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Archives: May 2004
Mon May 31, 2004
Actual good news
Sometimes justice is done.
(Via Dave Barry.)
Soundtrack: Mike Cross, "My Spirit's Willing"
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Chatskele, Chatskele
Chatskele, Chatskele, shpil mir a kaztskele,
Chotsh am orime, Abi a chvatske.
Orim iz nit gut, Orim iz nit gut,
Lomir zich nit shemen mit eygene blut.
Chatskele, Chatskele, play me a kazatskele,
even though we're poor, we can be happy.
Poverty's no good, poverty's no good,
Let's not be ashamed in front of our flesh and blood.
"Kazatskele" is a diminutive of "kazatske," a fast Cossack dance.
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Sun May 30, 2004
Miscellaneous notes
A friend loaned me his DVD of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends: Complete Season 1. I plan to spend the evenings this week studying one of the masterworks of the 20th century. Don't expect a lot of posts from me beyond the daily tune.
Erik asked where to start with Gene Wolfe. I recommend beginning with his short stories and novellas. The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, his first collection, would be my preference, though all are good. (The others are Gene Wolfe's Book of Days, Endangered Species, Storeys from the Old Hotel and Strange Travelers. There is also a small-press collection or two that I haven't seen.)
Someone came here looking for "anti-culture hippie literature." Uh, wrong place. If you should want "pro-culture, anti-hippie literature," I might be able to help you.
If the skies are clear where you are, you might grab your binoculars and do some comet watching.
Some pretty math/physics: Lissajous figures. (Via et cetera.)
Soundtrack: Happy the Man, "I Forgot to Push it"
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Hey! Zhankoye
When you go to Sevastopol,
That's not far from Simferopol,
There you'll find a pretty little town.
Who would need to seek new pleasure,
It's the best by any measure
Called Zhankoye, zhan, zhan, zhan.
Hey Zhan! Hey Zhankoye!
Hey Zhanvili, Hey Zhankoye,
Hey Zhankoye, zhan, zhan zhan.
Zhankoye was a Jewish settlement in Crimea that was obliterated by the Germans in World War II.
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Sat May 29, 2004
The World Turned Upside-Down
A popular title for ballads and tracts during the past several centuries; unsurprisingly, it turned up as the name of a song during the War Between the States.
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Fri May 28, 2004
Gene Wolfe III
Steven linked to Ultan's Library, a site devoted to the study of Gene Wolfe's writing. I came across it a year or two ago; it seemed then to be mostly post-colonial drivel about The Fifth Head of Cerberus, so I didn't bookmark it. The range of articles now seems broader, and it might be worthwhile to spend some time there.
From an interview with Gene Wolfe:
SFR: Do you think that the recent films adequately portrayed the vision you yourself have taken from Tolkien - of life not as it is now but as it could be - a society that extols the values, as you say near the end of your essay, of Freedom, love of neighbor and personal responsibility? Do you believe such a society is possible in today’s world? What would need to change to achieve it?
GW: Sheesh! If such a society existed, today's world wouldn't be today's world. I think the film did the best that it could. As I said, I doubt that any other film will do it better. No film, and no book, is ever entirely successful. We have four gospels because people kept saying, no, that's not quite it. It's a great piece, Mark, but you haven't quite captured....
*****
SFR: How do you feel about the future? What makes you the most hopeful and the most fearful?
GW: Worried. Most hope: the growth of faith. It can be good, and bad too when it leads to fanaticism. Overall, I think it a very good thing. Most fearful: the decay of democracy. "Think of us as your children," one citizen told a presidential candidate. "What are you going to do for us?" Sparta became the most brutal totalitarian state in history. The Nazis were kids in comparison. It happened when rule passed from the kings to the judges, the ephors. That's clearly happening again.
Here are a couple more Wolfe stories online:
Under Hill
Copperhead
Gene Wolfe on The Lord of the Rings
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No flip-flops
A curious place to spend a lunch hour at: StephenEsque.
Here Mr. Stephen Baldwin discusses his need to redecorate:
After the last M.C. Escher fiasco, I needed to find another interior designer to redecorate my house - and fast.
So. Scanning the classifieds section of the local paper, I saw an ad for de Chirico and Co. and decided to call them up. What the hell, I thought, they can't do any worse than the optical illusion I am living in at the moment.
Giorgio de Chirico himself came over with some sketches and unrolled them on the kitchen table. "These are my ideas." he said with a particularly strange Italian accent and a faraway look in his eyes.
"Basically," he told me, "I am thinking of going for the open-plan and no roof look with a Perpetual Night theme. Lots of deep shadows complemented by a palette of melancholy colors and alabaster. A sprinkling of statues would be chic, perhaps an Ariadne or two, you know, on a nice plinth. And why not be devils and scatter a few busts of Julius Caesar here and there. I'm also thinking we should knock down all these walls and replace them with some tasteful Doric columns, and, you know, a few Greek arches and tunnels that lead nowhere, very fall of Ancient Rome. And all the surfaces should slope at weird angles to one another. That's very important. A very lovely effect."
It is no surprise that Mr. Baldwin includes among his heroes the great and deranged Vivian Stanshall, "[o]wner of the world's fruitiest voice."
(Via The Charlock's Shade.)
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Stonewall Jackson's Way
Presumeably this tune, or at least a set of lyrics for it, originated in the Civil War.
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Thu May 27, 2004
Inevitable
Spotted at the bookstore this evening: The Origins of Tolkien's Middle Earth for Dummies.
Soundtrack: Schubert, the "Trout" quintet
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Literary notes
Secret Agent Man on why he can recommend books such as The Handmaid's Tale:
Dystopian literature is more accessible this way than utopian fantasies. To sign on to a utopian vision, you have to share the author's particular worldview in most of its signal aspects. (If I lived in Roddenberry's 24th Century, I'd be a secessionist urging my countrymen to kick those Godless Yankee Starships out of our solar system). To appreciate dystopian literature, however, one only requires some familiarity with the general run of human depravity. Knowing the good is sometimes more difficult than recognizing the bad, and so satisfying dystopian visions can come from all quarters.
Meanwhile Edward at In principio erat Verbum lists some of the works that will need revision should the improvements to the Iliad made in the movie Troy become canonical. These works include The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Inferno and Troilus and Cressida.
