What is the first question people ask when you tell them what you do? Are there common misconceptions or generalizations that people make? How do you tactfully and/or humorously correct them? [more inside]
posted on Apr 28, 2008 - 152 answers

I am interested in the mimetic and narrative capacities of artefacts, how cultural remnants transmit information through time and how meaning is translated once an artefact is re-appropriated or examined from a new perspective. I have several avenues of study at the moment (a list in extended explanation), but would like some more ideas. Areas of critical theory, linguistics, evolutionary psychology and poetics are all relevant. [more inside]
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - 12 answers

Is there a word for: expecting to feel grief or ache of conscience and then not feeling it? [more inside]
posted on Jan 23, 2008 - 22 answers

I am searching for examples of The Infinite, or the immeasurably large, in our mythologies and archetypes. I am also interested in the categories of Truth which came out of the emergence of Western, ontological thought. Does the trust in a rationally conceivable reality deny us the infinity of the mythological realm? By rooting ourselves in the present, and denying atemporal mythologies, do we also deny the infinite origins from where we came? [more inside]
posted on Nov 28, 2007 - 22 answers

Name That Thing! You know that feeling you get sometimes when you wonder what would happen if you did something outrageous- punched a cop, stepped off a building, peed on the dinner table? No? Well, I'm sure I'm not the only one, because both Daniel Clowes (in Eightball) and P.G. Wodehouse (in Carry On, Jeeves) mention it. The problem is, what do you call it? Does any culture have a word for this? I certainly can't think of an (American) English word or phrase shorter than "You know that feeling when...", etc.
posted on Sep 21, 2006 - 75 answers

What is the nature of the relationship between thought and language? [more inside]
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - 30 answers

What is the label for an entity or idea which began as nothing and came to have identity through its own fictionalisation? That is, notions diametrically opposed to 'simulacra' - in that the entity has no referent to begin with... [more inside]
posted on Feb 21, 2006 - 20 answers