Australia
>The quarrel between philosophy and poetry
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| Kennedy James @ Fogged Clarity/ |
Mark Chou considers the limits of our rational lives @ Griffith Review.
Plato tells this story. Set in 433 BCE, it has as its backdrop an Athenian city-state at the peak of its renown and yet facing a precipice; a war of disastrous proportions is brewing across the Peloponnese and, unknown to the citizens of Athens, a plague will soon devour the city and its inhabitants. Plato’s story recounts a quarrel between an elderly sophist by the name of Protagoras, after whom this dialogue is named, and another man we know as Socrates, still a relative unknown at the age of thirty-six.
As it unfolds, the nature of their dispute becomes clear. Protagoras and Socrates are discussing how, if at all, we can attain control over our lives. What, they ponder, would it take for human agency to outfox human vulnerability? Why are some moral laws, for instance, universally capable of guiding life both now and in future while others not? And how might we safeguard the public affairs of the city from the irascibility of private emotions?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )In other words, they’re quarrelling over how human beings can actually limit the role that fate plays in our lives and whether we can ever know reality definitively, quantitatively, scientifically?
>The builder sometimes needs the services of the poet
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| Josh Martin @ F-Stop Magazine/ |
Jorge Sotirios on the false divide between literature and science @ Griffith Review.
The earthquake that rocked the Mediterranean during the summer of 1999 was quick and devastating. Lasting thirty-seven seconds and measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, the consequences were far-reaching. In north western Turkey an unofficial estimate of up to 40,000 died instantly under rubble or were buried alive. Over 100,000 were left homeless. Mass graves became the norm with every morgue filled to overflowing. Civic authorities even commandeered ice-hockey rinks to refrigerate numerous corpses. Threats of disease of plague proportions threatened to inundate the country, yet this tragedy also brought out the best between Turks and their natural adversary, the Greeks. The two nations initiated ‘Earthquake Diplomacy’ exchanging first aid personnel and rescue teams, alongside financial support when seismic quakes affected suburban Athens a month later.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )One notorious case was revealed in the investigation and characterised Turkey’s antiquated building laws that preserved its Byzantine legacy, and allowed conmen to take advantage of them. A builder was put on trial for lax building material used in his constructions, but sought to deflect blame by claiming he wasn’t a builder, ‘but a poet’. His defence was thrown out of court. A badly erected building can kill you. A badly composed poem – generally speaking – won’t.
>Here we go again
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Stephen Wright on being struck by lightning, Christmas, and the spiritually wretched @ Overland.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The other night I was struck by lightning. The summer storms sweep up toward my house from the valley behind the menhir shadows of Nimbin Rocks, like a Groke on a rampage, all grey flying sheets and vast threats.
I was standing in the kitchen idly wondering what I would do if I were hanging from a cliff-face threatened by ravenous tigers above and ravenous tigers below, when the lightning hit.
Lightning at very close range really does go CRACK, a massive machete-edged CRACK, like the sound effects in a Marvel comic. The difference is that to replicate the actual aural impact of a lightning strike, especially one in your kitchen, you’d have to magnify the sound effect by about 800 000, and then compress it into a slice of ruptured air about a nanosecond thick. Then when it’s packed good and tight, ignite it.
In that instant of blistering light and noise, the lights in the house went out, all the pots hanging on the kitchen wall simultaneously rang and were then instantly damped, the modem and the printer in the corner were both fried into extinction, and my body went ZAP – and sparked with something like static electricity that seemed to want to find its way out into the world through my teeth. The house was plunged into darkness while everything outside instantly went brilliantly white and transparent.
altimoniere 