Friday, February 12. 2010
William Zinsser at American Scholar. A classic essay.
Now he has a new one: Writing English as a Second Language. One quote:
The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.
How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”
Thursday, February 11. 2010
As Mrs. BD quips, "Lorenzo was sort of a Renaissance Man, wasn't he?" Lorenzo took an active role in designing the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano, 12 miles north of Florence, in 1485.
The design of this rural Medici farming villa, which so much impressed and influenced Palladio, was revolutionary in several ways, not the least of which were its orientation outwards rather than towards an inner courtyard and its lack of defensive fortifications. (Lorenzo was famously casual about security.)
From the Value of a Life at Ragamuffin Studies:
...as we were speaking, I realized that my friend had wandered into a collectivist view of the value of a life. His value of liberty was not completely based on the principle of individual rights. Because if his values were firmly rooted there, he would realize immediately that the value of a life is not based on how useful to society, or how precious that person is to another.
That friend is a victim of pernicious Utilitarianism - John Dewey's contribution to the totalitarianism of the Left. "The greater good" and all that soul-crushing stuff.
There is no greater earthly good than individual freedom.
I sure hope this is the ugliest building on the Princeton campus:
Wednesday, February 10. 2010
A friend was thoughtful enough to give us a year's subscription to Zagat's online for Christmas. Zagat's has gone global now.
A (free) alternative to Zagat's is Yelp. Pick your city. I have been warned, however, that a 3-star rating on Yelp in NYC is equivalent to a 5-star rating elsewhere. New Yorkers are highly critical and demanding about dining - and about everything else. "If I can make it there..."
For example, we were in the city this weekend at the Irish Repertory Theater and were looking for Venetian restaurants in the neighborhood. We tried Le Zie in Chelsea on 7th Ave. Not pricey. Zie had some rough reviews on Yelp (people love to bitch in reviews) but the place was better than any neighborhood trattoria in Italy. The ten "small plate" seafood appetizers were wonderful, and the Venetian calf's liver with onions and vinegar sauce was a fine treat.
It was fun checking out Zagat for Venetian restaurants in NYC. Here are a few of them, for your amusement.
The menus give a good idea of what Venetian cooking consists of:
Cipriani
Osteria al Doge
Antica Venezia
Osteria Laguna
REMI
All good fun. Here's inside Le Zie:
Our friend Elissa will have a show of her latest at the Noel Gallery in Bronxville. A sample:
Tuesday, February 9. 2010
Something Much Darker: Andrew Sullivan has a serious problem.
The TRN piece is really about the mystery of the Trinity and other topics, not just about Sullivan's disorder - whatever it is. I used to admire, but not usually agree with, Sullivan, back in the day before he ran off the road.
The Trinity? It is no more a mystery to me than the math of the 90 degree angle. It just is. Reality just is.
Monday, February 8. 2010
Form Rick Moran:
There are few human beings on planet earth more annoying than Deepak Chopra, the touchy-feely, New Age Guru whose fetid, gooey, and completely banal nostrums regarding health and healing have reached a new low in the history of civilized thought.
But, Rick, remember that he has gotten fabulously rich from his banal nostrums. So maybe he's not a complete idiot. Maybe he is our P.T. Barnum.
Sunday, February 7. 2010
I do not know how many of Lorenzo di Medici's country villas are extant, but he helped design a few of them, one of which was an architectural inspiration for Palladio.
This one, sitting on the hills overlooking Florence, was built by Cosimo for his second grandson Giovanni, and came into Lorenzo's hands after his brother was assassinated by a cabal which included the Pope. It became one of Lorenzo's favorite hangouts with his philosopher, artist, and poet pals (and girlfriends).
(By the way, we recommend staying in Fiesole when visiting Florence, and it's just a 15-minute bus ride down the hill. November and May are good months.)
A friend was enthusing about (Habanos) Romeo y Julietas the other day. He views them as the best brand. Photo is their medium strength 42 ring gauge Corona - a good "starter cigar." Now that cigar appreciation is no longer the yuppie fad that it had been for a while, it's OK to enjoy them again.
Saturday, February 6. 2010
In the (now, sadly, defunct) New York Sun:
Given the nearly total absence of fanfare, you could be excused for not knowing that this was the quincentenary of Andrea Palladio's birth. Generally it is a kind of condescension to treat the great cultural figures of the past as though, in some sense, they were, or needed to be, our contemporaries. And yet a respectable case could be made that, of all the architects who lived before the 20th century, few were as influential as Palladio (1508-80) or came closer, in the arc of their reputation, to being what we would now call a "starchitect."
Read the whole thing.
Here's Wiki on Palladio. Below is a photo of Villa Capra, aka Villa Rotunda, in Vicenza.
A quickie for dessert? Restaurant bathroom trysts.
