h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just the title of this paper will give you a buzz:

http://www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/Grinder_Reply_1.htm

Who needs drugs? Just read Anglo-Saxon philsophy and theoretical linguistics.

Hey thanks for that reference, Dmitri, it did wonders for my frontal cortex

Don't mind me, I *like* think about time travel paradoxes and the Colour Problem.

A few years ago, a bunch of modern anglo-saxon philosophers, the kind who worry about epistemology and stuff like that, had a conference and invited Jacques Derrida. This was a hoot! Talk about chalk and cheese...

Derrida he's something else. I used to have some kind of idiot's guide thingy. My ex partner has probably got it. I like what he said about viruses and car indicators

What did he say about viruses and car indicators? Tell, tell!

(I used to have a picture of him on my cubicle wall at my last job - along with a 'you-are-here' picture of the galaxy, with a quote from DNA.)

Re Derrida: I know he uses the analogy of the virus for the artist who wants to attack something. Rather that standing against it the artist should inhabit the body and attack from within. Some people say that Damien hirst does this by becoming famous and capitalist, but undermining the system for example by making the dead shark piece which is inevitably disintegrating, even though Satchi paid thousands for it.

The car indicator thing was told to me by someone who read one of his books about death. I think it's a way of knowing and not knowing your dead, just at the interface between life and death.

I like the virus analogy - subvert from within. Good thought. Might work as an explanation for the Dadaists, as well.

Yeah the virus is an interesting thing. Just a protein coat surrounding DNA. Not 'alive' in the sense that it is composed of cells. It can only reproduce by inhabiting an alive organism.

A possible solution to the problem of evil?

Possibly

Anole, a book you'd like, I think - 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane' by William Peter Blatty. Yeah, 'The Exorcist' guy, but it's not a horror story. It's about a crazy astronaut and the problem of evil. And it's very funny.

It was written in the 60s, but I bet you can get it on interlibrary loan, or from alibris.

There's a bunch of insane airforce pilots in an asylum, and one keeps hitting the wall with a hammer, to punish the atoms for not moving out his way so he can walk through walls. And another is casting 'Hamlet' with dogs.

Is EvilClaw coming on tonight?

I don't know, he's about 45 minutes away from me.

he's having fun at COLLAGE

!!