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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