February 12, 2006
From the “Guaranteed icebreakers at university conference panel discussions on Descartes and his refusal to bend to both Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophical traditions in an attempt to usher in the Enlightenment by merging philosophy with the hard sciences using a method of hyperbolic doubt” series
So Descartes walks into a laundromat with a load of soiled linen (bedding, some whites), whereupon he is approached almost immediately by a beautiful, doe-eyed young woman who explains to him that the change machine is busted. “You wouldn’t happen to have any spare quarters you could part with, would you?” she asks, lowering her eyes and offering up a shy smile. “I have bills.” To which Descartes, a bit
Harshing your subliminal mellow?
From John Hood, writing on the FCC vs. product placement in the March Reason: When Peter Parker shot out his webbing and snagged that can of Dr. Pepper in Spider-Man, its seems that impressionable movie audiences across the country suffered deleterious consequences—perhaps in the form of forgetting how much they loved Mr Pibb. “The public needs to know when they’re being advertised to,” says Jonathan Adelstein, one of the five
Three Things: an experiment in contextual narrative
1. a naked “escort”, whose exuberance for Special K left her in a deep dark place from which neither a series of cold compresses nor two shots of adrenaline were able to successfully retrieve her. 2. a “virtual” hotel registration card, containing a license plate number and name (both real and both duly registered with the Colorado MVA). 3. a dead hotel night clerk named “Edward” who was strangled with