Accepted Ideas

Dilemma of Determinism

Hypnophobia

'Sleep can continue any idea…” as his self-awareness fades into suspension points. Valéry himself kept a diary for over fifty years (collected as the Cahiers [Notebooks]). One of his central concerns was to observe the successive phases of his awakening, as in the early hours of the morning he annotated his mind-rise. Naturally, dreams preoccupied him as much as the daily resurrection of the self. He suggested that dreams might be an attempt to make sense of the body’s passage from sleep to wakefulness.'

interaction

"For them it's the spirit of God which is moving through them. I can't prove that or disprove that on the basis of a brain scan, but I can see the changes that are going on in the brain while they're engaged in this very, very powerful and very deep spiritual practice... It certainly looks like the way the brain is put together makes it very easy for human beings to have religious and spiritual experiences."

quantifiable

In general, nations with a higher measure of gender equality also have higher levels of Emotional Investment. As gender equality increases, though, the increase in women’s Emotional Investment score is greater than the increase in the men’s score. Everyone is more loving with greater gender equality, but the difference between men and women’s tendency to love diverges as equality increases, so that women become notably more loving than men in countries with high gender equality. Economists have long struggled with the realization that while we recognize that culture matters for economic outcomes, only quantifiable evidence can tell us by just how much. Cultural traits are often difficult to quantify, unfortunately, and the absence of reliable measures leaves us with a hand-waving exercise, the reliability of which our mathematically-oriented minds find difficult to accept.

Subtil nettoyage

« Ce qui n’était que pigment sur la terre est glorifié dans le ciel par le moyen de la transparence, écrivait Paul Claudel à propos de la Sainte-Chapelle. Ces panneaux de verre coloré autour de nous, c’est la matière sensible au rayon intellectuel. Voici le paradis retrouvé. »

irresistibly quotable

“No other critic approaches [Sheed’s] ability to synthesize the vast literature on a subject or to illuminate a writer’s oeuvre in a short starburst of words.” It’s those starbursts that led fellow critic Jonathan Yardley to call him “irresistibly quotable.” Barra’s tribute was almost entirely a list of “Sheedisms,” and I can’t blame him. It’s almost impossible to write about Sheed without simply offering a buffet of his epigrammatic genius:

[Edward] Albee can no longer wait to tell us what’s on his mind: his plays are coming perilously close to his interviews . . .

It seems [Robert Lowell] was strictly a line poet, string them as you will, so that his poems are like all-star teams that haven’t practiced together.

I have never seen (or joined in) such drinking as the Lit set could contrive in those days. So what would have seemed like a personal drinking problem elsewhere was lost in the crowd, and Berryman drifted into alcoholism without noticing. He and Schwartz had once talked with contempt of writers who drown their talent in booze, but both would now proceed to do so themselves, having badly misjudged the undertow.

Best of the Year Award

The fifth annual design competition recognized superior interior design projects and products in more than 70 categories. Cindy Allen, editor-in-chief of the magazine, described the achievement as “a perfect trifecta” of honors for Andre Kikoski Architect, whose 2010 distinctions for the Wright also include the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design and the Gold Key Award for Excellence in Hospitality Design. Since opening in December 2009, the Wright, named for the Guggenheim’s famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has received numerous accolades for its innovative design. The 1,600-square-foot space features a curvilinear wall of walnut layered with illuminated fiber optics, a bar clad in innovative custom metalwork and topped with white Corian, and a sweeping banquette with blue leather seating. The modern American menu, which emphasizes seasonal, local, and sustainable ingredients, was created by David Bouley protégé Rodolfo Contreras. Reflecting the museum's modern and contemporary focus, renowned British artist Liam Gillick was commissioned for a site-specific work, titled The horizon produced by a factory once it had stopped producing views (2009). Conceived as a sculpture that can be expanded or contracted to fit any designated space, Gillick constructed a sequence of horizontal planks of powder-coated aluminum mounted to the walls and ceiling.

doesn’t have to go on.

