February 2013 - Meandering home

Beguiling Ambiguity

I wrote a theoretical reflection about binary communication with babies a few weeks ago, and I'm going to add something to that. Don't worry: I won't advocate ternary or n-ary communication here. Rather, I want to say something about ambiguity and undecidedness. About half an hour ago, Miru was hungry (she eats a lot) and ...

27 February, 2013

ambiguity, Critical thinking, decidability, Einstein, Schrödinger

Miru, Philosophy

The Ought that haunts others

"Can I even express the quiet horror that debilitates my mind when I experience the utter vacuity of this work, of these pointless tasks I perform every day? Can I communicate this torment? Why would I? Perhaps because there is a statistical probability that I'm not the only one experiencing this, that there are many ...

22 February, 2013

Philosophy, ready product, Thought

Activism, Philosophy

Cries and Music

This is part of a series of blog posts that is inspired by our baby daughter, Miru. It is well known that babies have a sonic prehistory that starts in the womb, and advice to comfort a baby often includes exposing her to white noise similar to the audible sensations she had while in utero. There ...

21 February, 2013

baby, Beethoven, calming, consoling, Crying, Miru, Mozart, singing, soothing

Miru, Philosophy

Awaiting Binary Communication

This is part of a series of blog posts that is inspired by our baby daughter, Miru. Every infant starts out in this world with a one-word vocabulary, the content of which we (from the perspective of our infinitely nuanced expressive apparatus) then interpret as crying. I don't know how the baby herself experiences the crying, ...

17 February, 2013

Crying, Diaper, Ethology, Hominina, Infancy, Infant, mind, Miru

Miru, Philosophy

Burping the baby

This is part of a series of blog posts that is inspired by our baby daughter, Miru. Imitation, it seems, begins as soon as our children open their eyes, just in ways we are unable to recognize due to our preoccupation with highbrow communication techniques like smiling and cooing. What if the baby develops its ...

15 February, 2013

baby, belch, burp, induce burp

Miru, Uncategorized

Babies Are Cute!

Most people find babies cute, and for good evolutionary reasons. A newborn human is more completely dependent on the care of its parents than any other mammal (there probably is an exception to this rule, but for the purpose of this article, we go with the clich'e). I just want to share an experience with ...

5 February, 2013

Behavioural sciences, Cuteness, Developmental biology, Social psychology

Miru

Unsubscribe: all

Over the course of the last few days, I received dozens of e-mails from organisations I didn't knew I knew about, and I invariably clicked on their 'unsubscribe' link. Political campaigns, real estate listings, environmental actions, job openings, social networks, online marketplaces, and so on. It feels a little bit like the mise-en-scène of an ...

1 February, 2013

Freeware, internet, online death, online marketplaces, silence, social networks, unsubscribe, Web 2.0

Uncategorized