61–70 of 137 posts
Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day.
I smell a replacement for the birthday problem in introductory probability courses.
For those who haven't read anything by Eco but want something more digestible on a Friday evening than a novel, I highly recommend his essay Ur-Fascism. Eco was brilliant and had a clear-eyed view on the lasting impact of the Middle Ages into today... and it's pretty clear how growing up in a fascist society impacted his views.
http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf
His reflections on fascism remain as important as ever.
Umberto Eco on operating systems and religion, in 1994: The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells th…
Did he ever say something about Linux?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really doubt we know very much about how people thought back then. There are many filters between what was thought, who knew how to write it down, the form people used to express thought in written form, what happened to be copied or survive. Ex: People don't actually believe in Santa Clause, but if you randomly chose 10,000 pages to represent US thought from 1800 to now. Them handed them to scholars in the future…
Is it not true that Santa Claus is the major religion? Many don't believe, but nearly all worship just the same.
Umberto Eco on operating systems and religion, in 1994: The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum" of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells th…
http://cliffarnold.com/macvdos.pdf
The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS
Published in Espresso on September 30th, 1994
Umberto Eco
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Plus it's as brilliant a takedown of conspiracy-theory-thinking as ever the world will see." How does it compare on that score to The Illuminatus Trilogy[1], written more than a decade before Eco's book? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminatus
The Illuminatus Trilogy is a couple of guys getting stoned and screwing around with various goofy ideas. Like a lot of postmodern stuff, it doesn't take much of anything, especially its subject seriously. Foucault's Pendulum is a very smart guy who knows a lot, pointing out that, if you peel an onion you won't find anything in the center.
We read Name of the Rose in my 10th grade English class and it was a tome that challenged us all for the couple of weeks that we pored over it. I love that book. I've read it one other time since then and it's amazing the number of layers that continue to appear when you read it a second (and, presumably, a third) time. When you spend so much time dissecting somebody's work, you develop a sort of relationship with th…