STAGING WAGNER
RECENTLY, I NOTED, WATCHING Bergman’s The Virgin Spring reminded me of Wagner staging of medieval interiors. I was thinking especially of the Hunding residence built around a massive ash tree … Continue reading
TIDBITS ABOUT AUNTIE BEEB
BBC WORLD SERVICE is my wakeup call at 6:00 a.m. Pacific, 13.00 GMT. They used to play Lillibullero, but now it’s just a zippy modern sound check. This year is … Continue reading
VOLKSWAGEN DELUXE SEDAN—A 1952 PERSPECTIVE
“HOW WOULD YOU IMPROVE on a car which will cruise effortlessly all day long at top speed? What changes would you suggest in a vehicle which will seat a driver … Continue reading
TAKING A KITE-SHAPED TOUR
IT’S A RATHER IMPOSING title for a 1915 pocket guide: The Real United States & Canada Guide-Book. But its author William Harman Black had already published Real Round the World, … Continue reading
CELEBRATING TRUFFAUT, BERGMAN, AND BONDARCHUK PART 2
CONTINUING OUR FOREIGN FLICK fling, we devote Part 2 to the single, massive, expansive, (add adjective of your choice) 7 hour 11 minute epic, Sergei Bondarchuk’s Война и мир, War … Continue reading
CELEBRATING TRUFFAUT, BERGMAN, AND BONDARCHUK PART 1
IN MY BEATNIK PHASE (which lagged into the 1960s) I was into foreign films, the sort that lingered on pensive closeups and raindrops clinging to a leaf. Now, apparently into … Continue reading
BUT HE WENT, LIKE, WHATEVER….
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, ANGLO-IRISH playwright, went, like, “The true use of speech is not to express our wants as to conceal them.” Whatever. How facile this evasive English rolls off the … Continue reading
ONLINE LEARNING PART 2
YESTERDAY, PROFESSOR WILLIAM DAVIES discussed plagiarism, identifying such literary treachery with TurnItIn software, and obscuring it by means of Artificial Intelligence. Today, his article in London Review of Books continues … Continue reading
ONLINE LEARNING PART 1
I ENJOYED THE PROCESS of lecturing on mathematics. And, apparently, so did my students (if their anonymous surveys were to be believed). Even though I am computer-friendly, I’m not sure … Continue reading
THE WHEEL IN JAPAN
THE WORD 車, KURUMA, vehicle, appears in the ancient historical chronicle Nihon shoki, 720 A.D. However, as noted in The Wheel: A Japanese History, “In China, whose influence on the … Continue reading
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