With the new academic year about to crash, this seems more than usually relevant.
For some reason my most vivid memories concern examinations. Big amphitheater in Goldwin Smith. Exam from 8am to 10:30. About 150 students—unwashed, unshaven young males and reasonably well-groomed [...]
I am not here concerned to enquire under what circumstances some of us might with advantage take a lesson from the cow. I have really no doubt that such exist.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica: With the Preface to the Second Edition and Other Papers, Thomas Baldwin (Ed), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, [1903] 1993, p. 96. [...]
In The Rest is Noise, Ross mentions (p. 182) the following “placard-like notice” appearing in the preface to the Ragtime movement of Paul Hindemith’s Suite ‘1922’:
Mode d’emploi – Direction for Use!!
Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons.
Do not consider for long whether you should play D# with the [...]
There are many useless ways to idle away time on the internet. And then there is this.
Roberto Bolaño would have had a lot of fun with this—
Scott Alan Carson, “The Stature and Body Mass of Mexicans in the Nineteenth-Century United States”, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 39, No. 2, Autumn 2008, pp. 211-232.
Abstract
Data taken from nineteenth-century American prison records reveal that the statures of Mexicans born in Mexico declined, whereas [...]
Over at Three Percent, Chad has been pushing Paul Verhaeghen for some time now. I had initially been very excited about reading Omega Minor, which sounded like a Pynchon-esque historical caterwaul, not least because Verhaeghen is by day a professor of psychology working on cognitive aging. In what free time did he manage [...]
Almost exactly a year ago, I noted the release of Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines. Now, in a stroke of genius, NYRB Classics is broadcasting the entire book through Twitter. (Insert commentary on the ever-shifting world of media here).
I am currently reading Alex Ross’s excellent history of twentieth century classical music, The Rest is Noise. In Chapter 5, “Apparition from the Woods: The Loneliness of Jean Sibelius” (an edited version of which is available online), Ross describes Sibelius’s descent into alcoholism by referring to a painting:
A widely discussed painting by the [...]
In the latest issue of the British Academy Review, there is an excerpt from Robin Dunbar’s 2007 Joint British Academy/British Psychological Society Lecture, appearing under the title “Why Humans aren’t just Great Apes” [PDF]. The article begins with Dunbar recapitulating his famous argument for his eponymous number, complete with the following, lovely, table.
The number ~150 [...]
(By Erik Satie, via UbuWeb)
An artist must regulate his life.
Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of [...]
Ian Jack, the editor of Granta and chairman of the judges, admitted: “His agent wrote to me saying he was a cross between Milan Kundera and Woody Allen, which made me not want to read him.”
Fiachra Gibbons, “Obscure unpublished novelist joins the elite”, in The Guardian, Monday 6 January 2003.
(Thirwell’s latest book looks very interesting).
[...]