Isolated Blurt Thread

[Alice_Rosaleen]

So much to say...


First of all, I'm an Anthropologist, and I assure you. the notion that humans are unnatural is a dangerous bit of hubris. Art is a natural process, rooted in the structure of brains that learn and discover. The contrast between nature and culture is a cultural fiction that turns "nature" into the "other," to be used, abused, or stewarded by the higher beings that humans call humans. I had a colleague who taught "ecohiking - leave nothing behind." He even had his students cart out their own shit, in plastic bags, mind you. I'm sorry, human shit is no less natural than bear shit. And art is a natural part of that living, breathing, shitting, reproducing, and dying animal we call Homo sapiens.

Ulysses is great literary scholarship, but even greater in seeing the allegory in Ulysses and in Poldy and, by extension or metaphor or allegory, to all of us.

Now, I am truly tired of the prejudices against Finnegans Wake (and, apparently, those of us who aren't Fionn McCuahill, but nevertheless enjoy and understand any aspect of that tome), characterizing it as "a drunk codex of another language." Yes, it does help to be familiar with things Irish when reading it, and such is the case with any cultural-based work of art (and, be assured, all works of art are culturally based; try understanding the Sistine Chapel ceiling without a knowledge of the history of Christianity, of Western Art, and of Roman politics.
It is a delightful excursion into a literary manifestation of Abstract Expressionism, among much else, including a consideration of the history of history itself, while constantly playing with words and themes.

Its end is its beginning, and we can follow the ring road from Howth Castle around Dublin, including the stretch known as the Via Vico. Vico was the historian who gave us the circular view of history. Imagine, Tristan returned to Ireland from North Amorica. Amorica in the Latin name for the Norman Peninsula and also harks to the return from North America, not to mention that Tristan himself is a violer d'amores. It is circular, and far from linear. Try the section with the four voices to see something entirely new in literature as well, despite Baktin's view of the absence of polyvocal stories in the Western tradition. No, I don't mind if people don't understand it, but most people don't understand general relativity either, and I don't hear them suggesting that there's something wrong with it because they don't understand it (They probably think planetary orbits are curved, anyway).

Enough rant.

P.S. I started university in Molecular Bio with minors in Art History and Comparative Literature. When I discovered they were not disparate studies, I found the unity in Anthropology. The Academic distinction between arts and sciences is a recent one. and even in this day, you'll find non-Western art in Museums of Natural History.

Is English your first language? Because I never said humans are unnatural. And I highly doubt you've actually tried to read and decipher Finnegan's Wake, because otherwise you'd know what I'm talking about from a scholarly point of view (he WAS drunk, there are many allusions and shifts in language). It doesn't seem from your responses that you've understood what I'm saying at all.
This may be our barrier, or you might not have actually studied these things in an academic setting where published authors, digital artists, physicists and other leaders in their field from around the world specifically come to teach because of how beautiful and peaceful the area is. That's the university I went to- a liberal arts college where people are encouraged to think and discuss, not agree.
My comments are based on a 400 level (in the States, that's the highest level of courses in an academic environment) philosophy class, and yes- art and science have always been separated. I've taken an anthropology course and they also distinguish biology, genetics, geography- nature- from aspects of culture.
*At any rate, I see it as pointless to continue talking with someone who doesn't seem to actually be reading my side of the conversation.

 

[MagicaPractica]

I can't help wondering what he'd say if I told him how much I love him and only want him to be happy? But if he hasn't figured it out by now, I don't know.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Is English your first language? Because I never said humans are unnatural. And I highly doubt you've actually tried to read and decipher Finnegan's Wake, because otherwise you'd know what I'm talking about from a scholarly point of view (he WAS drunk, there are many allusions and shifts in language). It doesn't seem from your responses that you've understood what I'm saying at all.
This may be our barrier, or you might not have actually studied these things in an academic setting where published authors, digital artists, physicists and other leaders in their field from around the world specifically come to teach because of how beautiful and peaceful the area is. That's the university I went to- a liberal arts college where people are encouraged to think and discuss, not agree.
My comments are based on a 400 level (in the States, that's the highest level of courses in an academic environment) philosophy class, and yes- art and science have always been separated. I've taken an anthropology course and they also distinguish biology, genetics, geography- nature- from aspects of culture.
*At any rate, I see it as pointless to continue talking with someone who doesn't seem to actually be reading my side of the conversation.

I find it difficult to talk to someone who doesn't seem to be reading her own side of the conversation, let alone mine. Insult, by the way, is not part of an academic discussion.

