A no fluff list of five Wes Anderson short films. Yes, some of these are commercials.
Castello Cavalcanti
Come Together
Moonrise Kingdom, book short
Candy L’Eau
My Life, My Card
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H/T Essential Homme H/T avalanchealonso -
Excerpt from Tyler Cowen’s The Age of the Infovore:
I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I’ve conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago-at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.
Cowen, Tyler. The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. New York: Plume, 2010 (see page 97)Ed Boyden’s note taking practice seems both exhausting and exhilarating. Tedious and satisfying. He’s not only writing notes, but drawing them as well.
It’s taken him far though. He’s gone from blogger for the Technology Review to the Professor in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences, and Biological Engineering, and an HHMI investigator at MIT.
For someone who understands so much about the brain, is Boyden’s drawing function of his note-taking deliberate? A tool to help him remember and synthesize information?
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Below is the list of the books that most shaped C.S. Lewis’s world view. Originally published in the Christian Century, but captured here from Jason M. Baxter‘s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind:
- Phantastes – George MacDonald
- Everlasting Man – G.K. Chesterton
- Aeneid – Virgil
- The Temple – George Herbert
- Prelude – William Wordsworth
- The Idea of the Holy – Rudolf Otto
- Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
- Life of Johnson – James Boswell
- Descent into Hell – Charles Williams
- Theism and Humanism – Arthur James Balfour
George MacDonald’s Phantastes stands out. The subtitle is: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. I’ve never read it, but an entire book on Faeries, written by a Christian Congregational minister?
The sheer intellectual power of these authors is striking. I don’t think anyone of them were only writers. Maybe Virgil.
Taking a deeper look we learn Arthur James Balfour was a statesman and Prime Minister.
Charles Williams wrote poems, novels, and plays, but was also a theologian and literary critic. “Inklings” member too.
Rudolf Otto was a theologian, philosopher, and scholar.
Boethius? Boethius was a Roman senator, consul, historian, philosopher, Saint, and Martyr.
Intellectual titans, the lot of them.
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From the introduction of Jason M. Baxter‘s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind:
In addition to the Christian apologist, whose sagacious words delivered over radio waves had been so comforting during England’s darkest hour, and in addition to Lewis the mythmaker, the creator of Narnia and fantastic tales of space travel, there was Lewis the scholar, the Oxford (and later Cambridge) don who spent his days lecturing to students on medieval cosmology and his nights looking up old words in dictionaries. This Lewis, as Louis Markos puts it, “was far more a man of the medieval age than he was of our own.” This was the man who read fourteenth-century medieval texts for his spiritual reading, carefully annotation them with pencil; who summed himself up as “chiefly a medievalist” ; the philologist, who wrote essays on semantics, metaphors, etymologies, and textual reception; “the distinguished Oxford don and literary critic who packed lecture theaters with his unscripted reflections on English literature”; the schoolmaster who fussed at students for not looking up treacherous words in their lexicons; the polyglot pedant who did not translate his quotations from medieval French, German, Italian, or ancient Latin and Greek in his scholarly books; the man who wrote letters to children recommending that they study Latin until they reached the point they could read it fluently without a dictionary; the critic who, single-handedly, saved bizarre, lengthy, untranslated ancient books from obscurity.
Baxter M. Jason, The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022. (see pages 2,3)C.S. Lewis cultivated multiple intellectual lives. He was the writer-apologist-professor we remember him as, but in addition, he was a medievalist. Captured by the medieval, his spiritual reading consisted of fourteenth century medieval texts. He gave lectures on medieval cosmology. And there was no need for Lewis to translate texts written in medieval French, German, or Italian. And of course, he possessed a mastery of ancient Latin and Greek.
Also, remember Lewis’ maxim, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between? I mistakenly thought he meant one should re-read a book, before beginning a new one.
Lewis meant read an old book. Like 14th century old, before reading a modern one.
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“You’ve got to mix with people with money if you want to make money.”
Max Malini. Magician.Magicians can spout solid career advice. They’re entrepreneurs and showmen all-in-one.
That from the underrated book – David Copperfields History of Magic.
