Spoon: Girls Can Tell
This is a great, understated album that merits repeated plays. Spoon have made a literate, rocking, breakthrough record that occupies a funny place--the songs are not unconventional, per se, yet they're somehow really special. Girls Can Tell displays the emotional resonance and big rock power of, say, Thin Lizzy and Mott the Hoople; the sonically referential, indie-rock smarts of a band like Versus; and amazing hooks that recall Colin Blunstone of the Zombies. Like Jennyanykind, Moviola, and the Lilys, this Austin, Texas, trio has chosen to work on perfecting their craft without paying much heed to mainstream or trends. In spite of (but mostly because of) wrenching breakup-centered lyrical material delivered in a very real, matter-of-fact way, Girls Can Tell is one of those life-affirming pop albums you know you'll return to in years to come. --Mike McGonigal (*****)
Michael Hardt: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Empire (2000)—the surprise hit that made its term for U.S global hegemony stick and presciently set the agenda for post–9/11 political theory on the left—was written by this same somewhat unlikely duo: Hardt, an American political scientist at Duke University, and Negri, a former Italian parliament member and political exile, trained political scientist and sometime inmate of Rome's Rebibbia prison. This book follows up on Empire's promise of imagining a full-blown global democracy. Though the authors admit that they can't provide the final means for bringing that entity about (or the forms for maintaining it), the book is rich in ideas and agitational ends. The "multitude" is Hardt and Negri's term for the earth's six billion increasingly networked citizens, an enormous potential force for "the destruction of sovereignty in favor of democracy." The middle section on the nature of that multitude is bookended by two others. The first describes the situation in which the multitude finds itself: "permanent war." The last grounds demands for and historical precursors of global democracy. Written for activists to provide a solid goal (with digressions into history and theory) toward which protest actions might move, this timely book brings together myriad loose strands of far left thinking with clarity, measured reasoning and humor, major accomplishments in and of themselves. (****)
"And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment."
--Luke 7:36-50
"[Richard Dawkins] starts with some sharp definitions of his own: God he takes to mean 'a supernatural creator it is appropriate to worship'; pantheism 'is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism'. There are plenty of 'isms; to choose from, but to Dawkins they all smack of compromise. He is an out-and-out atheist and this is his testimony."
Link: Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Judgment day.
Above, The Wit Of The Staircase's version of God.
Gary Wills in the New York Times on Jesus as a political figure:
"The Jesus of the Gospels is not a great ethical teacher like Socrates, our leading humanitarian. He is an apocalyptic figure who steps outside the boundaries of normal morality to signal that the Father's judgment is breaking into history. His miracles were not acts of charity but eschatological signs — accepting the unclean, promising heavenly rewards, making last things first. He is more a higher Nietzsche, beyond good and evil, than a higher Socrates."
Epilepsy (often referred to as a seizure disorder) is a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures. The condition is named from the Greek epilepsia ("a taking hold of or seizing").
In the past, epilepsy has been associated with religious experiences and even demonic possession. Historically, epilepsy was called the "Sacred Disease" because people thought that epileptic seizures were a form of attack by demons, and that the visions epileptics experienced were sent by the Gods. Hippocrates remarked that epilepsy would be considered divine only until it was understood.
There has also been serious speculation that science fiction author Philip K. Dick suffered from similar seizures; he claimed to have experienced visions on several occasions, that, among other things, reportedly helped him save his infant son from an undiagnosed life-threatening medical condition.
More common yet less familiar than the physical manifestations of grand mal epilepsy, temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a response to abnormal electrical activity in the parts of the brain controlling feeling and memory.
In TLE seizures, a patient experiences uncontrollable, intense emotions, sensory hallucinations, and vivid memories. Unlike grand mal epilepsy, the intervals between seizures are often marked by a common pattern of personality changes, typically including compulsive writing or drawing and hyper-religiosity.
Famous people who probably had the disease include Vincent Van Gogh, Soren Kierkegaard, St. Paul and Lewis Carroll. TLE's conjunction of personality and physiology impacts on our concepts of personhood, creativity, and free will.
Caravaggio's "The Conversion of St. Paul," above.
