Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sketch as Stretch

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Francois Lachance

I admire his sequencing. Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel provides a lovely set up to his discussion of de Maistre’s Travel around My Bedroom (found in the chapter “On Habit” in the section “Return”) by in the … Continue reading →

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Fantasia on a Materialist Epiphany

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Francois Lachance

Unfolding the mind of one youthful version of Alan Turing To his great surprise his materialism is not so sad. He moves with greater ease and resilience and less fear. It is as though his eyes have suddenly come into … Continue reading →

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Wall of Brass Keys

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Francois Lachance

The character, Kurt Gödel, is in Paris, stop-over on his way back to Vienna, and is in some distress. Out of this unease peers a cinematic eye. He hid in a small hotel of single rooms near the train station, … Continue reading →

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Two Views of Tipping Fountain

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Francois Lachance

First an observation on space Scrivener Public Square Designed by Toronto architect Stephen Teeple and named after the late MPP Margaret Scrivener, it includes a ‘tipping fountain’ by artist Robert Fones and a series of small, angular streams and ponds … Continue reading →

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Hands, Hands, Hands

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Francois Lachance

A pair of enumerations from an essay on hands. It’s because of our independently moving, finely adjustable fingers and very mobile, opposable thumbs that we can both grip and finely manipulate: wield scalpels, plait braids, shell peas, tie knots, pluck … Continue reading →

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Contemplating Destinations

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Francois Lachance

It reads like an homage to the gazetteer form. Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens that hang in rows from the terminal ceilings to announce the departure and arrival of flights, whose … Continue reading →

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Work, Carnival & the Other

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Francois Lachance

W.H. Auden’s essay on Loren Eiseley (The New Yorker, 1970) serves at the introduction to Eiseley’s collection The Star Thrower. After celebrating the levelling influence of Carnival, Auden muses on the balanced life. A satisfactory human life, individually or collectively, … Continue reading →

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Respect of Not Knowing

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Murmur is a novel by Will Eaves that is patterned on the life of Alan Turing. It’s a plunge into the mindset of a character receiving treatments for chemical castration and in passing is a meditation on how one makes … Continue reading →

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Time & Space: chronobiopolitics

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Knowledge keeper, Kim Wheatley refers to these acknowledgements as “necessities” not “niceties”. The sign reads: The TDSB Outdoor Education Schools acknowledge the land that we are situated on is the traditional territories of the Aboriginal founding Peoples of the Great … Continue reading →

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Swing Shift

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Annie Lowrey Smart money: Why the world should embrace universal basic income in the Globe and Mail So easy to miss the negation These studies – as well as many others – counter many of the most common objections to … Continue reading →

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