Drum Improvisations – Baby Dodds
Self indulgence week closes with a drum roll. This excellent solo from Baby Dodds in 1946.
C.S. Lewis Lectures on the Novels of Charles Williams
February 6th, 2008 Comments Off on C.S. Lewis Lectures on the Novels of Charles Williams | # link to | posted by david
Lewis is on the right. He pronounces almost every vowel as a diphthong, something that is heard only among very old English aristocrats, these days.
I’m sure Lewis would be turning in his grave if he knew that he was a hero of the contemporary Christian right.
Comments Off on C.S. Lewis Lectures on the Novels of Charles Williams important dead people, self indulgence week
Silent Film of Nietzsche accompanied by unnecessary music and moustache.
February 6th, 2008 Comments Off on Silent Film of Nietzsche accompanied by unnecessary music and moustache. | # link to | posted by david
Nietsche is dead, God is not. Sadly.
Comments Off on Silent Film of Nietzsche accompanied by unnecessary music and moustache. important dead people, self indulgence week
T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land.
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?
Einstein, Dirac, Godel, Erdos, Weyl in Princeton
February 6th, 2008 Comments Off on Einstein, Dirac, Godel, Erdos, Weyl in Princeton | # link to | posted by david
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
Comments Off on Einstein, Dirac, Godel, Erdos, Weyl in Princeton important dead people, self indulgence week
Mark Twain at Stormfield, 1909 (Edison film)
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).
Nikolaus Pevsner – Reith Radio Lecture
“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”.
1 comment architecture, important dead people, self indulgence week
Le Corbusier Interview
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.
Link