No, actually we see human life as holistic and systemic. It is the relationship among the parts that leads to understanding. One cannot explain the distribution of abnormal hemoglobins in the US without reference to history, economics, technology, parasitology, social organization, ecology, genetics, immunology, politics, and more. If your Anthropologist is teaching you that culture has nothing to do with genetics or geography, give her/him my email.

If you want to play education, I'm content with my Ba, 3 MAs, 2years of PhD residency, and nearly 50 years of Post Grad personal study. And why would you assume I haven't read Finnegans Wake? Simply because you haven't? Would you care to read it and discuss it with me. Try an easy section, such as Tales Told of Shem and Shaun, and we'll see what you can do. Or will you make no sense out of "Ofttimes he repeated in his botulism that no jungle-grown pineapple ever tasted like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias' can." By the way, I do not appreciate being insulted.

My god! Joyce may have been drunk! That explains all the polyglot wordplay that I can't understand. It's just meaningless drunken rant, much like Poe produced when he was drunk. It clearly has nothing to do with the fact that I don't know the word for thunder in a dozen different languages. It could only be a drunken accident that Joyce built the first hundred-letter thunder word of them. Just a lucky accident, I guess, like chimpanzees on a typewriter.

More insults - Is English my first language? It surely musn't be yours if you can't understand what I or you write. Give it some thought. Science has to do with nature, art with humans, and it is not part of nature. Humans, then, are not part of nature, are they? (Did you try Logic 101 in your undergrad curriculum?) If humans are natural, then the art they produce as part of their nature must also be natural. Or do you take the erroneous view that "Mankind is the crown of creation or evolution?" Take your pick; both are wrong. Are you near NYC? Take a tour down the Hall of Mammalian Evolution at the AMNH for another view. No, people are animals, and not above them, neither by dint of an imaginary deity nor by virtue of a biological process.

I enjoy discussions and differences of opinion; I do not enjoy personal insults and arguments in such a venue as Lit. We've had problems (and sometimes fun) with them in the past, but I don't want to get one going further again. Feel free to say what you will without much worry of further response from me.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I can't help wondering what he'd say if I told him how much I love him and only want him to be happy? But if he hasn't figured it out by now, I don't know.

Sometimes the obvious is unexpected, and thus remains unseen. Say but the word, and you soul may be healed.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Sometimes the obvious is unexpected, and thus remains unseen. Say but the word, and you soul may be healed.

or utterly destroyed.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

Lol, apparently asking someone whose handle isn't in English whether English is their first language is an insult.

 

[RocketLauncher]

For me both what we call science and art are the same thing: they allow us to see the universe and beyond in a way we haven't, on a scale we can comprehend.

Anyone who has experienced the beauty of fractals would have to agree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

If you can't discuss things using an agreed upon language in which there are distinctions between art and science, then you end up talking in vague, imprecise terms. The language of science and math is beautiful and I appreciate that it's different from that of art and theology.
I love fractals and have designed many in software environments (the Triforce, if you're a Legend Of Zelda fan, is the simplest fractal form btw). They're beautiful. A sunset or seashell is beautiful. But the origins of that beauty is best described in scientific or mathematical terms and then synthesized and applied to art.
You can't fully appreciate one without the other- but you must first understand each in their own terms.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

or utterly destroyed.

Yes a difficult decision: the risk of the pain of knowing versus the certainty of the pain of never knowing. A decision one can only make for oneself. Best wishes for you.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Anyone who has experienced the beauty of fractals would have to agree.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

And then, of course, is the discovery by a couple of mathematically oriented art historians that Jackson Pollock's work is fractal, and the authenticity of a work ascribed to him can be verified in part through the math.

It was not surprising to me; if you watch the film of him painting, you see a dance, and it is understandable that the complexity of the work is reflected at any level one might examine it.

By the way, did you know that Bertrand Russel dismissed the "Barber's Paradox," and all such paradoxes, from the discourse of philosophy because they couldn't be resolved. It certainly helps to arrive at a solution if you exclude that which you are unable to address.

 

[MREDME2]

We got funding and more!

Today is the birth of The Teflon Guy Initiative!

July 4th - How kewl is that?

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

And then, of course, is the discovery by a couple of mathematically oriented art historians that Jackson Pollock's work is fractal, and the authenticity of a work ascribed to him can be verified in part through the math.

It was not surprising to me; if you watch the film of him painting, you see a dance, and it is understandable that the complexity of the work is reflected at any level one might examine it.

By the way, did you know that Bertrand Russel dismissed the "Barber's Paradox," and all such paradoxes, from the discourse of philosophy because they couldn't be resolved. It certainly helps to arrive at a solution if you exclude that which you are unable to address.

