I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infiniteFYI Intelligence. I believe that this universe's intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science.— Antony Flew, born in 1923
Yuval Noah Hariri thrives in an environment of relative critical neglect. After all, nobody is an expert on the meaning of everything, or the history of everybody... His story
A poem my late dad (tato) would have loved to have written:
From forest to workbench: a carver
with a chisel chips and shaves away,
shaping hardwood cedar.
with a chisel chips and shaves away,
shaping hardwood cedar.
Curls fly up and fall to the floor.
A lyraki fiddle
is all of a piece. Once carved it is hung
to dry and for the wood to darken.
A bow-maker chines a bow from
pernambuco.
is all of a piece. Once carved it is hung
to dry and for the wood to darken.
A bow-maker chines a bow from
pernambuco.
The lyre is threaded then
with three strings made of horsetail.
Ready now for the high melodies,
it is placed vertically on the knees,
longneck resting on the player’s heart.
The first ripples of sound, our arms
and shoulders rise level:
with three strings made of horsetail.
Ready now for the high melodies,
it is placed vertically on the knees,
longneck resting on the player’s heart.
The first ripples of sound, our arms
and shoulders rise level:
Zorba’s Dance.
We start to move in a circle like trees.
We start to move in a circle like trees.
Louis C Callaghan’s latest collection is Dreampaths of a Runaway (Salmon 2017). A new book, Moonlights: A Full Moon, is forthcoming from Salmon.
My father and godfather loved walking together among the trees in Minisek nad Popradom and High Tatras
My father and godfather loved walking together among the trees in Minisek nad Popradom and High Tatras
Rather Be Dead than Wet
Nigeness: Quiet Dell
Quiet Dell (as all the world but me might know; it seems to have attracted a lot of attention, rave reviews and accolades on publication) is a gripping imaginative re-creation of a real-life murder case from 1931 – the murder of a widow and her three children by a psychopathic con man. The dedication page reads 'for Annabel Eicher' – Annabel, the youngest of the three murdered children, an imaginative, dreamy and talented child. It is in her voice that the novel begins, and her voice and presence recur from time to time, colouring and heightening the atmosphere of the novel. Phillips imaginatively enters the world of the Eicher children, their mother and grandmother and the surrogate uncle/father figure who rooms with them, rounding out their characters until we know and care about them all. As a result, when mother and children go, all unknowing, to meet their terrible end, the effect is heartbreaking.
Equally convincingly Phillips fleshes out the characters who will propel the narrative after the grisly deed is done, giving them depth and inner lives – notably the woman journalist determined to understand what happened, and the local banker who knew the family and is equally determined to get to the truth and ensure that at least the killer faces justice. Documentary elements – photographs, press reports, verbatim statements – enhance the verisimilitude, but there is really no need. This is no ordinary true-crime fictionalisation but an utterly compelling journey into darkness – a darkness in which, I trust, a light is somewhere shining. And so I read on...
Snoring is in our genes DNA
Who is excellent and why?
A few of you have written in and asked me why some people, such as Kevin Lewis and Samir Varma, are designated as say “the excellent Kevin Lewis” on Marginal Revolution.
It is simple — I view this recognition as resulting from a combination of their intelligence and persistence, and thus their excellence in finding and sending me links and interesting commentary. (I have met them both, and they do seem to have other virtues, but those other virtues are not the ones being recognized here.) The word is completely unironic. I view “belief in excellence” as one of the underlying philosophies of MR, and also belief in the notion that excellence should be mentioned and promoted.
In this sense, those designations are quite similar to the ongoing series “My Favorite Things [xxxx]“.
This designation of excellence is also related to why MR does not spend a great deal of time on all of the political depredations of our time. Yes, they are important, but I fear that focusing on them too much would a) make me stupider, and b) distract from an underlying vision of excellence I wish to communicate. I am too selfish to wish to be made stupider in that manner.
More generally, for any media source you are reading, what is the underlying vision of excellence? Or are they just pukers?
If you can trace their underlying vision of excellence (or lack thereof), you will understand much of their material much better.
Meet the man who lives his life as a work of art
England's
most eccentric dresser, Daniel Lismore, knows no bounds when it comes
to crafting 'a look' – but despite his outrageous appearance, he is
quite shy.
Trump is obsessed with height. Now he's trying to weaponise it in the election
Trump is a rare politician who understands the most powerful, insidious but overlooked dynamic in American presidential politics. Hate? No. Height.
Prince Harry and Meghan axe all 15 employees in their UK-based team Newscom Australia
‘Author in Chief’ Review: The Oval Office Book Club - WSJ.
The fortitude and unexpected writerliness involved in the creation of Grant’s book make for an impressive but familiar story. It is decades further on—after dust jackets, department-store bookselling, catalog shopping and Carnegie libraries have further transformed the publishing landscape—that Mr. Fehrman finds the unlikely, taciturn standout of “Author in Chief.” In 1920, Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge, newly famous for suppressing a labor revolt by the Boston police, secured the Republican vice-presidential nomination in large part by allowing some wealthy backers in business and advertising to promote a collection of his levelheaded, self-written (in pencil) speeches. The sampler concluded with his no-nonsense telegram to the police union: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
The Process Genre
From Duke University Press and author Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky comes what looks like an intriguing book on the beloved phenomenon of “how things are made” media — you know, things like “how to” cooking videos and IKEA instructions — The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor (at Amazon). From the book’s introduction:
Chapter 3, “Aestheticizing Labor,” argues that the category of labor is central to the process genre. In my account, the process genre is, in effect, always symptomatically reflecting on the interactions of human labor, technology (i.e., tools, instruments, machines), and nature. The chapter first examines the genre’s relation to technique. Then it surveys the political implications of the ways in which labor is poeticized in the genre. In its most exalted examples, the process genre presents a striking paradox. On the one hand, it is the most instrumentalist of genres. After all, it is a genre constituted by the presentation of a sequential series of steps, all aiming at a useful result; it is a genre that is usually associated with what scholars call “useful cinema.” On the other hand, it is a genre that has produced some of the most romantic, utopian depictions of labor in which labor figures not as that from which human beings seek relief in the form of listless leisure, but as the activity that gives human life meaning. The philosophical basis for the centrality of labor to life — what has been called the “metaphysics of labor” — finds expression in the process genre; thus, the genre stands in opposition to the politics of antiwork.
The photos on the cover of the book are stills from the Mister Rogers video on how crayons are made:
As you’ve probably observed, I am an unabashed fan of the process genre, with dozens of videos & tutorials in kottke.org’s how to tag alone. Some of my particular favorites are the crayon video above (along with a similar one from Sesame Street), an Oscar-winning short from 1958 about glassmaking, the Primitive Technology videos, how marbled paper is made, how candy is made at the Teddy Grays factory, and the National Film Board of Canada’s video about how to make an igloo.