josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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11 Aug '13 04:34:23 PM

The Intellectual Construction of "Social Distance": Toward a Recovery of Georg Simmel’s Social Geometry

11 Aug '13 04:16:07 PM

'… escaping a burning house…'

10 Aug '13 04:25:55 AM

'In the same way people have wanted to express, 'There are no things', by writing '~(∃x).x = x'. But even if this were a proposition, would it not be equally true if in fact 'there were things' but they were not identical with themselves?'

(A 'grammatical joke'. And a hilarious one!)

8 Aug '13 10:30:15 PM

'I conquer a small piece of color, I enter a little farther into color, that's where joy can be located'.

6 Aug '13 03:48:19 AM

B. goes pretend shopping in the pretend grocery store. The other kids have carts; she takes a basket. Most of the shelves are lined with fake products—or empty packaging from real products, or pictures of things—then covered with plexiglass. Next to the things you can't have there is real shelf space for the pretend groceries—plastic bread, little cans, cartoon cheese wedges. The kids with carts race around filling them with mounds of pretend groceries. B. goes from shelf to shelf looking for something to put in her basket, but everything has been taken. You can see that her disappointment, every time she reaches instead for one of the other things, the ones that are not pretend but fake, not just gone but never available, is real. I wonder whether she's learned yet how to hide disappointment like that—to fake it.

3 Aug '13 07:08:29 PM

'For fifty years, pop music was created and consumed like this: you heard a record on the radio, or read about it in a music paper; you bought it on Saturday; you lent it to, or taped it for, a friend; and they reciprocated with another record. It was a secret network. It was how you made friends, how you met girls, and how you soundtracked your world.'

3 Aug '13 09:59:28 AM

'I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.'

2 Aug '13 05:09:50 AM

Another day flipped around, dark and bright hours circling, hopefully to come to rest.

2 Aug '13 02:09:13 AM

'This specification covers the chemical requirements for wrought stainless steels used for the manufacture of surgical instruments. Classes of stainless steels covered here are Class 3 (austenitic stainless steel), Class 4 (martensitic stainless steel), Class 5 (precipitation hardening stainless steel), and Class 6 (ferritic stainless steel). The data contained in this specification, such as typical hardness values, common heat treating cycles, and examples of selected stainless steels that have been used for surgical instruments, are provided for reference only. Mechanical property, heat treatment, hardness, and all other requirements except for chemical composition, are governed by the appropriate material standards as specified or as agreed upon between purchaser and supplier.'