lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Death of the Author
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2009/03/death-of-author.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Tuesday, March 3, 2009. Death of the Author. I finally got around to reading Roland Barthes’ essay Death of the Author. Why do I do this to myself? The essay is short and I should be doing something else …? Well, yes. But why do I bother with yet another fashionable modern French theorist, I’ve never found it a rewarding experience. And I didn’t this time either. The author is a modern figure, ...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: The hollow states of Islam
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-hollow-states-of-islam.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Saturday, August 8, 2015. The hollow states of Islam. Reading Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms. It struck me how much Islamic states- across most of the history of Islam- resembled the fluid warlord states of Europe in the centuries immediately after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Subjects but not participants. Once the Abbasid revolution. Did not recognise juristic persons. Which b...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Sad Puppies
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2015/04/sad-puppies.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Friday, April 10, 2015. I have not been following the Sad Puppies controversy in detail, so my comments are very general. (And a. M so not touching Gamergate. Which deals with a particularly intense subculture I have only passing acquaintance with.) However, the Hugo Awards. Controversy reprises similar controversies in other fields; hence the general comments. 2) Diversity has varied dimensions.
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Understanding narcissism
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2009/12/understanding-narcissism.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Monday, December 7, 2009. At its core, narcissism is very simple. It operates on the principle:. My convenience comes first. This may look like simple selfishness and, of course, it is. Profoundly selfish. But the key feature of narcissism is that the principle goes all the way down. That is, it goes right down to what they tell themselves. About what happens. The principle is:. It also means t...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Frustrated status and bigotry
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2015/08/frustrated-status-and-bigotry.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Monday, August 10, 2015. Frustrated status and bigotry. Bigotry (in the sense of prejudice-by-category) is a form of moral exclusion- one excludes some group from the moral consideration and standing given to other people. As I have noted before. Bigotry is always and everywhere a moral. S aphorism that not everything with a human face is human. Laws in Southern US States provided both the form...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Narcissism: ego defence as self-delusion
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2011/05/narcissism-ego-defence-as-self-delusion.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Narcissism: ego defence as self-delusion. A friend who practises Chinese medicine put me on to this Webinar. By Lonny Jarrett, a Chinese medicine practitioner who runs the Nourishing Destiny website. If one looks at the ego as insisting on separation and control then narcissism becomes – in its pure form – the complete insistence on separation and control...It can al...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1)
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2010/11/medieval-machine-industrial-revolution.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Friday, November 5, 2010. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1). There is surely no period of European history that is loaded down with more misconceptions than the medieval period. It is regularly dismissed as centuries of social stagnation, fearful of change, an intellectual desert. There are the Classical philosophers ( Socrates. And Descartes (though Aquinas.
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Small-yet-broad is beautiful (or why it is good to have been British)
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2014/06/small-yet-broad-is-beautiful-or-why-it.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Sunday, June 1, 2014. Small-yet-broad is beautiful (or why it is good to have been British). The central purpose of Calomiris and Haber's Fragile by Design: the Political Origins of Banking Crises. The structures and political histories of these three countries tended to mitigate the ability of populists and bankers to form coalitions that disadvantage everyone else. Something that is very clea...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: Conformity and dissent
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2009/08/conformity-and-dissent.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Thursday, August 13, 2009. A fanatic is a person who cannot change their mind and will not change the subject. Winston Churchill, attr.). 8230; they cannot change it, because they have no other subject. That is the nature of their crippled epistemology, without which they would not be fanatics. Russell Hardin, elaborating. Had a prolonged Aha! Hardin’s concept of crippled epistemology. Supposin...
lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com
Thinking Out Aloud: The Rotten Heart of Europe
http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-rotten-heart-of-europe.html
Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder). Wednesday, July 15, 2015. The Rotten Heart of Europe. S The Rotten Heart of Europe: Dirty War for Money. It is entirely within keeping with the book's analysis that the European Court of Justice referred to the book as. Aggressive, derogatory and insulting. Apparently the Court took, in the words of the above news report:. A new of edition of The Rotten Heart of Europe. That no-one dared to att...