Readers with an interest in philosophy will probably know Richard Rorty died last week. Of the summaries of Rorty’s thinking, two in particular caught my eye. Their connection to each other, and to recent posts, is, I think, pretty obvious.

Norman Geras wrote:

“Rorty’s anti-foundationalism, his refusal of the idea of an objective realm beyond the language in which we try to apprehend it, leaves us intellectually defenceless in the face of a cognitive relativism for which any view must be just as good as any other. Rorty denied this consequence of his own arguments, but the denial struck me as one example among many of his tolerance for internal contradiction.”

Roger Scruton had this to say:

“[Rorty’s] venture into political theory took [him] in new and unforeseeable directions, as he tried to reconcile his view that some versions of political order are superior to others, with his belief that there is no trans-historical perspective from which any such judgment can be made. It is a testimony to his literary skills that he was able repeatedly to stare refutation in the face, and to go on staring…

Undoubtedly he was the most lucid of the postmodernist philosophers – though that is, given the competition, no great achievement… Rorty was paramount among those thinkers who advance their own opinion as immune to criticism, by pretending that it is not truth but consensus that counts, while defining the consensus in terms of people like themselves.”

Rorty was a learned man, to be sure, but, like so many of his postmodernist peers, he tried to deform logic to fit a political prejudice.

Related: On Derrida’s clotted prose.

Via Digital Clendening, a gallery of Chinese public health posters for a happy proletariat. Posture, hygiene, vaccination. “Eat clean food.”

Related: “Japanese Art on the Subject of Medicine.”

Further to my article on the ludicrous Carolyn Guertin, here’s another example of how not to impart knowledge to soft student brains. From Jacques Derrida’s 1994 book, supposedly on the relevance of Marxism, Spectres of Marx, the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International:

“Capital contradiction. At the very origin of capital. Immediately or in the end, through so many differential relays, it will not fall to induce the ‘pragmatic’ double constraint of all injunctions. Moving about freely (aus freien Stucken), on its own head [de son propre chef], with a movement of its head but that controls its whole body, from head to toe, ligneous and dematerialised, the Table-Thing appears to be at the principle, at the beginning, and at the controls of itself. It emancipates itself on its own initiative: all alone, autonomous and automaton, its fantastic silhouette moves on its own, free and without attachment. It goes into trances, it levitates, it appears relieved of its body, like all ghosts, a little mad and unsettled as well, upset, ‘out of joint’, delirious, capricious, and unpredictable…”

“But also at stake, indissociably, is the differential deployment of tekkne, of techno-science or tele-technology. It obliges us more than ever to think the virtualisation of space and time, the possibility of virtual events whose movement and speed prohibit us more than ever (more and otherwise than ever, for this is not absolutely and thoroughly new) from opposing presence to its representation, ‘real time’ to ‘deferred time’, effectivity to its simulacrum, the living to the non-living, in short, the living to the living-dead of its ghosts. It obliges us to think, from there, another space for democracy. For democracy-to-come and thus for justice. We have suggested that the event we are prowling around here hesitates between the singular ‘who’ of the ghost and the general ‘what’ of the simulacrum.”

Now it’s possible you find this meaningful and “skilfully poetic”, as others claim to do, and you might argue that I’ve taken these passages out of context and thus obscured some deep and elegant insight. In fact the sequence of many paragraphs appears arbitrary and I suspect one could rearrange them in any number of ways to much the same effect. And if you think I’ve been unfair and scoured for the most “difficult” passages, please feel free to read a much longer extract here, from which these passages were taken. Caution is advised, however, as prolonged exposure may induce fits of nausea or hilarity, or an urge to bite one’s own fist. Those who survive will, no doubt, be rendered very, very clever.

Some of you may have seen Vanessa Engle’s witty BBC4 documentary series, Lefties, screened in February last year. The 3-part series revisits the “alternative politics” of the 70s and 80s, when the far left was an all-too-serious force in British political life. Among the gems to savour are the endless factional disputes over exactly how capitalism should be toppled, the farcical mismanagement of the News on Sunday, an earnest exposition on “penile imperialism”, and interviews with former self-styled radicals, now sitting by private swimming pools, fretting about fridge ownership or planning to work on llama farms.

