Ummagumma

Addressing a New Year’s resolution, I began reading Marcel Proust’s wonderful, demanding, lengthy novel, In Search of Lost Time , on February 12.  This is my third time negotiating Proust’s labyrinthine sentences, ample poetic prose, and philosophical explorations, my last journey was in 2008 .  By happy coincidence, a new literary article on the novel was published on February 8 entitled, “ Reading Proust Is Like Climbing a Mountain – Prepare Accordingly. ”  It reemphasized the importance of my planning for Proust this past December.   The article states: “Proust doesn’t write day hikes, Proust is more like the Appalachian Trail.”  Which is true enough.  His sentences and paragraphs meander through all sorts of interrelated ideas, often presented in little more than stream of consciousness, though there is a clear narrative structure accentuated with a luxurious maze beautiful and eloquent phrases.  The article suggests that a reader tackle the massive work in 20-30 page increment

Picking up where he left off with Sapiens , Yuval Noah Harari writes “a brief history of tomorrow” in Home Deus .  The book begins with a discussion of how humanity has addressed, and largely conquered, two of our traditional nemeses - disease and famine.  As examples, whereas the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people in the 1300’s and 15 percent of the French population died of starvation during the reign of King Louis XIV , today famine and malnutrition kill about one million per year worldwide.  Obesity, on the other hand, kills 3 million per year out of 2.1 billion overweight human beings worldwide compared to about 850 million undernourished people.   Today more humans are dying from excess than from the lack of anything. Exposure of the native peoples of Mexico to Spanish explorers and conquerors in the 1500’s likewise had catastrophic implications in terms of disease.  The native Mexican population numbered about 22 million when the Spaniards arrived.  Within a

Last November, I offered some mid-term election thoughts here and here .  In those pieces I asked liberals (I think the word "progressive" is so wimpish) a very straightforward question regarding the 2020 presidential election... Do you want to be right or do you want to win? So far, it looks like the left-wing of the democratic party wants Donald Trump to be re-elected, because they are acting like morons.  Today and yesterday , a couple of articles caught my eye as I was flipboarding . CNN, not exactly a conservative bell-ringer, featured an insightful piece entitled: How Democrats are handing Donald Trump a viable path to a second term .  Then, early this morning, National Review offered: Trump Can Win Again Only If Democrats Keep Moving Leftward .  Let's review some facts.  Donald Trump's approval rating has never crested above 50%.  He is the only president since 1937 to be so consistently unpopular. Trump is the most polarizing president in history

I reviewed 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari late last year.  That book inspired me to ask for Harari’s other two books, Sapiens and Homo Deus , as Christmas gifts.  Harari has a knack for effectively communicating sophisticated scientific discoveries and debates in layman’s terms without dumbing down the material.  He is also a bold writer, making firm contentions, largely supported by the most recent evidence, in a manner that is simultaneously insightful and troubling to the extent that we humans have only recently begun to fully understand ourselves.  Meanwhile, the road ahead for the next 30-50 years will most likely mark fundamental changes in what it means to be human. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is Harari’s most popular book.  It gives a “brief” history of the evolution of humankind with chapters that are part chronological and part thematic, skipping through time to make an evolutionary point.   In this blog post I will offer a summary of th

Yesterday, Jennifer and I decided to drive down to Atlanta and visit the High Museum with Avery and her boyfriend, Ben.  Our intent (naively as it turned out) was to see Yayoi Kusama's world-renowned Infinity Mirrors Exhibit .  We did not realize that tickets to the special exhibit had been sold out for weeks. Disappointed but not disheartened, we decided to spend time with the museum's permanent collection.  I saw the Richter abstract that I blogged about years ago  here .  There was also a large mirrored dish mounted on the wall that I have also seen before (see previous link), but this time I saw it in a different light.   I enjoyed the trip even if Infinity Mirrors escaped me.  There are many smaller wonders at the High.  Barred from the big crowd drawing event, the ordinary aspects of the High's collection became more pronounced in my mind.  It was a wonderful experience.   We spent almost two hours there.   Here are some photos and interpretive signage of the