The morning Lull Report …

… courtesy of Dave Lull:



… Well, yes and no: The University Bookman: Pop Culture Mysticism.

The popular culture is exploding with art, creativity, and mysticism. And in response conservatives get an occasional Star Trek joke from Jonah Goldberg.

I'm 72, which makes me a first-generation rock-'n'-roller, and I have a very nice collection of real punk rock 45s — people like the Pork Dukes and Flux of Pink Indians. But pop culture these days does not impress me very much. I was in an luncheonette recently and the TV was on some music channel and the songs — Justin Bieber followed by Lady Gaga and the like —all sounded manufactured and pre-fab. As for films, Gravity was OK, but I guess I missed the mysticism.



… Looking for a hammer: A Mighty Wind.



… Indeed: The Best Sherlock Holmes Parody Ever: Firesign Theatre’s The Giant Rat of Sumatra.



… In case you wondered: Are We Our Brains?

… there is a problem with the idea expressed in the title. The statement “we are our brains” may give Swaab the freedom to roam but it is obviously false, the kind of glib reductionism into which popular science so often descends. If I met your brain on the street I wouldn’t know you and you wouldn’t know me. We are our arms, legs, eyes, heart; we are our friends, and the cities and fields in which we walk. To say these are all mediated by the brain is a reprise of the geneticists’ claim that we are our genes or the physicists’ that we are all stardust. In short, it is to say nothing. … [Swaab's] book is 70% fascinating and 30% infuriating.