Scott Billington, producer extraordinaire of so many top-notch musicians (that typically that don’t get mainstream airplay — well, because they have genuine talent — for example “Gatemouth” Brown and James Booker, two of the GREATS — is writing a monthly “Letter from NOLA” column for Universal Music’s uDiscover website, sharing stories about the musicians he’s worked with (and others), and talking about Louisiana music in general. Here’s the first installment on Ruth Brown.
Dirk Bogarde (along with Klaus Kinski) ranks as one of the two greatest screen actors of the post-War era. I realize that this may be somewhat controversial given what Hollywood (I include the Brit luvvies) take to be its finest. Bogarde was very bright, literate, articulate, dignified, brave, philosophical, had integrity and importantly was very scathing — he didn’t suffer fools gladly especially Hollywood and TV interviewers. Below is the definitive Borgarde documentary enhanced by Anthony Forwood’s terrific home movies, supplemented by thoughtful and frank insights by DB’s family and colleagues. Especially notable, for me at least, was a glimpse of DB’s sketchbook which showed an artistic maturity very early on and is far superior to the usual actor-or-musician-turned-painter schlock. Also, I’d always wondered whatever happened to Björn Andrésen (Tadzio in Death in Venice) — great to see that despite the albatross that the role was, he’s alive and well and living a “normal” life.
The DB website claims that:
Given the VERY modest sums involved in maintaining a website one would have thought that DB’s sizable estate would cover this in perpetuity since Brock Van den Bogaerde was the main beneficiary and indeed runs the website. Very odd.
Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile. Fix me a toddy, Lola, and we’ll sit on the gallery of Tara and you play a tune and we’ll watch evening fall and lightning bugs wink in the purple meadow.
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“A perfect example of Homo Americanensis politicus paranoicus, would you say, Max?”
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The Heavy Sodium ions hit his pineal body, seat of self, like a guillotine, sundering self from self forever, that ordinary self, the restless aching everyday self, from the secret self one happens on in dreams, in poetry, during ordeals, on happy trips—“Ah, this is my real self!” Forever after he’ll live like a ghost inhibiting himself. He’ll orbit the earth forever, reading dials and recording data and spinning theories by day, and at night seek to reenter the world of creatures by taking the form of beasts and performing unnatural practices.
I even fancy that I see his soul depart, exiting his body through the top of his head in a little corkscrew curl of vapor, as the soul is depicted in ancient woodcuts. Or was it no more than a wisp of smoke blown from the bunker?
This special issue of Cognitive Systems Research is intended as a follow-up and a companion to an earlier issue devoted to the theme of stigmergy, what we termed stigmergy 3.0 ( Doyle & Marsh, 2013). It reinforces the idea that the observation and the theorizing of the mechanism of stigmergy is no longer the sole preserve of eusocial insects (termites for example), eukaryotic cellular organisms (slime mold) and the flocking, herding, and schooling of organisms with much higher cognitive capacity than termites. Indeed, homo sapiens’ richly adaptive and dynamic behavior may well be the paradigm instantiation of stigmergy – think economies and markets, cultures, traditions and practices, urban development, and of course of late, the world-wide web – all highly complex emergent phenomena.
“Throw Me Something, Mister!”: Mardi Gras is much more than a debaucherous party. The exchange of gifts in parades and parties binds New Orleans’ diverse communities together.
The importance of giving for its own sake, rather than for prestige or other benefits, is emphasized by krewe anonymity. Mardi Gras law requires that krewe members wear masks during their parades. This creates an important dynamic: the receiver does not know who the gift giver is. No personal reciprocity is expected.
A reminder about our Twitter Q&A tomorrow, Monday 15 February at 8am PST/4pm GMT. The list of participants below, along with the titles of their contributions to the collection — if you can’t join us, a link will provided soon after to an omnibus version:
@markpingle — Boundedly Rational Decision-Making under Certainty and Uncertainty: Some Reflections on Herbert Simon
@mmarconov — Simon’s (Lost?) Legacy in Agent-Based Computational Economics
@MilekPl — Models of environment
@FernandGobet — From Bounded Rationality to Expertise
This 1989 BBC Horizon documentary (see below) is an absolute gem. I must have seen it in the day but viewing it again with the benefit of the intervening quarter century, is so rewarding. It’s television at its best — very tightly presented, it is neither pretentious nor dumbed down as so many programmes on LW are wont to be. Of course, the programme is replete with LW’s aphorisms and wonderful extracts from the Bertie-LW correspondence. It also features the immensely cultivated mind that is Michael Tanner who kindly kept me in snout at an early Nietzsche Society of GB meeting. Three things struck me about this programme. First, it’s very easy to see how the “cult” of LW arose. Second, whatever the vital foundations Russell (and Whitehead) laid in Principia Mathematica, Russell’s genius was that he recognized true genius in LW at the outset. According to the programme, Russell’s ego was somewhat bruised by being eclipsed by LW manifest by his pooh-poohing the Investigations. Last, but by no means least, LW’s existential commitment to philosophy shows just how shallow, ideological and intellectually dishonest “professional” philosophy has increasingly become over the past 40 or so years — of course there are exceptions. (The image that always springs to mind when considering the generic climbing-the-greasy-pole-academic-cum-public-intellectual, typically in the humanities and social sciences, is one of a kid traipsing about in their parents’ garb).
P.S. Here’s a bit of LW news that eluded me: Lost archive shows Wittgenstein in a new light.
As Plato said, “children’s passions should not always be restrained with severity, nor should they be habitually petted and caressed.” Wisdom consists in finding the medium between these extremes.
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How unstable is fortune in this life!
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Pliny rightly stated that “fear is a very unfaithful teacher.”