What an excellent way to prove the point I'm making. When art historians talk about fractals/recursive forms in a painting, they are discussing Art, even if they use mathematical principals to explain it, because ultimately they are discussing how it applies to composition and technique. When a scientist is talking about naturally occurring fractals, even if they acknowledge the beauty of them, is focusing on the biological processes or mathematical formulas to describe those recursive forms- which you would study as Science.
Thanks for the info, and Happy Fourth of July all!

 

[MagicaPractica]

Yes a difficult decision: the risk of the pain of knowing versus the certainty of the pain of never knowing. A decision one can only make for oneself. Best wishes for you.

Thanks. I am "one that loved not wisely, but too well."

 

[Hypoxia]

* Third-shifting is like third-limited but the focus moves among players, hopefully not too disconcertingly.

1. Third shifting sounds like an ADHD wet dream. Something I'm going to have to work up to, hard enough keeping one character's voice in my head let alone my own. But I am definitely mercurial so I believe it will be highly enjoyable and a pleasantly frustrating experience.

I'm re-reading Crichton, TIMELINE now, after old JURASSIC WORLD. Quite mainstream. And very third-shifted. A chapter (any length) might focus on a single player, or the focus might shift between delineated sections.

And the technique is transparent. Read it, it just flows, doesn't jump out as a trick or anything. It really is third-omniscient, but not omniscient all at once. All-knowing in bits and pieces, with boundaries. Not like this:

The warm tide of ectoplasm rose toward the captives.

Marva thought of her past, all that was left to her, and wept. Derek mused of the present and how fast it could vanish. Tris yawned, bored, wondering idly about any possible future.

The ghostly wave slowly crested.​

That's high-speed POV-hopping. It works at times.

Hope you're holding up well, you seem to have an admirable inner fortitude to deal with life's slings and arrows.

I was told of paratrooper humor. The parachute instructor drills the troops on procedure. One enlistee has questions.

"But sarge, suppose I pull the ripcord for the primary chute and it doesn't deploy, and then I go for the backup chute and IT doesn't deploy... What do I do then, sarge? What do I do then?"

"Why, you just ride it on out, soldier! Ride it on out!"

I'm trying to enjoy the ride.
_____

My structural and internal problems are more-or-less being addressed. Vision is elsewise. Reading and writing go very slow. (Benefit: I don't bother much with the GB now.) Upcoming surgeries may help some but most damage is permanent. Our home is a library and I feel like most books and charts have been taken from me. Pisses me off greatly.

The rest of our home is a gallery. Much wall art is a blur now. I can feel and smell the weavings, and hold our ethnic pottery and carvings even if I can't see details. I can play instruments but can't read music for them. I load CDs into the player mostly by guess.

Then there was a posted notice:

** LOST DOG **
Patchy gray hair, three legs, no tail, one ear, one eye
Answers to 'Lucky'​

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

I'm actually glad this won't get a response because I'm just baffled by how a conversation with someone with whom I've enjoyed discussing things in the past with could get so misconstrued. I already addressed the English as a first language issue, but I really do think it's a fair question when someone's handle is in another language.
And also for someone to turn a fairly commonly held opinion I made into disparaging "prejudice" is also confusing.

Now, I am truly tired of the prejudices against Finnegans Wake (and, apparently, those of us who aren't Fionn McCuahill, but nevertheless enjoy and understand any aspect of that tome), characterizing it as "a drunk codex of another language."

For one, all of Joyce's works are set in Ireland and draw heavily from Irish culture, so to mention that it's said only the Irish can truly understand his writing is just making a statement. Also, Finnegan's Wake is regarded as one of the most difficult works in the English language. Even Joyce's closest friends didn't understand it. People write doctoral theses on it. It makes books like Foucault's Pendulum or War and Peace looks like child's primers. To say anyone can "understand any aspect of that tome" just isn't true.
Even comparing it to the Theory of General Relativity later isn't an apt analogy. I studied the principles of General Relativity in a 100-level undergrad Astronomy course. It can and is studied in more depth in higher level classes of course, but the text itself can be read and understood by a wide variety of people. Finnegan's Wake, according to a lit professor who loved all things Irish, isn't even commonly discussed on a postgraduate level. Saying that I highly doubt you've read and deciphered the whole thing would be like saying I doubt you've swam the Atlantic. How is that an insult.

No, actually we see human life as holistic and systemic. It is the relationship among the parts that leads to understanding. One cannot explain the distribution of abnormal hemoglobins in the US without reference to history, economics, technology, parasitology, social organization, ecology, genetics, immunology, politics, and more. If your Anthropologist is teaching you that culture has nothing to do with genetics or geography, give her/him my email.

