b.rox

Choice quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Gilles Deleuze: Overlooking many important nuances, we can say that Deleuze’s basic notion is that in all realms of being intensive morphogenetic processes follow differential virtual multiplicities to produce localized and individuated actual substances with extensive properties. Simply put, the actualization of the virtual proceeds [...]

It’s not often that I see a cat with its paws in the water. Maybe it thinks it’s a raccoon? My boss commented that strays must be desperate for water. The huge downpour last night ended a long dry spell, but I took these pix yesterday morning, well before it rained. This is not a [...]

Oops, time is getting away from me, but good things are happening. I also posted this on the FOLC site, but frankly my blog gets more traffic. See, we’re planning to do this year’s hike of the Lafitte Corridor in small groups instead of one monolithic horde. To pull that off we need a critical [...]

Another advantage of sickness — it can be a good excuse to go on a sobriety binge. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m sick my desire to drink alcohol and caffeine diminishes severely. I don’t want anything to make my recovery longer. Actually, let me make a liar of myself. In the [...]

I started this list on August 25, 2005, just a few days before we evacuated in advance of Katrina. I’ve added to it slowly over the years and finally I have seven items, enough for a respectable list. The reason it took me so long is because, as we all know, being sick sucks. But [...]

Dear Persephone, Thanks for sharing a wonderful Equinox with us yesterday. We decorated eggs and had an egg hunt and watered your tree (which we planted on the last vernal equinox) and went on a nature walk and you even put on some bunny ears (sent in the mail by your grandmother) and hopped around [...]

It really pains me to write it, but this situation in Japan seems horribly familiar. It’s like the Japanese people are getting hit with a combination of Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans and the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster — all at the same time, and quite clearly worse. I don’t see a lot [...]

What with all the bedrest I’ve been catching up on my reading. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution & Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond My rating: 5 of 5 stars I first became aware of Jared Diamond while having lunch in Tampere in the summer of 2001. I was there in Finland for [...]

In April, I’ll be making a presentation to a special interest group of the AERA titled “The Role of Blogs in the Rebuilding of New Orleans.” My plan is to tell five separate stories that have emerged in, around, through or about the local blogosphere since the flooding of the city in 2005. I thought [...]

I’m quoted in this here article in The Gambit.

Strictly for archival purposes: Here’s a snapshot of how my blog looks on the morning of March 14, 2010. This is the main page, showing the twenty (I think) most recent posts. Of course, this is an absurdly tall and skinny image, 762 pixels wide by 22,721 pixels tall. If you want to see any [...]

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I like science fiction. I like Caribbean cultures. But I’ve never looked for the intersection of the two. Actually, now I think about it, I have encountered lots of science fictional themes in reggae lyrics. But certainly I never thought to look for a [...]

Thirteen tracks for my convalescence (and yours) including music by Aleatoric, Donald Joyce and Guanaco. Relax, take a nap and enjoy.

Or would that be Mardi Mince? I never completely recovered from the cold I caught in late January. I only missed one day of work, and I felt well enough that my general routine was not disrupted, but I could not quite kick that last stage. I kept coughing up little bits of phlegm, but [...]

I imagine anyone reading this post today will be from outside New Orleans. Here it’s Mardi Gras, and people have other things to do. So for all those people in the rest of America, where it’s just another Tuesday, I offer the following mix for your amusement. My boss challenged me to whip up an [...]

I remember when chin straps used to be deployed in the general vicinity of the chin. Often they’d be a little too short to reach the chin itself, giving an appearance of military severity — but this just looks ridiculous to me. Seriously, what’s up with that?

Since I spent so much time bellyaching here about our cashflow problems, I thought I should at least report some recent tidbits of good news. We did not run out of money at the end of February. Granted, it’s a short month, but I think our austerity measures are paying off. I did our taxes [...]

Misery loves company, and this year I’ve got plenty. To recap ever-so-briefly: Over the last few decades, all the big parades have been consolidated onto what’s now known as the “traditional uptown route” — except one, the biggest of ‘em all, the gaudy spectacle known as Endymion. It’s the one time the festive spirit of [...]

The Thursday before Mardi Gras is one of my favorite times to catch some parades. This year we had a multiplicity of invitations Thursday from a variety of friends who live in the vicinity of the uptown parade route. With so much hospitality on offer it was a tough call, but we eventually made our [...]