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The Side View – A Call for Contributors

The Side View is a media platform being developed by my good friend and colleague, Adam Robbert. Lots of opportunities for collaboration, cooperative asceticisms, existential acrobatics…

Knowledge Ecology

The Side View Logo Final V1“Attention is an art form. We explore how people shape their minds to become expert perceivers and doers.”

I’ve been working on a new project as of late. I’m calling it the Side View. It’s a media organization (podcasts, essays, interviews, books, events, that sort of thing). The basic premise—to study the skills of perception in action—is one that grows out of the work I’ve been posting about here for the past several months, but it’s much more than that. It’s a whole media environment.

The official launch is several weeks off yet. I’m aiming for Fall 2017. However, the major components of the website are already in place and I’ve been working with a graphic designer on logo and branding elements. I also have a sound engineer helping me set up and use the recording equipment for podcasts, and I already have several contributors ready to go. Things are…

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Posted on by Sam Mickey 0

Distraction and Dromocracy in Learning

Debates about media in academic institutions are as old as academic institutions themselves. Is handwriting better than typing for learning? This article indicates that the answer is yes, specifically in terms of classroom learning. I would disagree. Part of the argument is that handwriting is better because it makes you slow down. I like the point about slowing down. The current obsession with speed—Paul Virilio’s dromocratic society—is very much a problem that should be addressed, and presumably it should be addressed very quickly. Slow down now! However, taking typing out of the classroom is not the solution. Continue reading →

Posted on by Sam Mickey 0

another burning man

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen a noticeable increase in views of a post I wrote last year on Burning Man, probably because it’s been Burning Man season for a little while.  I didn’t go this year.  Why?  I couldn’t afford my ticket to the gift economy.  No, that’s just a joke poking fun at the inherent hypocrisy of the event, which, to be fair, isn’t a very funny joke to make: it’s hacky.  My real reason for not being there?  As a person deeply concerned with lowering carbon emissions, I simply cannot participate in an event with that kind of carbon footprint (not to mention other resource issues, like water use, including virtual water).  Okay, that’s not the real reason either.  I just like making fun of the blatant hypocrisy of the Leave No Trace ethic espoused by event organizers and participants.  But again, that’s a pretty hacky joke to make.  My real reason for not going?  It’s not that I don’t like individualist orgies or group narcissism.  I just had classes to teach.  I’d hate to cancel class this early in the semester, when we are just starting to do the delicate work of co-constituting an intimate space for learning.  On that note, I should get back to work.

Posted on by Sam Mickey 10

What’s funny about puns?

I just got back from a week in Malibu, and along with that, I’m recovering from a pretty severe case of olympic fever.  What have I learned?  Simply this: some puns are funnier than others, and only partially because some work better orally than they do in writing.  For instance, consider the following three observations.

Meddling:
If I was going to compete in the Olympics, I would medal in other people’s business.

Schelling:
When some people visit the beach, they go shelling.  I’m more open than that.  When I visit the beach, I go Heidegger.

Booooo:
I think the name “Malibu” comes from a Chumash word for the aural intensity of the surf there (i.e., loud waves), but “Malibu” sounds too negative to signify that sacred sound.  A more positive name would be Malihooray, or better yet, Benihooray.

What can we conclude from this?  At the very least, we can probably agree that a lot of puns feel like bad jokes, but maybe the point of puns is less about being funny and more about performing some kind of phonosemantic alchemy, like Jesus using the “Peter is a rock (petros)” pun to enact the institution of his Church.

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Misleading Titles: Foxes, Ecstasy, Laundry

“I have been watching Fox News for hours now, and I have not seen one story about foxes.”
–Russell Brand

That’s an astute observation from Russell Brand.  “Fox News” is definitely a misleading name.  What about the foxes themselves? 

Similarly, I was disappointed to read Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy the Laundry.  That book is not about laundry at all, and it’s only about ecstasy in a very limited sense: the ecstasy occasioned by meditative states within the horizon of contemporary spirituality.  It’s a fine book, I was just hoping for something that would describe the wonders of doing laundry after an experience with a psychoactive medicine called “ecstasy” (i.e., MDMA). 

I can imagine something like a narrative of a young man whose empathogenic experience helps him finally learn how to appreciate and execute the complex work of folding his girlfriend’s delicate underwear.  This new knowledge grants the young man opportunities to take up his own responsibilities more authentically, opportunities to grow closer to his girlfriend, and strangest of all, opportunities to fall in love with the weird objects that assemble in the phenomenon of laundry: a washing machine, a dryer, the quarters that operate those machines, the nickels that look like those quarters, a lint trap, some detergent, some fabric softener, a hamper, socks, shirts, towels, pants, shorts, underwear, sweaters, hangers, closets, drawers, stains, stain remover, the inordinately drafty laundry room in the apartment complex, the timer that beeps when the washing and drying cycles are done, the unusually large key to the laundry room, and the alchemical process of becoming clean.

Posted on by Sam Mickey 1