Never said it was. I said they separate them in that genetics and geography influence culture, but are not culture. The sentiment being you can't analyze someone's genetics and know their nationality; you can't look at someone's skin tone and know their culture.
And even when you get a degree in Anthropology, it's either a Bachelor's of Art or Science, because you must choose a concentration.

If you want to play education, I'm content with my Ba, 3 MAs, 2years of PhD residency, and nearly 50 years of Post Grad personal study. And why would you assume I haven't read Finnegans Wake? Simply because you haven't? Would you care to read it and discuss it with me. Try an easy section, such as Tales Told of Shem and Shaun, and we'll see what you can do. Or will you make no sense out of "Ofttimes he repeated in his botulism that no jungle-grown pineapple ever tasted like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias' can." By the way, I do not appreciate being insulted.

My god! Joyce may have been drunk! That explains all the polyglot wordplay that I can't understand. It's just meaningless drunken rant, much like Poe produced when he was drunk. It clearly has nothing to do with the fact that I don't know the word for thunder in a dozen different languages. It could only be a drunken accident that Joyce built the first hundred-letter thunder word of them. Just a lucky accident, I guess, like chimpanzees on a typewriter.

I was never playing an education game. I was merely saying that I was fortunate enough to attend a college that attracted scholars and artists from across the world to teach, and because of that and the focus on liberal arts and humanities, I learned a good deal about Art even though my major was in Science. We learned to neither make insults nor perceive them when they weren't there.

The rest is pretty much you backing up exactly what I said about Finnegan's Wake. I assume no one has read it because few people have. I have a copy and it's over six hundred pages of stream-of-consciousness written in idiosyncratic language full of allusion. I don't feel threatened to admit I haven't read and understood it. Do you?

Joyce wrote drunk, Poe didn't. Poe actually wasn't a drunk, he had a very high work ethic. His archrival Griswold created this and other myths about Poe and effectively assassinated his reputation.

Take care, isolated blurt isolated.

 

[Handley_Page]

I was told of paratrooper humor. The parachute instructor drills the troops on procedure. One enlistee has questions.

"But sarge, suppose I pull the ripcord for the primary chute and it doesn't deploy, and then I go for the backup chute and IT doesn't deploy... What do I do then, sarge? What do I do then?"

"Why, you just ride it on out, soldier! Ride it on out!"

I'm trying to enjoy the ride.
_____


Then there was a posted notice:

** LOST DOG **
Patchy gray hair, three legs, no tail, one ear, one eye
Answers to 'Lucky'​

A group of young Air Cadets (about 14-15 year-olds) was being taken flying for the first time. Predictably, the Safety Lecture was very strictly undertaken by a Safety Equipment worker in charge of the parachutes who told them Exactly what to do in the event of a problem (each cadet got the 'main 'chute' and a 'secondary' chute).
"If you have to bail out pull THIS ONE," he said, pointing to the D-ring under the left breast pocket, "and if this does not work, you pull THIS ONE", he said, pointing to the release on the strap.
He went on to say what the cadet should do next; "if it does not work, bring it back and we'll give you another." (a very old Air Force joke).

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall that day.
One cadet's primary chute failed and he pulled the secondary tab; it worked and the cadet made it safely to the ground. He handed the primary 'chute to the Instructor, completely unknowing of the amazed humour everyone felt.

 

[RocketLauncher]

And then, of course, is the discovery by a couple of mathematically oriented art historians that Jackson Pollock's work is fractal, and the authenticity of a work ascribed to him can be verified in part through the math.

It was not surprising to me; if you watch the film of him painting, you see a dance, and it is understandable that the complexity of the work is reflected at any level one might examine it.

By the way, did you know that Bertrand Russel dismissed the "Barber's Paradox," and all such paradoxes, from the discourse of philosophy because they couldn't be resolved. It certainly helps to arrive at a solution if you exclude that which you are unable to address.

That's amazing. I've always been a fan of Pollock, more for his individuality and his disdain for societal interpretations of contemporary art. Interesting that there is a mathematical connection to his art. They say Picasso could draw the human form to perfection and chose to explore Cubism as a way to expand on his abilities (prolly to relieve boredom, too).
As to Bertrand Russell, seems a little arrogant to dismiss paradoxes seeing as philosophy is largely a study of ethical paradoxes.

 

[RocketLauncher]

I'm re-reading Crichton, TIMELINE now, after old JURASSIC WORLD. Quite mainstream. And very third-shifted. A chapter (any length) might focus on a single player, or the focus might shift between delineated sections.

