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Ghost Dance
Speaker: Big Picture Date: Monday 9th August 2010
Ghost Dance

Is Jacques Derrida a ghost?

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Network: Programme Notes

     Network: Programme Notes (pdf) An analysis of the film, and a discussion of its political context. For all Big Picture events we produce our own programme notes, with ful
Posted on 2010-07-28 20:46:53 in Big Picture

A Howard Roark building

     Pastiching the International Style in The Fountainhead The Fountainhead may not be a film 'about' modern architecture at all, but it certainly features a lot of modernist buildings in the form of plans, maquettes and p
Posted on 2010-06-05 17:11:20 in Big Picture

The Fountainhead: programme notes and a short account of the discussion

     The Fountainhead: Programme Notes (pdf) For all Big Picture events we produce our own programme notes, with full cast and production information. They’re free with th
Posted on 2010-06-02 11:24:04 in Big Picture

Wittgenstein: programme notes

     An analysis of the film, and a brief summary of the history of Wittgenstein's thought.
Posted on 2010-05-20 19:12:58 in Big Picture

Gattaca: programme notes

     An analysis of the film, and some news stories examining contemporary genetic inequity.
Posted on 2010-05-20 19:10:42 in Big Picture

Waking Life: programme notes

     An analysis of the film, and some (after)lives of the characters who appear in it.
Posted on 2010-05-20 19:09:18 in Big Picture

London's ears are burning

     I'm browsing an old Rough Guide to London left on our bookshelves by someone I can't remember who passed through London and our flat. There is something pleasurable about reading guidebooks when not travelling, and reading one about your home is like surreptitiously listening in on a conversation about yourself.
Posted on 2010-04-12 14:55:01 in nathan @ big ideas

Religious Programming, Secularism and Bad Arguments

     The National Secular Society put out an alarming press release last week insisting that the "BBC must not become an evangelical wing of the Church of England". Leaving aside whether the C of E now has wings, how great is this risk and how do the NSS's arguments stack up?
Posted on 2010-02-17 04:35:38 in This Sentence No Verb

Risk and Research

     Mary Beard's latest Don's Life column refers to the current culture of risk aversion in university research funding. As someone who's putting together a funding application for the ESRC (with almost zero chance of success, I should add) her words seem absolutely right to me: the only way sensibly to be able to conform to the AHRC guidelines is to apply for money for research you've already done
Posted on 2010-02-15 07:18:28 in This Sentence No Verb

Care Needed When Campaigning With Indexicals

     Just a quick note on the Conservatives' latest election poster. It's not that it's negative: I'm fine with negative campaigning, and I think the Tories, having been in opposition for a long time now, have every right to score points off the incumbent administration's record.
Posted on 2010-02-15 04:50:22 in This Sentence No Verb

Emancipation from What by Whom?

     I've been reading a fair bit of radical pedagogy (Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux etc) of late and seeing the word "emancipation" so many times that it started sticking out of the page and looking wrong. Then I read something in, of all places, Huddleston & Pullum that I think made sense of it for me.
Posted on 2009-12-18 09:52:44 in This Sentence No Verb

An hallucinogenic lecture on London history

     Robert Kingham and Rich Cochrane will be putting on another performance of Align on 22 January 2010 at the Bridewell Theatre in London.
Posted on 2009-11-14 12:39:55 in SitRep

Coming up in 2010

     We've got some great speakers and topics scheduled for 2010. The calendar is filling up fast and here's a taste of what we've got planned.
Posted on 2009-11-14 12:11:06 in SitRep

Reminder: What is psychogeography today?

     Rich Cochrane will be giving a talk about pychogeography at Housmans Bookshop tomorrow. Where: 5 Caledonian Road, King's Cross, London N1 9DX When: Saturday 7 November
Posted on 2009-11-06 09:13:22 in SitRep

Deptford Pastoral

     Yesterday we walked the lower half of the Ravensbourne River in South East London, recording our impressions as we went.
Posted on 2009-11-01 08:14:11 in This Sentence No Verb

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel

     Back in the summer Clare, her brother Mark and I visited the foot tunnel to take some photographs. There had been sometimes over-egged stories about the tunnel's scheduled closure for works over the next year and our main intention was to document some of the details of the fabric of the place, not knowing how much might be "improved" when it re-opened.
Posted on 2009-10-26 09:21:22 in This Sentence No Verb

Get hooked up with a Greek

     Kind of like a philosophical dating agency, this system from Mark Vernon finds your perfect match in ancient Greek philosophy. I've been matched with Zeno of Citium who, given the stoic
Posted on 2009-10-18 11:01:40 in nathan @ big ideas

What is psychogeography today?

     Rich Cochrane will be giving a talk about pychogeography at Housmans Bookshop, London's premier radical bookstore, at 5pm on Saturday 7 November. Admission is free.
Posted on 2009-10-18 09:09:40 in SitRep

A date for your diary

     This year's Big Ideas Christmas Social will be held on Tuesday 15th December. You probably don't want to think about Christmas festivities yet, but just take a moment to put this date in your diary and then you can forget about it all until December.
Posted on 2009-10-18 06:29:24 in SitRep

Is the Theism Debate a Class Conflict?

     I ask because Andrew Brown has claimed it is in his CiF blog, and atheism campaigner Ariane Sherine has strongly disagreed. CiF Belief is an engine that runs on this debate, but it's an angle I hadn't thought of before so I thought it was worth chewing over.
Posted on 2009-10-11 10:34:02 in This Sentence No Verb
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