nice paragraph on sleep debt

"Outside of maintaining a healthy sleep pattern, there is literally nothing you can do to erase your sleep debt. It's a lot like fiscal debt: gradually accumulated and a bastard to get rid of. Also, you probably have way more of it than you think. Most people only count "negative" loss of sleep into their sleep debt -- the nights when they had to work late or couldn't sleep because of the monster truck rally next door. However, every little hour counts, no matter how you spent it: Playing BioShock until the small hours adds to the debt pile just the same, no matter how much fun you had."

 http://www.cracked.com/article_20426_5-ridiculous-health-myths-you-probably-believe.html#ixzz2Rzzx67Ko

Van Vogt fits

We may be better able nowadays to appreciate the merits of van Vogt's fiction. The disjointed novel is more in vogue today than at any previous point in history...

But, above all, van Vogt fits in nicely with the popular culture of our day, in which loose narratives or anti-narratives — in computer games, music videos, reality TV, etc. — have replaced the tightly scripted tales of an earlier era. 

Fix-up Artist: The Chaotic SF of A.E. van Vogt by Ted Gioia

Only the Sociologist has Agency

In spite of the strenuous attempts by sociologists to preserve some autonomy for the acting subject — Bourdieu’s “habitus,” Latour’s “actor-network” theory — popularization has inevitably resulted in more weight being thrown on the structuring side of things, the network over the actor. The only quantum of freedom left then belongs to the sociologist himself. It is the sociologist who is uniquely qualified to provide explanations for us, which have to do with feelings of status or desire for recognition, sublimated self-interest. Ultimately, there can be no mixed motives, no swerving, no revisions, no “powerful attraction towards all that we conceive or fear or hope beyond ourselves,” as Shelley once tried to define love.
http://nplusonemag.com/too-much-sociology

Sefirot Color Visualization

Thanks to Aharon Varady for posting this

An important quotation in Moshe Idel, "Mystical Techniques": 

The earliest texts explicitly referring to this technique are those connected to the name of
R. David ben Yehudah he-Hasid, a Spanish Kabbalist of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries:

"R. David said: We are not allowed to visualize the ten Sefirot, except in accordance with the rashey perakim which reach you, such as Magen David to Ḥesed and Ḥonen ha-Daat to Tiferet. Therefore, you should always visualize that color which is [attributed to the Sefirah according to] the rashey perakim, that color being the ḥashmal of the Sefirah, the ḥashmal being the covering217 [or dress] of that very Sefirah around [it]. Afterward you shall draw [downward] by your visualization the efflux [shefa] from the depth of the river to the worlds down to us—and this is the true [way], received [in an esoteric manner] by oral tradition."

2 hours ago · Edited · Like

Cervantes on Translation

It seems to me that translating from one tongue into another, unless it is from those queens of tongues Greek and Latin, is like viewing Flemish tapestries from the wrong side; for although you see the pictures, they are covered with threads which obscure them sot hat the smoothness and gloss of the fabric are lost.
(Cervantes, Don quixote, 2.62)
yet another quote stolen from http://borbor-chan.livejournal.com/

Foucault on the fantastic

"The fantastic is no longer a property of the heart. Nor is it found among the incongruities of nature; it evolves from the accuracy of the knowledge, and its treasures lie dormant in documents. Dreams are no longer summoned with closed eyes, but in reading; and a true image is now a product of learning."

http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/03/07/the-redemption-of-saint-anthony/

Anthropology of "real" magic

compiled by Robert Mathiesen, sent to Academic-Study-Magic e-list

"Here are some anthropologists' encounters with magic that seemed to be (or actually was) effective, as well as a few other related items:

(1)  Anthologies:

David E. Young & Jean-Guy A. Goulet, edd.  Being Changed by Cross-Cultural Encounters; The Anthropology of Extraordinary Exeprience.  Broadview Press, 1994.

Jean-Guy A. Goulet & Bruce Granville Miller, edd.  Extraordinary Anthropology: Transformations in the Field. University of Nebrasks Press, 2007.

Philip M. Peek, ed.  African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing.  Indiana University Press, 1991.

Michael Winkelman & Philip M. Peek, edd.  Divination and Healing: Potent Vision.  University of Arizona Press, 2004.


(2)  Monographic Studies:

Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes.  In Sorcery's Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger. University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Edith Turner et alii.  Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African healing.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

Barbara Tedlock.  The Woman in  the Shaman's Body.  Random House (Bantam), 2005.

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer.  Extraordinary Knowing.  Random House (Bantam,) 2007.


(3)  Various articles:

Michael Winkelman.  "Magic: A Theoretical Reassessment," Current Anthropology, 23/1 (Fenruary 1982), 37-66.

Bruce T. Grindal, "Into the Heart of Sisala Exeprience: Witnessing Death Divination," Journal of Anthropological Research, 39 (1983), 60-80.  --  Perhaps the most important article of them all.

Barbara Tedlock.  "From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography," Journal of Anthropological Research, 47/1 (1991), 69-94.

Edith Turner.  "The Reality of Spirits: A Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study?" Anthropology of Consciousness, 4/1 (March 1993), 9-12.

James McClenon & Jennifer Nooney.  "Anomalous Experiences Reported by Field Anthropologists: Evaluating Theories Regarding Religion," Anthropology of Consciousness, 13/2 (2002), 46-60.

Edith Turner.  "Advances in the Study of Spirit Experience: Drawing Together Many Threads," Anthropology of Consciousness, 17/2 (2006), 33-61.  --  Has large bibliography."