Non-Professor Kierkegaard

I had a somewhat timely reminder today of Kierkegaard's attitude to academia – or, at least, his attitude to some of those in it. He is reported to have said that 'even if you offered me a place in the great edifice of the system, I would rather be the kind of thinker who just sits on a branch'. Kierkegaard famously loathed professional philosophy; he hated professors. 'What's the difference between a thinker and a professor?' he said. 'Take away the paradox and you have a professor!' Increasingly, I see his point.

See also: this at one of my other sites.

In A Man's Mind's Eye - 1

Looking through my folder of miscellaneous images, I find that I have a few images in a similar vein. Here is the first.

Not forlorn perhaps but still disappointing

Back in January I described how sad it was to have seen the old Borders bookshop in Charing Cross Road, empty. Today, I've been in Oxford and seen what has become of the Borders that used to be there. It's now a Tesco supermarket – and virtually next door to Sainbury's. I am of the opinion that a town can have too many supermarkets but it can never have too many bookshops.

A funny thing happened on the way back. As my train approached its next stop, it was announced that 'We will shortly be arriving into Leamington S-P-A'. (Amusing but I do wish they would say arriving 'at' though.)

Tessellation

This is inspired by the iPod app 'Tessellator' by Yuji Katsuma. (See: http://tessellator-iphone.appspot.com.) I did it with pre-prepared 1x1, 3x3 nd 5x5 squares in the spreadsheet OpenOffice Calc.

A Quote About Nothing

'It takes a long time to understand nothing'

Edward Dahlberg

The eyes – and maybe the lips – have it.

I was taken aback by the picture on the cover of last week's Radio Times. There was something not quite right about Christina Hendricks's face. (Not that I've studied it – or any other part of her – in any detail.) I just looked at it as a face and quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't so much a face as an exaggeration of a face.
On the cover of the Radio Times, her eyes seemed just too big. So I've searched for a picture with which to make a comparison. Below is a copy of the cover picture and a clipping I made from a video capture at a website called 'Admiring Christina Hendricks'. I think my conclusion is justified. She has, in the vernacular, been 'photoshopped' - and not only her eyes. I think that her lips may have been enlarged, too. Not to mention how the corners of her mouth seem to have been turned up.

See what you think.