad I can't figure out how to make money off of them. I think it's something I picked up to compensate for my lack of doodling skills. Other people draw things; I mess with words.
(And I was wondering how long it would be before I got outed for those signature lines. Although not all of them have been me.)
I'm in -- I hardly read anything other than work, blogs, and genre fiction these days, so I could use the exercise. Any particular edition recommended?
Please don't make me come find you and sing it for you.
[grin] I'll be happy to email you my phone number so that you can call and sing it to me. I'll even concede if it falls trippingly, but I've run it past a musician and a poet and they both agree with my take.
Forget iambs and trochees and anapests and spondees. [And dactyls, unless one is suggesting something sexual.] My primary criterion is whether or not one can sing the damn song when drunk.
Ok, after just reading your comments here I think I'd like to join in. But what kind of time-frame are you talking about here? I may be away from the computer for long stretches this summer.
Around the corner, fudge is made.
Actually, this might hold some interest for me, but I'm wondering if you or someone else can outline the general topics under discussion in Being and Time (more specifically than "being, and time")?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 10:40 AM
Heidegger in particular wasn't part of my summer reading plans, but a group effort would probably make that book more palatable. So I'd be up for it.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 10:54 AM
I am in... or maybe even "there"
Posted by rob | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:01 AM
Ogged, fantastic... I m just ploughing my way through "Sein und Zeit" in German for the second time. I'd leap at the chance to do a prose seminar online.
Count me in, if you can cope with scientists with no formal training.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:02 AM
This is great, because I was already planning on starting it in a few days, as my friend has fallen in love with it. My only concern is that as an undergrad I don't yet have enough background (Husserl, Nietzsche, whoever) to be jumping into it.
Posted by Toadmonster | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:55 AM
I would tentatively be interested. I am tentatively interested. I'm very tentative.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 12:16 PM
Wolfson: Knight of Infinite Reservation?
(Wrong philosopher, I know.)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 1:30 PM
take care of all the back-end stuff
Well, it seemed obligatory.
I'll read.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 1:34 PM
I'll [...] take care of all the back-end stuff
At the Mineshaft.
Who's in?
That's always the question, isn't it?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 1:38 PM
I'm in, as long as:
(1) we switch to Hegel's _Philosophy of Right_ or Kant's _The Metaphysics of Morals_,
(2) everyone promises never to make any reference to the nuances contained in the original German,
and
(3) everyone promises never to take the book with them into the bathroom.
That's not a lot to ask, is it?
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 1:46 PM
Wolfson: Knight of Infinite Reservation?
Woeful countenance.
Howabout we change the book to Hegel's Phenomenology? (muffled chortle)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 1:53 PM
I might be in, but I'd have to see how gritty the book is.
Does anyone read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" anymore?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:11 PM
Hey Bridgeplate, you in?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:16 PM
I had been planning on reading "Godel, Escher, Bach," this summer, because I started it last year and then couldn;t concentrate on it when I got wrapped up in law school. Any interest in that one, or people who want to dissuade me from reading it? Not as a substiute, just in general. The parts I got through seemed pretty fun, even if quite a bit of it is under-argued.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:17 PM
Wd, That book was the fashion accessory nr 1 for all wannabe theoretician sin my first undergraduate (freshman, right?) at college. It certainly is fun and it certainly seems very clever. In the end though, it is like junk food: Sits heavily for a while and then you wonder why you ate it.
It is difficult in the sense of being clever. There are harder subjects that are less showy, I suspect.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:25 PM
" theoreticians in"
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:26 PM
I'll have to pass, ogged. Sounds like fun, though.
I'm sure the world weeps that my all-singing, all-dancing Heidegger pastiche is not to be.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:40 PM
If I don't tell anyone (else) I'm reading it and promise not to engage in public reading, that would avoid the non-substantive problems, right?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:44 PM
I dont know, Tripp. I certainly read it as a teenager and still have a massive soft spot for it.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:45 PM
Don't get me wrong, Wd, I think the book is great fun and I bloody well wish I could think up something like that. I just suspect we'll get more as a group out of ogged's project (no, that is NOT sucking up, I think)
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:49 PM
GEB is worth it for the brilliant dialogues, the lucid explanation of Goedel's famous results, the remarks on how layers of abstraction arise in complex systems, and the shish-kebabing of Searle's and Penrose's theories of transcendent meat. If you study formal systems for a living, or if private languages and beetles dwell in your fever dreams, a lot of the material will seem old hat to you. But it's a great bit of popular logic and philosophy.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:55 PM
Oops, Austro's 20 would have sufficed.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 2:58 PM
The idea sounds like fun but Heidegger would not be my choice.