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We’ve covered how Thomas Jeffs was interested in everything. And we mean everything. But we were still surprised to discover Jefferson’s mammoth obsession. One doesn’t immediately think, founding father and mammoth. But one must remember TJeffs was a cut of different fabric.
As American paleontologist, professor, and author, Steve Brusatte writes:
One American colonist became obsessed with mammoths.
This is one of my favorite sentences ever written. The content — An American colonist’s bizarre obsession. And that Steven Brusatte resists announcing it’s Thomas Jefferson, hiding him behind the noun “colonist”. Let’s continue:
One American colonist became obsessed with mammoths. During the late 1700s, there was a lot on Thomas Jefferson’s mind-writing the Declaration of Independence, winning a Revolutionary War, preventing his new country from falling apart, running two of the most contentious presidential campaigns in American history, and raising (or at least producing) two families. Through it all, he kept thinking about mammoths. And writing about mammoths, begging people to send him mammoth bones, ordering generals to procure mammoth skeletons. In part, this was escapism. Jefferson loved nature, and, in his words, preferred “the tranquil pursuits of science” to the pugilism of politics.
Brusatte, Steven. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us. Boston: Mariner Books, 2022. (see page 326)Most would escape into drink or theater. Thomas Jefferson escaped into mammoths. And this wasn’t a side hobby, this man was ordering generals to hunt down mammoth skeletons.
But Steven Brusatte reveals, this obsession did have other motivations. Mainly debunking Comte de Buffon’s theory that North American climates spawned weak animal species and cold people. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t letting that shit stand! He fought back with mammoths:
But he had grander reasons, too. In a bestselling book, the noble French naturalist Comte de Buffon had presented his “Theory of American Degeneracy,” which held that the cool and wet climates of North America caused its animals to be “feeble” and its people to be “cold,” compared to the grandeur of the Old World. Hyper with patriotism, Jefferson saw the mammoth — an elephant larger than those of Africa and Asia! — as his ultimate comeback. It was proof that America was not a backwater, but a land of vitality, with a bright and industrious future.
Brusatte, Steven. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us. Boston: Mariner Books, 2022. (see page 326)Could you imagine today, a mammoth, a prehistoric creature of any kind, being used as a smack-talk comeback for international rhetoric?
Or a mammoth being a symbol of vitality?
Or having a president that cared at all about mammoths?
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MZS: How do you work out ideas for costumes before they’re sewn? Do you draw rough versions of them in a sketchbook and then have somebody do more elaborate illustrations when the ideas have settled a bit?
MC: On the other two movies I did with Wes, The Life Aquatic and the Darjeeling Limited, I applied traditional sketching methods to design the look of the characters. On this one, our illustrators used both Photoshop and traditional sketching to incorporate Wes’s and my own ideas. With Photoshop we could get very close to the actors’ likenesses, and then easily do variations and send them to Wes via e-mail. The actors were very pleased because they could relate easily to how their character would look. Having worked on two of Wes’s other movies, I had already worked with some of his “ensemble” actors and it was interesting to change them again to these other characters. Wes had decided that all the men in the movie would have moustaches or beards, save for Jopling and the nasty sergeant in the train. I loved this idea, and it is curios that hardly anyone notices this detail–but it gives a style to the men’s looks.
Zoller Seitz, Matt. The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel. New York: Abrams, 2015 (see page 89)Costume design is an overlooked art form. When done well it’s hardly noticed, but adds to the world as a character. The 2017 American film Lady Bird is an excellent example. Anyone who grew up in 90s suburban America will recognize that movie and say yes! Yes! That’s exactly how a pre-teen leaving mass would dress 30 years ago.
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University of Toronto professor Alexandra Ghostafson shares her tips for reading philosophy. They’re superb tips for reading anything really.
Download the pdf here.
Starting out, read twice. Read once quickly to get the gist of the paper, and once more slowly to get the details. This can be time consuming, but it still takes less time than trying to both orient yourself and get all the details in the first pass!
Take reading notes. During the first pass, make notes for yourself in the margin of the paper. Point out places you want to pay closer attention to on the second go, and highlight sections that seem especially important. After this first pass, you might want to write down initial impression or questions for yourself to answer after your second read–these might be about what the author is doing in a certain section, what a certain term means, etc.
