Interesting Links for 31-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• God Is In The TV interview the ever fabulous Hannah Werdmuller
  (tags: HannahWerdmuller music interview)
• 750,000 more people 'to pay higher rate of tax' (and 500,000 to stop paying income tax at all)
  (tags: tax uk)
• MAXO signals - a solution to the Fermi Paradox by Charlie Stross
  (tags: charlesstross writing scifi)
• Battlestar Choclactica. This is why the Cylons were chasing it. They were desperate for chocolate.
  (tags: battlestar bsg chocolate)
• Note: If you are impressed by a female science blogger do not convey this by telling her her tits are gorgeous...
  (tags: gender science sexism blogging feminism)
• This Is Your Artistic Brain on Drugs
  (tags: art drugs)
• Why one wife now chooses to shop alone
  (tags: shopping funny)
• Tiny Adorable Animals That Will Make You Squee
  (tags: cute animals)
• Myths RETOLD: A VERITABLE SMORGASBORD OF MYTHOLOGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND AWESOME!
  (tags: mythology funny)
• Juden raus (Jews Out!) a boardgame from 1930s Germany.
  (tags: germany boardgames Jews)
• Ignosticism. I keep encountering this, and then forgetting about it. Which is a shame, as it's a very useful position.
  (tags: ignosticism religion knowledge)
• Ayn Rand Received Social Security, Medicare
  (tags: aynrand objectivism politics funny)

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

In re Juden raus: See also Swastika Night, a novel published in 1937 and set 700 years later after a Nazi victory, which includes the extermination of the Jews.

Various links (most of which copy each other) mention that Juden Raus was heavily criticized by the Nazis, but no one has explained why.

Ignosticism: You might be interested in Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht, a history of ideas of the limits of knowledge.

The Book of Not Knowing by Peter Ralston. I've only read about half of it, but it's an extended exploration of the fact that your idea of yourself isn't the same as your actual self.

Ralston is a martial artist who's used logic and introspection to go deep into the roots of action and perception.

[andrewducker]

I studied a bit of epistomology at university, it is indeed a fascinating subject. I've added the Book of Not Knowing to my wishlist.

Swastika Night sounds fascinating too. I'm boggled that I hadn't heard of it before, as it definitely sounds like an antecedent to 1984.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

More Ralston: The Principles of Effortless Power-- as I understand it, clearing out illusions and increasing one's understanding so that one's actions become extremely efficient-- it seemed like getting movement to the same level that savants have with computation. Zen Body-Being: Ralston's wife convinces him to write a relatively accessible version of the former book.

I find it perennially amusing that Ralston, who'd put huge amounts of work into getting into the truth of experience, still needed to be pushed to getting past "I did all this work on my own. At least you have a book. And now you want a book that's easier to understand?".

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Also, if you haven't read it already Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream, as an imagined alternative past in which Hitler becomes a pulp author in the US and fantasises about, rather than attempts to realise, his 1000 year reich.

[andrewducker]

I have a copy of that!

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

There is also the film Stadt ohne Juden from 1924, which was based on a novel: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016392/