RMWMTMBM Archive

One World (Stand By Me)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

This is one of the greatest things I’ve seen on the old interwebs in a long, long time. It’s a collaborative recording of “Stand By Me,” the familiar Ben E. King standard, with musicians and vocalists from all over the globe contributing. Here it is, for those of you who may still doubt that some…

Read More

The Uncanny Valley 6: Unreal and Unreal-er, or, Why a “Fake” Fake Isn’t Uncanny

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Uncanny Valley 2 Comments

I made a brief mention in my last uncanny valley post about the difference between “real” music, by which I mean music played on actual (i.e. “real,” material or physical) musical instruments by musicians (i.e. human beings with some skill on those instruments, availing themselves of said instruments without superadded technological assistance) on the one…

Read More

The Uncanny Valley 5: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Uncanny Valley 4 Comments

Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve written several posts about the “uncanny valley” on this blog. The theory of the uncanny valley is loosely based on Freud’s account of Das Unheimliche (the “uncanny”), a major trope of psychoanalytic theory and a favorite play-thing of literary, film and cultural theorists who borrow…

Read More

200,000-Strong Bartlebys Unite To Say: “Meh”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 8 Comments

The much-ballyhooed “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”— brainchild of America’s Ironists-in-Chief Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert— came and went this past Saturday in Washington, DC. Although the crowd-count estimates vary (as they always do), most put the number at somewhere between 200,000 and a quarter-million attendees. (TRANSLATION: For Midwesterners, that’s somewhere between the total…

Read More

Bon Mots: Delueze on Philosophy

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

In the interview “On Philosophy” in Negotiations (Columbia University Press, 1995, p.136), Deleuze remarks: Philosophy is always a matter of inventing concepts. I’ve never been worried about going beyond metaphysics or any death of philosophy. The function of philosophy, still thoroughly relevant, is to create concepts. Nobody else can take over that function. Philosophy has…

Read More

Exercise Your Franchise!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

If you didn’t “early vote” before, please take the time to go to your local polling place today and exercise your franchise. As Tom Stoppard once wrote: “It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.” But if you don’t vote, you can’t be counted. Stop. Think. Vote.

Read More

Deconstructing Sasha Fierce

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 10 Comments

I’m guessing that many of us have those fleeting fantasies from time to time in which we conjure up what we imagine would be the AWESOMEST. COURSE. EVER. For example, my fantasy courses: “I’m Not Here To Make Friends: Ethics and Reality TV” (sort of a cross between ethical theory, applied ethics, and existentialism), or…

Read More

Details, Details…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 6 Comments

In the Humanities, we like to emphasize the importance of what we call “close reading,” by which we mean concentrated attention to the details of a text: syntax, specialized vocabulary, nuance and conditions, logical order, the manner in which ideas develop and are connected. We do this because we aim to achieve, I hope, precision…

Read More

The Secret Little Book-Banner Inside You (and Me)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 11 Comments

This week is Banned Books Week, so designated by the American Library Association, which created the week in the hopes of motivating us to celebrate our “freedom to read.” The ALA keeps a list of the most frequently challenged books each year, including a list of banned “classics,” and my guess is that a quick…

Read More

60K Come And Gone

June 9, 2024 Dr. J BlogCounts, RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

Sometime in the last couple of days, when I wasn’t paying attention, this blog passed the 60,000 hits mark. Thanks y’all.

Read More