Coming soon (an unlikely cover for an OUP book).
AttentionCognitive scienceconsciousnessJesse PrinzMind–body problemneurosciencePerceptionPhilosophyPhilosophy of mindThe Conscious Brain
Coming soon (an unlikely cover for an OUP book).
Oakeshott on Law
STEVEN GERENCSER trailer from A Companion to Michael Oakeshott
To write about law in relationship to Michael Oakeshott’s ideas generally, or his thoughts on politics in particular, presents a complicated task, not because law is an obscure concept in Oakeshott, and not because it is a topic about which he has written little. In fact, Oakeshott wrote about law and jurisprudence at the beginning of his life as a publishing scholar and was still writing essays on law more than half a century later. Rather it is a challenge to write about Oakeshott and law because his ideas about law are so closely nested with related and interlocking concepts that it is very easy to start by thinking about law and find oneself considering authority or politics, or his distinction between civil association and enterprise association. These concepts are woven together so tightly for Oakeshott that to pull one out and consider it on its own without attention to the others would badly misconstrue the idea. To express this idea in the terms that Oakeshott employs regarding Hegel and Hobbes, these ideas are related as in a system, and to attempt to understand any element of the system in isolation can only generate a limited and incomplete view, that is, a misunderstanding.
Evelyn Waugh Revisited
Having just viewed Brideshead Revisited again after 30 some years here is the infamous and deliciously obstreperous John Freeman-Waugh interview.
Jazz in Japan
The Japanese people want to thank the United States, New Orleans and Satchmo for giving the world such wonderful music called jazz.
A lovely example of the power of this music to spread the joy, the conduit the very special Yoshio Toyama. In Treme (1:5) you may recall a Japanese jazz fan does a good turn for Antoine. Check out the photos as well.
Vettriano
Hated by the art establishment and other literati snobs, no doubt many of them would see virtue in Andrew Lloyd Vombo. JV’s film noir perspective is a lost idealized world of menace and sleaze with elegance, strong sexy women, sinister men, sexual “deviance”, drinking, smoking, politically “incorrect behavior” . . . some mid-Atlantic world, the LA of Marlow meets Bournemouth. NOLA would of course “get” Vettriano.
See this article The Singing Butler Did It – the writer Amy Fine Collins seems to be very versatile and writes competently on fashion to sex trafficking and much in-between.
Brain plasticity and the internet – a debate
Neil Levy takes on Susan Greenfield.
I started by mentioning Plato’s worry that literacy would weaken memory. As a matter of fact, Plato may not have been entirely wrong: there is evidence that people in preliterate cultures have better memories. It does not follow, however, that the invention of writing had costs as well as benefits, or rather it does not follow that any effect on short term memory is simply a cost. It may that (sic) writing did not merely provide us with an external memory store that was superior to brain-based memory (much more reliable, for one thing). By decreasing the burden on our memory, it may also have freed up brain-based processing resources for other tasks.
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
86-year-old returns to New Orleans, fulfilling wish of a lifetime
Her eyes still light up when she talks about New Orleans. When asked the top three reasons she loves New Orleans, she quickly answers with, “the food, the music, but especially the people,” referring to her close friends and the 400,000 friendly locals who make the city what it is.
Floyd’s American Pie
Food writing at it’s entertaining best. This is the guy (a wonderful character – who else would use the rather naughty The Stranglers’ Peaches as a theme tune) who brought me to Dooky Chase and Paul Prudhomme – I let the latter know of this 20 year journey and he very kindly sent me a lovely inscribed paper table cloth with the words: “Good cooking, good eating, good loving.” Sums up what is important in my world at least. For more on Floyd see this droll documentary.
NOLA @ Newport
NOLA is very well represented at this year’s event. This from the Providence Journal.
Dr. John & The Lower 911 featuring ex-Brit Jon Cleary (there are a few of us who are besotted with NOLA), Preservation Hall Jazz Band, with special guests Catherine Russell and Jonathan Batiste.
Parsifal: the greatest meditation on death?
I’ve been watching James Levine‘s version of Parsifal. Though quite the production, it doesn’t come near the experience of the starker Simon Rattle production I saw at the Royal Opera House some years back in which I thoroughly appreciated Vera Dobroschke’s lighting design (see photo below). Here is the NYT review, far more receptive than the reviews of the 2007 production revamp. Speaking of Levine, I bumped into him on my way to “water the horses” – he wasn’t looking well at all. (An artist friend very kindly invited me to share his Symphony Hall box – I’ve never come across someone so knowledgeable and passionate about music and a very tough hockey goalie as well).
manwithoutqualities 