William Eaton

A Week of Reading: 30 September-6 October 2012

September 30, 2012 by William Eaton

From Maryam Moeini-Meybodi, Zeteo Publicity/Outreach Coordinator 30 September 2012 The first thing I saw this morning was the below quote from Marc and Angel Hack Life‘s website. After a long and busy week, this was the first thing I needed to see: It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you aren’t really living at all – you’re merely existing. You cannot always wait for the perfect time; sometimes you must dare to jump. Sometimes all you need […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: courage, dreams, poetry, proverb, Rainer Maria Rilke, spirituality, Thoreau, women

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A (Short) Week of Reading: 11-15 September 2012

September 11, 2012 by William Eaton

From Paul Kelly, Zeteo Chief Copy Editor 11 September 2012 I read in today’s Guardian about proposed UK legislation regarding evidence given in civil trials of those claiming damages against the government for rendition and the abuse suffered in those places of confinement, including but not limited to Guantanamo Bay. The new legislation would allow members of the intelligence services to give evidence in secret, to protect themselves and their political superiors, all in the name of protecting state secrets. […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Holocaust, human rights, James Joyce, Northern Ireland, poetry, torture, Ulysses, United Kingdom, United Nations

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A Week of Reading: 4-10 September 2012

September 9, 2012 by William Eaton

Reading 4-10 September 2012 (ZiR) Texts William Eaton has been pleased to spend time with this week [One in an ongoing series of posts. For the full series see Zeteo is Reading.] 4 September 2012 The Summer 2012 issue of The Hedgehog Review, . . . excellent “conceptual history” of “sustainability” by the issue editor, Joshua J. Yates, and an equally engaging piece on “The Historical Production (and Consumption) of Unsustainability,” by Lafayette College professor Benjamin R. Cohen. From the latter: […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Catch-22, death, Ezra Pound, Habermas, sexuality, sustainability, technology

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For Want of Wonder

July 27, 2012 by William Eaton

For Want of Wonder By Jeffrey M. Barnes A review of Floating Gold: A Natural (& Unnatural) History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) [One] continually finds [one]self shimmering between wondering at (the marvels of nature) and wondering whether (any of this could possibly be true). And it’s that very shimmer, the capacity for such delicious confusion . . . that may constitute the most blessedly wonderful thing about being human. So wrote Lawrence Wechsler in […]

Categories: Review • Tags: ambergris, perfume, whales

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The Congo and Hammarskjöld

June 10, 2012 by William Eaton

The Price of Uranium: the Congo and Hammarsköld By Paul Kelly There is a common theme in Congolese history: the same exploitative impulse which defined King Léopold’s Congo, carried on in spite of independence, and has continued unbroken to this day. The biggest losers throughout have been the Congolese people; the biggest winners, the multinational mining companies. A review of Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, The Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, by Susan Williams (Columbia University Press, 2012) […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Congo, Hammarskjold, neo-colonialism, United Nations

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Sutra as Power Play

May 10, 2012 by William Eaton

Sutra as Power Play By William Eaton A review of The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun-Huang Manuscript translated by Philip B. Yampolsky and Readings of the Platform Sutra, edited by Morten Schlutter and Stephen F. Teiser (both from Columbia University Press, 2012) {click for pdf} As a result of the Platform Sutra, Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch (638-713 CE), has come to be regarded as one the founders of the school of Chinese Chan Buddhism, […]

Categories: Review • Tags: class warfare, sutra, Zen

James Watt & Intellectual Property

April 30, 2012 by William Eaton

James Watt Did Not Want Information to Be Free By Clifford D. Conner What was that most powerful idea that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution? The idea of latent heat? Thermodynamics? Steam power? No, it was the idea that an inventor’s innovations could be considered property deserving the protection of law that provided the incentive—the “fuel of interest”—for inventors to invent, and which thereby set into motion the “miracle of sustainable innovation” that began with the Industrial Revolution and […]

Categories: Review • Tags: England, Industrial Revolution, intellectual property, invention

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American Atomization

April 11, 2012 by William Eaton

The Atomization of America and Its Popular Music Culture Todd Rongstad A significant cultural shift in the American community is underway that is reflected in dramatic form by a comparative consideration of popular music and its cultural processes over the last century. A fundamentally singular popular culture of the twentieth century is atomizing into infinite parts in the twenty-first. At the same time, we are in the midst of rapid change in popular music culture relative to consumer behavior […]

Categories: Article, Spring 2012 Issue • Tags: music, music industry, popular music, technology, Walter Benjamin

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What the Market Will Bear, Occupy Wall Street poster by Roger Peet

The Scandal of Democracy

April 11, 2012 by William Eaton

The Scandal of Democracy Chaotic Thoughts on the Occupied Squares By Pablo Bustinduy Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all — Hesiod, Theogony (II 116) Zeteo asked me to write a piece about the relations between Occupy Wall Street and the 15M, a political movement which erupted in Spain a few months before the events of New York. What follows, however, is not a list of affinities and discrepancies between […]

Categories: Essay, Spring 2012 Issue • Tags: chaos, democracy, Dewey, Hesiod, Occupy Wall Street, Plato, Spain

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Author Archives: William Eaton

A Week of Reading: 30 September-6 October 2012

A (Short) Week of Reading: 11-15 September 2012

A Week of Reading: 4-10 September 2012

For Want of Wonder

The Congo and Hammarskjöld

Sutra as Power Play

James Watt & Intellectual Property

American Atomization

The Scandal of Democracy