Here’s a brief taste.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The three episodes – Property is Theft, Angry Wimmin and A Lot of Balls – can be viewed online here. Given a generation of young lefties with little, if any, experience of what their dreams entail when applied in the real world, it’s worth casting an eye over what happened when Socialism wasn’t just something people laughed at.

Help me buy my own llama farm.

Kazuko Shinoka’s tofu robots. 4” high. Extra firm. Not really made of tofu. // Also available: Astronaut Jesus. // Via Ace, Dr Grordbort’s retro-future ray guns. Atomise those moon soldiers. // Arcade games of the Soviet Union. // Okayama’s slightly alarming pedal-powered rollercoaster. // Aging Haight-Ashbury hippies hassled and disgusted by younger, “uncivilised” drop-outs. Bummer. // New age hippies bang drums, attempt “astral travelling.” One hippie leaves body. Permanently. (H/T, Tim Blair.) // The alien abduction lamp. (H/T, Technabob.) // Cow abduction. Watch the skies, click the cow. // Via Coudal, the best looking supermarkets in the world. // New punctuation mark to denote irony. Winking smileys not suitable for literature. (H/T, 1+1=3) // Remember the interrobang? Thought not. // 3D web browsing. // Inscrutable planetary clock. “The beautiful object where magnificent outer space is made to think.” // Flies on a window. // Beer-pouring robot. Noisy, slow and pointless, but lovely nonetheless. // Disembodied robot head grimaces at scary words. Later models could be “companions for the elderly.” // The ultimate deer hunting truck. Can drive over most large mammals. // The Dreidel Song. 

Busy today. Back tomorrow with fresh ephemera. Meanwhile, feel free to rummage through the archives for overlooked nuggets and curios. For heftier posts, see the greatest hits. If you’re really stuck for something to do, clicking the button below can, I’m told, be hugely entertaining.

Zombietime has posted video and transcripts of Christopher Hitchens’ recent debate with the leftwing jihad apologist and author of American Fascists, Chris Hedges. I urge you to watch the brief “Hitchens Highlights” clip below. A second compilation can be found here and a much longer exchange, in 7 parts, can be seen here with photos, transcripts and commentary. Needless to say, Hitchens does a fine job of highlighting the sneery, morally contorted posturing that now defines much of the left.

“The decline – not to say the moral eclipse – of the secular left has just been illustrated on this very platform by someone who makes excuses for suicide murder and tries to trace them to a second-rate sociology… Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know. But these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers – and you have to live with the shame of having done that – these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they’re also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.”

Someone buy that man a drink. More sneery posturing here. Related: this.

Developed by Japan’s Science and Technology Agency and unveiled last week at Osaka University, CB2 is a 1.3 metre robot toddler. This sexless automaton is fully jointed, equipped with hundreds of optical, auditory and tactile sensors, and, just like human babies, is moved with compressed air. It also has grey silicon skin, which only adds to its appeal. As the videos below demonstrate, CB2 approximates a 1- or 2-year-old toddler and can stand with adult assistance. CB2 can also blink, roll over, wave its legs in the air and make a slightly disturbing “eh” noise.

More of CB2 in action here. (H/T, Lepton.) 

If Jeff Han’s multi-touch interface stroked the appropriate membranes, this could also be of interest. Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates Microsoft’s Photosynth. Hyperlinked image content, spatially mapped and allowing very deep zooms.

More here and here. (H/T: Mat.)

Is it me, or has the amount of junk mail dropped dramatically during the last few days? I mean, by about 80-90%? My inbox is now littered with only a small fraction of the usual solicitations for ways to increase my “volume” or to enlarge some part of my anatomy to superhuman proportions. Looks like this guy was indeed one of the so-called Kings of Spam. Let’s hope that once in prison Mr Soloway winds up as some burly guy’s sexual plaything. Make that several burly guys.

Just imagine the “volume” then.