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“It is not about adding more for the sake of more. Nor is it a minimalist, ‘less is more’ attitude. It is about allowing the end-user to decide how to use a creative work, and providing the opportunity to assimilate it to some extent; to make it one’s own. But assimilation is not the final… Continue reading

I think I have finished “Act II” of the Nietzsche book. (So, there is an “Overture,” an “Act I” which covers The Birth of Tragedy and Untimely Meditations, and “Act II” which covers Human, all too Human). Next will come “Act III,” where I’ll try to take on Thus Spake Zarathustra. It intimidates me; there… Continue reading

My family and I just had an 8-day vacation in Costa Rica. Great time: stayed in a deluxe treehouse, explored the rainforest, swam in the ocean, crossed the jungle on hanging bridges, floated down a river, saw an erupting volcano, met lovely people and ate great food. Then a “pure life” experience: my daughter was… Continue reading

I won’t be checking in at huenemanniac for the next couple weeks. Will resume April 21! Continue reading

Lately I have been encountering many different expressions of just how different our world today is from anything we have faced in the past. For a review of the geopolitical situation, see Tom Barnett’s short lecture here; for an update on genomics, look here; and for the classic “Shift Happens” presentation, look here. The upshot… Continue reading

That “Back to Nietzsche” post set off a firefight (a philosophically friendly one, I hope), and one of the issues that came up has to do with the relation between naturalism and metaphysics. “Naturalism” can mean many things, but one widespread meaning in philosophy is this: naturalism is the view that contemporary science is (roughly)… Continue reading

Here is a “jaw-dropping” short lecture by Craig Venter on what’s going on in contemporary genomics. Fascinating stuff, especially to me, since my wife Jeannine just got a job with a genomics center on campus. (We say she’s working on the “Huenemann Jeanninome” project.) Looks pretty clear that creating artifical life isn’t too far away. Continue reading

Provocative passage from Nietzsche, Human, all too Human: For this reason a higher culture must give to man a double-brain, as it were two brain ventricles, one for the perceptions of science, the other for those of non-science: lying beside one another, not confused together, separable, capable of being shut off; this is the demand… Continue reading

See his reasoning here. Compelling (though I was pro-Obama to begin with). Continue reading