Comments on: Milan: now 10110, binary-wise

By: B

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:22:00 +0000

Well, I hope I keep dying for a while.

By: Tristan Laing

Tristan Laing — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:18:00 +0000

To the problem of isolating the time (event) at which we first come to realize our own impending death, I am not at all surprised our inability locate this point. It seems quite obvious to me that very few of us, perhaps none, have actually grasped our own death in the sense explained. Initially and for the most part, when we are confronted with death we are confronted with it as something objectivly present - such as a ball or the winning of a sports competition. Such objectivly present things or states come and go, and do not belong to us primordially and for as long as we are as death does. “As soon as man is born, he is old enough to die”, but initially and for the most part, so long as death is understood as something objectivly present which is not at this point “here”, (we would say ‘close’, but what we would mean is ‘here’ in the sense of death being a present possibility), the impendingness of our own death is covered over. Death, understood as such, need never be grasped in its inevitability that we are so quick to assert, because it is never-yet a real possibility for us (and if it is, it is a transient possibilty which only exists at certain times, ex) “I could have died back there”).

Death is a perticularly important possibility to be recognized because it is the only possibility which we posess which is non-relational - entirely our own, and cannot be taken away. (Formally, our birth is also a possibility like this, except since we are always already born at the time of contemplating our birth, it is no longer possibility but actuality. At the point in which our birth is but a possiblity for us there is no ‘us’ there for it to be a possibility for). The “realization of death’ as you refer to here would be something like grasping death not as the “I am going to die”, but as “It is part of my very constitution to die - dying is something I am doing all the time and my perishing is always an immediate possibility.” This perishing, or demise however, by which I mean the biological end of “life”, will not exactly constitute “death” but rather the end of death because one will no longer be there to be dying.

By: Milan

Milan — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:17:00 +0000

And happy birthday!

By: mpi

mpi — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:10:00 +0000

Vivian,

My apologies. You would have been my next guess, actually.

Cool luck weathering the Ottawa cold

By: Vivian

Vivian — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:16:00 +0000

Heya Milan :)

Ok… you didn’t guess right about who I am. It’s Vivian from POLI 464 :) Remember the clue about order and the muddy track pants? I was the only one to graduate with the same degree as you, and so I was right behind you for convocation :) …which is why I said i was one behind you all the time :) ..and of course being right behind you I saw the muddy track pants quite well ;)

Thanks for wishing me happy birthday :) Mother Nature seems to have given me a special gift by reversing the weather between Ottawa and Vancouver just for my birhtday! It’s a balmy
Vancouver-like 10 Degrees here in Ottawa (where it’s been -5 to -10 degrees for the last two weeks…and this is expected to resume after today) ..and in Vancouver, it’s a very Ottawa-like 1 Degree and snowing!

I miss Vancouver…you are truly right about it being chillier here than it is in Oxford…Ottawa is apparantly the coldest capital city in the world…even colder than Moscow! Brrr!

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:33:00 +0000

Many happy returns of yesterday!

By: Milan

Milan — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:04:00 +0000

May Canada’s 38th parliament rest in peace: to be remembered, perhaps, as the fifth most short lived in the history of the nation.

By: MeFi

MeFi — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:47:00 +0000

The Canadian government has fallen.

The Liberals just lost a non-confidence vote and elections are set for January. In Etobicoke, Ontario, Michael Ignatieff, Harvard Professor of Human Rights and Author is set to run. Will this be the opening moves of a new intellectual Prime Minister? How will his views on humanitarian intervention and the idea of a lesser evil play out?

By: Milan

Milan — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:23:00 +0000

For the benefit of you and any would-be assasins, here are some pictures of me. I hope I shall see you at the party.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:15:00 +0000

I shall try to keep an eye out for you at the department party, but I am a) short-sighted and b) useless at faces…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:49:00 +0000

Happy birthday. As a gift, find enclosed one (1) joke about Soviet Russia:

Question: What has four feet and twenty-four teeth?
Answer: A crocodile.
Question: What has twenty-four feet and four teeth?
Answer: The Politburo

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 05:35:00 +0000

May you live to be 1100100!