Finally, the current "classic" short story at SciFi.com (I hate that name. It's "SF," not "sci-fi," please) is Gene Wolfe's Paul's Treehouse. Frankly, it's not one of my favorites and I'm surprised that the webmasters chose it. I can easily think of a dozen short stories that would be better introductions to Wolfe's storytelling, e.g., "Westwind," "When I Was Ming the Merciless," "Melting," "It's Very Clean," "Kevin Malone," "Procreation," "Feather Tigers," "How the Whip Came Back," "All the Hues of Hell," "Car Sinister, "Straw" or even "Suzanne Delage" -- twelve utterly different stories, some funny, some grim, some thoughtful, all very enjoyable. Wolfe is best known for his multi-volume novels, but he is just as good, or better, at shorter lengths.
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Harriott
Although this one was on the same page as "The Bonnie Dundee," "The Rising of the Moon" and "Gary Owen," it was new to me.
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Wed May 26, 2004
A is for Mick, B is for Francesco
John at TexasBestGrok came across a musical time-waster: assemble an alphabet of bands or musicians you positively like. Here's what I came up with:
Abrahams, Mick
Banco del Mutuo Soccorso
Cynic
Dixie Dregs
Electromagnets
Fairport Convention
Gryphon
Hicks, Dan, and His Hot Licks
Incredible String Band
Jarzombek, Ron
Keaggy, Phil
Legg, Adrian
Magic Elf
New Orleans Klezmer Allstars
Orme, Le
Pogues
Queen
Rare Air
Scott, Raymond
3 Mustaphas 3
U2*
Van der Graaf Generator
Winter, Johnny
Xiannian, Xiao
Yezda Urfa
Zappa, Frank**
I avoided duplicating John's choices (except for one awkward letter), generally preferred the obscure to the familiar, and tried to cover as broad a range of music as possible. I'll be very surprised if anyone reading this has heard all these artists.
*Early stuff only.
**With reservations and careful selection.
Soundtrack: No Strings Attached, "Music for a Found Harmonium"
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Bullwinkle, Betty Boop and Hoppity Hooper
Via The LLama Butchers: Cartoon theme songs. The archive includes the tunes for both The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Bullwinkle Show, not to mention Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Magoo ("Road hog!") and Super Chicken. I couldn't find the themes for Peabody's Improbable Adventures or Fractured Fairy Tales, though.
Soundtrack: "George of the Jungle"
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Wondering
Has anyone heard anything from Chris, the Maine Catholic? It's been over a month since his last post, which was a request for prayers.
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Further and further
This one is making the rounds of St. Blog's again, and I got the same result as before:
The only book which doesn't take place in Narnia at all, per se, you're the story of a voyage to find the end of the world and hopefully the Seven Lost Lords (remember Rhoop!). You contain some of the most unique people and places and beautiful descriptions of the whole series.
Find out which Chronicles of Narnia book you are.
More...
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Under the New Sun
Barbara Nicolosi and Amy Welborn ask:
Who are the Catholic writers today whose work will be read in fifty or a hundred years? Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Tolkien and Chesterton were all stars while they were alive. People knew they were great. Who are the great writers today, whose work will last?
There is one obvious answer: Gene Wolfe. In my arrogant opinion, Wolfe is both the best Catholic writer currently active, probably the best SF writer ever (I need to re-read Wells before I can definitely say Wolfe is better, but I can't think of any other SF writer who has the range, depth and skill of Wolfe) and possibly the best fiction writer alive today.
(I'll write more when I'm home and have the books at hand -- it's lunch time at the office right now.)
Addendum: it may be a few days before I have time to write much. If you've never read Wolfe and are interested, I'd recommend starting with his collections:
The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories
Gene Wolfe's Book of Days (included in Castle of Days)
Endangered Species
Storeys from the Old Hotel
Strange Travelers
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Frog in the Well
Don't worry; there may be more frog tunes to come, but I won't subject you to "Goober Peas."
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Tue May 25, 2004
Mon May 24, 2004
Ah nuh no weh e deh
From a friend: It's not there, eh?.
Here's the Lileks version.
Here's another useful phrase, in 102 languages.
Soundtrack: Schumann, Symphonic Etudes
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An odd shade of yellow
Blooming this week in my garden:
Echinocereus dasyacanthus
(The Mesa Garden seed list claimed that this strain has large yellow flowers. Yeah, right.)
Hybrid tea rose "Tiffany"
An older variety, but still one of the best.
I also recently spent a morning at the local botanical garden with camera and tripod.
Oenothera speciosa
Clematis, I forget which species.
Erik might be interested to know that at Botanica I spotted a bright red hybrid tea rose called "Amalia."
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Sun May 23, 2004
N.B.
I notice that a number of visitors to this site are looking for "Logic Pro crack." I resent paranoid copy-protection schemes, but I loathe more the crackers and warez-users who make dongles and challenge-response authorizations inevitable. I don't know where to find cracked versions of software, and I don't want to know.
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Eight times as weird
I reached another musical milestone the weekend. I've been remixed. One of the KvR regulars put together a song by combining bits of eight entries in this month's music competition, including my "Threnody."
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Loopy
Well, I'm back to what passes for reality around here. Much of the past few days I spent rehearsing a quasi-square dance for the spring dance concert and waiting, and waiting, to go on stage. I also took several rolls of pictures. What took the most time, however, was practicing the flat loop with my home-made lariat. It's not difficult to keep the rope moving once it's going, but starting it first try every time is not so easy. The director thought that it would be effective in the stage business before the squarish dance, though, so I kept at it. I'm happy to say that I was three-for-three in the performances.
Soundtrack: "Le forze d'Hercole/Lo Ballo Dell'Intorcia," Philip Pickett with Richard Thompson & the Fairport Rhythm Section
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Steamboat Quickstep
I've heard this march before under a different name, but I can't remember where or what it was called. It sounds like an Irish jig to me.
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Sat May 22, 2004
Always Welcome Here
Another tune from the Civil War reenactor's collection.