I know ogged isn't trying to pick a philosopher to be popular, he's just offering us the chance to participate in his decisions to catch up on his heidegger, but I'd echo the earlier request for Hegel or Kant or, since it's summer reading, even someone with a sense of humor -- say Kierkegaard.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:18 PM
I d go for Kierkegaard too:Entweder-Oder is on the table here beside me too.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:36 PM
If this goes well, I imagine we could do other folks too.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:38 PM
Is this all part of an insidious plot to make me feel stupid, ogged?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:40 PM
* The audience asks itself: Will he take the low hanging fruit?*
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:43 PM
Well, there's one joke that could be made by ignoring the comma at the end, and another about whether a plot is required. Or are you thinking of something else?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:46 PM
The requirement for a plot was the game-ploy that suggested itself.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:49 PM
I thought Austro's comment was in reference to "do other folks too".
It's not you, Martin; I just think it's time we did other people.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:50 PM
Or better: "Darling, who's fun for a change? Shall we do the Hegels this evening?"
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 3:55 PM
Re Enten/Eller: in my edition of "Or" there's a footnote which runs, in its entirety, "As a cloud upon Semele, as a rain upon Danae". Best found poetry ever?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 4:37 PM
Does your fruit hang low
In the comments box below?
Can you twist its sense to mock,
Or rhyme it with "fellatio"?
Can you bring its innuender
To a thundering crescender?
Does your fruit hang low?
(Apologies to eb.)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 4:46 PM
Or rhyme it with "fellatio"?
Omit the "it"; otherwise, it doesn't scan correctly.
Posted by Byron, Shelley & Keats | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:01 PM
The blue Plato special: Kantaloupe, Lockes & Hegel. Also available à la Descartes.
Posted by Aunt Dahlia | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:08 PM
Nice try, DE.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:09 PM
No, the original scans:
Or rhyme' it with' fell-a'-ti-o'
The addition of an unstressed syllable at the beginning ("or") is a smidge infelicitous, but not much.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:10 PM
Not very. Degree, not quantity, O dull-witted self!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:14 PM
Still too many syllables, no matter how you stress it.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:15 PM
Well, you are picky. OK then, I hereby delete the "or".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:19 PM
Well, you are picky.
[raising eyebrow] This comes as a surprise to you, SB?
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 5:23 PM
You know, if you were to Tennyson for Shelley, you poetry-authoritarian pseud's acronym would be BTK. Or is that a little too Wolfson?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:33 PM
I had that same thought, Choppo.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:38 PM
Binding Scansion Killer.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:38 PM
Heathens! The BSK was from Dorothy Parker's 'A pig's eye view of literature':
Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:43 PM
Not that anyone here has used it, but "BTK Killer" is another one of those annoying redundancies.
Good thing I previewed this, almost messed up my use/mention.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:45 PM
45 reminds me of something or other, but I can't remember quite what.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 6:48 PM
Bad washerdreyer!
I'm going to have to beg off, unfortunately. Or I'm most likely to have to beg off--I may lurk. I need to spend the summer writing lots of papers and getting ready to teach new courses (and moving--breaking hiatus to come in and reserve my U-Haul). And I should be learning about vagueness and formal epistemology a bit too--not sure I can take on another unfamiliar area of philosophy. That's the problem with making it your profession.
If John Emerson ever finds this comment he is totally going to give me a swirly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:13 PM
WD: And here I thought all the self-abuse and trips to the Mineshaft would have done in the short-term memories around here...
