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Showing posts from 2016

Loose Ends for 2016

Work, family and other projects took precedent over blogging in 2016.  I plan to concentrate more on my Nietzsche blog in the coming weeks.  I have worked on it for 8 years and am finally close to completing the philosophical biography portion of it.  This blog will take a back seat to that one for the time being, although I do have a few topics I still want to post here. 2016 was the year my Flipboard editing sort of took off.  As of this post I have a modest 2,186 followers as of this post, up from my humble beginnings back in 2014 .  My number of magazines proliferated this past year, though news, art, space, and sex remain the topics of primary interest.  I added a number of specialty magazines this year including additional archives on art and hot pix.   SeXtEcH focuses on the diverse world of sex augmentation and technology - everything from virtual reality to toys to sex robots, which is an emerging topic.  My personal opinion is that virtual reality and robotics will bo

Best Christmas Novelty Gift

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Listening to Rihm: Two Other Movements

I have previously posted about my explorations of classical composer Wolfgang Rihm's vast repertoire of music.   In early 2016, the seventh installation of SWR Music's Rihm – Edition Series was made available in the US.  I purchased it several months ago and have since spent time listening to it off and on.   This CD features the world-premiere recording of Two Other Movements , a large scale 40-minute work which Rihm composed in 2004 as well as several shorter pieces from the 1980's.  I find everything on the CD accessible and enjoyable, but, like most of Rihm's work, it is an acquired taste in modern classical composition. Once again, Rihm is a prolific composer and most of his compositions have yet to be recorded.  This CD is an excellent example of how Rihm views his music as essentially part of a collective, almost continuous body of work, a singular artistic path, wherein Rihm takes inspiration from his previous compositions to create new material.   Two Oth

Reading The Windup Girl

Note: This post contains some spoilers for The Windup Girl , but it does not reveal everything in the novel by any means. A couple of months ago I came across this article listing 17 science fiction novels that changed the genre.  The list includes such great titles as Stranger in a Strange Land , Dune , Foundation , Dhalgren , Slaughterhouse-Five , and Neuromancer . Scanning the list, I realized I had read every book mentioned (and own almost all of them) with the exception of two. One of the two, The Windup Girl , caught my eye because it was published in 2009, the most recent book on the list. I had not heard of it before and decided to pick up a copy. The novel is exceptionally well-written by author Paolo Bacigalupi .  The prose is expressive, entertaining, sometimes technical, sometimes poetic, and it guides the reader into the vivid world where global warming and various diseases have wrecked havoc on humanity's food supply, the environment, and where plagues arise thre

Crazy Beats Dishonesty

Turns out  Lindsey Graham was wrong , in 2016 America thinks Crazy trumps Dishonesty (forgive the pun).  Turns out the GOP is at war with itself but it does not matter .  Turns out almost all the polls were wrong .  Turns out Pennsylvania , Michigan , and Wisconsin were the wild cards to Donald Trump's election.  Trump conquered the Electoral Map in grand style, thanks largely to angry voters .  But, more significantly, Trump won with fewer voters showing up in major cities like Milwaukee , Detroit , and Philadelphia .  Had the turnout been higher in these three cities it is very possible that Clinton ( who benefited from higher urban voter participation ) would have carried these three respective states that she lost to Trump.  That was the election in a nutshell. Hillary may have won the debates , she may have been more favorably perceived by the news media , but in 2016 the voters were anti-establishment , anti-media , and anti-logic  - a perfect storm for a candidate like

An Exhibition Revisited

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As we did last year , Jennifer and I met up with some of our 'Dillo friends to attend a open studio art event in Atlanta last night. This year we enjoyed a pre-art dinner at Tuk Tuk , a nice Thai restaurant near the exhibit.  Paintings, sculptures, photographs, digital art, and mixed media work abounded. Once again the venue was crowded and the somewhat narrow halls often restricted my ability to snap a good photo of some of the art. Overall, I did not think the exhibit was as strong this year as last. But there were several high-quality pieces. Some samples below... Detail of above. Detail of above. Detail of above.

The Most Absurd Election Ever

On the wall in my office I have a sign that simply reads: " Dishonesty Beats Crazy. "  That is the way Republican Senator Lindsey Graham characterized the 2016 presidential election back in February.  I thought it was an erudite comment at the time, probably the best single summation of the Donald Trump - Hillary Clinton election train wreck. Graham succinctly defined the choice between someone who is widely perceived as one of the most dishonest politicians in America, Hillary Clinton, and the absolute craziest loose cannon on the political stage, Donald Trump.  It is not a choice most Americans care for and this is probably the most loathed presidential choice in my lifetime. The American electorate is pissed off and stressed out over this mess. So, until recently, Graham's statement captured the 2016 zeitgeist of American politics for me.  All that has changed now.  Graham’s comparison is still valid, but other factors have come into play with a double “Octobe