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Fri May 21, 2004
A delight in courtly things
If you're looking for something more substantial to read than comic books, you could do worse than visit The Blind Bard, the weblog of a gentleman who enjoys Beowulf, Icelandic sagas and William Morris. Here he quotes a bit of Yeats:
"Children play at being great and wonderful people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a like dream once; everybody and nobody built up the dream bit by bit, and the ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires.
"I have read in a fabulous book that Adam had but to imagine a bird, and it was born into life, and that he created all things out of himself by nothing more important than an unflagging fancy; and heroes who can make a ship out of a shaving have but little less of the divine prerogatives. They have no speculative thoughts to wander through eternity and waste heroic blood; but how could that be otherwise, for it is at all times the proud angels who sit thinking upon the hill-side and not the people of Eden. One morning we meet them hunting a stag that is 'as joyful as the leaves of a tree in summer-time'; and whatever they do, whether they listen to the harp or follow an enchanter over-sea, they do for the sake of joy, their joy in one another, or their joy in pride and movement; and even their battles are fought more because of their delight in a good fighter than because of any gain that is in victory. They live always as if they were playing a game; and so far as they have any deliberate purpose at all, it is that they may become great gentlemen and be worthy of the songs of poets. It has been said, and I think the Japanese were the first to say it, that the four essential virtues are to be generous among the weak, and truthful among one's friends, and brave among one's enemies, and courteous at all times; and if we understand by courtesy not merely the gentleness the storytellers have celebrated, but a delight in courtly things, in beautiful verse, we understand that it was no formal succession of trials that bound the Fianna to one another. . . "
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Simply Marvel©-ous
Not content with plundering Norse and Egyptian mythology, Marvel Comics has also ripped off Tolkien. Here are the Marvel versions of Aragorn and Sauron. (I suppose that the comic book people could have come up with the names independently, but I doubt it.)
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Duke of York
I have no idea why a British Duke is waltzing around in the middle of the War between the States.
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Thu May 20, 2004
Agony column, traditional ballad-style
From a friend: The Child Book of Etiquette.
Dear Francis,
I just got back from the wars and so naturally I wanted to find out if my girlfriend had been faithful to me in my absence. It's been a few years and I look different from when I left, so when I saw her waiting by the harbor I introduced myself to her as if I were a stranger and asked why she was there.
She said she was waiting for her love to return from the wars, which was encouraging, but I needed to be sure, so I told her that I had served with her beau, had been with him as he died, and that his dying wish was for me to comfort and console her.
I was so happy when she said that she could never be comforted by anyone now that her love was dead. I was fully convinced that she had passed my test. I revealed who I was and opened my arms to her.
That's when she decked me!
What the hell happened?
Sincerely,
Suddenly single
Dear Suddenly single,
The old "I saw your love die whispering your name and he wished that you would love me in his place" routine may be a time-honored test of fidelity, but it is not without risk. For this reason it is recommended that the ruse be performed in such a manner that the lady in question sees through the disguise and so is not shocked too dearly.
It may be too late for you at this point, but this episode can still serve as a warning to all other would-be Martin Guerres not to sucker your lady, lest you be sucker-punched!
Signed,
Francis James Child
Soundtrack: Il Balletto di Bronzo, Ys
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I is another
This could be very interesting: a new weblog focusing on depression and literature.
(Via About Last Night.)
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F2, F3, F4, F5
On this date in 1916, the northwest Kansas town of Codell was struck by a tornado. On this date in 1917, Codell was hit again. On this date in 1918, Codell was hit once more.
Forty-nine years ago next Tuesday, my Uncle Tony was driving across the country. His schedule called for him to spend that night in Udall, Kansas, but he was running late and decided instead to stay in an Oklahoma motel. It's fortunate that he did so.
Here's more information on Kansas tornadoes.
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Wed May 19, 2004
Intisementes to whoredome
Steven, ever mindful of my spiritual well-being, found a 1581 tract, A Treatise of Daunses, in which is shewed, that daunses bee intisementes to whoredome, and that the abuse of playes ought not to be among Christians. It's a pity that I'm going to be too busy with ballet through the weekend to read it, but I'm sure I'll find it illuminating when I have time.
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Kingdom Come
Many of these 19th-century tunes are very familiar, though I didn't know their names.
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Tue May 18, 2004
Utter garbage
The young man in the other half of the duplex is playing his "music." It's a good thing I don't keep guns, because the temptation to smash down his door and shoot out his subwoofer would be overwhelming.
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Making movies
An interview with Barbara Nicolosi:
The mistake a lot of Christians are making is thinking that Hollywood can just pump out more Passions without too much trouble. This project came from a devout Christian who also happened to be an Academy Award winning director and a global superstar. The Passion works as art because of Gibson's twenty-five years of making movies. The movie works as theology because of the fact that he actually believes this stuff. The reason Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ turned off Jesus people was because it wasn't any Jesus they knew. The Passion's Jesus is one that tens of millions of Christians worldwide have a relationship with. The film works because, as Jesus says in the Scriptures, "My sheep know my voice and they follow me."
*****
There is a great need for mature, articulate Christians to work in Hollywood at all levels. We need business people, attorneys, accountants, IT people, and administrators just as much as we need actors, producers, writers, and directors. The main reason any happy Christian would come here is--as St. Teresa of Avila put it--to try to bring God where He is not. Before you come to Hollywood, get your spiritual and moral act together. This can be a very seductive place to work, and we don't need another bitter, lapsed Christian to mount the bulwarks against the Gospel. So, borrowing from what Jesus told the rich young man, 'If you would be part of making movies and television, give away everything else that you have that won't help you in this demanding field, and come follow us into Hollywood.'
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Movies versus books
From Enoch Soames at The Charlock's Shade:
Uncle!
I received an email the other day from a reader who inquired if I, Enoch Soames, Esq., had heard the news? There is a new film to be released, called "Troy," ostensibly about the Trojan War. And, if so, did I know of a book version?
I diligently wrote back, suggesting that the gentle reader might try an obscure book named The Iliad, by Homer. I assured the reader that, although written prior to the advent of color television, the story still held up quite well.
So far, so good...The reader then replies and objects that the book, this Iliad thing, seems to be some sort of Greek mythology book, and what the reader wanted was a book based on the movie. You know, with pictures and what not. They also noted that the publisher had forgotten to print Homer's surname on the aforesaid volume.
