And yet another phenomenally stupid sentence: “Which is why algorithms, exactly like fascism, work perfectly, with a sense of seemingly unstoppable inevitability, right up until the point they don’t.”
“You should take note of this first, easy lesson: if no one ever seems right for you, and then the one person who does seem right doesn’t want you, then the problem isn’t the person, the problem is you.” Yes. Many times yes.
Shred your vagina to pieces and gain access to a new identity club! I warn you, people, this is scary shit.
“Is the president of the United States not allowed to say God bless the United States of America because he holds office and needs to support the separation of church and state?” Unfortunately, he is, indeed, allowed to make a mockery of the Constitution and shit on the heads of citizens to placate insane religious fanatics. There is no need to promote the same barbarity in Canada, as the linked blogger advocates we do.
I agree with this blogger completely in that these constant attempts to blame the technology for one’s incapacity to teach are annoying.
A beautiful revenge a blogger took on a troll. This will happen to everybody who harasses academic bloggers online. Remember, we are academics. this means we are smart and we will get you if you try to annoy us.
Very good advice on how to write job application letters.
“A regular routine isn’t limiting to creativity. It’s freeing because it conserves your energy to make the important decisions related to your creative life.” A very good post on decision fatigue that made a lot of sense to me.
“Hospitals – guided by ideological recommendations and arbitrary (as opposed to evidence-based) targets to reduce caesarean rates – are pushing NORMAL birth at all costs. Story after story we hear about caesareans not carried out on time, risks of a trial of labour not properly explained or recognised by staff, and mothers and babies dying or suffering as a direct result.” This is true. Doctors and especially the nasty, uneducated, money-hungry, woman-hating doulas do all they can to dissuade women from having C-sections. And the results are sometimes tragic.
Romney’s campaign is already looking for a way to explain why he will lose.
One of the funniest examples of left-wing hysteria I have seen in a long time. Apocalyptic fear-mongering at its best. This is why I keep reminding everybody that psychological hygiene should be practiced regularly or you will end up like this guy.
Clarissa's Blog 
That decision fatigue article is interesting, thanks.
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Since you seem to like psychotherapy (or psychoanalysis, anyways) and also the car-free life, I decided to promote this this week.
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Jeez, now I will be scared of getting on a bus. 🙂
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The narcissus post is interesting, because Mike and I are both reading Bataille together, again, namely his book, Inner Experience. Of course Bataille and Lacan lived in the same milieu, even to the point that Lacan later married Bataille’s ex-wife. I have heard it said that Lacan derived a lot of his understanding of the mind from Bataille.
Of course, it seems that Lacan and Bataille put their ideas to very different uses. What Lacan sees as the path to normal psychological development, or its antagonist, pathological stasis or diversion, Bataille views in terms of the tower of the psyche and the inclination of the psyche to invoke a sense of the sacred.
In terms of Bataille’s theory, we start out in life with a primeval sense of the sacred, but then we encounter our limits. I think Bataille finds it very interesting to play off our sense of the infinite (‘wanting to be everything’) against our limits. This creates an internal or “subjective” dialectic, which Bataille equates with mysticism, albeit in the absence of any God.
I refer to this paragraph from the link, in particular:
>>>>You cause him to be tested: this is the kind of person you are, you are good at this but not that. This other person is better than you at this, but not better than you at that. These are the limits by which you are defined. Narcissus was never allowed to meet real danger, glory, struggle, honor, success, failure; only artificial versions manipulated by his parents. He was never allowed to ask, “am I a coward? Am I a fool?” To ensure his boring longevity his parents wouldn’t have wanted a definite answer in either direction.
