Archinect has an interesting piece up titled Delirious Moscow, In Search of Lost Vanguards, drawing connections between Soviet architectural modernism, avant-garde constructivism, utopianism, and that societies fluctuating ideas concerning space exploration. Quote: “One could look at the remnants of the avant-garde projects that litter the former USSR as the detritus left by the Martians: the incomprehensible, incommensurable ruins of a strictly temporary visitation by creatures not like ourselves.” It touches on the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic which inspired the Tarkovsky film Stalker, Tatlin’s Third International Tower, and Shukhov Tower among many other things. Great stuff (via enthusiasm).

10.17. filed under: art. design. history. ideas. 1

Her name is The Humanities

There has been a lively discussion going on over at Varieties of Unreligious Experience touched off by Conrad’s post Humanism and the virtue of anxiety. My mind, degenerate and poorly oiled as it is, could not help but take a particularly delightful exchange to its ultimate conclusion (pictured above through the miracle of photoshop). Rather than catastrophically lower the level of discourse there, I thought I’d post my addition where it could do no such harm- here.

09.20. filed under: ideas. misc. play. 3

The Last Epiphany

Waiting for a light bulb to go on… it can be a drag. That’s what I did though, just sat there and waited. I couldn’t understand it. Not a flicker of warning. Not a buzz. Not even that final brilliantly bright POP you might expect before a burn out… the thing just stopped working, leaving me to sit there in the dark. I tried a few times to coax it back… a jiggle… a tap. Nothing. At one point, and I’m not proud of it, I think I might have threatened it, saying something to the effect of, “go on or I’ll smash you against the fucking wall!” (Big man me, threatening a defenseless, paper-thin, spheroid of glass!) Other than that though I pretty much just sat there, waiting. 

08.02. filed under: ideas. life. personal. 4

Quote, “Some books are ahead of their time. Some books convey a message which threatens prevailing notions, and are therefore brushed away. Some books are mixtures of profound insights and garbled speculations. Hamlet’s Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969) partakes to varying degrees in all of the above. Hamlet’s Mill began a revolution in understanding the profound sources of ancient mythology. Although it tottered on the edge of oblivion for years, it has reemerged as the fundamental inspiration for many progressive researchers who find the precession of the equinoxes lurking within ancient creation myths around the world.” - From an intro to the complete online text of Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. (Via.)


Gk. hysterikos, “of the womb.”

From wikipedia: An ancient Greek myth tells of the uterus wandering throughout a woman’s body, strangling the victim as it reaches the chest and causing disease. This theory is the source of the term hysteria, which stems from the Greek word for uterus, hystera. A prominent physician from the second century, Galen, wrote that hysteria was a disease caused by sexual deprivation in particularly passionate women: hysteria was noted quite often in virgins, nuns, widows, and occasionally married women. The prescription in medieval and renaissance medicine was intercourse if married, marriage if single, or massage by a midwife as a last recourse. It was a popular diagnosis in the Victorian era for a wide array of symptoms and treatment came in the form of a “pelvic massage” — manual stimulation of the woman’s genitals by the doctor to “hysterical paroxysm”, which is now recognized as orgasm.

Links: Female hysteria, Why Only Women Get Hysterical, In the History of Gynecology, a Surprising Chapter, Freud, Charcot and hysteria: lost in the labyrinth, Hysteria’s Notorious History, Medical texts and other fictions, The wandering wombUnbalanced Drive ShaftHistory of the vibrator, For pleasure, Come again?, Nerves and Narratives, The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body, and finally…

12.09. filed under: history. humanity. ideas. 12

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