(Via Reflections in d minor.)
Tangential note: I was surprised this morning to find that James Bowman actually gave Petersen's not-terribly-epic Troy a star.
Also from Mr. Soames: yet another reason to loathe movie adaptations of good books:
As most readers are aware, I am not a fan of screen adaptations. Neither was Evelyn Waugh (pronounced EVE-len WAW as in Adam and Eve, and it is a "he"), he would not allow Brideshead to be filmed during his lifetime, for the simple reason that the central character of the story, God, would be removed, thus destroying the entire plot, and meaning of the novel. This stand cost Waugh a considerable sum of money, which he desperately needed at the time, but he stood firm on principle. He was well aware of the travesty that Hollywood would make of his novel.
There's a new version of Brideshead Revisited in the works:
As noted by David Cliffe at An Evelyn Waugh Website, the screenwriter, Andrew Davies is doing just as Waugh feared; "Davies has decided not to have Charles convert to Catholicism; rather he intends to show how faith destroys the relationship of Julia and Charles. He has been quoted as saying If God can be said to exist in my version, he would be the villain."
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Slow Scotch
You can follow "Three Camps" with this one in playing the reveille. The tempo is not indicated on any of these tunes; what you hear is my best guess.
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Mon May 17, 2004
Theological vocabulary
From Smockmomma:
... Father C told a story today about a sort of "Jesus is my homey" priest who went to a high school and said, "if you want to know about God, forget everything you've ever learned because i can sum everything up in three simple words: God is love." one of the students raised his hand and inquired, "do you mean God is eros, philia, or agape?"
Soundtrack: Raymond Scott, "Powerhouse" (The Metropole Orchestra with the Beau Hunks Saxtette)
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Sequence and dreams
From Laurie Niles' violin blog, lyrics for Vivaldi's A minor violin concerto:
There are a lot of re-
There are a lot of re-
There are a lot of repeated phrases here,
And what is difficult
And what is difficult
And what is difficult is remembering which of them comes next.
Now starts my solo violin, violin, violin part
and the orchestra tries to drown me out.
...
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a se-
This is what is called a sequence.
There's also a violinist's view of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste:
IV. Allegro molto
The fly from the second movement has now grown to be the size of Mothra, and it is chasing you. It chases you up stairways that have locked doors at the end, through mazes and tunnels. You keep bumping into dead ends, turning around, going another way, counting randomly placed measures in quick five. In the end the giant fly swallows you alive, smiles and lets out a big burp.
(Via Reflections in d minor.)
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Aristocracy
Barbara Nicolosi encounters a European aristocrat:
In the course of the dinner, I noted to the other civil people at the table, that I often encourage young filmmakers to master the work of one American Master at a time.
EA: (loud sniff): Such a term! ‘American Master.’
BN: (Slapping foie on bread)….like, for example, Hitchcock –
EA: Hitchcock was not a good director. He went to America because he couldn’t make it as a director in Europe.
BN: (tearing off chunk of bread with teeth) In one hundred years, people will still be watching Hitchcock. Whereas, you and I will be forgotten.
EA: (disdainful shrug) It is a pity.
He went on to opine the next day that anything the masses like is ipso facto lowly and unworthy of attention. It was a fascinating to me how infuriated I became being around this kind of attitude. I understand the French guillotining of such fools so much more sympathetically now…
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Three Camps
Or "Points of War." Here are some tunes from a collection compiled for Civil War reenactors. This one is suitable for reveille.
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Sun May 16, 2004
Too meta for me
Thought for the day, courtesy of the Old Oligarch:
I'm getting tired of fatigue. Oh, no, meta-fatigue!
Soundtrack: Ozric Tentacles: "A Gift of Wings"
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Miscellaneous notes
Zorak is 28 years old today. Discoshaman is getting used to being 30. Buncha damn kids, they all are. (I've been 39 for years.)
Congratulations are in order for my sister in Alaska. She entered college this spring after a twenty-year detour and got straight A's in her first semester.
What's going on with Blogger/Blogspot? And Then disappeared a day or two ago, and now Eve Tushnet and Dyspeptic Mutterings are missing. Alert the authorities; this is a national intellectual emergency.
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Seeking consonance
An NYT article on Berg's violin concerto.
And another on Charles Ives.
Also from the Times: services at the virtual Church of Fools:
... a substantial part of the early avatar chatter on the site has ricocheted between aggressively irreverent and incomprehensible. Ship of Fools is looking into filtering software that might automatically convert foul language to "amen" or "hallelujah" ....
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Sat May 15, 2004
When all else fails ...
... there's always delusion.
Mark Twain's Advice to Youth.
Conan O'Brien's commencement address
(Via Finches' Wings.)
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Walt & Emily
Recent searches that led frustrated surfers here:
picture of 17 sided regular polygon
"byker hill" explanation
cracked version of logic pro
pointless quizzes
St. Agnes Church Baton Rouge catholic
"Gather Us In" Haugen midi OR mp3 [boy, have you got the wrong site]
David Haas midi [ditto]
Anthem +"tom Conry"
Barbie of Faramir and Eowyn
actors gitting punched
"how to pronounce" and hypnerotomachia
midi "about last night"
"blue ox emily dickinson"
walt whitman was 90 stories tall
orographic movie
musical modes creepy
Bryce Stoa
There were also the usual inqiries for "pirate hat template", "Orlando Bloom's phone number" and "mystic phrase from ages past." Can anyone explain the last one? It apparently has something to do the with The DaVinci Code, which I have no intention of reading.
Soundtrack: Liz Carroll, "The Sock in the Hole/The Hole in the Sock"
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Catholicism and science
An interview with a Vatican astronomer:
I'd been an astronomer for 15 years before I decided to enter the Jesuits. And I did my undergraduate work at MIT and my doctorate at Arizona. And at one point I wondered why was I wasting my time doing astronomy when people are starving in the world - a little voice of conscience.
So I joined the Peace Corps. While I was there, I discovered that I loved teaching. But mostly I discovered that the people in Africa, the people in Kenya, where I was, wanted to know about astronomy. That's what they wanted from me. And they were as fascinated and as excited about it as I was, as anyone in America.
