{"id":1125,"date":"2009-08-08T10:57:59","date_gmt":"2009-08-08T17:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=1125"},"modified":"2009-08-08T10:57:59","modified_gmt":"2009-08-08T17:57:59","slug":"are-you-what-you-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2009\/08\/08\/are-you-what-you-search\/","title":{"rendered":"are you what you search?"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Andy Baio, a Reddit user claims to have extracted the search history<\/a> of the murderer in Pennsylvania. If it’s not a hoax, it’s a very selective excerpt<\/a> that includes: age of consent laws, photos of a “public housing ghetto” and Peggy Morrison costumes.<\/p>\n

this ongoing crowd-sourced exegetic<\/a> shrink session is pleasurable for its participants in large part because it exploits the hope that our technology is now good enough to render a mind transparent. <\/p>\n

it’s not. <\/p>\n

our inability to make sense of bad deeds \u2013 or, even, perhaps, of madness \u2013\u00a0is not from a wont of materials. some of the most atrocious misdeeds in our history are very well<\/a> documented. what stands in the way of knowing the “why” is not a technical limitation nor a lack of data. it’s impossible to make sense of a logic that we deem immoral because our reason is intimately tied to our morality. as it should be.<\/p>\n

in other words: we can’t stop trying but we should also be certain that we can never succeed.<\/p>\n

related: the guilty pleasures of this latest exegesis are discussed in this thread<\/a> on MetaFilter. from 2008, an essay titled Suffering Souls<\/a> in the New Yorker<\/a>: “Dr. Kent Kiehl uses MRI technology to scan prison inmates for signs of pyschopathy in the hope of discovering a treatment.” In 1994, serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s brain was dissected<\/a> after his execution \u2013\u00a0it was deemed normal. in 16th century Padua, the public dissection of criminals<\/a> was entertainment, albeit not entirely for moralistic reasons.<\/p>\n

finally, here are the Google searches I made to write this entry: exegesis, standard operation procedure movie, brain dissected to understand crime, dissection crime brain 19th century, public dissections as theater, dissection john wayne gacy. i guess those aren’t very damning. unless the crime of which i’m accused is being a geek. in which case: nolo contendere.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

via Andy Baio, a Reddit user claims to have extracted the search history of the murderer in Pennsylvania. If it’s not a hoax, it’s a very selective excerpt that includes: age of consent laws, photos of a “public housing ghetto” and Peggy Morrison costumes. this ongoing crowd-sourced exegetic shrink session is pleasurable for its participants…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}