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Category: On the Nature of Things.

‘Stretch Forth the Hand to Take a Fond Farewell’

December 18th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

photographed in Cheyenne, Wyoming on September 28, 2006

Medea: Jason, I crave thy pardon for the words I spoke, and well thou mayest brook my burst of passion, for ere now we twain have shared much love. For I have reasoned with my soul and railed upon me thus, “Ah! Poor heart! Why am I thus [...]

On the Creation of Inversions Using a Matrix Array

December 6th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

photographed in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 4, 2006

To fix the signs in terms in the expansion of a determinant of any order, the notion of an inversion is introduced. If, in an arrangement of positive integers, a greater precedes a less, there is said to be an inversion. Thus in the order 12543, [...]

Mistaking One Emotion for Another, or, This Girl’s Laughing, Not Crying

December 2nd, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Heidelberg, Germany. September 25, 2009.
The American psychologist James, and the Danish psychologist Lange, independently of each other, put forward this theory in the early eighties of the last century, and it has since remained a great topic for discussion. According to the theory, the emotion is the way the body feels while executing the [...]

On the Assistance of Multiple Unexplained Balloons, Part Two

November 11th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Schloß Heidelberg, Germany. September 25, 2009.
“Do you feel strong enough to tell us your story?” asked Captain Simon.
“I am strong enough,” said Professor Sherman, “and I want to first of all thank you three gentlemen for your kind attention. But, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “as an honorary member of the Western American Explorers’ Club in San [...]

On the Assistance of Multiple Unexplained Balloons

November 6th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Outside Golden, Colorado. October 12, 2007.
The Western American Explorer’s Club, in the city of San Francisco, was honored as it had never been honored before in the first week of October 1883 by being promised to be first to hear the details of an unexplained, extraordinary adventure; the biggest news story of the year, the [...]

The Private Man Reverts to the Public Sphere

October 23rd, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

London, England. September 30, 2009.
These extensions of the activities of the state involved a parallel organisational development. The other side to the social citizenship that Marshall advocated was the rise of bureaucratic organisation in both the corporation and the state. It was the massive scale of the new national projects, bringing the same organisational principles [...]

On the Statue Commemorating United Flight 232, A Photo from 2009 at Top, and the Three-Year-Old from Said Statue, Pictured as a Grown Man in a 2006 Photo, at Bottom

October 10th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Sioux City, Iowa. October 9, 2009.
As reported in the Seattle Times: Twenty years ago … passengers and crew aboard United Airlines flight 232 from Denver to Chicago heard a loud midair blast at the rear of the plane. The engine mounted in the tail of the DC-10 had exploded at 37,000 feet.
With two good engines [...]

The Accordion Continued to Play

September 18th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Amsterdam, Holland. Early 2001.
A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn’t see each other’s faces. With an off-handedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernández’ voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that death of [...]

Self-Interest, Self-Need and Self-Government

September 3rd, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia. October 17, 2007.
But when the social bond begins to be relaxed and the state weakened, when private interests being to make themselves felt and small associations to exercise influence on the state, the common interest is injuriously affected and finds adversaries; unanimity no longer reigns in the [...]

Choice Versus Non-Choice, Based on Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence

August 24th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. June 20, 2009.
In fact, it’s part of a bigger theme I’ve been mulling over: freedom from choice. I’d always been taught to fetishize freedom of choice. It’s the American way. It’s why I went to Brown university, where they don’t have any requirements, and you can go through all four [...]

Violating the Implied Civil Contract

June 4th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

The Forbidden City, Beijing, China. September 7, 2007.
PARIS — There is a civil contract implied by photographs. An Israeli writer, Ariella Azoulay, published a book making that point. Henri Cartier-Bresson made it too. He described shooting pictures of people as a “sort of violation,” adding, “if sensitivity is lacking, there can be something barbaric about [...]

On Taking Kierkegaard’s Leap a Bit Literally

April 25th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Chicago, Illinois. April 24, 2009.
Chapter XII: The Leap into Certainty. The further step which we have to discuss has been called by Kierkegaard the ‘leap into the unknown’ or the ‘jump into the abyss’. This leap is required both in the religious and in the ethical sphere, but has different implications according to whether we [...]

‘But the Act of Photographing It Would Have Obliterated All Memory’

February 15th, 2009  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Seattle, Washington. Mid 2002.
But soon the scene broke apart and lost its perfection … I was unable to capture the moment that has passed, the perfect composition. I could return tomorrow at the same time if the sirocco continues to blow, and certainly people will continue to tumble around in the waves, the intensity of [...]

unpacking the topic of topic sensitivity

July 24th, 2005  |  by nick  |  published in On the Nature of Things.

Shortly after I read a (very) abridged version of Don Quixote in grade school, I started noticing little references to the book everywhere: a favorite cartoon would do a takeoff on the tilting-at-windmills bit, I saw a Gustave Dore print in a history book (see image to right), a local high school did Man of [...]

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