Sun - June 24, 2007Dogs Are Now Painting — Or Painting Has Gone to the DogsAnd why shouldn't Rover try his hand at painting?
Surely he can't do any worse than Jackson Pollock and the rest of the Advanced
Finger Painting and Paint Flingining Fraternity. But that's exactly what we
have, according to talk show host Dennis Prager.
Posted at 09:17 PM Read More Sun - June 17, 2007Review of Chris Nunn's "De La Mettrie's Ghost"De La Mettrie's
Ghost seeks to provide a scientific
explanation for free will. The books author, Chris Nunn, argues that "stories,"
recorded in memory, provide the nexus for choice. Unfortunately, this argument,
almost from the beginning, veers toward a sort of cultural determinism. The only
freedom that his account of human decision making allows for is an individual's
haphazard choice of which stories—i.e., which culturally determined
objects—are to dominate his life.
Posted at 06:31 PM Read More Tue - April 11, 2006The insane pendantry of "queer studies"This is about as bad as it gets. Please keep a
barf bag by your side as you read the following.
Posted at 03:09 PM Read More Wed - March 22, 2006A composers take on atonalityThe British composer Frederick Stocken has
recently published a short web-essay denouncing atonality in music. He compares
the avant-garde's fixation with atonality to Marxism, and roughs up the
avant-garde's golden boy of the late 20th century, Pierre Boulez. See the
article here:
Posted at 04:34 PM Read More Wed - December 21, 2005Stalin's plan to cross apes with humansAccording to recently uncovered secret documents, the Soviet
dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin ordered Russia's top animal breeding
"scientist," Ilya Ivanov, to create a "living war machine" to fill the ranks of
the Soviet Army. "I want a new invincible human being," Stalin told Ivanov,
"insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they
eat."
Posted at 09:34 AM Read More Fri - December 9, 2005Book Review: Blank SlateBlank
Slate by Steven
Pinker
This is one of the most important books to appear in recent decades. For most of the 20th century, social scientists have engaged in a long and fruitless denial of the biological factors influencing human behavior. Never mind that this denial goes against nearly everything expressed in great literature about human nature; nor that most of human history stands as testimony against it. Posted at 04:49 PM Read More Tue - June 7, 2005George Rochberg, RIPFew months ago, Saul Bellow, America's greatest
living novelist, passed away at age 89. This week the man who may very well have
been America's greatest living composer has now left us. Rochberg was
86.
Posted at 10:19 AM Read More Wed - April 6, 2005Saul Bellow RIPSaul Bellow, the last great American novelist,
passed away Tuesday at the age of 89. He had published a novel as recently as
2000, and rumors from the late nineties suggested there might be another
unfinished novel that he may (or may not) have been working on in his final
years. But whether he was working on anything or not, it would appear that a
major voice of American literature has been silenced for good.
Posted at 05:31 PM Read More Fri - February 11, 2005Ayn Rand CentennialThis month a hundred years ago Alissa Zinovievna
Rosenbaum was born (February 2, 1905). Miss Rosenbaum, after emigrating the the
United States in 1926, changed her name to Ayn Rand. In the following decades
she wrote several novels and developed an entire philosophy, known as
"Objectivism," around the worship of man as a "rational being." The centennial
of her Rand's birth marks a good time to give a brief assessment of her work as
a philosopher. It also affords the opportunity for me to reexamine my own view
of Rand, since, after all, I have written one of the more notorious critique's
of her thought.
Posted at 08:47 PM Read More Sun - January 16, 2005Education in the inner cityValerie Kirschenbaum, a teacher in Bronx,
provides yet more testimony of the essential dysfunctionality of the American
education system. Consider this sample:
Posted at 03:41 AM Read More Fri - November 12, 2004Foreign student enrollment continues to declineAccording to the Dow Jones, the number of foreign
graduate students enrolling at American universities for the first time declined
by 6%. It's the third year in row that such enrollment has
declined.
Posted at 06:22 PM Read More Fri - September 24, 2004Carl Theodore Dreyer's OrdetThe Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer is
undoubtedly best known for his masterpiece
Joan of
Arc, one of the great films of the silent era.
Dreyer, of course, lived well into the era of sound films, and TCM has been
showing some of the movies this month. They are very much in the Scandinavian
tradition: slow-moving, deliberate, very serious, with great attention to
psychological detail. Not so dissimilar from Igmar Bergman's films, only far
less morose and gloomy. Dreyer seems more or less comfortable with the tragedy
of the world. He has the faith that Bergman largely lacks. And, indeed,
Ordet
is about faith in much the same way that some of Tarkovsky's films, such as
Andrei
Rublev and
The
Sacrifice, are as well.
Posted at 08:44 PM Read More Thu - September 9, 2004Los Angeles = DuncevilleAccording to a news report
in the Daily News, 53% of workers ages 16 and older are deemed "functionally
illiterate." This has happened despite the hundreds of millions of dollars
poured into LA public schools to improve literacy.
Posted at 05:47 PM Read More Sun - August 15, 2004Lev Navrozov and the "Dying of Western Culture"I ran across an article
by Lev Navrozov at (of all places) newsmax.com . It is unusual these
days for someone to talk so frankly about the decline of western culture in
terms of classical music versus "pop" music. Even more rare is to find someone
with the courage to describe "pop" music as "screaming, banging, thumping, and
roaring," since many people are offended by an denigration of the popular music.
It's the price we pay for living in a democratic culture, as Mr. Navrozov
himself notes.
Posted at 07:47 PM Read More Sat - May 15, 2004Invasion of the BarbariansIn 1986, the Canadian director Denys Arcand
released his blistering exposé of modern sexual mores,
The Decline of the American
Empire. At first blush, the title of the film
may have seemed anomalous, since the film takes place on a lake shore in Quebec
and is spoken entirely in French. But Arcand, who has a background in history,
was actually making a larger point, as he attempted to make the connection
between decadent sexual mores on the one side and the decline of civilization on
the other. Now, seventeen years later, comes the sequel to
The
Decline. Appropriately enough, Arcand's newest
film is entitled The Barbarian
Invasions.
Posted at 09:24 PM Read More |
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