And I understood then why it's important. It's one of those things that makes us more than just well-fed cows. It satisfies a really deep hunger to know, to go someplace, to explore. And that is a hunger that is as human, as basic to human beings as food and shelter and anything else. And it's denied to a person only at the cost of denying them their humanity. By telling poor people, "No, no, you have to go hunt for food, you can't do astronomy," you are saying that they're less than human. And that's wrong. And it's a tragedy.
*****
AM: Isn't the belief that God created the universe a preconceived notion?
GC: It is. And it's a preconceived notion that in one form or another every scientist has to have. Because here's the other side: to be a scientist you have to have two fundamental assumptions, so fundamental you don't even think about it. You assume that the universe makes sense, that there really is an objective reality; there really is a logic to this; it's not just chaos; there really are laws to be found. We're so used to that assumption, you don't realize it. A lot of cultures don't have that.
And the other assumption you have to make is that it's worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you're not going to be a scientist, you're not going to be interested in Mars. So it's a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. Seeing how the universe works is worth spending a lifetime doing.
*****
The whole scientific enterprise really does coincide well with Christian theology. The whole idea that the universe is worth studying is a Christian idea. The whole mechanism for studying the physical universe comes straight out of the whole logic of the scholastic age. Who was the first geologist? Albert the Great, who was a monk. Who was the first Chemist? Roger Bacon, who was a monk. Who was the first guy to come up with spectroscopy? Angelo Secchi, who was a priest. Who was the guy who invented genetics? Gregor Mendel, who was a monk. Who was the guy who came up with the Big Bang theory? Georges Lemaître, who was a priest. There is this long tradition; most scientists before the 19th century were clerics. Who else had the free time and the education to gather leads and measure star positions?
(Via St. Blog's #1 Pixies fan.)
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Inhuman equation
The High Crusade is back with an essay on Isaac Asimov.
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Sympathy for the jackass
Hey, let's have a little respect for Ted Rall. Suppose that you were a humorless cartoonist with no skill and no wit. How would you get people to notice you? By being egregiously offensive, of course. It's probably no fun being Ted Rall, so let's temper our revulsion with a little sympathy for the miserable creep.
(Via Mark Shea, Dale Price and Michelle.)
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Fri May 14, 2004
Bibliophile alert
I spotted a set of the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica today at a garage sale. The covers and bindings showed their age, but the interiors of the 29 volumes were in excellent shape. The seller wanted $75 for the set. Unfortunately, I only had $3 in my pocket. The encyclopedia may still be there tomorrow, so if you are in the Wichita area and want your own copy of a legendary set of books, head to 1250 N. Perry in Wichita.
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Antler dance
Congratulations to to Mark Sullivan one the second anniversary of Irish Elk/Ad Orientem/???. When you visit, be sure to scroll on down and see one of Winsor McCay's "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend."
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"Catholicism in a contemporary context"
Here's an art installation I'll probably skip:
If the Catholic Church took a cue from a hair salon to help boost attendance at Mass, the results might look something like "Neo Baroque," an installation currently on view at Project.
Artists Jonathan Lee Stevens and Jennifer Locke saw the soothing colors, large picture-banners, meditative words and gold-framed mirrors that adorn many Aveda salons and envisioned them hanging in a church.
"Neo Baroque" displays traditional religious pictures within a contemporary interior design. Instead of pretty models on a sales banner, it's the Ecstasy of St. Teresa. Instead of faux Greek columns holding shampoo and conditioner, it's elegant vases each sprouting a single plastic lily.
Painted on the walls are words, singly and strung together -- "Illuminate," "Transform," "Evolve" -- buzzwords for Aveda products and for enlightenment.
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Pass the popcorn
The Weekly Standard celebrates movies today.
I am aware of fan art and fan fiction, so I suppose I should have expected fan cinema as well:
Take, for example, How the Sith Stole Christmas. It's an insane jumble of the Star Wars and Dr. Seuss storylines, only it's played straight. By the time Darth Vader steals the Ewoks' presents, a Star Destroyer is chasing Santa Claus through an asteroid field, and elves in toy planes are wrapping tree lights around the legs of imperial walkers.
*****
And what if the fans do manage to reinvent the wheel? "Fan-films are probably going to wane pretty soon, either for one of two reasons: (1) Someone's going to make one way too good, and Lucas is finally gonna have to put the smackdown on allowing them; or (2) people are going to realize that filmmaking is so cheap any more they can make something quality enough to sell instead of being beholden to Lucas's copyright laws."
Not that he's giving up hope. "Right now, there are 200 15-year-olds all bugging each other asking how to make lightsabers glow. It's hard to believe, but one of those kids is the next Spielberg. Hopefully not the next Lucas--I'd hate to release that on the world."
Jonathan Last's review of Troy is worth reading for the explanation of John Wheeler's game, "Negative 20 Questions," as well as for Last's observations:
Other departures are gratuitous. For instance, Paris survives the sack of Troy and escapes with Helen, Andromache, and Aeneas. As the changes mount--and become less and less required for purposes of internal logic--the reason for them becomes more and more clear: The writer believes that he is improving on the original text.
This isn't to suggest that screenwriter David Benioff, whose sole previous credit is The 25th Hour, is incompetent, or has done a bad job. He isn't, and there are some genuinely nice moments in Troy. But trying to "fix" Homer is an act of epic hubris. It's the type of choice the gods would surely punish.
If they existed, that is.
Over at Popcorn Critics, Steven reviews Princess Mononoke. In general I agree with him, though I didn't find the storytelling all that non-linear or hard to follow. For those watching on DVD: an anime expert friend of mine says that the subtitled version is better than the English-language release, even though Neil Gaiman wrote the script for the latter.
All the Miyazaki I've seen is first-rate, by the way. Besides Princess Mononoke, those I've seen are Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away. Kiki is suitable for all ages -- in fact, adults might find it a bit too sweet. Castle and Spirited are for a somewhat older audience, e.g., those capable of enjoying the first Harry Potter book. (N.B.: Kiki is a witch in training. If you object to Rowling's books on principle, you'll want to skip Kiki's Delivery Service as well -- and the more fool you.)
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Dan Dowd's
Alicia's favorite mode is Dorian, as in this jig in A with one sharp.
