Andrew.frampton

A Modern Dance of Death: A portfolio of prints by German artist Joseph Sattler (1867–1931), c. 1894 The images come from a 1912 Berlin edition scanned by Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, with a handful from what appears to be a Berlin/London edition (in French) held by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The German wikipedia entry tells us that Sattler is a big name in Art Nouveau remembered especially for his illustrations in Simplicissimus and Pan. via Peacay (are you not following BibliOdyssey on tumblr?). See also his post "Danse Macabre Collection." from the earlier edition from the 1912 edition This post first appeared on October 29, 2013 on 50 Watts

[Becky Reina of Washington D.C. was angry when someone stole a carved pumpkin from outside her home. Thanks to Reddit, the sign she posted in front of her house is attracting quite a bit of media attention. Image via The Great Photographicon]

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Great gifs created by oamul

Scroll Down to Riker might just be my new favorite web toy. Essentially the website requires you to do what the site says and scroll down to see Star Trek The Next Generation's William T. Riker say something fantastic to you. If you're a lady who finds the actor Jonathan Frakes to be quite stunning, you might want to keep scrolling over and over until you get a nice "hey girl" style line to brighten your day. I sure wouldn't mind being his Counselor Troi, though personally, I prefer first-season, clean-shaved Riker than the bearded Riker used on this fun site.

While discussing the Ender’s Game controversy, Rauch argues that hate speech is necessary for social progress:

To make social learning possible, we need to criticize our adversaries, of course. But no less do we need them to criticize us. … Some of the things [Orson Scott Card] has said are execrable. He wrote in 2004 that when gay marriage is allowed, “society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.” That was not quite a flat reiteration of the ancient lie that homosexuals seduce and recruit children—the homophobic equivalent of the anti-Semitic blood libel—but it is about as close as anyone dares to come today.

Fortunately, Card’s claim is false. Better still, it is preposterous. Most fair-minded people who read his screeds will see that they are not proper arguments at all, but merely ill-tempered reflexes. When Card puts his stuff out there, he makes us look good by comparison. The more he talks, and the more we talk, the better we sound.

Why he hopes the Ender’s Game boycott will fail:

I can think of quite a few reasons why boycotting Ender’s Game is a bad idea. It looks like intimidation, which plays into the right’s “gay bullies” narrative, in which intolerant homosexuals are purportedly driving conservatives from the public square. It would have little or no effect on Card while punishing the many other people who worked on the movie, most of whom, Hollywood being Hollywood, probably are not anti-gay (and many of whom almost certainly are gay). It would undercut the real raison d’être of the gay-rights movement: not to win equality just for gay Americans but to advance the freedom of all Americans to live as who they really are and say what they really think. Even if they are Orson Scott Card.

Above all, the boycott should fizzle, and I expect it will fizzle, because gay people know we owe our progress to freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

Stump Stump is a Steeler and Corgi’s part of the Raider Nation…. you guys don’t even know how ugly it’s gonna get this weekend.

A portion of Max Richter’s dazzling take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons:

In a wide-ranging essay that connects Kanye West to Beethoven, Michael Markham discusses the similarities between classical music and today’s popular genres:

Vivaldi’s generation reveled, without embarrassment, in instant emotional gratification. Its most popular form of music, Opera seria, was not like later Romantic opera. It did not present a deep unified story in the Wagnerian sense, and instead provided little more than a series of 40 or so fragmented emotional moments, each represented by a static aria that crystallized a single mood.

Baroque-era audiences treated the productions as live “best of” concerts, wandering in and out of the theater, choosing to listen only to the excerpts that touched the right mood for them that night. Baroque composers were trained to enhance such evocative mood-experiences even when writing instrumental concertos. The constant nervous pulse (that for much of the 20th century led to Baroque music being called “sewing machine” music) invigorates in the same way modern rock or hip-hop does; the cascading sequences and recurring fragments of melody produce a pop-like repetition that pulls the listener back again and again to the same emotional starting point. …

The form of the Vivaldian concerto is based on the idea of the reoccurring “hook.” It is similar in this way to the verse-chorus-verse-chorus progression of our own pop songs. [Composer Max] Richter’s own comments on his music reveal this connection to today’s composition: “I was pleased to discover that Vivaldi’s music is very modular. It’s pattern music.” So is Richter’s, as well as that of many of the most prominent composers of both “classical” and “pop” minimalism (not to mention trance, hip-hop, dance, house, etc.) of the last 20 years — from Brian Eno and Meredith Monk to Kanye West, Gotye, Nico Muhly, and John Luther Adams.

Kathy Bates' American Horror Story character has just been dug up after being buried alive for 180 years. She's immortal, y'all. And here's her reaction to seeing President Obama on television. I've been waiting for a good quality clip, but this one from JMG reader Drew will do. You absolutely must wait for the final line. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Wednesday's episode.

via karateboogaloo

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