tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33168102024-03-14T03:31:16.829-04:00Anti-Climacus<br>"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."<br>-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the NazisNicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.comBlogger5406125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-4678566432505239192020-08-25T08:09:00.004-04:002020-08-25T08:09:49.505-04:00Some thoughts on suburbia and its merits or lack thereof Matt Yglesias had an interesting bit in his newsletter this morning:"If it were allowed, this same logic would carry over to houses built for
middle class people. All else being equal, a $400,000 detached house
should have fewer square feet of house than a $400,000 townhouse which
in turn has fewer than a $400,000 unit in a small condo. So you ought to
see the urban/suburban calculus Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-58183544186264908922020-08-10T18:56:00.003-04:002020-08-10T18:56:28.183-04:00A couple of Morisots, why notI spent more years than I care to remember with the kind of crippling writer's block that is so common to academics and aspiring culture writers. Oddly, it's been years now since I've had that feeling, though I write and present at a similar volume, just for mostly private audiences. The thing about art, I've found, is that even when I'm just copying someone else's work, I seem to be able toNicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-34252198315983332652020-07-12T20:08:00.001-04:002020-07-12T20:08:27.850-04:00In which we attempt to be Van Gogh
A funny thing I've learned while painting: if you're looking at a painting for color and order of composition--as opposed to form or iconography, like they teach you in art history--you notice that there are fiddly little problems that recur across artists and have sometimes funny solutions. "How does Van Gogh leave no gaps between the objects in his painting?" was last week's question, the Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-37811332879271231632020-07-02T09:53:00.000-04:002020-07-02T09:53:07.349-04:00Remember me, the one you got your idea from?Wishing you a day filled with the insouciance of a young Flavor Flav dancing in the background of this video for no particular reason:
Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-65628292864316934142020-07-01T19:03:00.000-04:002020-07-01T19:03:18.697-04:00Just some thoughts on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as an HR person now"It's my job to know, but it's not anyone's job to tell me"That’s been my mantra for twenty years now. It was not exactly a conscious decision, and after it became a conscious decision, there were still a number of years before it took that precise form. Now that focus has come to diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s still the work: learning about other concepts, thoughts, experiences than my Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-52299811516581514842020-07-01T19:00:00.003-04:002020-07-01T19:00:43.239-04:00Recalled to LifeNicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-75278057210419091612015-08-02T10:57:00.000-04:002015-08-02T10:57:42.873-04:00Adventures in Cultural Consumption, Reading in Progress EditionKristin Lavransdatter: There have been two notable effects that have come from the part of my life I spent reading and writing about human rights and their violation. The first is that it definitively ended my interest in the depiction of violence. I was never much of a horror movie person to begin with--or comic-book-violence, or "this is art and not spectacle, no, really"--but I have very Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-32391738228572627022015-08-02T10:08:00.000-04:002015-08-02T10:08:24.161-04:00Cut out from a long post on leaving academia and deciding not to be a freelance writer,* best left uncompleted:
This is probably also a decent time to mention my belief that the
reason we should divorce judgments of personal behavior from quality of
work produced in aesthetic and academic realms is that success appears
to correspond to developing unattractive personal qualities. Not that
Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-39879077566669003982015-08-01T21:15:00.001-04:002015-08-01T21:15:24.800-04:00Bull Durham: I hold onto this opinion, rendered two years ago. But note a few other meaningful details: the presence of a grizzled old (actually 32) Kevin Costner falling for a (nine years older) Susan Sarandon, who convincingly play as equals. Note that everyone gets a happy-ish ending, which is less about handing them everything they want than giving them some measure of dignity (Millie gettingNicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-53270001117457456882015-07-22T08:56:00.001-04:002015-07-22T08:56:31.188-04:00I'm not much of one for fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God (or any arguments for or against the existence of God, for that matter), but if I were:
the fact that a 12" record being spun at 33 1/3rpm produces enough music to last for exactly one human adult attention span (~20 minutes, according to pedagogical research) would be proof enough.Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-20227010276245869582015-07-21T15:42:00.002-04:002015-07-21T15:42:54.501-04:00A Brief Note On Living In the South, Weather EditionGrowing up in the midwest, precipitation was a metaphysical certainty. The wind blows from west to east (if it blows in any other direction, you're in serious trouble). There are no geographic features to slow or disturb a front as it moves through. From the right vantage point, you can watch a storm come in for, literally, hours before it hits. But it will always hit.