And the technique is transparent. Read it, it just flows, doesn't jump out as a trick or anything. It really is third-omniscient, but not omniscient all at once. All-knowing in bits and pieces, with boundaries.


I was told of paratrooper humor. The parachute instructor drills the troops on procedure. One enlistee has questions.

"But sarge, suppose I pull the ripcord for the primary chute and it doesn't deploy, and then I go for the backup chute and IT doesn't deploy... What do I do then, sarge? What do I do then?"

"Why, you just ride it on out, soldier! Ride it on out!"

I'm trying to enjoy the ride.
_____

My structural and internal problems are more-or-less being addressed. Vision is elsewise. Reading and writing go very slow. (Benefit: I don't bother much with the GB now.) Upcoming surgeries may help some but most damage is permanent. Our home is a library and I feel like most books and charts have been taken from me. Pisses me off greatly.

The rest of our home is a gallery. Much wall art is a blur now. I can feel and smell the weavings, and hold our ethnic pottery and carvings even if I can't see details. I can play instruments but can't read music for them. I load CDs into the player mostly by guess.

Then there was a posted notice:

** LOST DOG **
Patchy gray hair, three legs, no tail, one ear, one eye
Answers to 'Lucky'​

I'll give Timeline a shot, never was a huge Crichton fan but my interest has now been piqued and I'll read it with the third shifted focus in mind.

It must be dreadful losing one's sight especially when music and literature are such big part of your life. I think the library would make me the saddest but I would still go in and run my hands along their spines and hold them in my hands, something people of this generation will never truly understand having been brought up with ebooks. Part of the reason I'm trying to quit smoking is a fear of macular degeneration which my father is suffering through at the moment. I never realized how much one misses out on having once had sight but slowly losing it.
But....it does make for an interesting story, eye transplant allows recipient to envision the sexual escapades of the eyes former owner, a little twist being the recipient is the opposite sex to the donor.
Hang in there, if your 'chute doesn't open I'm pretty sure you'll sprout wings.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

That's amazing. I've always been a fan of Pollock, more for his individuality and his disdain for societal interpretations of contemporary art. Interesting that there is a mathematical connection to his art. They say Picasso could draw the human form to perfection and chose to explore Cubism as a way to expand on his abilities (prolly to relieve boredom, too).
As to Bertrand Russell, seems a little arrogant to dismiss paradoxes seeing as philosophy is largely a study of ethical paradoxes.

Pollock, and fractals, existed long before Mandelbrot discovered them in working numbers for chaos theory. Fractals exist in nature, including human nature; the math originally just helped us understand this kind of algorithm. Since we did the math, though, it can be used to generate even more.

Over a hundred years ago, the Anthropologist Franz Boas, showed how unconscious algorithms produced artistic forms.

Russel presented (to me at least) a fundamental problem with much of philosophy. It tends to demand "clear" definitions, and excludes discourse when those definitions are not forthcoming, As a result, philosophers often end up discussing their definitions rather than the things to which their words are supposed to refer.

Of course, in the old days of the Western tradition, Philosophy wasn't the same thing. It was "love of knowledge," and was mostly found in "Natural Philosophy," the study of everything in the world, from rocks through art. In the curricula, it was distinct from the purely mathematical disciplines. The "Age of Enlightment" started the fragmentation, and the rise of the modern university in the Nineteenth Century gave us the "disciplines" we have now. In the 1600s, Peter the Great built a an art gallery at the Winter Palace to house the many paintings of plants and animals by Maria Sybilla Merian that he had purchased. But she had produced them to illustrate her studies of the living things; in fact, she was the major source of biological knowledge for Linnaeus in his "System Naturae."

 

[MREDME2]

I can't help wondering what he'd say if I told him how much I love him and only want him to be happy? But if he hasn't figured it out by now, I don't know.

I'll be okay. Thanks.

That Charlie Brown. He's a clown.

 

[RocketLauncher]

I've been reading the stories of a few authors who regularly post in the AH. I must say I'm surprised by the tales penned by the AH authors I've read so far, some are definitely not what I was expecting. People, eh? Full of surprises.

 

[carsonshepherd]

Packing is murder.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Packing is murder.

I know it kills my back.

 

[MREDME2]

You stop me at 8 AM on a Sunday morning to ask me wtf I'm doing on a riding mower?

I was taking it back to a friend who loaned it to me and it was quicker than loading it on a truck I don't have.

Wait.....you thought I was cutting grass alongside the road, right?

Next time I'll lower the blades JUST to piss off your dumb, nosey ass.

 

[MREDME2]

Packing is murder.

Not if you are a Green Bay fan.