tomartin
tompeters! reading list
I love reading lists. Here is one from Tom Peters! Eclectic/challenging/current.
http://www.tompeters.com/toms_world/read.asp
enchilada music!
Friday afternoon I made 100 chicken and cheese enchiladas for my son's thirteenth birthday. I made the enchiladas with corn tortillas, la victoria enchilada sauce, jack & chedder cheese and simmered chicken breasts. I listened to the following music.
1. Zwan - Mary, Star of the Sea: Billy Corgans new band. A great rock album. heavy guitars, lilting melodies and impossibly sentimental lyrics.
2. Warren Zevon - Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon: A good collection with some surprising ommissions. I wish it had accidentily like a martyr and the song about the big gorilla at the l.a. zoo, that took the keys to my (his) bmw.
3. Elvis Costello - when i was cruel: a rockin' little outing. (this was bugging my wife and i had to switch to.....)
4. Van Morrison - St. Dominics Preview: My favorite Van Morrison album....for now.
5. Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan: A great early album.
6. The Beach Boys - The Pet Sound Sessions: I use to listen to this constantly. It is so good. I have not heard it for sometime and it all came back to me. Note: read Heroes and Villains about the Beach Boy saga.
And than the party started and the kids started to listen to a bunch of music by bands with post-modern names that sounded all alike to me.
So it goes.
cultural literacy or further adventures in autodidacticism
One of my favorite websites, Bartleby.com, which makes available several reference works online including the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare ...oh, and the Harvard Five Foot Shelf, has now/recently/apparrently made available the latest edition of the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. The page on the site has a list of 23 main topics. Each topic can be clicked sending one to another page where there is maybe a hundred words/terms/phrases that can be clicked sending one to a definition/explanation of the term.
How I use the site is thusly: I click on a main topic and go to the terms page. I read through the terms (and I am familiar, depending on the topic 80-90% of the terms. I click on the terms I am unfamiliar with and I am one step closer to considering myself culturally literate.
It's a pretty fun quick read. You can debate the value of the terms or if you are culturally literate or the value of being culturally literate or the definition of culturally literate at another time.
http://www.bartleby.com/59/
busy dying
Warren Zevon was given 4 months to live and has chosen to be very public about it. Zevon is a great funny songwriter and artist. An unlikely rock star singer/songwriter with a great sense of humor. He has recorded prodigously over what turned into a year and lived to see his twin grandchildren born. He is reportedly bedridden at this point.
http://www.warrenzevon.com/
Bob Dylan has been rotating in 3 or 4 songs a show which, I believe, has provided Zevon with a fairly sizable income over the last year. A touching, generous gesture.
http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/100402s.html
David Letterman, who is also a big fan of Zevon, (he was a frequent guest bandleader/sit-in guitarist/pianist and musical guest) dedicated a whole show to Zevon before he became too sick. He spoke frankly about his death and performed a few songs with early breathless evidence of his illness.
http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/
Zevon's has recorded one of his last recording sessions, performing Dylan's Knockin' on Heavens Door.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030820/ap_en_mu/music_zevon_s_exit_2
space and/or time and/or motion and/or something else
This interests me. I receive an e-letter from the Utne Reader, which is a sort of left wing Reader's Digest. It is running an abstract on a story about an essay by a young physicist named Peter Lynds from New Zealand. The 23-yer-old college drop out has developed a theory about time and motion which asserts that neither time nor motion is static. the theory resolves many ancient paradoxes. There is also a competing theory that the whole matter is a hoax perpetrated by a teenage computer nerd who is circulating postings claiming himself as the new Einstein. The theory is interesting. The controversy is interesting. How the theory is being reported is interesting. How the controversy is being reported is interesting. It's all just interesting.
