Without Lifting A Finger

Anonymous: movie review



Was thinking today about the novel (one of my faves and I need to get back), especially the "clippings" of knowledge that went up on Geiser's wall. Without digging up my text (or did I give it to someone--and now I only have the partial text in the German Library of Frisch's work?) I googled a bit and found 6 of the 7 final pieces in the final collage (I guess I'm missing the definition of erosion):  

From Letter #309 (according to my Kindle edition): For, the moment that a thing is true, it is good. Obscene books likewise are immoral only because they lack truth. Things are not "like that" in life.    And observe that I curse what they agree to call realism, althought they make me one of its high priests; reconcile all that. * I believe I've posted a photo of Flaubert (many posts ago) but not George Sand. Though she was a bit cuter in Impromptu  (Judy Davis falling for Chopin = Hugh Grant), this is an older version of the real thing. Flaubert often calls her "my master." 

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre ( French pronunciation:  [də mɛstʁ] [ 1 ] 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He was one of the most influential spokesmen for a hierarchical monarchal state in the period immediately following the French Revolution of 1789. Despite his close intellectual and personal ties with France, Maistre remained throughout most of his life a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia , whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817), and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821). [ 2 ] Maistre, one of the key intellectual figures of the Counter-Enlightenment , regarded monarchy as both a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government. He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and also for the ultimate authority of the Pope over temporal governments. According to Maist...

This passage comes from Isaiah Berlin's anthology of essays titled The Proper Study of Mankind : the essay is "The Counter-Enlightenment" (apparently Berlin is given credit, at least by some, for coining Counter-Enlightenment ):    One of the darkest of the reactionary forms of the fight against the Enlightenment, as well as one of the most interesting and influential, is to be found in the doctrines of Joseph de Maistre and his followers and allies, who formed the spearhead of the counter-revolution in the early nineteenth century in Europe. Maistre held the Enlightenment to be one of the most foolish, as well as the most ruinous, forms of social thinking.The conception of man as naturally disposed to benevolence, co-operation and peace, or, at any rate, capable of being shaped in this direction by appropriate education or legislation, is for him shallow and false. The benevolent Dame Nature of Hume, Holbach and Helvetius is an absurd figment. History and zoology are th...

Rereading Foucault's "What is Enlightenment?" I was struck by this observation: * Are there others who think this way and/or are suspicious of Reason? Two passages from Darrin M. McMahon "Sweep of reason" (Boston Globe, June 22, 2003): 

In the "old days" they'd let them put chalk right on the sidewalk. This year they're taping some paper to the sidewalk and working on paper. I guess, at the end of the day, they take the artwork with them (I spoke to one young lady and that was her understanding). Too bad. I used to like to watch the chalk fade away. 





Beach Biker: Trash sweep: Crossroads: Lucky #8: My ship is coming in: Birds, Pier, City: Sails: Buoys & Bridge: Swimmer: 



This one demanded its own space. 

Sandwiched between sections dominated by Marx and Engels, we find two sections titled "Historical Actors." The first is Historical Actors: Lassalle . Though Wilson labels Lassalle the "great spokesman of the next phase of German socialism," both Wilson and Marx agree that he's intellectually inferior to Marx. Marx considers Lassalle's written works--e.g., the Workers' Program --bad vulgarizations of his own works, but, at least according to Wilson, Lassalle was a force to reckon with: He had also begun talking to the liberals in terms of Marxist social dynamics: constitutional questions, he told them, were "not legal questions but questions of power"; they could never get themselves a constitution by filling up a sheet of paper with words, but only by changing the relationships of power. * Good to a point. However, the cynic in me sees only a somewhat Viconian and unending exchange of "power" with "power." * Ferd...

I have never been able to see what good it is to the author criticised. Criticism always starts from a personal point of view, the authority of which the artist does not recognize.

http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home99/nov99/alpha.html http://www.brainchannels.com/news/evolution/firstalphabet.html *

 This is a replica of the "horse panel"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v338/n6218/abs/338758a0.html

   This conflict has been productive of more paradoxes and absurdities perhaps than any other aspect of radical thought--Shaw's defense of the British policy in South Africa on the basis of the backwardness of the Boers; the position of those American socialists who approved the participation of the United States in the World War on the ground that in order to achieve socialism it was necessary to save capitalism first; and the contention of their former critics, the Communists of the Soviet Union, that the alliance desired by the Kremlin would somehow contribute to the proletarian revolution which the Kremlin was sabotaging in Spain. So that in contrast to much that has happened since, the handling by Marx and Engels of these problems--and especially in view of the fact that they were pioneers in international thinking--seems remarkably conscientious and sagacious. They did, however, land themselves in some conspicuous contradictions. They denounced the imperialistic designs ...

Within our family we usually jokingly call it Apple Valley (there is a Cherry Valley back in there but most of the action is around Oak Glen), because once a year, in the fall, we go up there to pick pumpkins and/or apples and get a "fallsy" feel (I know, it's hard in Southern CA). There's also great food--barbecue, pie, cider--and "fitting" entertainment (mostly bluegrass or country). You can also easily leave the crowds behind and get a little taste of nature.