Log24

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Gropius Moritat…

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:00 am

Continued from other posts so tagged.

"Was ist Raum, wie können wir ihn
 erfassen und gestalten?"

Walter Gropius,

Another approach to changing the game

See also a search here  for a phrase related to 
last night's Country Music Association awards 
speech by Reba McEntire — "Rule the World."

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Trends

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:04 am

"The philosopher Jerry Fodor was important for the same reason
you’ve probably never heard of him: he was unimpressed,
to put it politely, by the intellectual trends of the day."

—  Stephen Metcalf in The New Yorker , Dec. 12, 2017

See also "The French Invasion," a Dec. 11 Quarterly Conversation
essay about Derrida in Baltimore in 1966, and the Dec. 10 posts
in this  journal tagged Interlacing Derrida. (The deplorable Derrida
trend is apparently still alive in Buffalo.)

According to Metcalf, Fodor's "occasional review-essays in the L.R.B. 
were masterpieces of a plainspoken and withering sarcasm. To Steven
Pinker’s suggestion that we read fiction because ' it supplies us with a
mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday,' for
instance, Fodor replied, ' What if it turns out that, having just used the ring
that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my
new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to
continue to be immortal and rule the world? ' "

In the Fodor-Pinker dispute, my sympathies are with Pinker.

Related material — Google Sutra (the previous Log24 post) and earlier posts
found in a Log24 search for Ring + Bear + Jung —

Four Colours and Waiting for Logos.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Sunday June 8, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am
 
CHANGE
 TO BELIEVE IN
 


Part I:

NY Lottery June 7, 2008: Mid-day 925, Evening 016

Part II:

I Ching Hexagram 16

16

Thus the ancient kings made music
In order to honor merit,
And offered it with splendor
To the Supreme Deity,
Inviting their ancestors to be present.

When, at the beginning of summer, thunder– electrical energy– comes rushing forth from the earth again, and the first thunderstorm refreshes nature, a prolonged state of tension is resolved. Joy and relief make themselves felt. So too, music has power to ease tension within the heart and to loosen the grip of obscure emotions. The enthusiasm of the heart expresses itself involuntarily in a burst of song, in dance and rhythmic movement of the body. From immemorial times the inspiring effect of the invisible sound that moves all hearts, and draws them together, has mystified mankind. Rulers have made use of this natural taste for music; they elevated and regulated it. Music was looked upon as something serious and holy, designed to purify the feelings of men. It fell to music to glorify the virtues of heroes and thus to construct a bridge to the world of the unseen. In the temple men drew near to God with music and pantomimes (out of this later the theater developed). Religious feeling for the Creator of the world was united with the most sacred of human feelings, that of reverence for the ancestors. The ancestors were invited to these divine services as guests of the Ruler of Heaven and as representatives of humanity in the higher regions. This uniting of the human past with the Divinity in solemn moments of religious inspiration established the bond between God and man. The ruler who revered the Divinity in revering his ancestors became thereby the Son of Heaven, in whom the heavenly and the earthly world met in mystical contact. These ideas are the final summation of Chinese culture. Confucius has said of the great sacrifice at which these rites were performed: "He who could wholly comprehend this sacrifice could rule the world as though it were spinning on his hand."

—  Richard Wilhelm, commentary
    on Hexagram 16 of the I Ching

 

Part III:

The Dance

Song 'The Dance' performed by Tony Arata, who wrote it

See also 9/25.
 

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Thursday February 15, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:25 am
Pop!

From “Music and Lyrics” (2007)

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, Hollywood released a romantic comedy, “Music and Lyrics,” based on a fictional reality-TV show called “Battle of the 80’s Has-Beens.”

This, along with the Feb. 13 Log24 entry touching on both pop science and pop music, and the fact that today is the anniversary of the 1988 death of physicist Richard Feynman, suggests the following exercise:

Compare and contrast the lives and works of Feynman (May 11, 1918 – Feb. 15, 1988) and the late Carl Sagan (Nov. 9, 1934 – Dec. 20, 1996).

(Being dead, both are, in a sense, has-beens, and both were popular in the 1980’s.)

I personally regard Feynman as one of science’s saints, and Sagan as, shall we say, a non-saint.  For some related reflections on pop science and pop music, see the five Log24 entries ending on Michaelmas 2002.  And then there is popcorn–

A 1980’s Hollywood ending
that Feynman may have liked:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070215-Popcorn.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Click on picture for details.

 “… slow-motion romp
   through the popcorn…
Tears for Fears’
‘Everybody Wants to
Rule the World’ ramps up
on the soundtrack….”
Credits.

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