In the afterlife...

Movie from: Silly Symphony - The Skeleton Dance - 1929

If this isn't nice, what is?

Words of wisdom by Kurt Vonnegut:

My Uncle Alex Vonnegut, an insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania, taught me something very important. He said that when things are going really well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about very simple occasions, not great victories. Maybe drinking lemonade under a shade tree, or smelling the aroma of a bakery, or fishing, or listening to music coming from a concert hall while standing in the dark outside, or, dar I say, after a kiss. he told me it was important at such times to say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”  

Assortment

How did the north end up being at the top of the map?  Interestingly, north wasn't always north. A cartographic history of "what's up"

Even the Beatles got bad reviews. I kid you not! Find out what the critics wrote about the Beatles in 1964.

Dear Graduate: don't follow your dreams! Here's the brutal truth: most people can't pay the bills by living their passion. What can we do instead? Apparently: never stop enjoying the wonder of the world, and never lose the curiosity that got you here today. A little off topic, but yeah, nice advice.

The Histomap

from Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton.

Film & Philosophy

“Film has become such an integral ingredient in our motley recipe of mass art and pop culture entertainment that we often overlook its potential for stimulating serious reflection and speculation. The visual immediacy of cinematic art appeals to our receptive curiosity in the same way that paintings and natural landscapes often captivate our perceptual and emotional attention. However, our intellectual engagement with film has been minimized more and more with the proliferation of movies that cater simply to the passive sensory networks of spectacle-obsessed viewers rather than to the active reflection of thoughtful inquirers.”

- Kevin L Stoehr

My name is?

Aristotle, oh and the shadows

When Aristotle isn't being praised as God himself, he gets beaten around a bit.  So does Plato but mainly Aristotle. Here's something interesting that I found when going through my old files:

"If there is a philosophical Atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders, it is Aristotle. He has been opposed, misinterpreted, misrepresented, and—like an axiom—used by his enemies in the very act of denying him. Whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements.

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history’s brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. The Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century brought men to the Renaissance. The intellectual counter-revolution turned them back toward the cave of his antipode: Plato.

There is only one fundamental issue in philosophy: the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind. The conflict of Aristotle versus Plato is the conflict of reason versus mysticism. It was Plato who formulated most of philosophy’s basic questions—and doubts. It was Aristotle who laid the foundation for most of the answers. Thereafter, the record of their duel is the record of man’s long struggle to deny and surrender or to uphold and assert the validity of his particular mode of consciousness."

- Review of J.H. Randall’s Aristotle, The Objectivist Newsletter, May 1963, 18

Musical history tour

Google research has created an amazing history of music timeline.  It's really fun to play around with.