Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
The Lore of Scriptology: Summary & Reflections (Lecture 6a, Part 2)
Previous articles from this lecture include: Scriptology: The Lore of Alphabets and Writing Systems Introduction and Overview (Lecture 1) The main point I want to make is that writing is a tool, an invention that transcends any particular field—truly inter-disciplinary. Gelb called this “Grammatology” but a postmodernist philosopher, Jacques Derrida, has also used that term […]
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Scriptology: The Lore of Alphabets and Writing Systems Introduction and Overview (Lecture 1)
(This is the first part of the first lecture—an introductory overview. See also: Very Early History of Writing The Early History of Writing Mid-History of Writing Further Developments (Typography, Calligraphy, etc.) Invented Writing Systems Codes and Playing with Alphabets Summary and Further Considerations Note also, written several years earlier, an overall introduction to Scriptology elsewhere on my website, […]
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Jnana Yoga as Spiritual Practice
Jnana Yoga is the activity of using study, contemplation, thinking, and dialoguing about the spiritual foundations of our life. As I understand it, it should be recognized as a type of spiritual practice. I think this works for me, at least. My wife and I read together at bedtime—we take turns: one of us flosses […]
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Premature Closure: Some Thoughts
In a book I’ve recently begun to read, Exploring Happiness: from Aristotle to Brain Science, by Sissela Bok (2010, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), I was struck by the author’s use of the idea of premature closure. That term is also used by Erik H. Erikson as a pitfall of adolescence. It means that […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Follies, Psychological Literacy | No Comments
Roman Numerals??
In the Newsweek of 2/14/11, that issue under the table of contents says, Volume CLVII, No. 7. I was struck by the idea that this re-modeled up-to-date newsmagazine was still using Roman Numerals. I wonder what their rationale is? I mean, Roman numeration didn’t even know about the value of the zero! (The zero in […]
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High on Anxiety—Revisited
Gary Schwartz wrote a column in the February 14 Newsweek titled High on Anxiety. This is a most interesting problem that deserves much deeper investigation. What people do may not correlate with what is wise to do. Indeed, many subjects in psychological researchers may be the kinds of students whose idea of fun is getting […]
Posted in Current Events, Psychological Literacy, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments
The Problem of Authority in Religion
Newsweek, February 14, 2011 , page 48, involves an article that’s sort of a book review of two recently released books that invite a re-evaluation of the common understandings of sexual mores as presented in the Bible—mainly in the Old Testament. What interested me was a statement near the end of the article. Albert Mohler, […]
Posted in Current Events, Essays and Papers, Spirituality and Philosophy | 1 Comment
The Roots of My Interest in Scriptology
I’ve been making a series of presentations about scriptology, the very inter-disciplinary not-yet-officially formed field that deals with writing and associated technologies. It has been a sort of hobby of mine since the early 1970s, though I now realize that I’d been somewhat sensitized to the whole enterprise through a number of blessings (as I […]
Posted in Autobiographical, Scriptology, Whassup? | No Comments
Bibliography on Alphabets and Writing Systems
(Please also see my comments on “Scriptology“) Also sections near the bottom on: codes the history of numbers lettering, typography, calligraphy literacy Mayan Adkins, Lesley & Roy. (2000). The keys of Egypt: The obsession to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. New York: HarperCollins. Aguirre, Manuel. (1961). La escritura en el mundo. Madrid: Libreria Reliex. (mongol, semphore, berber, p 123, […]
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Re-Juvenile
Thinking of Christopher Noxon’s book, “Re-Juvenile,” (New York: Crown Publishing, 2006), generally I enjoyed it. I think the author speaks to the hunger for a re-integration of the best elements of child-like-ness, as I talked about in my book, The Art of Play, now being revised. However, the language is problematical. I described the value […]
Posted in Book Reviews, Psychological Literacy, Wisdom-ing | 3 Comments