Sunday, May 18, 2008

Superman hair

Today Dawn stepped out of the shower and got stabbed in her heel by one of my hairs.

My hairs have jabbed me underneath my fingernails (this is more or less a regular occurrence when I take the clippers to my head), but that's not nearly as impressive as penetrating heel skin.

My hair is a weapon. I've got like Superman hair.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Monday, May 05, 2008

He's better when he's talking about stuff no one can see

When Plato is good, he's very good. But when he's bad, he's hilarious.

There are a number of moments of the latter sort in the Timaeus. I ran across one of these some time ago, and it remains one of the funniest things I've ever read in philosophy. But there is so much more.

On the order in which a soul gets incarnated in different bodies on earth:
And if a person lived a good life throughout the due course of his time, he would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star, to live a life of happiness that agreed with his character. But if he failed in this, he would be born a second time, now as a woman. (42b-c)
On creating the human body:
Copying the revolving shape of the universe, the gods bound the two divine orbits into a ball-shaped body, the part that we now call our head. [...] They intended it to share in all the motions there were to be. To keep the head from rolling around on the ground without any way of getting up over its various high spots and out of the low, they gave it the body as a vehicle to make its way easy. (44d-e)
On why women want to have babies:
A woman's womb or uterus, as it is called, is a living thing within her with a desire for childbearing. Now when this remains unfruitful for an unseasonably long period of time, it is extremely frustrated and travels everywhere up and down her body. It blocks up her respiratory passages, and by not allowing her to breathe it throws her into extreme emergencies, and visits all sorts of other illnesses upon her until finally the woman's desire and the man's love bring them together....(91c-d)

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Yay music

We went to a Brit pop concert yesterday. It consisted of a fellow grad student on an electronic drum kit, and one of his friends from back home (that being Britain) on acoustic guitar, playing mostly self-written songs. There were also surprise cameos by the drummer's roommate, who did karaoke-ish vocals for a cover of Springsteen's "Dancing in the dark", and then blew the hell out of a harmonica during the instrumental breaks of the next song.

The venue was an apartment dining room, specially decorated for the occasion with the Union Jack and St. George's Cross, and while it wasn't standing room only, there were way more people than there were chairs. There was only one short set, and the audio equipment left something to be desired (the drums were hooked up to tiny computer speakers), but it was as fun as any concert I've ever been to. This would probably lead me to reflect on the true meaning of music if I were into that sort of thing.