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:20 PM
46: Dunno, maybe it distinguishes that guy from people who did things in a different order.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:27 PM
But that person would be the BKT or TKB or whatnot killer. I think the reason it's not redundant is that "BTK" doesn't stand for "Bind Torture Killer", but rather "Bind Torture Kill".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:31 PM
So killer is qualifying that he's the "Bind Torture Kill" killer, rather than the "Bind Torture Kill" ballerina, for instance?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:36 PM
Eh, guess you're right. But a little redundancy is OK.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:44 PM
41: There's picky, and then there's picky. I hold my unfoggerel to a pretty high standard, and it surprised me that I'd catch heat for a syllabic insertion that didn't bungle the meter.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:49 PM
Syllabic counting is the wrong way to go, anyway. Consider this masterpiece for support.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 7:50 PM
But ya can't sing it trippingly to the tune with that extra syllable. The stress SB suggested - which is necessitated by the extra syllable - makes it clumsy.
And ghod knows, we wouldn't want a ball song to sound odd...
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 8:10 PM
I would have suggested running "it with fell" together.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 8:21 PM
DE, I think you're misreading my meter as iambic, instead of trochaic with an initial "grace note". That would really mess things up, I agree. Or possibly you don't like my nonstandard fell-a'-ti-o'. But honest, you can sing it trippingly. Does it look any better to you if you move the "or" to the end of the previous line?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 8:46 PM
Maybe this will be clearer. The stresses on "Can you twist" and "rhyme it with" correspond exactly. As do those on "its sense to mock" and "fellatio". The unstressed "or" slips in nicely, completing the half-trochee "mock". Please don't make me come find you and sing it for you. Because, um, that would be a lot of work to justify some garbage I posted in a Heidegger thread.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 8:57 PM
On the blog the comments come and go,
Making rhymes with "fellatio."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 9:25 PM
Unfoggerel it is:
Thou still unfinished thread of sillyness,
Thou poster-child of dalliance and free time,
Learned grammarian, who canst thus express
Syntactical rules more smoothly than a rhyme,
What mineshaft legend haunts about thy shape,
Impiety, decorum, perhaps both,
In lively jokes and tales of philosophy?
What men or women are these? What lawyers loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What snarks and grumbles? What mild empathy?
Posted by keats | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 10:50 PM
Hooray, more comments! I am working on that stupid journal write-on competition now, and need to be constantly distracted from.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:05 PM
Uh, you're really good at those, eb.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:23 PM
Too bad I can't figure out how to make money off of them. I think it's something I picked up to compensate for my lack of doodling skills. Other people draw things; I mess with words.
(And I was wondering how long it would be before I got outed for those signature lines. Although not all of them have been me.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-24-05 11:40 PM
That's super, eb.
On the subject of poetry, is this not a fitting epigram for our favorite blog?
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.(More here.)
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 7:35 AM
I really dislike that poem.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 8:10 AM
Mind saying why?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 8:35 AM
I'm in -- I hardly read anything other than work, blogs, and genre fiction these days, so I could use the exercise. Any particular edition recommended?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 9:31 AM
No decision yet on the edtion, though we'll all have to use the same one, or be plunged into translator hell.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 9:34 AM
I recommend the Stambaugh edition, because it's the one I own.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 9:47 AM
I'm in, also suggesting the Stambaugh edition...
Posted by RIPope | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 10:53 AM
I'm in.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 2:21 PM
Please don't make me come find you and sing it for you.
[grin] I'll be happy to email you my phone number so that you can call and sing it to me. I'll even concede if it falls trippingly, but I've run it past a musician and a poet and they both agree with my take.
Forget iambs and trochees and anapests and spondees. [And dactyls, unless one is suggesting something sexual.] My primary criterion is whether or not one can sing the damn song when drunk.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 2:52 PM
Can I play in German? *evil grin*
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 05-25-05 4:22 PM
I'd love to join!
Posted by Anne dotter | Link to this comment | 05-27-05 3:47 AM
is this open to lurkers? i'm in.
Posted by azad | Link to this comment | 05-27-05 2:58 PM
Ok, after just reading your comments here I think I'd like to join in. But what kind of time-frame are you talking about here? I may be away from the computer for long stretches this summer.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-05 4:15 AM
Hey, wow, that old thread is where Fontana and I got our start as a couple, so to speak. I think that discussion even continued over here for a while.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-31-05 9:13 AM
And now you never speak.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-31-05 9:33 AM
Now we're married.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 05-31-05 9:34 AM
I know that there are many stories play black-jack the dance was on the phone .
Posted by Charlie Kenyon | Link to this comment | 01-25-06 1:10 AM
Now that's good comment spam!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03-23-06 6:22 AM