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Thu May 13, 2004
Perfect metre
While dylan is away from St. Blog's, if you should feel like some poetry, visit Meredith at Basia me, Catholica sum. Currently featured there is verse from T.S. Eliot, Galway Kinnell, Yeats, James Tate and Taliesin, as well as her own parodies.
(Reading the comments on the Taliesin poem, I just learned that Steven has a minor in Arthurian studies.)
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Without a song
Kashi at Synonyms and Sugar has a special reason for liking the movie The Iron Giant:
And have I mentioned that there's no singing? None! Not once does the giant robot burst into song. Not once does young Hogarth sing about how great it is to be a kid! Not once does anyone, ever sing. I for one found that refreshing.
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Festive occasions
Theodore Dalrymple on having a little fun:
One thing that unites the men who beheaded the American Nick Berg in Iraq, the soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the Palestinians who have held on to Israeli body parts in Gaza City and the murderers of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan is that they all enjoyed what they did, and enjoyed it immensely.
There is almost no greater pleasure known to man than to commit great acts of cruelty in the belief that the cause of right and justice is being served. Anyone who has observed rioters will know that they are having a wonderful time: could there be a greater joy than vandalism with a social purpose?
(Via Cacciaguida.)
[Addendum: John Derbyshire on Dalrymple:
I had the pleasure of lunch with "Theodore Dalrymple" (Tony Daniels) on Monday. He is one of the funniest men I know, an imp of mirth, always chuckling and smiling, laugh lines all over his face. The regrettably-little-used English word "merry" kept coming to mind.
God chooses some odd messengers to bring us the bad news about humanity. I wonder if Dostoyevsky was as much fun to be around as Dalrymple.]
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Q.E.D.
There's been a lot of discussion about JFK II's religion. Is he, in any way that matters, Catholic? Of course he is. Let me demonstrate:
Here are three statements in bold type.
Two of these statements are false.
J. Forbes Kerry is a good Irish Catholic.
Now the first statement is obviously true: there are indeed three bold-faced statements in this post.
Assume that the second statement is true. Then the first and third statements must be false. However, we have seen that the first statement is true. Therefore, the second statement is false.
If the second statement is false, then we have three possibilites: All three statements are false; all three are true; or, exactly one is false. However, we have seen that the first statement is true and second is false. The only possibility that doesn't lead to a contradiction is that there is one and only one false statement in bold type, and that is the second statement. Therefore, the third statement, no matter what it is, must be true.
And thus we can conclude that Kerry is a good Irish Catholic.
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Crabs in the Skillet
Most Irish fiddle tunes are notated with one or two sharps n the key signature. This one is mostly in g minor, with two flats.
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Wed May 12, 2004
In a different region of the electromagnetic spectrum
More quizzes, courtesy of a Restoration-era friend:
More...
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King cobras and ancient alphabets
A couple of sites to spend your lunch hour at.
These people are crazy: VenomousReptiles.org
AncientScripts.com
(Via Mike Gunderloy.)
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Tue May 11, 2004
Mon May 10, 2004
Seasickness
Victor Lams has posted a new cartoon. You have been warned.
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Carraroe
I have no idea who or what or where the title of this jig refers to.
[0] comments (1208 views) | link
Sun May 09, 2004
Redrum
You saw The Exorcist in 30 Seconds. Now watch The Shining, as done by bunnies.
(Via Jeff Miller.)
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Contentment Is Wealth
Enough with the reels. Let's have some jigs now.
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Sat May 08, 2004
Orographic rain and black riders
A meteorological look at The Lord of the Rings (large PDF file).
I wonder what the trilogy would have been like had Tolkien lived in Kansas.
(Via Nârwen, of course.)
[0] comments (1331 views) | link
New tune
Here's another odd little tune. This one, like Threnody, was originally intended to be part of the expanded Armadillo! project but didn't really fit in with the rest of the music.
Kechi Gypsy (1.4 megabytes)
(Kechi is a small town northwest of Wichita inhabited by farmers and antique shop owners.)
[0] comments (1336 views) | link
Fri May 07, 2004
Analog timbres
Because of poverty, I use virtual instruments for my recorded music, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to work with an analog beast such as a Moog modular synthesizer. If I had $3295.00 in my pocket (I wish), I could buy the updated MiniMoog, the Moog Voyager. (I could realistically budget for a PAiA kit, but that won't happen anytime soon.)
(Via Texas Best Grok.)
For those who are curious, this and these are the main synths I use these days. This one is free and is amazingly deep, though you will need a VSTi host to use it.
*****
Soundtrack: Prokofiev, "Five Sarcasms," Op. 17 (Gyorgy Sandor)
[2] comments (1741 views) | link
Harmony and dissonance
Paul Rex recently discovered some of Erik's old posts on dissonance, timbre and the morality of music:
Now, the reason I have gone so much into dissonance is that the item that inspired me to write was a preposterous study cited on another blog that had to do with the physiology of plants when exposed to different kinds of music. This “study” (I use scare quotes, because this study had to have had such predetermined conclusions as to be completely laughable) determined that plants atrophied and died when exposed to a diet of rock and roll, lived but did not thrive on a diet of Schoenberg and Webern, and thrived moderately on Brahms and Beethoven, and thrived admirably on a diet of Mozart. Anyone with even a basic understanding of harmony will immediately smell a rat here.
Before we look at the absurdity of the system of classification of music listed here, let us poke at the bigger absurdity of using plants as the guide to moral content in music. Music is an activity of people, for people. Plants do not have ears, nor brains. If we are to decide how to live our lives based on the vitality of plant growth, we had better get used to compost and water for breakfast. I wonder if the authors of this study will next do a project reading various poetry to the plants. Naturally the poor dandelions listening to Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Elliot will fare much worse than the ones listening to Robert Frost, Joyce Kilmer, and, to a lesser degree, John Milton.
Let us start with rock and roll. Rock and roll, of all the music cited here, is the least dissonant....
*****
The whole notion of counting dissonances reminds me of an equally laughable article in an otherwise good magazine by some dunce who was a philosophy major at TAC and later a grad student in music at CSU Northridge. This poor fellow, using a remarkably poor reading of the Angelic Doctor, determined that the more dissonant the music was, the more immoral it was. By his own argument, we would have to accept John Tesh or George Winston as the summum ad bonum of music. I hope the poor bunny grew out of it when he got through grad school.
