Sunday, August 26, 2012

“Porn” Posts


An ever-popular category among our essays  are the ones with “porn” in the title.  No no, nothing naughty:  the use is metaphorical.  As, “physics porn” denotes the tawdry, flashy, empty display of random razzle-dazzle factoids, intellectual junk-food for the public.
So, assuming that most of you are by now back from church, we offer this chaste selection of quotations;  for the entire essay, close the door and click …

For some reason, folks keep finding this site by search on the term ‘funporn’, even though the only thing nekkid around here is the penguins, who are in a state of pre-Lapsarian innocence and hence may parade thus unattired. 

“Top-of-the-mountain” -- “Triple Theory” -- This is the language of People magazine, or of Oprah.  And indeed, it directly develops, that like these, which cater to the self-caressing, victim-licking, pruriently empathetic downswirl of our current culture, the present article (nestling in the venerable New Yorker like a maggot in meat) is interested in its fifteen-minute-famous philosopher, not as a thinker, but as a freak.

Crystallography, cosmology, planetology, low-temperature physics, materials science  -- each boasts a clique of adepts  initiated into the Masonic mysteries of their own particular discipline (which alas, by its very success and progress, threatens to fragment further).

Oh, Nietzsche by all means, that self-imagined Übermensch in a paper cape.  Not so good for your mother-issues, however …

Our favorite pre-Conciliar amateur philosopher  and two-fisted gat-toting private detective …

As a prophylactic against any future such claims, bear in mind this simple example.  Consider the position of women in Iran; and know that Farsi has gender-neutral pronouns (the same word goes for ‘he/she', or for ‘his/her’).

"It's a bird!"  "It's Balloon Boy!"   "It's the HI-I-IGGS  BOSON !!!"

… the flat and mindless use of supposedly numinous numbers on “Lost” (along with the downspiral of that initially eye-pleasing series  into rank incoherence)

“How a piece of journeyman work is turned into patently junk science”

our funny humble friend the echidna (think:  hedgehog with a proboscis)

Note that all penguins in these videos  are duly married and care for their babies.

… these ultra-hot Rising-Sun girlbands

Feminist, and feminine -- get it?  She’s got it all!  (Whether that combo would appeal to any actual guy, we leave to the reader;  but it is perfect for admiring yourself in a mirror.)

Warning:  To view this, you must be married, over 49, and hold a Ph.D.

…. all of which goes to show that, as shown by Principle P of the Binding Theory, the Nicene Creed is true.  Down to the last detail.

Jemand ist eben jetzt in dieser Weise hierher gekommen:
        porno fuer intellectuelle
Sie irren sich, mein Herr!

the tendency of some neuroscientists to leave their last  and to issue pronunciamentos that teeter far beyond any base of evidence, straining after shock-value

sexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (!)

Have I been too harsh?
Anent the miscreants, not nearly harsh enough.  But any unintentional carom effect upon the honor of the grand old weekly, is to be regretted.
Let us therefore express our profound conviction, that the piece in question was approved for publication  during the August doldrums when all the senior staff were away in Maine.   It was approved by the doorman, and probably written by some homeless guy, who is still laughing.

“If you want me,” says Voltaire, bearing off a large plate of sandwiches, “I shall be in the innermost room… “ (a moan and a shiver passes among the assembled ladies) “... on a porcelain throne ... disinventing God”.

The books are progressively more seriously marred by what we may call the Pornography of Intelligence, consisting of gurgled tributes to the purported brilliance of someone (generally female, or the admirer of one) who does not actually ever get around to demonstrating that brilliance on the printed page.

[Update 30 November 2012]  Further attestations of this extended use of ‘porn’ in the sense of ‘prurient interest of any sort’.  Re post-earthquake Aquila:

Italian officials have kept promising to restore the city to its former self, but fewer than a dozen buildings have so far been repaired among the hundreds damaged in the center, which is a virtual ghost town. Never a tourist mecca, despite its pretty churches and squares, L’Aquila was a working town of some 75,000, home to a university and to many families with local roots dating back to the Middle Ages.
These days, tourists arrive to gawk at the rubble. Ruin porn has become the new local industry.

Re pushback against the bloated claims of neuroscientists:

As a journalist and cultural critic, I applaud the backlash against what is sometimes called brain porn, which raises important questions about this reductionist, sloppy thinking and our willingness to accept seemingly neuroscientific explanations for, well, nearly everything.



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