Now, I think the difference between Bataille’s paradigm and that of Lacan is that Bataille requires that one should constantly test one’s limits, especially in terms of confronting real danger. However, unlike Lacan, he does not think that discoveries based on one’s real life success or failures should eternally define one. To assume so would be to erect a monotheistic deity above you, who beckons you upwards with the seduction that there are some fixed and transcendent moral lessons to be learned, and that one’s experiences are a means to learn these. This expectation imposes a danger of a metaphysical reading of existence — when, in reality, there is no overarching moral order, and the lessons that life teaches you are not fixed, or absolute. Indeed, whilst experiences may be indicative of one’s limits, and surely are indicative of one’s physical, intellectual and emotional nature, they do not serve to teach us any moral lessons about anything, apart from those that we would wish to apply as personal principles, out of our own desire to be a particular kind of person or thing. We have to educate ourselves, in other words, and that it the meaning of confronting real dangers: in order to work out what we choose to make of them.
The difference between Lacan and Bataille, then, should be plain: Lacan outlines that we should leave the realm of primeval relationships to learning and on the basis of accepting one’s limitations, one should climb the monotheistic ladder toward moral perfection. Bataille says: since there is no God, that is just a metaphysical conceit that, moreover, robs you of fruitful exploration of one’s limits in relation to one’s will to power (that is, one’s “desire to be everything”).
You can also see that Lacan’s notion of the psyche involves linear progress, whereas that of Bataille involves a dialectic with no end point in sight.
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http://www.salon.com/2012/10/24/richard_mourdock_misogynist/
Embarrassed to be male after reading what this idiot had to say.
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Lots of reasons to be embarrassed to be male. I was reading the comment on this link Clarissa posted.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narcissus.html
Here, some apes proclaim that all the problems in the world stem from women wearing cosmetics.
The anti-woman guys proclaim that they feel deceived because women wear make-up. But aren’t they actually deceived by their corporations and political powers wearing make-up — and isn’t this anger they feel an expression of psychological displacement?
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@JFA ” isn’t this anger they feel an expression of psychological displacement?”
Your absolutely right. These “people” are too stupid to work out the root cause of their dissatisfaction and have laughably pinned it on “deceptive” women that wear makeup.
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Today I read 2 interesting things about US election in a major Israeli newspaper:
1) About 30% of Americans define themselves as Evangelists, as a part of the “extreme version of Christianity” (my free translation).
2) Among American citizens living in Israel Romney gets 85% and Obama – only 14%, as found the organization I VOTE ISRAEL after asking 1,572 people from this group. “Not less than 80 thousand American citizens voted from Israel – the biggest number of voters in the world outside of US, even larger than in Canada or Mexico”.
I wanted to ask whether you would be interested to write why Obama is so unpopular here. Most Israelis don’t want a war, but they do want an American president, who won’t let Iran to get the Bomb and will work for that goal together with Israel. Has Obama decided to let Iran achieve this bomb, or what?
I am not asking whether you think Iran should be let have it or not, but what you think that Obama plans to do. Imo, Israel 100% will attack Iran, if they come close to the bomb. So, won’t Obama support us then, but Romney will?
Imo, that Democratic party doesn’t see Jerusalem as Israeli capital and the newspapers in Israel mention that plays a part too.
Another very interesting thing RE Israel & Iranian bomb that I read today:
http://rt.com/news/netanyahu-strike-iran-2010-985/
Quote: “In 2010, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to prepare fully for a war with Iran. The head of Mossad intelligence service and country’s chief of general staff opposed the move and prevented war with Iran, a documentary claims.”
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Did you see the post dedicated to you? I don’t want you to miss it. 🙂
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Oh, yes. Thank you! I think my seriousness may be at times boring, without this “raisin” (from Russian), so was happy you even liked it.
I hope not to disappoint you in the future. 🙂
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“About 30% of Americans define themselves as Evangelists, as a part of the “extreme version of Christianity” ”
– This is not true. I gave statistics on this blog last week which says it’s just 16%.
“So, won’t Obama support us then, but Romney will?”