In the south, count on no Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-79402524609795929662015-07-20T07:50:00.000-04:002015-07-20T07:50:00.090-04:00Books Do Furnish a Room
Temporary Kings
Hearing Secret Harmonies
I agree with much of the standard reception of these three books, the weakest in A Dance to the Music of Time. They condescend to soap opera antics too readily; they contain too much plot and too much emphasis on dramatic turns of event; they require one to believe that Widmerpool, Pamela, X. Trapnel, Murtlock and Gwinnet are Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-85679863912784405942015-07-13T07:50:00.000-04:002015-07-13T13:21:07.554-04:00There are three active possibilities for Go Set a Watchman. In order of likelihood:
1. Everyone forgets about it in a few years. By all accounts, it is not a good novel, and what makes it notable is only the fact that it differs in tone and characterization from To Kill a Mockingbird. The book is properly considered either as juvenilia or as something close to a last novel/posthumous novel/Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-63292405137277047222015-07-11T21:17:00.000-04:002015-07-11T21:17:13.537-04:00
I'm not sure what, not quite 20 years ago, sent me off on the idea that I should spend my life reading too much and otherwise attempting to work my way through culture (I blame my parents), but I am fairly certain that today's experience was the sort of thing I had in mind: reading the first chapter of Foucault's The Order of Things, an extended interpretation of Velazquez's Las Meninas, and Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-73069373235018740422015-07-09T07:50:00.000-04:002015-07-09T16:03:43.661-04:00The Civil War has been coming up with some regularity in the news, and it occurs to me that I've never offered here my view of it, which is in some respects different than the standard view. I base this off of reading my way through my library's collection of Civil War books as a child, and a few years thinking about constitutions, civil war, and the rule of law during my academic career.
In a Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-21969788778949432062015-05-20T07:50:00.000-04:002015-05-20T07:50:00.044-04:00A Long Post About Lost, Prestige TV, Comic Book Movies, and the Serialization of EverythingLost
It's clear that my relationship to genre cultural properties has changed in the last ten years, and given enough time, it's clear that Lost is the reason for that change. I had a much larger appetite for them before, and almost none now. It's not entirely clear what exactly about Lost took me in that direction. But for need of a lot of something to watch, I've returned to it. I had a Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-20452597134221350952015-05-19T07:50:00.000-04:002015-05-19T07:50:00.515-04:00Some End-ish of Season Thoughts on FootballAtlético Madrid 0-1 FC Barcelona
This weekend, I learned the Barça-Real Madrid rivalry has its own, equally foul-mouthed, version of "Go to Hell, Carolina":
Having the benefit of almost a season's worth of Premier League and Barcelona games, the differences are obvious. Premier League games frequently descend into slog--the best teams, like the worst, seem content with a slog. There are Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-55878332929627523822015-05-18T07:50:00.000-04:002015-05-18T09:24:48.063-04:00Adventures in Cultural Consumption: Books About or By Women EditionHenry James, The Portrait of a Lady
There's not a plot point in this book that the attentive reader cannot see coming from a long distance. The very smart girl is obviously going to do something very stupid. The woman who befriends her but seems unable to provide any good account of her own history will find that history to be implicated in what happens next. Henry James does not try very hard toNicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-91725153827488588092015-05-12T07:50:00.000-04:002015-05-12T07:50:00.291-04:00The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander et al.
A Pattern Language
i.
As avid blog readers know, we recently bought a house. It is, even in the most buyer-friendly of markets, a difficult prospect, a sort of three-dimensional chess where the features one might desire in a new house must be weighed against the available housing stock, the time of year, and one's realtor's interest in Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-75919126288606567642015-05-11T07:50:00.000-04:002015-05-11T07:50:00.455-04:00My ongoing project of (re-)learning Spanish has hit something of a plateau. This is not particularly surprising: brute repetition is needed to fix many elements of reading, from recognizing the precise meaning of particular words, to recognizing the various shades of meanings a word can have, to properly identifying phrases and other grammatical units. (It is odd--and gratifying--to 'hear' those Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-21950897073086054092015-04-16T07:50:00.000-04:002015-04-16T09:30:25.560-04:00On Keeping Up With SpanishA few months ago, I posted on my attempts to re-learn Spanish using the mobile app Duolingo. In the meantime, I've kept at it: six days a week with at least some progress.
As the details of the language return to me, I find myself surprised that anything managed to stick.* At six months (more or less) of progress, I reached the point at which I recognized the need to now do something with Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-90755512337776944652015-04-06T12:00:00.000-04:002015-04-06T12:00:12.531-04:00On Henry James and Proust, FinallyI have mentioned a few times a fondness for this poem by Ezra Pound--
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root -
Let there be commerce between us.
--despite liking neither Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-44876127457050466682015-04-06T07:50:00.000-04:002015-04-06T09:56:47.433-04:00Adventures in HomeownershipAccording to the letter of the law, I was, however technically, previously a homeowner. We are now in a new house, though, and this is the first time I feel like a home-owner. Something about being there for the inspection and walking through all the components of the house made a notable difference--I am the person who knows the most about everything. Unpacking has been a bear: we had a Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-15695572184524134662015-03-16T07:50:00.000-04:002015-03-16T10:08:13.632-04:00The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
There are no surprises in this film. The quiet brunette girl who looks like she has a crush on the main guy, so much that you think they'll end up together? They end up together. When the main guy and main girl sleep together, and you think she'll probably get pregnant? She'll get pregnant. When that perfectly nice guy shows up and shows interest in the girl while the Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3316810.post-47947774981103311042015-03-12T12:00:00.000-04:002015-03-12T12:32:36.371-04:00Ethan Hawke, doin' work:
A person can reach incredible heights of grace in art and have no relationship to that in their daily life. But what Seymour talks about is something I’ve personally found very inspiring—the idea that they could play off each other, and that you can use the things you learn not only in life in your art, but the things you learn in your art in your life. That’s Nicholashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05693481720368030657noreply@blogger.com0