Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 – 1900) was in his time famous around the world, and deservedly so.
This picture is about the Battle of Navarino in 1827. There are others at the Wikipedia page on Aivazovsky and a lot more at Wikimedia Commons.
Month: August 2013
The Future of Media (?)
As I was walking in River North I stopped short after seeing this sign for “Buzz Feed”. If you don’t know the name, they are a very successful internet site (is that what you call it nowadays?) that creates their own content that typically goes “viral” or pushes out existing content. You know, the ones with cats, cute animals, funny GIFS, etc…
It is strange seeing the physical manifestation of all the time-wasting crap on the web that most of us enjoy from time to time. If you go to their “about” page on their web site (I probably am literally the first person to do this) you can see the usual types of people that you’d expect to run a web site (or mobile content site? I’m not sure what to call it anymore). I looked at their jobs site and didn’t see any open ones in Chicago so I’m not sure what goes on there besides the little plaque.
Another aggregator is “Gawker Media” that has a bunch of sites (mobile sites?) that we visit a lot especially Deadspin, but also LifeHacker and many others. These sites, like Buzzfeed, are a big challenge to “traditional” media because 1) they sell a lot of advertising 2) they create their own content (or borrow it) 3) they aren’t really journalists (mostly). For instance Deadspin absolutely breaks stories or “piles on” when something happens (like Sandusky in Penn State) but often they just take what’s out there and call it like they see it. Deadspin in particular could care less what journalists / media / companies think of them and they are immensely likable as a result. Gawker too breaks stories like when they had long-term unemployed write in about their plight or Wal-Mart employees started writing in about how miserably that company apparently treats their staff.
The future of media (?) in my own neighborhood…
Cross posted at LITGM
City Living
For those of you reading this post from the suburbs or rural America you won’t know why this photo of the River North Walgreens drug store is so unique, but city dwellers might if they ponder for a bit… The answer is –
Because there are no bums out front
For people who live in the city, especially women, the presence or absence of bums or aggressive panhandlers in fact is a serious criteria for selecting where you live, shop and eat. This Walgreens in River North usually has a crew of bums accosting everyone going in and out of the turnstiles, like clockwork.
After a while you subconsciously avoid those places and favor other places. Another common bum congregation zone are churches. I usually walk on the other side of the street whenever churches are in my path, except for the brief times when the churches are fully of happy people all dressed up which would be a wedding.
Someday I will walk through the loop and count how many times a day I am asked for money or asked to buy something of no value (i.e. the magazine “Streetwise”). It has to be in the dozens of times. Another common topic of interaction – “can I ask you a question?” is that they have lost their bus pass / CTA pass / need some money for the train back home. This “line of inquiry” is consistently heard anywhere near the commuter rail stations.
Businesses would be wise to hire security of some sort or use their own managers to figure out how to minimize the presence of bums and panhandlers and aggressive street people on their premises. I’m sure many of the smarter businesses have already done this. Women in particular will likely shy away from your establishment if they have to run a gauntlet in order to patronize it.
I feel sorry for the tourists that actually interact with these bums and panhandlers. Their kids are usually surprised and the “smart” bums will try to strike up a conversation with the children that after a brief start of recognition the parents are quick to want to get out of. This is a good tactic to get a buck, and quite sneaky.
Cross posted at LITGM
Do The Great Books Have a Place in the 21st Century?
Originally posted at The Scholar’s Stage on the 27th of May, 2013.
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| A selection of the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World. Image source. |
A “proper education” changes with its times.
In the days of America’s founding a true education was a classical education. An educated man was not simply expected to be familiar with the great works of Greek and Roman civilization; the study of these works was the foundation of education itself. Thomas Jefferson’s advice to an aspiring nephew captures the attitudes of his era:
It is time for you now to begin to be choice in your reading; to begin to pursue a regular course in it; and not to suffer yourself to be turned to the right or left by reading any thing out of that course. I have long ago digested a plan for you, suited to the circumstances in which you will be placed. This I will detail to you, from time to time, as you advance. For the present, I advise you to begin a course of antient history, reading every thing in the original and not in translations. First read Goldsmith’s history of Greece. This will give you a digested view of that field. Then take up antient history in the detail, reading the following books, in the following order: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophontis Hellenica, Xenophontis Anabasis, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Justin. This shall form the first stage of your historical reading, and is all I need mention to you now. The next, will be of Roman history (*). From that, we will come down to modern history. In Greek and Latin poetry, you have read or will read at school, Virgil, Terence, Horace, Anacreon, Theocritus, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles. Read also Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakspeare, Ossian, Pope’s and Swift’s works, in order to form your style in your own language. In morality, read Epictetus, Xenophontis Memorabilia, Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Cicero’s philosophies, Antoninus, and Seneca….
Reality lives in the details
Sometimes you come across a comment that passingly mentions a central truth that you just want to climb up on a roof and shout it out to the world. That! Pay attention to that!
Trent Telenko comments on his own excellent post:
Reality lives in the details.
You have to know enough of the details to know what is vital and to be able to use good judgement as to which histories are worthwhile and which are regurgitated pap.
No one has bothered to do that with MacArthur’s South West Pacific Area, especially as it relates to the proposed invasion of Japan.
Yes, reality lives in the details and we are living in a world that both has more of those details available and has fewer of those details capturing our attention. We leave important details unexamined and fixate on the exciting but unimportant details of celebrity and titillation.
What makes the situation supremely frustrating is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Computers are both becoming cheaper and more powerful. We’re deploying new technologies such as the Semantic Web to fix it but the progress is agonizingly slow.
Faster please