The Yahoo story which doesn't mention the controversy.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/space/20030807/sc_space/newtheoryoftimerattleshallsofscience
THe article that claims the whole affair is hoax by a 17 year old computer nerd.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/comments/peterlynds.html
A pretty thorough look at the whole controversy.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1017994,00.html
Read the document in for yourself.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search.py?recid=622019
Abstract from the above article: "It is postulated there is not a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process at which the relative position of a body in relative motion or a specific physical magnitude would theoretically be precisely determined. It is concluded it is exactly because of this that time (relative interval as indicated by a clock) and the continuity of a physical process is possible, with there being a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time. This explanation is also shown to be the correct solution to the motion and infinity paradoxes, excluding the Stadium, originally conceived by the ancient Greek mathematician Zeno of Elea. Quantum Cosmology, Imaginary Time and Chronons are also then discussed, with the latter two appearing to be superseded on a theoretical basis."
tatoos, fiscal irresponsibility and that darn pope
I read three great stories over the weekend and will now take the extremely lame step of asking you to look them up on your own. Two stories were in the LA Times and one was the Weekly World News cover story for August 12, 2003.
The Christian Research Institute (CRI) was audited, by an accounting firm that audits organizations, that invite them to do so. It is a fairly good way to show you're on the up and up and are responsible stewards of donors money. The results of the audit were a recommendation to return some money to some people. Neither the people nor the dollar amounts were made public. It appears that financial sloppiness was the only crime but the damage is done and the vagueness of the settlement has not helped much.
On the same page of the LA Times was a Christian Tattoo convention featuring people glorifying God by getting tattoos on upwards of 80% of their bodies. One of the guest speakers was Dr. James Dobson's son.
http://www.latimes.com/
And this weeks religion column is concluded with a weekly World News cover story:
VATICAN RED ALERT... POPE IS MISSING! 'HE SEEMS TO HAVE JUST WANDERED OFF' -SAYS AGITATED CARDINAL.
www.vatican.va/
adventures in autodidactiscism
Again, with the September issue of Wired magazine. There is a story about the MIT OpenCourseWare program. They are currently making available 80 of their courses online free of charge. What they offer is reading lists, lecture notes, assignments and quiz/test questions. You don't get any interaction with students or teachers but you can go through the materials and get a good introduction or better to a given subject. I have been taking a literature course. You are given a reading list and they tell you how to obtain the reading materials free online. Segments are offered as PDF files or you are pointed to project
guttenberg to obtain the whole text. All for free. And it is their goal to offer all MIT courses at the website in the same way.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm
Project Guttenberg
http://promo.net/pg/
dreams
I usually don't like listening to other peoples dreams. This is, I believe, put together by the "love letters" woman. Several people post dreams in a brief, graphically pleasant format.
http://www.sleeptrip.com/
love letters
This is pretty interesting. A young woman has posted scanned copies of love letters (300 of them) on this website. There is a color code to the frontpage which ties letters together by theme. warning: the letters frequently use explicit language. interesting though.
http://www.sleeptrip.com/300loveletters/2.html
books recommended by fictitous teenage girls
I joined a mailing list called Rory's Book Club. It turns out Rory is one of the Gilmore Girls - the teenage one. Once a week a letter goes out recommending one or two books. This week's offerings were Catcher in the Rye and Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole. Salanger is not a very surprising recommendation but O'Toole is. A couple of interesting facts/anecdoes about the book: First, the book was championed by my favorite novelist/essayist Walker Percy after it was delivered to him by O'Toole's mother. It was written in long hand and was published after O'Tooles suicide. Second, the movie version has been set to go into production on three separate occasions with as it's star, in order of untimely death, John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley.
http://www.thewb.com/Shows/WithFeedback/0,9310,115845||,00.html
Fox's highly acclaimed action show 24 has a fairly developed website and at a section entitled Kimberley's Desktop we find the show's star's daughter's favorite books listed in two convenient understated catagories.