Find the argument. On the second pass, you might start with finding the author’s conclusion, or what it is they are arguing for. Once you’ve found what they are arguing for, read the paper from start to finish looking for premises—these are reasons that the author gives for accepting their conclusion. Make note of where they are in the paper, writing down page numbers. The premises together with the conclusion make up the author’s argument.
Rewrite the argument. Once you’ve reread the paper and have found the author’s argument, try to paraphrase it. Writing it down in your own words will help you think about what the author is saying and whether it seems plausible to you.
Write down your thoughts. If you are able to answer any of the questions you wrote for yourself after your first reading, do so. Do you have any new questions? Write them down! These questions might have more depth to them than before-for instance, are there any premises that seem especially convincing or unconvincing? Why? Are there any background presuppositions that the author seems to be committed to? What are they and why does the author hold them? Your questions also might not be philosophical, but methodological: why does the author do what she does in section X? Not all your questions have to be ‘deep’, however-it’s perfectly fine to ask what an author’s conclusion is if you can’t find it, or what the purpose of reading this paper is! Whatever your questions or impressions, write them down.
Bring the material and your notes to class. Bring the paper and what you wrote down about it with you to class! Asking a question that you wrote down when you read the material helps take off some of the pressure of coming up with a question on the spot. Plus, if someone else has your same question, class discussion may help you answer it! And again, bring the paper with you, too-having the paper to refer to will help facilitate class discussion and your own understanding.
Revisit the paper. After class, you might want to revisit the paper or the question you wrote down about it. Has your impression remained the same? Have you answered all your questions? Do you have new ones? Keep going!
Rewriting the argument in your own words is a powerful practice. In his book, How to Take Smart Notes, Sönke Ahren’s also highlights the value of “translating” a text into your own words:
We tend to think we understand what we read – until we try to rewrite it in our own words. By doing this, we not only get a better sense of our ability to understand, but also increase our ability to clearly and concisely express our understanding – which in return helps to grasp ideas more quickly.
Ahren, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Sönke Ahren, 2017. (see page 54) -
“I had not before encountered this sort of ambition, unabashed frankly egotistical, communicating it’s excitement, and extorting sympathy.
It was not that he was without the faculty of self-criticism. He could laugh of his dreams of glory and he had an impish fun.”
Unnamed journalist from the Manchester Guardian. The Rest is History podcast episode 241, Young Churchill: Prisoner and FugitiveThat from The Rest is History podcast, with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. The backstory here is young Churchill is traveling on a ship with a journalist from the Manchester Guardian. After spending a few days observing young Winnie this was his brilliant description.
Ambition combined with the ability to laugh at one’s self. Potent mix, that.
Listen to more exquisite Rest of History pods below:
641. Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Hannibal’s Nemesis (Part 2) – The Rest Is History
What happened at the Battle of Ibera, a totemic though overlooked battle of the Punic Wars? With the forces of Carthage closing in on a depleted Rome, would a young Roman, Publius Cornelius Scipio resurrect the fortunes of the Republic? And, could he destroy Carthage’s most crucial power base in Europe? Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss this next phase of the Carthaginian Wars. _______ To hear our previous series on the rise of Carthage, Hannibal, and the battle of Cannae, go to episodes: 421, 422, 423, 424, 568, 569, 570, 571. _______ Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at therestishistory.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to http://www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek + Harry Swan Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Twitter isn’t all terrible. Recently rabbi, poet, and podcaster, Zohar Atkins posted a thread of his reflections on the Great Books.
He begins with the question: “What makes for a Great Book? And how should you approach one?”
A great list of the Great Books can be found on the St. John’s College Great Books curriculum page. Many of the titles are intimidating. Like Herodotus’ Histories, and Antoine Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry. But one shouldn’t avoid the intimidating.
There are surprises too. Works like Benjamin Franklin’s Excerpt from several letters to Peter Collinson on the nature of electricity” and Alfred Hitchcock, Selected movies.
Reading one intimidating text, and one surprising text, could be an optimal entry point.
Floodlights and Goalposts 