About a year, ago Erik began a series of posts on the "building blocks of music." Besides the two listed above, there was another analyzing in great detail a little bit of Gregorian chant (which I couldn't locate just now. I hope it didn't get lost when Erik moved to Movable Type). Perhaps someday he'll continue the series.
*****
Soundtrack: Bartok, "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta"
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Whatever happened to . . .
Stirling Newberry? I haven't seen any new posts at Symphony X in about a month.
John Salmon? Crisis Mode has apparently gone the way of Birdland 59.
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Discombobulated marches and weird harmonies
Music writers at The New York Times recommends a number of Charles Ives recordings. Missing from the lists is my favorite, An Old Song Deranged, a collection of Ives' more obscure music which makes clear that he was not only a great experimental visionary pioneer and all that, but also part of the tradition that more recently produced Spike Jones and P.D.Q. Bach.
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Thu May 06, 2004
Lithium niobate and Palantiri
Nârwen has found a cache of articles on science and Middle Earth.
Elvish technology
Just how sharp are Legolas' eyes?
Do balrogs have wings?
What is mithril?
How do you make a palantir?
Tolkien the science-fiction writer (including a note on the great, neglected Olaf Stapledon)
How tall is a mallorn?
These and many other articles can be found here.
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Title theory
One approach to developing a theory of titles is to look at some bad titles and figure out why they don't work. The problem is finding enough positively bad titles to work with. Despite a night of insomnia, I only came up with five, of which just three are book titles.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Martian Timeslip
The Isle of the Mighty
"Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" (or is it "Eye of Crystal, Wall of Night"?)
Peanuts
Taking them in reverse order:
There is nothing leguminous about Charles Schultz's work. The title "Peanuts" is not particularly interesting, and it tells you absolutely nothing about Charlie Brown and his associates. (Schultz himself disliked the name "Peanuts," but it wasn't his opinion that counted when he began the comic strip.) There needs to be some connection between a title and the work it's attached to.
Algis Budrys' story is a minor classic, but I can never remember which permutation of (eye, night, wall, crystal) is correct without looking it up. A title needs to be easy to remember.
The title that Evangeline Walton gave the first volume of her retelling of The Mabinogion is The Virgin and the Swine. I think this is pretty good. There are indeed a virgin and some pigs in the story, and some swinish behavior as well, and yoking the feminine and the porcine together is startling enough for the title to stick in your mind. Lin Carter, however, didn't see this, and he gave the book a generic fantasy title when he republished it. I ignored the book, as I do any generic fantasy, until I learned that there was more to it than the title indicated. So, no cliches, please.
Martian Timeslip is indeed set on Mars and does play games with time. However, to my ears the neologism "timeslip" sounds cheap and flashy. This title might work for a technothriller or a space opera, but it doesn't give any hint of the depth of Dick's meditation on autism, mental illness and entropy. The tone of a title should not conflict with that of the work.
The word "stigmata" is problematic enough. Then there is the word "eldritch." Ugh. It puts me in mind of such writers as H.P. Lovecraft and unspeakable horrors that drip ichor. This novel is indeed partly a horror story, but of a much subtler sort than H.P. was capable of. If I had not known that Dick was a better writer than the covers and title of his books indicated, I would never have even touched this book, at least not without gloves. So, be aware of both the denotations and connotations of all the words in the title. Corollary: be careful what you name your characters.
(To be fair, let me note that most of Philip K. Dick's titles are at least adequate. The two books mentioned here are among his best, though, and they really do deserve better titles.)
So, what can we conclude? Mainly just that common sense matters when devising titles. I doubt that one can ever formulate rules for titling stories that are specific enough to be useful. The best approach, perhaps, is to regard the ideal title as a form of advertising: it should catch the eye, stick in the mind and make you curious to read the book.
Further notes:
Titles that are meant to be funny are a separate topic for research, as are titles of country songs.
With titles for instrumental music or abstract art, anything goes. The more off-the-wall, the better.
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Wed May 05, 2004
Power elbows
After the recent discussions of book titles at Eve Tushnet's place, I started thinking about other kinds of titles. For instance, those of SF short stories:
Think Blue, Count Two
The Game of Rat and Dragon ("Cordwainer Smith" is one of the great pen names, by the way)
Continued on Next Rock
The Hero as Werwolf
The Man Who Ate the World
The Pi Man
Burning Chrome
The Nine Billion Names of God
Or Frank Zappa song titles:
Twenty Small Cigars
Toads of the Short Forest
Bogus Pomp
Peaches en Regalia
Heavy-Duty Judy
Dwarf Nebula Processional March
My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama
America Drinks and Goes Home
Or Celtic tune titles. Here is a selection from O'Neill's Music of Ireland:
A Lover of Mild Behavior
Burnt Old Man
Caves of Cong
Dear Black Cow
Denis, Don't Be Threatening
Downhill of Life
Faithful Brown Cow
Good Ship Planet
Gramachree Molly
Humors of the Joyce Country
I'll Make My Love a Breast of Glass
If All the Sea Were Ink
Monks of the Screw
Fasten the Leg in Her
Kinnegad Slashers
Smash the Windows (aka Roaring Jelly in other collections)
Stack the Rags
Wallop the Potlid
A Whack at the Whigs
Contradiction Reel
Flogging Reel
Five-Leaved Clover (I've found a few)
Good Morning to Your Night Cap
Johnny with the Queer Thing
More Power to Your Elbow
Roll Her on the Mountain
Wily Old Bachelor
You'll Never Be Any Good
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Hollow men
Eric Johnson (not the guitarist) on three Democratic presidential candidates:
None of them have any discernable principles for which they have worked during their political lives, and they have introduced no significant ideas into politics. Their primary concern is promoting themselves, not for the sake of a cause, but solely for personal advancement. The three men reject traditional understandings of morality in favor of a fuzzy relativism.
Because they do not seek to destroy and murder their opponents like a Middle Eastern despot, their danger to the body politic is not immediately apparent. Whatever one might think of Jimmy Carter, for example, he was not a Hollow Man in that he truly attempted to serve others when he was in office, and though ambitious (what high officeholder isn't?), he did not allow his ambition to enslave him.
