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The Combed Thunderclap: 2016 - The Year in Books
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Sunday, January 01, 2017. 2016 - The Year in Books. 2016 There may never be another year during which I read so many of the Great Classic Novels for the first time. Let me list them: War and Peace. By Leo Tolstoy, The Brothers Karamazov. By Fyodor Dostoyevksy, Ulysses. By James Joyce, Don Quixote. By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Moby Dick. By Herman Melville, and The Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot. I also chucked in a few of the great plays for good measure: Hamlet. Was a real surprise for its intel...
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The Combed Thunderclap: Prejudice: the dissociation model
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Monday, December 06, 2004. Prejudice: the dissociation model. As promised, the write-up on prejudice. To simplify things I will stick to the theory that, by all accounts, have much to offer studies on prejudice: the dissociation model developed by Devine. This distinction is important because, according to Devine, different cognitive processes govern their activation: automatic processes govern activation of stereotypes, and controlled processes govern the activation of beliefs. The art of happiness.
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The Combed Thunderclap: Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song: A short interpretation
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Friday, March 11, 2005. Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song: A short interpretation. Zerzan's grievance that reification and symbolism lead away from sensual experience via projects, makes me think of Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song. Whereas I don't think LC intended this song first of all as a commentary on all civilisation, it is well to remember that many of his songs have just such a theme - on the same album, I'm Your Man, the song First We Take Manhattan. Ah remember me, I used to live for music. But I hea...
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The Combed Thunderclap: 2016: A Torch Gone Out
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Sunday, January 01, 2017. 2016: A Torch Gone Out. Let's wipe away 2016, but first, let's set the record straight. Was it really such a bad year? Such a sad year? It's not just the celebrities who passed away - although that had a lot to do with it. Or another sign of the uncertainty of our collective future. The old guard, whose hopes can no longer sustain this new world, leaving us to work it out. Either way don't believe the statistics. A few, perhaps: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Paul Simon&#...
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The Combed Thunderclap: February 2016
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Sunday, February 07, 2016. What Shakespeare has in Common with Software Development. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the world's leading playwright in English, and perhaps any language. Such is his influence that phrases and ideas coined by him at the turn of the 17th century still live on in our colloquial speech today. Romeo and Juliet is shorthand for passionate, ill-fated love, and quotable lines from his works permeate our treasure trove of idioms and phrases. How did this happen? I find it useful...
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The Combed Thunderclap: July 2015
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015. Poetry Technology Goes Liftoff! Has gone live and I can finally explain what it’s all about. So, what is. Is it a text-bending exercise involving the classics? Is it an exploration of poetics with the aid of computing? And, does it have a point? Yes, Yes, and - good question. Some time ago I talked about the need for Poetry Technology. And argued for its wider adoption. At the time I'd had PoetryDB. Etc) I could see they'd be useful tools to play with, especially the low level too...
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The Combed Thunderclap: June 2016
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Thursday, June 30, 2016. On Brexit and Freedoms. Rhetoric aside, what prompted me to write this post was actually a chance rereading (or listening, in this case) today of the first chapter of John Stuart Mill's classic text On Liberty. Halfway into the first chapter I realised that the social and political context he was writing in sounds eerily familiar. Here is one quote:. Unhappy with government interference, the British? Who would have thought! This referendum has put the cat among the pigeons. Yet t...
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The Combed Thunderclap: March 2016
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Sunday, March 06, 2016. Can Interactive Fiction be Improved? Like many readers old enough to remember the 80s, I have fond memories of the "Choose Your Own Adventure". Series of books, as well as their more sophisticated cousins, adventure gamebooks like "The Way of the Tiger". So when I recently looked into interactive fiction again I had high hopes that the genre had really been brought into the 21st century. Because, given the choice of reading through reams of text, or navigating a little character a...
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The Combed Thunderclap: A Look at Ferrante's The Story of the Lost Child
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Sunday, October 04, 2015. A Look at Ferrante's The Story of the Lost Child. This post discusses the final novel in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Saga and deals with plot points without warning or discretion. If you haven’t read the series up to the end and do not want plot spoilers, stop reading here. I am glad. As a reader I tend to prefer the Lila-centric parts of the novels over the Elena-centric parts of the novels, probably because they are the extraordinary ones. It also means that some of my obser...And t...
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