Century is almost definitely the best 'introduction' to the philosophy of Alain Badiou. Compiled from a set of lectures taking as their subject the 20th Century, it makes for some remarkable reading and gently introduces aspects of his wider philosophical vision. What I'm most struck by is the Lacanian influences and his ability to examine the Century in terms of what it says about itself. It's tantamount to the psychoanalysis of an epoch and illuminates his central thesis that the common thread behind the significant developments of the century is a passion for the real (where the 'real' takes a Lacanian meaning). His mathematically grounded ontology (based on Cantor-fuelled set theory), thoughts on multiplicity and Marxism are also subtly on display in these lectures.

Badiou is passionate, highly readable, succinct and immensely knowledgeable on the literature, visual art, poetry and politics of the Century. He makes seemingly simple, profound statements over and over again whilst examining Brecht, Breton, Mao, Mandelstam, Celan, Mallarme and others. If you've trawled through your fair share of Derrida and Foucault, Badiou is a refreshing, brilliant counterpoint with an astoundingly complete and mature ontology of his own.

I leave you with this drawing by Badiou himself, produced during a lecture entitled 'Truth procedure in politics':

• all,
• any,
• collect,
• detect,
• each,
• find,
• findAll,
• include,
• inject,
• map,
• max,
• member,
• min,
• pluck,
• reject,
• select,
• size,
• sortBy

It's provided as a subclass of the native Array object, but if you want all native Arrays to inherit the enumerable interface (a la Prototype) just add:

Array.prototype = new Enumerable();

var enum = [];
enum.push(0.2);
enum.push(0.3);
enum.each(function(item,index) {
  trace(item + ':' + index);
});

var enum = [];
enum.push({value:'foo'});
enum.push({value:'bar'});
enum.push({value:'camp'});		
var item = enum.find(function(item,index) {
  return item.value == 'bar';
});

var enum = [];
enum.push('foo');
enum.push('bar');
enum.push('camp');	
trace(Math.floor(enum.inject(0,function(strlen,string) {
	return strlen + string.length;
})/enum.size()));

Go ahead and grab the source code, which will find its permanent home at /code, should you want to check back.

See the prototype enumerable API doc for further documentation, as the usage examples are identical in Actionscript 2.0. Thanks to Sam Stephenson of Prototype for the JS port.

Arthur Russell - Another Thought (Keeping Up)

The second release in our series of Tropisms is now available as a high quality download. This one contains the next three Tropisms. Download it here.

Takashi Homma is a japanese photographer. I really like 'Tokyo And My Daughter' and 'Tokyo Suburbia'. He's about to publish a volume which aggregates a selection of his work on Tokyo to date.

Tomita does synth-debussy. Top.

"Physics-Sun" Scientific Production Union in Parkent, Uzbekistan (photo by pluvialis)

- Josef Albers, Fugue (about 1925)

- Henri Nouveau, plastic representation of the Fugue in E Flat Minor by JS Bach, 1928

I'm consistently drawn to expressions of music in other media. Here's two expressions of the structural properties of the Fugue from the Bauhaus period.

Heartbreak live @ Bethnal Green Working Men's Club (Last.fm presents), photo by Russ.

Just perfect.

- Kent Beck, OOPSLA interview

Kent has been the biggest single influence on my programming.

- Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel (full text)

One of my favourite short stories.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, from an interview on bldgblg, Comparative Planetology

Sennett describes craftsmanship as "an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake". It's a great topic, which has come to my mind a lot with respect to software design. I have always viewed programming as a craft, amongst other things. There are reviews from The Times & The Guardian. I've ordered my copy. Grab yours.