Most of us, I suspect, like to think of artists as a breed apart, a cadre of idealists whose souls have been ennobled by long exposure to beauty. The truth, however, is that they are every bit as human as the rest of us, and that a certain number of them are self-centered opportunists who are perfectly willing to ignore evil so long as the evildoers leave them in peace to do their work. That was pretty much what many German musicians did when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Within a matter of days, Hitler and his henchmen started putting into place a policy of systematic persecution of German Jews.
“Because of the impression made on me by the actions of my Christian compatriots against German Jews…I find it necessary to break off my concert tour in Germany.” What makes this act so significant is that Mr. Busch was the only well-known non-Jewish German classical musician to emigrate from Germany solely as a matter of principle—and one of a bare handful of non-Jewish European musicians, including Arturo Toscanini and Pablo Casals, who resolved to stop performing there for the same reason.

Dreams and Facts

The influence of our wishes upon our beliefs is a matter of common knowledge and observation, yet the nature of this influence is very generally misconceived. It is customary to suppose that the bulk of our beliefs are derived from some rational ground, and that desire is only an occasional disturbing force. The exact opposite of this would be nearer the truth: the great mass of beliefs by which we are supported in our daily life is merely the bodying forth of desire, corrected here and there, at isolated points, by the rude shock of fact. Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs. There are three ways by which this non-rational origin of our convictions can be demonstrated: there is the way of psycho-analysis, which, starting from an understanding of the insane and the hysterical, gradually makes it plain how little, in essence, these victims of malady differ from ordinary healthy people; then there is the way of the sceptical philosopher, showing how feeble is the rational evidence for even our most cherished beliefs; and finally there is the way of common observation of men. It is only the last of these three that I propose to consider.

chronicled in “isms”

A history of the humanities in the 20th century could be chronicled in “isms” — formalism, Freudianism, structuralism, postcolonialism — grand intellectual cathedrals from which assorted interpretations of literature, politics and culture spread. The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data. Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have. These researchers are digitally mapping Civil War battlefields to understand what role topography played in victory, using databases of thousands of jam sessions to track how musical collaborations influenced jazz, searching through large numbers of scientific texts and books to track where concepts first appeared and how they spread, and combining animation, charts and primary documents about Thomas Jefferson’s travels to create new ways to teach history.

Le livre des fuites

Le trolleybus numéro 9 avançait, portant dans son ventre les grappes de visages aux yeux tous pareils. Sur son dos, les deux antennes dressées couraient le long des fils électriques, s'inclinant, vibrant, crissant. De temps à autre, une boule d'étincelles jaillissait en claquant du bout des antennes, et on sentait dans l'air une drôle d'odeur de soufre. Le trolleybus numéro 9 s'arrêtait devant un pylône sur lequel était écrit « ROSA BONHEUR ». Les freins sifflaient, les portes se repliaient, et il y avait des gens qui descendaient à l'avant pendant que d'autres montaient à l'arrière. C'était ainsi. Puis le trolleybus numéro 9 repartait le long du trottoir portant dans son ventre la grappe d'oeufs blanchâtres, en route vers le but inconnu. En route vers le terminus toujours recommencé, l'espèce de place déserte avec un jardin poussiéreux, où il virait lentement sur lui-même avant de repartir en sens inverse.

Autobiography of Mark Twain

“It’s totally the Dad book of the year,” said Rebecca Fitting, an owner of the Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “It’s that autobiography, biography, history category, a certain kind of guy gift book.” Many booksellers said the memoir has a perfect holiday-gift quality: a widely adored author, a weighty feel, and a unique story behind its publication. (Twain ordered that the book be published a century after his death.) Most of the content was dictated to Twain’s stenographer in the four years before he died, at 74 in 1910. It is more political than his previous works, by turns frank, funny, angry and full of recollections from his childhood, which deeply influenced books like “Huckleberry Finn.” A younger generation of readers is discovering Twain for his political writings, Ms. Fitting said.

Holiday Stress

December is one of the most stressful times of the year. And, this particular month is more chaotic, maddening, and depressingly stressful than most years in recent memory. But, in celebration of Jane Austen's birthday, Laurie Viera Rigler wrote: "It is a truth little-known that Jane Austen novels and works inspired by the great author are an effective cure for holiday stress." Do you allow books to offer solace at stressful times in your life? Books always offer an escape--a brief moment of reprieve to forget the worries or troubles of the day. But, books are also old, familiar friends. Cradled in your arms, a book can take you back to bygone days, be the voice of reason, and offer sage wisdom or life-changing experience. So, what do books mean to you in stressful times? Does reading help you deal with stress? Whatever the reason for your reading, take a look at Rigler's novel: Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (website).