T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land.

February 6th, 2008 · 4 comments or link to (permalink)

On the one hand I hesitate to post The Waste Land since it is clearly self indulgent nonsense. However:

1. This is/was self indulgence week.

2. It’s really good self indulgent nonsense.

3. Eliot himself inoculated the poem by saying it was nonsense.

I do feel uncomfortable with the bits that sound pretty anti-semitic to me. Perhaps someone could elucidate?

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Einstein, Dirac, Godel, Erdos, Weyl in Princeton

February 6th, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

A home movie from 1947. What a place Princeton was, after the war.

@ 33 seconds: Einstein

1:06 Godel on left

1:25 Selberg at the right, his wife Heddy in the middle

1:41 Paul Erdos (left) and Hermann Weyl (right)

3:01 Paul Dirac at right, and his student Harish-Chandra at left

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Mark Twain at Stormfield, 1909 (Edison film)

February 6th, 2008 · 2 comments or link to (permalink)

Mark Twain in his signature “Don’t Give a Damn” white suit. The first true American.

(Self indulgence week runs over a couple of days, since I didn’t manage to put up the remaining clips in time, on account of having to rebuilt the site after it was hacked. I have now intstalled 3 miles of razor wire, machine gun posts and watch towers).

Mark Twain at Stormfield, 1909 (Edison film)

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Nikolaus Pevsner – Reith Radio Lecture

January 31st, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

“A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture”. So said Pevsner, who fled Nazi Germany to the UK and is responsible for one of its greatest architectural edifices. Something that is neither a bicycle shed or a cathedral, but an inimitable 32 volume foundation to the definitive history of the “Buildings of England”.

Today’s piece of self indulgence is poached from my all time favorite Youtube user, “Meades Shrine”.

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Le Corbusier Interview

January 29th, 2008 · 1 comment or link to (permalink)

Self indulgence week continues, with an interview with Le Corbusier when he was in his 70s, speaking in English. If Robert Moses was the Stalin of architecture, then Le Corbusier was its Marx: a genius who shouldn’t be imitated.

The amazing thing about Le Corbusier is that despite the fact that almost everything he built was a masterpiece, it is a very good thing that most of what he designed did not get built. Otherwise we would have gotten what the English satirical magazine, Private Eye, called the “Cite Lunatique de Ciel”.

Actually – I’m not finished on the subject of Corbusier. What is it about architects that they rebel in such overtly repressed ways, wearing a conventional suit but a flamboyant bow tie, and always having funny glasses? Did “Corbu” start this messed up behavior and was it anything to do with being Swiss? In this interview, he seems utterly devoid of what is referred to as a sense of humor.
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