Gling Glo

Sorry we've been away for a while, but on Thursday Laura and I were at a conference in Cambridge. This was surprisingly good fun, particularly for Laura I think, mostly thanks to the Wittgensteinian leanings of talks and attendees. For me it was a little bit like attending a conference in a foreign country. Although everyone spoke my language, there was definitely some kind of intellectual culture these people shared, but which I did not. Thankfully, Crispin Wright was there to give voice to my mainstream unease with the various talks. While I enjoyed Avner's talk on contextualism and Wright's talk on rule-following, Laura headed up to Scotland for Jane's wedding. Now that I'm back, and enjoying Sunday with my ever expanding music collection, I just popped on to share with you this amusing description of an excellent (though deeply obscure) Bjork album I've been listening to a lot lately. It's translated pretty roughly from Icelandic, but somehow I suspect that even with better translation, it wouldn't make very much more sense than it does now. The album is one of Bjork's early collaborations with a jazz trio of all things, and is a tour de force of her unique vocal stylings.

...when the forces of nature Bjork Gudmundsdottir enwraps it self, the partners [the trio] fly high and deep into the core of the jazz-pop of the fifties to the extend that they escape time and space. Listeners will get an unique opportunity on this CD to experience the mysterious and random meeting of umbrellas of the past and sewing-machines of the present, on the keyboard. Katie rocks in Bjork's disguise. Bjork is Bella telephone-operator and Adda Ornolfs. Bjork is Ingibjorg, Sigrun and Soffia. Bjork is. The lyrics span old and classic realms of passion. These are the final scenes of Electra and Oedipus. It is man's wish to kneed together, from time and space, their own special dream-dough. Here is where the dream comes true. Enjoy. (From Bjorkish.net)

The Uses of Philosophy

I found this story (discovery courtesy of the Guardian's Wrap service) somehow reassuring. Even if I don't manage to make it clear to anyone over the course of my career what possible use philosophy might be to anyone but philosophers, perhaps someone else might come along one day and do it for me.