By contrast, the Hollow Men will subordinate everything and anything to their ambitions. They fought in the Vietnam War, they protested against it; they spoke out against abortion, they promise to nominate only doctrinaire pro-abortion judges; they say they will propose a tax cut, they raise your taxes; etc.
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The Sunday School Queen
Steven posts an excerpt from one of Philip Gulley's Quaker novels:
"Did Jonah really get swallowed by a fish?" my son Addison asked.
"You bet your bippee, he did," Alice said. "You can't run from God. He'll hunt you down and nail your hide to the wall, if He's a mind to."
"He's kinda like Superman, except He has a beard and He's a lot older," Billy Grant explained to Addison.l
"Not exactly," I said. "But that's not the important part of the story anyway. The important thing is that God loved the Ninevites and sent Jonah to help them."
"Who were the Ninevites?" Addison asked.
"A bunch of perverts, if ou ask me," Alice said. "The Lord sent two angels to warn them, and the men of the city went mad with lust."
"I believe you're thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah," I pointed out to Alice.
"Ninevites, Sodomites, Gomorites. What's the difference?" she said. "They all needed killing if you ask me."
And people wonder why pastors burn out at an alarming rate.
There's more at Flos Carmeli.
I may have to investigate Gulley. I wonder how much longer before the floors of my place collapse because of the weight of books.
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New tune
Something a bit different from the sorts of things I usually do. See what you think of it.
Threnody (1.6 megabytes)
[Later: I chopped off the first 15 seconds, which were just sound effects and very expendable.]
*****
Soundtrack: Genesis, "The Return of the Giant Hogweed"
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Tue May 04, 2004
Convenience Reel
The name of the tune reminds me of one of the great album titles, the Dead Kennedys' Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death (not recommended, though "Holiday in Cambodia" is a sentimental favorite). There's nothing punk about this reel, though.
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Mon May 03, 2004
Dr'X
Victor Lams celebrates his third year of blogging today. Go congratulate him, and while you're there, listen to his music ("Underground Places" is a particular favorite of mine). Or listen to music by his alter ego, DrApostropheX. Or watch a cartoon. Or listen to some "blogtones" and perhaps request your own.
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Desperado
Don't monkey around with Johnny Cash
(Via Catholic Ragemonkey.)
[0] comments (1350 views) | link
Windy weather
Most of Kansas is not seismically active. Occasionally the remnant of a hurricane might bring heavy rain, but any punch the storm might have had is long gone. There aren't significant forests to burn, and no volcanos in the region. For natural disasters, we have to make do with tornados.
Five years ago today an F4 tornado hit Haysville, Kansas, killing six people. At its strongest it was ten miles due south of my place and heading due north. Fortunately -- for me -- when it reached Wichita it veered off to the northeast, toppling a large tree onto a friend's house before returning to the clouds. For a couple of years afterward you could trace the storm's path by the absence of trees in south Wichita neighborhoods.
Stong as it was, the Haysville tornado was overshadowed by outbreak in Oklahoma the same evening. One of the sixty twisters there may have been the strongest ever recorded, with winds measured at 318 mph. This is right at the F6 threshold. (The Hesston, Kansas, tornado of March 13, 1990, may have been as powerful. Its winds were estimated to have reached 315 mph. It struck while I was in a Fortran class at Wichita State University, and although the storm was miles north of Wichita, WSU interrupted classes for a tornado warning. In the CAC basement, the instructor reminisced about the storms of Wisconsin; that's where they had real tornados, he said. Yeah, right.)
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Congress
Another reel. If the title refers to the members of the legislative branch of the American government, it's better than they deserve.
[0] comments (1335 views) | link
Sun May 02, 2004
(title)
Eve Tushnet recently listed examples of great book titles. Here are some additional ones that occurred to me:
M/F
The End of the World News
Snow Crash
Titus Groan
Hexwood
Loitering with Intent
Cold Comfort Farm
At Swim-Two-Birds
His Monkey Wife
Morte d'Urban
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
thinks . . .
Free Live Free
Neverwhere
... and others I'll think of later.
Addendum (5/5)
Here are a few more:
The Miner's Pale Children
The Holy Thief
Not to Mention Camels
The Pedant and the Shuffly
The Egg and I
Iron and Silk
Fabulous Small Jews
Stormbringer
Lion Country
The Demolished Man
The Eve of St. Venus
Lost in the Funhouse
Rogue Moon
Neuromancer
Eve has listed contributions from others.
Also at Eve's: yet another silly quiz.
More...
[0] comments (1693 views) | link
Reading on a Sunday afternoon
Some New York Times articles on music and musicians:
Former wunderkind cellist abandons concert halls for CBGB and folk venues.
Mission of Burma, Roger Miller's old band, reunites (not that Roger Miller, the other one) after 20 years. The story illustrates the dangers of turning it up to 11:
Ultimately, however, the band's intense volume damaged Mr. Miller's hearing. He says he developed tinnitus, and by 1983 it was more than he could bear. So just as the band was poised to break through to a national audience, it split up (amicably, the members say).
Sooner or later, it had to happen. There now exists a band that specializes in covering video game music.
*****
In his studies, Steven has come across online one of the most peculiar books ever printed, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili:
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is one of the most unreadable books ever published. The first inkling of difficulty occurs at the moment one picks up the book and tries to utter its tongue-twisting, practically unpronounceable title. The difficulty only heightens as one flips through the pages and tries to decipher the strange, baffling, inscrutable prose, replete with recondite references, teeming with tortuous terminology, choked with pulsating, prolix, plethoric passages. Now in Tuscan, now in Latin, now in Greek –elsewhere in Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and hieroglyphs – the author has created a pandemonium of unruly sentences that demand the unrelenting skills of a prodigiously endowed polyglot in order to be understood.
The title actually isn't all that hard to pronounce once you decide where to put the accents, and the book is worth a view for the typography and layout, as well as the proto-cinematic illustrations.
Soundtrack: Blodwyn Pig, "The Modern Alchemist"
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Concertina Reel
Another tune from the Irish Session Tune Book. I'm not convinced that this tune is actually from Ireland; the second half sounds distinctly American to my ears.
[0] comments (1302 views) | link