Stupidity today is on display more than ever. Yet it is that “elephant in the room” few talk about or are aware of. There is much to be learned about it from an essay by an Italian economic historian named Carol Cipolla (August 15, 1922 – September 5, 2000). Graduating from the University of Pavia in […]
A good documentary on Hemingway was on PBS tonight. A Ken Burns film and it is really good. Tonight was Part 1 and covered Hemingway up to 1928 when he was 29 and just written A Farewell to Arms. I did my senior thesis in high school on Hemingway and read a great biography on him […]
In 1996, Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, was curious to see whether the then-non-peer-reviewed postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University Press) would publish a submission which “flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” The submission was an experiment to test the journal’s intellectural rigor. Specifically, to investigate whether “a leading North […]
John Fraim I’ve come to believe the way forward for the modern novel is through the creation of new narrative techniques rather than the structural forms of screenplay as Hollywood would have writers believe. Experiments in voice and narrator were at the heart of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Michael Ondaatje’s Collected […]
One of the strangest and most unique bands is the American indie folk band Lord Huron based in Los Angeles. Founded by Ben Schneider, the name of the band is a tribute to Lake Huron where the Michigan native spent many of his summers growing up where he spent evenings at the lake playing music around […]
“Francis Bacon never tired of contrasting hot and cool prose. Writing in ‘methods’ or complete packages, he contrasted with writing in aphorisms, or single observations such as ‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice.’ The passive consumer wants packages, but those, he suggested, who are concerned in pursuing knowledge and in seeking causes will resort […]
John Fraim One never knows how much they’re connected to the digital world until needs like updating an old computer come along. Living in the Bay Area since the mid-70s, I’d been involved in some way with Apple Computers I lived in Berkeley in the 80s and attended meetings of the Berkeley Apple or Mac […]
(Excuse all the table talk but this is how I heard the music that night … my stepson Drew’s 38th birthday with his beautiful wife Kelly. Getting us out for live music for the first time in a long tine in the Covid era) John Fraim I watched the Grammy Awards this year. Saw Billie […]
Billie Eilish just won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Record of the Year “Everything I Wanted.” It was a repeat of last year when she sweep the major categories. The music of Eilish first gained attention in 2015 when she uploaded the song “Ocean Eyes” to SoundCloud. The song was written and produced by […]
Love Theme from Spartacus Written my Alex North for the film Spartacus Memory by John Fraim Tonight on Bay Area jazz radio KCSM, they played jazz saxophist Regina Carter’s interpretation of “Love Theme from Spartacus.” In my mind, it is one of the most gorgeous theme songs ever attached to a Hollywood movie. The piece was […]
