I read the URL as "bedtime.unfogged.com".
we can comment even if we're not members of the group, right?
"bedtime.unfogged.com"...said Florence.
Hardly was the reading group in being, came the fall to the "magic roundabout"
Looking forward to this.
we can comment even if we're not members of the group, right?
But I have you down as a participant. Anyway, yes, anyone can comment, though I'd hope for a little humility if they haven't done the reading.
Was there an e-mail that went about with login information and whatnot? If so, I didn't receive it.
I'm also excited. Love book clubs.
And: Am I doomed from the get-go if it took me several minutes to decode the "SZ" in the icon? Maybe you had better change my password.
You're not just doomed from the get-go, you're always already doomed.
I'm a participant? I haven't been getting the emails, and I don't want to be (I can't promise to do the reading).
I want to get my philosophy on the cheap!
There haven't been any emails (right?).
Oops, I must have misunderstood something along the line. (And there haven't been any emails.)
Now that was a wierd feeling: I was both a member and a non-member of the reading group, and only by observing my membership did it's wave-state collapse.
Somewhere Werner Heisenberg may or may not be spinning in his grave at an unknown speed.
I can tell you exactly how fast Werner Heisenberg is spinning. Unfortunately, his body could be anywhere. Eww.
Also, wave function collapse is a bizarre hypothesis tacked onto an otherwise beautiful and well-tested theory. I'm all about unitarity.
V. Botkin demomonstrates a basic Unfogged dilemma: the joke or the nitpicking comment that undermines the joke. They both are so appealing in their own way.
That's a very nice characterization of the Unfogged duality. We might want to go further, and say that jokes are universal, while nitpicks are existential—rooted, as they are, in the particular. The categorical structure of the comments section should thus include the null joke as its initial object, and as its terminal object, the unit nitpick.
But that neglects the joke/witticism divide, and the fact that several so-called "jokes" here are actually witticisms. A witticism is particular and contingent.
By symmetry there ought to be a companion to the nitpick that has the same polarity but a more universal scope. We could call it, is banned!
SCMTim raises an important point, namely, how to account for blogcrushes of various creepiness in the calculus commentorum.
each level of blogcrush must correspond to a blogloathe of equal weight in creepiness.
I have only blogcrushes, so someone else must supply the blogloathes.
Style will out, Bridgeplate.
Perhaps in this case, "Ye shall know the lion by his pawprint."
Each blogcrush of a given creepiness corresponds to an angel of corresponding rank. Likewise with blogloathes and devils. Our doings on this blog are merely ripples in the celestial ether, emanating from the deeds of immortal combatants.
26 should be construed as extending, not contradicting, text in 24.
Is it the doings of Thrones and Powers that coördinate our blogcrushes, or do our passing fancies make the law for the seraphic choir?
Strange time to assert authorial intent, SB.
Excellent question. I was just about to reverse myself, to be consistent with your second alternative.
Do I reverse myself? Very well then, I reverse myself. I am abelian, I contain commutatudes.
Re 24 and 26: if every blogcrush corresponds to an equal blogloathe, can we infer that angels and demons are evenly matched? We have then reduced a tricky theological problem to an empirically accessible one (ascertaining relative numbers of blogcrushes and blogloathes). I think this constitutes major progress. Is it time to resurrect Manichaeanism?
We haven't enough blogloathes. The angels will surely rout the devils -- this seems to be a good thing, and no problem at all, but when the angels announce victory with showers of light and resounding trumpets, all strife and struggle will cease, time will end; we shall exist suspended in pastel stasis, a magnificent one, no doubt, but boring.
Unfogged is if nothing flux and fancy, boisterous voices, cacophony. We must find a hatefull commenter to restore the balance -- JE?
Are there any documented blogloathes? Or do we not want to go there? Since we all seem to coexist pretty well, by text's axiom there is a vast, untapped pool of loathing welling up somewhere nearby. The problem vanishes if we stipulate that the loci of the blogcrushes and their counterpart loathes need not coincide. Our trove of luv could then be offset by any number of sites in hatespace.
Here's what I think. I think the overall amounts of blogcrush and blogloathe are equal, for as the Beatles sang, "in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make". I interpret the "you" here as a plural addressed to the world, and "taking love" as being the creation of an absence of love (for what is loathing if not the privation of loving?). Thus the total mass, if you will, of loathing and crushing (for lack of a better term) is equal. But individually not every blogcrush is answered by an equal blogloathe. Thus strategy enters into the equation, for one mighty blogcrush may be able to neutralize large numbers of footsoldierly blogloathes (especially if it has trample).
I disagree, w-lfs-n; I think the blogloathe/blogcrush symmetry was present in the early universe but badly broken by some as-yet-unknown mechanism. (I smell a Witten index computation.) In any case, I will apply for millions in grant-money for a blog collider to study this phenomenon.
We must find a hatefull commenter to restore the balance
That could be as easy as a b c 1 2 3.
Hey, look, crackheads.
You can't disagree about physics with a guy named V. Botkin. I urge you to find the mechanism of disruption.
But we can disagree about some other bullshit, right?
But it is also the case that John of the Bealtes wrote, "Hey, you've got to hide your love away." The manifestation of the side of the Cherubim in the form of blogcrushes seems opposed to this sage advice.
On the other hand, who am I to disagree with the Beatles? As for the physics, I'm just fakin' it.
Also, I now retract my "how the hell do you people comment so much" of a couple of weeks ago. Working is really overrated.
As for the physics, I'm just fakin' it.
Oh, well then, I suppose we'll go with w-lfs-n's authoritative theory of Global Blogfeeling Symmetry.
the split occurred when ogged hurled abc123 -- issuer of hate for all purposes and pleasures -- from this unfogged paradise. Until that time there was adequate hate pulsating from mr. alphanumerical to offset all the love each other commenter represented.
That hate still exists -- hence the battle wages on -- but is exiled in some foreign land.
The mechanism of harmony-destruction is found.
Aren't the childfree people a sort of perpetual loathing machine, since they loathe everyone and generate loathing in all whom they encounter?
that is a good point. we need not worry over thinning of the demons' ranks.
It's not like the childfree reproduce, though.
Maybe Austro shouldn't read the book on the train.
Plus, the Delgados "Hate is all you need" is a good song leading to the question of whether Love/Hate symmetry is intrinsic or extrinsic to the Beatles.
Not genetically, but memetically.
You people had a recent Pale Fire discussion and I missed it? How incompetent of me.
Delgados songs have a strange way of making me feel that I've heard them before when I hear them for the first time. It disturbs me.
I've decided to drop out of the reading group. I'll probably lurk, but then again, I might not.