accidentals and substantives

"We do not solve them: we get over them"

The philosopher John Dewey on knowledge production:

Old ideas give way slowly, for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction persists—though history shows it to be a hallucination—that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume—an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place.

From The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, and Other Essays in Contempory Thought (1910)

Wordherders Meetup

While blogisms like "blogosphere," "social software," "link whore," "technorati," "comment blogging," and the like have become common currency, I've yet to see a term for the frisson that comes from flesh-and-blood encounters with people whom you follow on a regular or sporadic basis through the blogroll and RSS feeds. There really *should* be a word for that.

A few photos of the Herd and friends here.

mondegreens

My submission to the 60 second story project. Since the project is part of the Contagious Media Showdown , I wanted to play with ideas of transmission and mutation. My touchstones were things like Telephone, spoonerisms, the Translation game, even serial copying (this, this, and this)--in short, what Randall McLeod calls "transformission" (transformation + transmission). I collected some "mowed greens", stitched them together, and added some narrative tissue to bring out the social satire.

The best part is, I get to curse like a sailor.

Update: I've removed the mondegreens movie; if you'd like a copy, feel free to email me at kkru[at]mail[dot]rochester[dot]edu and I'll send you one.