You've got to love an essay that has the following paraphrase of Plato's Meno dialog:
Socrates: Here is a square with sides of length 2 and area equal to 4. If we double the area, to 8 units, what will the length of a side be?
Boy: Umm, 4?
Socrates: Does 4 x 4 = 8?
Boy: Okay, maybe it's 3.
Socrates: Does 3 x 3 = 8?
Boy: I give up.
Socrates: Observe this line from corner to corner, which the erudite among us call a diagonal. If we erect a new square on the diagonal, note that one-half of the original square makes up one-fourth of the new square…
The finale of the 1963 American Folk Blues Festival. Otis Spann and Memphis Slim on piano; Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson,Lonnie Johnson, Victoria Spivey, and Muddy Waters sing; Matt "Guitar" Murphy, guitar; and Bill Stepney, drums.
Even in that company, Muddy stands alone!
Well, folks, the week's made it to a close, and my plan — Did I mention my plan to post a daily entry about some product that I'd be reporting on during CES, or were you able to discern what I meant to do without my having to say it? — failed. Yeah, that plan, like so many other 2006 plans, came to an abrupt end soon after it began. I'm beginning to think that some people just aren't made to make plans. And I might be one of those people. Though a plan can be symbolic of so many wonderful things, and I think it's those things that I'm really attracted to — the act of making a plan, to my…
There's almost no gray area when it comes to Christmas music. You either love it and feel it's charming, or it's a holiday plague that you endure, cringing instinctively every time a bell jingles and someone wants a "figgy" pudding.
I readily admit I love the damned stuff, though I've recently reduced the size of my collection from seven boxes to a mere three. I got to the point this past summer where I had to admit that no one really needs six versions of Chuck Berry’s "Run, Run, Rudolph."
Most Christmas records are compilations where perhaps a track or two are listenable. Of…
The 50 greatest cartoons of all time? Could be.
A few links are nonstarters, but this ought to keep you busy for a while.
Christmas without Pops? Unthinkable!
Armstrong's 1942 band was smoking! Don't miss whatever it is that Velma Middleton does at the end.
Because nothing says Christmas like marimbas and wild bass! BTW, if the marimbas look backwards, it's because the clip was designed to be projected in one of those film jukeboxes, where they were in fact viewed from the other side.
Kyle Gann has posted Schoenberg's Weihnachtsmusik for our Christmas bliss. If you think Arnold never wrote a melody you'd like, take a listen to this gorgeous setting of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming."
And if you're a thoroughly modern kind of a guy, check out Gann's Postclassic Radio. It's music I guarantee you won't hear anywhere else.
Father Athanasius Kircher explains just about everything—and the pictures are gorgeous.
David Mehegan remembers his grandfather's devotion to the Harvard Classics: The Five-Foot Shelf of Books. Mehegan contends that the "Five-Foot Shelf" was the lodestone for "the life of a totally successful human being."