I guess amore is sometimes just overwhelmingly urgent, like diarrhea. Been there, but never when fully sober. I remember in the 70s when the only thing going on in restaurant bathrooms was people doing lines of coke with rolled-up $100 bills.
It is performed standing up, I assume, like the coke.
Friday, February 5. 2010
From Phi Beta Cons:
My point is that the common notion that a college education is essential to doing most of the work in the economy is mistaken. The ability of individuals to do work seldom depends on anything they studied in college.
True indeed. Nothing wrong with a liberal arts education, though, as life-enrichment for those too lazy to figure out how to obtain it on their own. (It's called "reading.") A rigorous high school education ought to be enough for most practical purposes, and adequate preparation for any job training or apprenticeship which doesn't require advanced math or science.
I have never been disappointed in The Teaching Company, but I have never enjoyed a series as much as Prof. Sutherland's Classics of British Literature. It is college as it should be.
As with any excellent humanities prof, you learn as much about thinking about life as you do about the topic at hand. His soft brogue is pleasant too.
Today, I am listening to his Chaucer lectures. Time flies by on ye olde elliptical machine.
Thursday, February 4. 2010
I visited Venice for a few days many years ago, and do not feel driven to return - it's a giant tourist trap with a pickpocket team on every block - except that I wouldn't mind catching the Venice Regatta in August:
On further thought, I wouldn't mind getting a little more experience with Venetian cooking. All I know about it is Risi e Bisi, which doesn't look like much but which is killer delicious when Mrs. BD makes it.
Here's When I Paint My Masterpiece live with The Band in 1971:
Wednesday, February 3. 2010
From Front Page's Class War in the Classroom:
“We must encourage students to access the antagonist class positions of texts in order to demonstrate how the oppositional voices contained in them identify evidence of class struggle,” Christopher Craig writes in the December 2009 issue of Radical Teacher, “a socialist, feminist and anti-racist journal on the theory and practice of teaching.” “Through this critical process, we can show how the values and interests of the dominant class are not universal but repressive, intended to keep the power relations between the ruling and working class one-sided.”
“For most of us, learning to read texts this way helps us to see through the ruling class ideology that exists in everything from literature to the nightly news.” Craig teaches at Emmanuel College, a Catholic institution of higher learning.
Wow. That's so cool, so advanced, and so deep. And no doubt it's exactly the lesson every $145,000 UAW worker wants his kids to be taught in school...
Thank God for teacher's ed. They do it all for the kiddies.
Rohmer died on Jan. 11. From a summary of Rohmer's movies:
Claire's knee—and the consternation it arouses in the diplomat—is a painstakingly constructed symbol of rationalisation gone amok. It gives us something by which to measure the diplomat's drift from reason. It also underlines the odd humour of the "Moral Tales": in Rohmer's world, faces are symmetrical, bodies proportional, and words are perfectly measured. Everyone is beautiful, and everything is in its right place. Everything, that is, except the intentions of his heroes.
The trailer for Claire's Knee (1970) - in French - sorry, but you can get the gist of it:
It would apppear that it is from bone fire, a burning of human bones.
Tuesday, February 2. 2010
Down the mall from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, a new museum will open next November, the National Museum of American Jewish History. It tells the story of Jews in America, the many contributions from Nieuw Amsterdam to “God Bless America” to today in every walk of life, and the appreciation for the opportunities coming from being freer than elsewhere due to freer markets, speech and observance under the rule of law. It’s the same story for every immigrant group to America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBmglA-yCCk
Considering a trip to the Dolomites and the Veneto this August, with visits to Venice (not again!), Padua, Verona, Castelrotto (Kastelruth), etc. Apparently the people in the Dolomites do not really think of themselves as Italian (they had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until WW1, and Mussolini Italianized the names).
Found out there are many villages up there in the Dolomites where the people mostly speak Ladin (not to be confused with Ladino). Several million people in the Veneto speak Venetian, too. People in Castelrotto speak German.
Photos below of Castelrotto, which looks more alpine-German or Swiss than Italian. It's the south Tyrol:
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.
I am sad to say that The Complete Pogo, Vol. 1, has not yet been released. It's a damn shame.
Monday, February 1. 2010
 During the 1700s and 1800s the Brits scoured the planet to find cool places to visit (or to make money). Amelia Edwards was one of them, and she wrote about it. It was the era when, if you saw a couple of ladies riding side-saddle in the desert or the mountains, the natives would think "They must be English."
From Amazon:
British writer and Egyptologist AMELIA EDWARDS (1831-1892) was a published writer by age seven. Among her books most beloved by readers past and present are the novels Barbara's History (1864) and Lord Brackenbury (1880), and the travelogue A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877).
She wrote mysteries too.
We have in hand her book about her trip to the Dolomites: Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys.
Her other books here.
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