Henry's New Writeups

Zombie Argument (person)

2009-01-13T02:35:54Z

The Zombie Argument provides, in its modern forms, a very effective attack on minimal materialism. Zombies are creatures without phenomenal consciousness. Minimal materialism says that all mental facts are entailed by the totality of physical facts. So, take a universe identical to this one in respect of all its physical properties, and without any extra non-physical stuff like ectoplasm (in technical terms, a minimal physical duplicate). Minimal materialism requires that it is impossible that that universe could differ from the actual universe in terms of its mental properties.

The zombie argument says, conversely, that it is possible that a universe could be a minimal physical duplicate of this one and have no mental properties at all.

Though it could take the form given by Nyte, above, there is an extra premise that can be unpacked:

1) Zombies are conceivable
2) x is conceivable -> x is possible.
C) Therefore zombies…

The Second Coming (thing)

2005-08-11T16:54:00Z

The Second Coming was the second true album by Manchester rock band The Stone Roses. I won't go into too much background detail on the effects of the album on the band, or its history, concentrating on the music, but a little context at least is absolutely vital.

Released in 1994, five years after the Stone Roses' indescribable debut album (1989), the Second Coming faced incredible hype. To meet the expectations of the British music press, nothing less the music of the spheres itself would have sufficed. Not only was the Stone Roses' debut one of the greatest albums ever made, it had been followed by one of the greatest stand alone singles ever made, Fools Gold (also 1989), which had pride of place in the Roses' spectacular not-quite-an-album, Turns Into Stone (1992), composed of B-sides and a smattering of new material. Fools Gold was not only an incredible song, it marked a change of style for the Roses from their pop-rock beginnings to a much more dance-oriented…

A Voyage to Arcturus (thing)

2005-08-11T11:51:15Z

A Voyage To Arcturus is a book written in 1920 by David Lindsay. Spoilers ahead, though really this book isn't about events, it's about the journey between them.

Though apparently sci-fic, really A Voyage To Arcturus is much closer to metaphysical fiction with a healthy dose of Psychedelic literature (think Philip K. Dick meets Carlos Castaneda and you'll be quite near the mark). It's written in quite a naive style – very dreamlike, and not particularly analytical.

One might think that being very early sci-fic, the book would have some charming and erroneous technological predictions. But this isn't true at all – technology isn't an aspect of the book at all, except in the very brief initial voyage to Arcturus, though the means of travel seems allegorical rather than literal.

A whole host of beings, mortal and immortal, throng the world of Tormance (the sole planet of Arcturus) on which most of the novel is set. Lindsay invents a whole vocabulary to describe these…

shlep (idea)

2004-01-13T21:35:10Z

"Shlep" or "Schlep" is a Yiddish word, literally meaning "to drag", but has a number of acquired meanings besides. As in English, where the word "drag" in its noun form ("a drag") has acquired the connotation of a nuisance or a chore, etc., shlep has a definite connotation of undesirable effort. I've heard it used two ways in this meaning - as a noun and as a verb. Shlep as a noun is almost directly equivalent to "a drag" or "a bit of an effort":

"Shall we make some dinner?
"Bit of a shlep. Let's get a pizza instead."

On top of this usage, shlep can also be used as a verb, meaning to do something that involves an undesirable or unpleasant effort, invariably involving going from one place to another:

"I've ordered a pizza, but they don't deliver. We'll have to shlep it all the way down there to pick it up."

As far as I can tell, shlep in this form is only used to describe exhausting and tedious movement. I've never heard shlep used as…

Gods in The Iliad (idea)

2003-01-04T00:58:14Z

Homeric Theology – An Outline

Introduction

The gods, as presented in Homer's Iliad, present a variety of difficulties for the critic. In their stylised and highly anthropomorphised form, they lack close parallels in earlier cultures, and compared to the gods of monotheistic religions seem petty, small-minded, and unworthy, perhaps, of veneration.

Moreover, their role as a literary device is highly contested; some authors, assign to them the function of comedy and light relief, their actions affording a hiatus from the intense fighting of the rest of the poem. Others choose to dismiss their more frivolous and sordid behaviour as unimportant, seeing them rather as truly metaphysical beings, whose relaxed lives merely emphasise their separation from and superiority to the suffering race of men.

The two attitudes are intensely polarised, and difficult to reconcile; however, some form of synthesis is vital for a thorough and non-polemical…

How to have an epileptic fit (idea)

2002-09-26T02:13:14Z

In short – deprive yourself of sleep, stop eating, and play lots of computer games in a darkened room. You don't even need to be epileptic to do this. Some years ago, at the age of fifteen, I had an epileptic fit, in my bedroom, on Christmas fucking Day. How's that for being born under a bad sign?

I should add that I'm not epileptic, and had only ever had one seizure before, as a baby – this, I'm told, was largely induced by a very severe fever, a very hot day, and damn bad luck, though I can remember nothing about it. Then and now, I'm not on anti-epilepsy drugs of any kind.

This particular day – since I'd not had any kind of epileptic fit for fourteen years – I wasn't anticipating any kind of seizure. Even so, I was very stupid indeed. I'd woken up at three A.M. that morning, because it was Christmas, and I was very excited (and pretty regressive, to be honest. I still play with Lego...). My Christmas presents that year were the copies of the newly released Zelda and Turok 2*…