tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89972497187370678742024-03-19T04:18:38.728-05:00Apologia Pro Literati VitaObservations on Philosophy, Culture, and the ArtsNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.comBlogger782125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-40164038202742174482021-08-31T21:13:00.002-05:002021-08-31T21:13:28.396-05:00Movie Review: Tangled (2011)Directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. 2010.I came kicking and screaming to the Wonderful World of Disney™. I had regarded Disney movies as fuzzy infantilizations of the traditional tales, but spurred by my wife and kids, movie-by-movie I was won over. All of a sudden I was the one sneaking the DVDs into the cart and declaring movie days to see the next feature.Still by the time I sat down toNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-59910015656514222112020-10-15T21:19:00.003-05:002020-10-15T21:20:37.468-05:00Schubert's Erlkönig, Animated Somehow Schubert–without my seeking–always finds me in the autumn. This year I came upon an animation of what is probably the composer's most popular lieder, Erlkönig, famous for its supernatural subject and text by Goethe, its frenetic galloping figure on the keyboard (too fast for Schubert himself to play it), and its distinguishing of four distinct characters for the vocal soloist. Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-34897975459052554032020-10-09T22:02:00.005-05:002020-10-15T21:22:59.914-05:00Ten Frames: Peter Pan (1953)10+ frames from Peter Pan, with final comments ad libitum.1. This is a great look for Peter Pan, a look which is unfortunately inconsistent and lost over the course of the movie. The partial illumination of his face makes him look like a bandit and his toothy, pointy grin gives him an air of devilish mischief. And I think there is something devilish and dangerous about a boy—especially an Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-85986069548554305092020-10-03T21:40:00.007-05:002020-10-06T12:25:32.166-05:00miseriI've been thinking this week of the old saying that in getting older and having kids you become more conservative. So the line goes, in a nutshell, that with responsibility comes a certain amount of aversion to risk. I suppose this is in some way true, and heretofore I thought I was a pretty conservative dad, but in fact I think fatherhood has made me more liberal. I say this namely because Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-86237012565894885912020-09-26T21:06:00.004-05:002020-10-15T21:23:47.746-05:00Movie Review: Peter Pan (1953)Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton LuskeAfter nearly 100 years, Disney movies have many reputations, most of them mostly wrong. I should know, as I harbored them until getting the opportunity to watch the classics with my own children. The first, that they're cheap knockoffs of classic literature and fairytale, is flat wrong. Books and stories were edited, Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-27334577734723378312020-09-21T19:39:00.027-05:002020-09-21T19:47:59.261-05:00A Hero's Philosophizing I saw re-tweeted the other day the following assessment of President Trump—possibly a fragment as I did not follow up and read the article but merely snipped this section—by former Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who famously landed his disabled aircraft in the Hudson River, off NYC. Of Trump he said:He cannot understand selflessness because he is selfish. He cannot conceive of Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-906853940679274202020-09-13T20:08:00.005-05:002020-09-13T20:12:00.527-05:00The Old Dies and the New Cannot Be Born
I had the opportunity this week to revisit the first version of Don Giovanni I ever saw, Joseph Losey's 1979 filmed production, with Loren Maazel conducting the orchestra and chorus of the Opéra de Paris and Ruggero Raimondi as the infamous seducer. I hope to reflect on the production later and at length, but I couldn't help notice now what I surely did not notice 20+ Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-33235050915382976182020-08-29T20:18:00.001-05:002020-08-29T20:18:29.153-05:00All Aboard!I'm fairly sure that—in America in July 2020—few if any people are vehemently opposed to federal government financial bailouts. We've been acclimated to it fairly well, every few years, since the airline and steel bailouts from the early G.W. Bush years after 9/11, and more memorably The Great 2008 Bailout of financial and automotive corporations, but regular people then felt, rightly, scammed byNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-77449767596305114032020-07-12T20:13:00.000-05:002020-07-12T20:13:03.378-05:00The POTUS Legitimacy CrisisIn my article last month The Great Epi-Twitter Meltdown I touched on the origin of the recent riots and the recent years of intense liberal unrest finding root in the fundamental belief for many on the left that Donald Trump is not the legitimate President of the United States. I'd like to expand on this observation which in my estimates goes back at least a couple of decades.Starting in theNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-49533132583259196172020-07-05T20:03:00.001-05:002020-07-05T20:03:28.701-05:00YouTube Highlight: AuthenticSoundAuthentic Sound is a delightful channel run by Belgian musician Wim Winters. Besides his marvelous playing he discusses musicology, history, instruments, and performance practice. He raises matters that performers often don't want to dwell on because they require a lot of work to sort out before you can settle on a reasonable reading of the score, and that non-performers (like me) just Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-11081341590924275642020-07-05T13:10:00.001-05:002020-07-05T13:10:30.081-05:00A Theory on Social Media Stress1. Social Media attracts dissatisfied people.2. Dissatisfied people are often emotionally immature.3. The traits of emotionally immature people, particularlylack of empathyavoiding anything that causes anxietyluring/antagonizing people into role-relationships and enmeshmentfussing to get attentionlogical reasoning disappears under stress of criticismcreate a backlash of blocking/ignoring from Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-6722056769265662912020-07-05T12:20:00.000-05:002020-07-05T12:20:53.919-05:00Some Site News1. Optics Tech SolutionsI took a long break from writing since Summer 2018, more or less right as I started my IT business. As such I haven't yet mentioned my business here on the blog. I'll work on finding a suitable place here for a little advertisement for it, but if you are interested in my tech services, you can find my business website atopticstechsolutions.comI'd very much like Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-29804854104431263652020-07-03T20:30:00.002-05:002020-07-03T20:30:33.397-05:00Thought, Heraclitus