Books for Being Serious
Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Beach, Alex Garland
Franny & Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Books for Being Not So Serious
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
Bobbi Brown Teenage Beauty: Everything You Need to Look Pretty, Natural, Sexy & Awesome, Bobbi Brown & Annmarie Iverson
Get over It: How to Survive Breakups, Back-Stabbing Friends, and Bad Haircuts, Beth Mayall
The Real Rules for Girls, Mindy Morgenstern
Sartre to beauty tips. Nice to see Franny and Zooey in place of Catcher.
http://www.fox.com/24/season1/home.html
I guess I think this is hilarious because I'm trying to get my head around fictitious television characters recommending books. "I'm reading The Bell Jar because Kimberly Bauer recommended it!". Kimberley has an existence which is contained within a 24 hour time period on a tv show stretched over a 24 week period. She didn't read those books within the confines of the show. What is the contribution of this type of backstory to the story as a whole? why do only readers of the website benefit from colors that are given to Kimberly as a supposed reader of the listed books?
PowerPoint
I have long been a fan of PowerPoint. I have done some presentations for work. I worked on a city council presentation proposing a City Street tree program. I have constructed presentations for myself, to organize my understanding of a given subject. The templates can be hilarious. They have templates for delivering bad news, for presenting a business plan, and other standard business presentations. They seem to have a humorous "I am now saying this..." quality to them. "Follow along as I deliver bad news". "You've got to buy this from me, see I made this nifty presentation".
Business guru Tom Peters! ( I think he has had the exclamation point legally added to his name) has created thousands of PowerPoint slides for his 200+ speeches per year. He also makes the slides available for sale from his website. They used to be free. He is not using the templates. They have a bold graphic quality using black, white and prime colors especielly red and yellow. I haven't ever seen the slides in action delivered by Peters but they seem to have a minimalist quality to them that act as a backdrop to the speech.
http://tompeters.com/
Cartoon network's Adult Swim programming, I believe, uses Powerpoint between it's shows, making a mockery of bumper graphics. The slides are peppered with self references to the text along the lines of "we were too lazy to come up with anything more clever than this but you're watching for the cartoons anyway". They seem to have fresh copy everynight or at least a pretty good rotation of fresh copy. and they are generally funny. It is always a black background with a line or two of white text across the center of the screen fading in and out.
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/
The adult swim website is pretty good too. It has a similar comedic and graphic tone as the bumpers.
http://www.adultswim.com/
How did I get started on Powerpoint? The September issue of Wired has a pair of articles about Powerpoint. David Byrne is on a book tour where he is using a loopy, almost Dadaistic (maybe the best word is Byrnian) Powerpoint presention to accompany his speaking engagement. There is a sample of the graphics in the magazine. He doesn't have anything nice to say about PP and the work is generally goofing on it.
www.talking-heads.net/davidbyrne/
There is an accompanying article by Edward R. Tufte called Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely. He is not fond of PP and calls it fascistic. He has written a book called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.
www.edwardtufte.com
I have been working on a PP presentation that I believe I will make a website out of. It's a slide presentation of art that I like with (very) brief essays on why the art is important to me. It features art by Chagall, Rothko, Cy Twombley etc. All very eclectic and completely personal in its selection. I may have a small cocktail party with my friends and run it as a kiosk throughout the evening than load it up to website.
I also have a slide presentation that I used Clarisworks to create called Seven Zen Koan which mocks both zen thought and slideware.
Is it accurate to call myself a fan of something if I'm not a fan of it for the reasons the creator intended?
eurydice and stalin
Robert Pinsky has a poem in the New Republic that I thought was pretty good (though it reminded me alot of a Zbigniew Herbert poem). It's called Eurydice and Stalin. I really neeed to figure out how to make it so you can simply click the link. Until than you'll need to paste it in your browser.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030818&s=poem081803
my first blog post
Well, here I go! i will post and link things that interest me. Hopefully you will find that interesting.
Most interesting thing that has recently happened to me: my daughter just called me from the Bjork concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The same place I'll be listening to 3 Beethoven piano concertos (2,3,and 4) tomorrow night.
New interest: reading scripts. found a great site. Read the new Kaufman script "The Eternal Sunlight of the Spotless Mind". Fascinating!
Anyway....i'll keep track of what i'm doing and post links. Pretty simple ...I hope.
