After Thanksgiving dinner we watched Tao Ruspoli’s Being in the World. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a documentary that didn’t piss me off. A nice introduction to Heidegger and a healthy level of skepticism towards our more abstract and over-intellectual look at nature and the world.

So nice to leave MIT for Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday.  

Also,  the movie was inspired by former MIT Prof. Hubert Dreyfus and this semester I’ve been TAing a seminar with Lee Perelman who’s kind of the Greek philosophy expert. I wonder if they know each other and I wonder what the spiritual and non-ivory tower Lee will think of the movie, and if he will agree with its interpretation of Plato. 

It's Lulu in the news!

It's Lulu in the news!

I finally see why singing is like playing violin.

outside of the most direct mimicking violin sounds. 

practicing the shifts, and the slides and the scoops is the same. 

interesting take on the loafer? oxford? what do we even call those

hair and bag of course, and the slightest hint of red lipstick :.)

husna! you could totally rock this.

Imperial feminism is a term used by Pratibha Parmar, a black British filmmaker, to describe the struggles of black women in Britain in the 1970s, when the wave of feminism which emerged rarely captured the experiences of those women. If it did, it was often from a racist perspective. It claims to stand in solidarity with Third World women but in fact perpetuates stereotypes of these cultures as backward through the use of marginalising language and sweeping assumptions.

This form of feminism overlooks the important fact that many of the cultural practices shunned by white feminists have been reinforced by a cycle of colonialism.

Source: Durkhanai Ayubi for The Age

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

Faulkner

nice hip hop mashups from deru

thank you ben and sahar!

nice hip hop mashups from deru

MIT does do research on education.

MIT does do research on education.

such a great story, and amanda palmer is such a great writer!

such a great story, and amanda palmer is such a great writer!

this is a good one, (algorithm i mean)

Transposing is so cool. flips my brain, and not quite sure when to actually do it. but don’t want to forget this one. plus his name is cool. way cooler than dijkstra. dutch people should use more letters so that they don’t keep coming up with ridic combinations.

this is a good one, (algorithm i mean)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVIKF03KkVM?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=374]

I like how you can only hear the hint of the recorded version at the beginning. so great.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

wow Fendi (boots)

so cool without even trying.

DAM-hip hop crew from Palestine

Saw these guys at the student center of all places yesterday. Amazing vibe.

"how many dudes do you know flow like this, not many..if any!"

DAM-hip hop crew from Palestine

everytime I read the tech i throw up inside my mouth a little

this is a response to a letter to the editor written by Dr. Finer, a.k.a really awesome researcher at the guttmacher institute who calls him on his extremely manipulative and warping use of a statistic that the guttmacher institute produced. 

the original article is here, Dr. Finer’s letter to the editor is in this issue. 

Seriously Tech, just because it’s someone’s opinion, does not mean you need to publish it. I realize that the Opinion section might be difficult to fill, but abortion. we’re really scraping the barrel here..

everytime I read the tech i throw up inside my mouth a little

patent-law.remove(possible career paths)

I was thoroughly convinced today by Terence Kealey, biochemist and most recently author of this book, that patents are bad, except maybe for pharmecuticals. 

In summary, progress in science and technology is most enabled when people can freely share their ideas with each other. Coming up with an idea and then failing to contribute it to the relavent community is pretty useless. 

This we knew, but what about the lowly inventor in her basement? Maybe it’s naive, but I had at least grown up thinking that patents existed to protect the future Edisons and Alexander Graham Bells. That was also a lot of the reason behind why I wanted to go into patent law in addition to the fact that I felt like it could leverage my skills in that field better than I could in straight up engineering. But the fact is that’s really not how it works, and we’d be much better off without them. So cross that one off the list I guess. phew!

patent-law.remove(possible career paths)

Next-Weekend Reading

main character is named Madeleine!? I have a feeling this is going to be spectacular. 

Thanks Lulu!

Next-Weekend Reading

muslimswearingthings:

Tabla master Zakir Hussain usually wears a kurta, and can wear out a pair of drums like nobody’s business.

Amaze. Listened to a lot of Zakir Hussain in Rucker’s Music of India class. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=281]

I was wondering about the significance since it had occurred to me before, so I checked if it had occurred to the internet. And yes, I think there is some fire-bird theme being explored—like for instance when the ballerinas freeze, and then only one comes back to life; the whole thing about her wanting her freedom etc etc (that one’s a little more blatant).

kanye—bringing stravinsky to the people. oh geeze

my last memorable trick-or-treating costume was firebird. i wonder where those pictures are. that was a good one. 

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

At fourteen I couldn’t find words (or words I liked) for the marvelous feeling of recognition that came with these characters who had my hair, my eyes, my skin, even the ancestors of the rhythm of my speech. These forms of identification are so natural to white readers-(Of course Rabbit Angstrom is like me! Of course Madame Bovary is like me!)-that they believe themselves above personal identification, or at least believe that they are identifying only at the highest, existential levels (His soul is like my soul. He is human; I am human.)

Zadie Smith, “Their Eyes Were Watching God: What Does Soulful Mean?”; from the collection, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (via walkoutofhermind)

How are you enjoying her book of essays? Did you see her essay “hair” on eyeshot.net?

[gallery]

Ideas for my next big haircut. 

I’m thinking short on the top is the only way to eliminate constant hair in my face. 

A little worried about how that will be to maintain when it grows out, and if it’s a little to edgy for spring jobs/job interviews….

on using an explicit stack to implement depth-first-search

on using an explicit stack to implement depth-first-search

best halloween costume

best halloween costume

Pretty freaking cool. 

And when you click the right one, you “train” it. 

nice nice

http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html

pretty fucking awesome

make your laptop match your lighting

oh and sleep better in the process….

pretty fucking awesome