– Romney wants to start a war. This is what Republicans do, they fight wars. The reason for the wars is always manufactured. Last time, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. This time, it might be Iran and anybody else. Their war-mongering is not about Israel. If Israel didn’t exist, they would still invade and attack. War-mongering is what the entire Republican economy approach and worldview are based on. Yes, Romney will definitely attack Iran. And probably somebody else to. But he won;t do that to support Israel. He will do that to let the military contractors who donate to his campaign enrich themselves.
““In 2010, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to prepare fully for a war with Iran. The head of Mossad intelligence service and country’s chief of general staff opposed the move and prevented war with Iran, a documentary claims.”
– Mossad is, indeed, a very effective organization that I can’t help but admire.
” Has Obama decided to let Iran achieve this bomb, or what?”
– No, of course not. But he is not quite as eager to start a new war with anybody. I mean, he is eager but not as eager as Romney.
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// I mean, he is eager but not as eager as Romney.
🙂
Thanks, after this I feel I can sleep in peace.
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I have no idea whether “Times of Israel” is a reliable source of information about any-thing, but their analysis of this “I Vote Israel” of which you speak loudly rings true for the way right-of-center American politics is done stateside.
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We, the Jews, are supposed to be smart. This is what we do and what we are. And it really bothers me to see how many Jews both here and in Israel have swallowed this idiotic propaganda that the US Republicans are somehow pro-Israel. They will cause another global economic crisis and everybody, including Israel, will suffer. They will make the Middle East a lot more unsafe than it already is. They promote an extreme pro-fundamentalist Christian agenda. They want Christianity to be declared the official US religion. How is all that “pro-Israel”, exactly?
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Oh, come on, your rejection of gender-based stereotypes is nothing less than total. I was half hoping it applied to stereotypes across the board. You did say “supposed to be.” I’ll assume that means something.
It would appear that the American right is pro-Israel for the same reason it’s pro-Georgia, pro-Columbia, and more recently pro-Honduras. It’s the right-left thing. From my perspective, anyway, Israel is about as structurally right-of-center as democratic nation states get.
And of course for Evangelicals Israel is a means to an end. In their scheme of things, that “third temple” is somehow a prerequisite for the Second Coming.
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“Oh, come on, your rejection of gender-based stereotypes is nothing less than total. I was half hoping it applied to stereotypes across the board. You did say “supposed to be.” I’ll assume that means something.”
– I was trying to be facetious. 🙂
“It would appear that the American right is pro-Israel for the same reason it’s pro-Georgia, pro-Columbia, and more recently pro-Honduras. It’s the right-left thing. From my perspective, anyway, Israel is about as structurally right-of-center as democratic nation states get.”
– Why aren’t they pro-Russia, then? Compared to Russia, Israel is a Liberal paradise.
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Repudenrons are pro-Israël, not pro-Israelites.
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Refudenrons, too.
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Repubenrons are pro-Israël, not pro-Israelites.
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I just had to share this: Learning a language is like…
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Out of all these things I have only been able to learn how to pee. That – and the languages – I’m really good at. 🙂
Thank you for sharing this great link!!!
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As of this comment, you’re showing 909,419 hits…
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Yes. 🙂 So little left to hit the million and make me very very happy.
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Today I read an opinion piece in one of Israeli papers claiming that Obama & Natanyahu are both elected for the same reason: since the other side is in the past, and while people may feel nostalgia, they won’t vote for it. The article claims that while both US and Israel moved from influential white majority to multiculturalism with numerous powerful groups, Israel has also become more religious & family oriented, less socialistic, etc. The writer wondered about army generals refusing the order (in the article I linked to earlier) and saw this as the old, white center of power, which lost in elections, thinking it should decide on truly important matters, instead of democratically chosen politicians. If anything, what do you think about it?
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Few things are as dangerous as a conservative military deciding that it knows better how to run a country and trying to put itself above democratic processes. In the Spanish-speaking world it happens all the time and it always ends very badly.
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Here a conservative military is against a war though, if the author is right.
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