and Paul Klee's Cat and BirdI picked up by chance a children's book one fine art, on the cover of which is Paul Klee's 1928 Cat and Bird. At once I was taken in by the ingenious picture. It reads precisely like a child's drawing—the bird is one the mind of the cat—with all of the simplicity and immediacy you see in what children draw. On the other hand there is something philosophical about it: we're not onlyNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-61196956454906415452020-06-19T21:21:00.000-05:002020-06-19T21:22:24.134-05:00The Great Epi-Twitter MeltdownDoctors were probably the last group of professionals broadly trusted across all stripes of society. Now, there seems to be no group whom everyone trusts. We have to thank for the destruction of that last bastion of trust the doctors, many of them epidemiologists, who first vehemently clamored for an urgent nationwide shelter-in-place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, only to make exceptions to Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-9245324218203477332020-06-15T15:17:00.000-05:002020-06-15T15:17:12.715-05:00POTUS 45The endless cavalcade of fulminations to the contrary, Donald Trump, his rise to the presidency, and his presidency are not separately or altogether complicated or inexplicable matters.My thoughts about him are twofold, one positive—that is to say, something that I know about him—and one negative—that is to say something that I believe is unknown and potentially unknowable. First, Donald Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-35881369396607889302020-05-28T21:33:00.003-05:002020-05-28T21:33:48.022-05:00Lorin Hollander w/ Fred Rogers
Pianist Lorin Hollander in conversation with Fred Rogers, from Rogers'
Old Friends...New Friends (1978)
Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-86656835916340447592020-05-28T21:16:00.001-05:002020-05-28T21:20:42.129-05:00Sundered BoughsI don’t know if you have had the same experience, but I can never decide how best to get rid of a weed. Should I spray it with some chemicals and patiently wait for it to expire in a few days, or carpe the diem and pop it out of its cozy wormy earth spit spot? Or maybe just slice through with the weed-eater, knowing they’ll grow back but guiltily satisfied with the newly and neatly Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-70663696736983902172020-05-27T13:04:00.001-05:002020-10-15T21:24:16.091-05:00Movie Review: Mary Poppins
Directed by Robert Stevenson (1964)
The quintessential Disney classic, Mary Poppins is best remembered for its spectacle of dance, animation, and music, most loved for the inimitable prim cheekiness of Julie Andrews, and most praised for the ingenious special effects that blended its many parts together into a marvelous whole. It's not really thought of as an especially well-plotted movie or a Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-29739310847726273472018-07-04T20:24:00.002-05:002018-07-04T20:24:49.391-05:00Quote: Ayn Rand on Nationalism
From, Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, ed. Robert Mayhew. p. 102.
from Lecture, "The Wreckage of the Consensus" (Boston, Ford Hall Forum, 1967)
Nationalism as a primary—that is, the attitude of, "my country, right or wrong," without any judgment—is chauvinism: a blind, collectivist, racist feeling for your own country, merely because you were born there. In that sense, nationalism isNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-45134606881672975952018-07-02T12:21:00.000-05:002018-07-02T12:21:39.835-05:00Various Thoughts Great and Small
1. My son was born a month ago, a few weeks earlier than expected. As did the birth of my daughter, so my son's birth humbled me. I can't yet articulate the depth of this change, but I feel purified by fatherhood. Seeing the innocence of my children in their infancy and the manner in which my daughter readily imitates me, I have never so acutely felt the imperative to be and do good. While Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-28143775316157762772018-05-26T16:04:00.000-05:002018-05-26T16:07:43.337-05:00Garfield and Friends: Guess the Classical Theme
Looney Tunes probably comes first to mind when people think of classical music used in cartoons, and with good reason, but the U.S. Acres segments of Garfield and Friends probably have the widest assortment of themes I've noticed in any cartoon. The show ran Saturday mornings from 1988-1994.
Can you name the theme at 14:05?
Hint: It's from a symphony. Click through for the answer.
TheNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-78178851356326747142018-05-26T12:26:00.000-05:002018-05-26T12:26:01.761-05:00Catharsis at Home Depot
So I'm suffering from a bad case of treppenwitz today, after yesterday an obnoxious driver cut me off on the road after riding impertinently close behind me. While the situation is all-too-common yesterday's instance of vehicular barbarism stands out because I had the opportunity of having my say with one of those discourteous drivers. At long last after years of abhorrent drivers zooming Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-37217567760887352018-05-24T21:11:00.003-05:002018-05-24T21:12:03.686-05:00Advice to Myself: An Examination of Conscience
When considering the causes of your actions, first consider their type so that you may consider more finely their nature.
Did you act by nature, doing what anyone would have done in the situation? Did you do what you usually do? Or perhaps did you do what a certain type of person would do?
Did you act according to habit, doing something simply because it was done before? Does Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-15088709363911802972018-05-08T20:44:00.000-05:002018-05-13T12:28:43.662-05:00Thoughts on Homeschooling, Part II
Continued from Part I
From the introduction to Paideia, by Werner Jaeger:
Education in any human community (be it a family, a social class, a profession, or some wider complex such as a race or a state) is the direct expression of its active awareness of an ideal. . . .
And, since the basis of education is a general consciousness of the values which govern human life, its Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8997249718737067874.post-19615606750715043472018-04-13T12:01:00.001-05:002018-04-13T12:01:10.519-05:00Quote: Gene Healy on the Imperiling Presidency
from The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power by Gene Healy. p. 265
Over the course of the 20th century, Americans have transformed the presidency from a modest chief magistrate into a national father protector invested with the responsibility for fixing every major problem in American life. We've matched that responsibility for fixing every major Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13151069197682776555noreply@blogger.com0