Discussing G.W.F Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History.
Mark’s Inspirational Speech
Responding to a listener request, here’s the text of the inspirational speech from the end of episode #14, so you can have it tattooed or mounted or embroidered or perhaps written in frosting on a birthday cake. I have rendered it in BOLD MAGENTA #3 (C031C7) for your pleasure: What you see before you, i.e. Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 8
The first newly completed song from the “Madison Lint” album: “Cold.” I’ve been singing this a lot to myself as I walk around this horribly frozen wasteland that is Wisconsin and thinking about when I wrote the words to this while wandering around the building of my crappy office job back in early 2001, when Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 7
Here’s another new recording: “Ann(e).” It’s a pretty old song, written I think late in 1991, back when I was in a psychedlic band called The MayTricks, and though the recording is entirely new (OK, I started the click track and the acoustic guitar back in 2000, i.e. this is another tune destined for the Continue Reading …
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Reading Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.
What’s a philosophically astute approach to political matters? What makes a government successful? Should you keep that fortress or sell it for scrap? If you conquer, say, Iraq, do you have to then go and live there for the occupation to work out? Is it OK to display the heads of your enemies on spikes, or should you opt for a respectful diorama?
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Discussing Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 6
More video this week: http://www.youtube.com/user/MLinsenmayer#p/a/u/1/u3nNXdV8tbQ. The linked song is one of two I’ve just put up there from a 1997 gig by The Fake Johnson Trio. This was the very last gig for that band, and one of the few played as an actual trio: I switched to bass for a couple of shows for Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 5
As January draws to a close, I made good on my determination to upload some more gig video, with a couple of songs from 1/16/10 New People show from the Alchemy Cafe. The song of the two by me currently visible (though I hope to have more up shortly) is at http://www.youtube.com/user/MLinsenmayer#p/a/u/1/_-9pPUESKN4, and from that Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 4
This week’s entry is an entirely new recording: “Came Round.” On one or two days in the summer of ’99 I wrote and recorded maybe five song fragments with nonsense lyrics that featured dual-vocals throughout the whole thing a la the Byrds. I was contemplating starting a folk duo that would feature collaborative songwriting and Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 3
This week I’ve finished another tune from the same project as “Write Me Off,” namely “Once in a Great While,” which was originally called “Therapy Song #141.” The song is one of several I’ve written about inspiration and its masochistic character. What I want from moment to moment is a feeling of warmth, of involvement. Continue Reading …
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 2
This week’s newly finished recording is “Write Me Off.” This is part of the “Sinking and the Aftermath” project; the story of my utter irresponsibility in not finishing these songs (from 1999-2000) earlier is told here. This is one of my favorite songs of those I’ve written, and it’s gone around my head quite regularly Continue Reading …
Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?
On Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy” (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey.
What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject “metaphysical realism” based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things.
Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?
On Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy. Dylan Casey’s first appearance (as a guest).
Partially Naked Self-Examination Music Blog, Week 1
Listen to “Space” by Mark Lint. This song was written in 1997 or 1998 smack in the heart of my Texas grad school tenure. That’s what the reference to “Every day I get up about three hours late” is about; I tended to sleep until 11am in those days. This is a song that seemed Continue Reading …
Thorough Musical Self-Examination: A New Year’s Resolution
Yes, it’s a new year. Big, fat arbitrary deal. Well, yes, but I find it refreshing that something in our life of mostly culturally created pressures presents itself as an obviously merely cultural, arbitrary creation, as opposed to money, or romance, or politics, or your job, all of which, though largely if not wholly cultural, Continue Reading …
Thorough Musical Self-Examination: A New Year’s Resolution
Yes, it’s a new year. Big, fat arbitrary deal. Well, yes, but I find it refreshing that something in our life of mostly culturally created pressures presents itself as an obviously merely cultural, arbitrary creation, as opposed to money, or romance, or politics, or your job, all of which, though largely if not wholly cultural, Continue Reading …
Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?
Discussing the “Chuang Tzu,” Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19.
It’s the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. What could it possibly mean to “make all things equal?” and how is the Taoist sage different from our other favorite paragons of virtue (hint: magical powers)?
Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?
On the “Chuang Tzu,” Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. With guest Erik Douglas.
Book Review: “Small Gods” by Terry Pratchett
This is the 12th in the “Discworld” series, a British humor/fantasy bunch of books comparable in style to “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy,” but it’s only the setting (a flat world resting on the back of four elephants resting on the back of a turtle) that’s consistent, not so much the characters, so it’s not Continue Reading …
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?).
End song: “The Greatest F’in Song in the World,” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio.
We go through Nietzsche’s convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss Christianity? Is he an anti-semite? Was he a lazy, arrogant bastard? What does he actually recommend that we do?