Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

So I consider 2001: A Space Odyssey enough of an artwork to put this in this forum. This is a reminiscence I just came across by Frederick I. Ordway III of his work with Kubrick and Clarke as scientific and technical consultant during the making of 2001. Riveting the quantity of detailed technical collaboration they had with major scientific, industrial and engineering companies to make the film as technically credible as possible. Widely reported, but I had somehow missed Ordway's own account until now: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0075.html

Lacking an explicit Nerd forum , herewith... Los Alamos From Below: Reminiscences 1943-1945, by Richard Feynman WHEN I say "Los Alamos From Below"' I mean that, although in my field at the present time I'm a slightly famous man, at that time I was not anybody famous at all. I didn't even have a degree when I started to work with the Manhattan Project. Many of the other people who tell you about Los Alamos - people in higher echelons - worried about some big decisions. I worried about no big decisions. I was always flittering about underneath. So I want you to just imagine this young graduate student that hasn't got his degree yet but is working on his thes…

Just got tickets today. 3rd row and dead center. Very anxious to see this.

Review of what sounds like a riveting new bio of the great, and farsighted, naturalist Von Humboldt: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/10/22/very-great-alexander-von-humboldt/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR FDR Palmyra Humboldt&utm_content=NYR FDR Palmyra Humboldt+CID_ab2301d16d41d31b197a0166c951e597&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=The Very Great Alexander von Humboldt

Nice look back by The New Yorker, where "Hiroshima" was originally published. John Hersey, the Writer Who Let “Hiroshima” Speak for Itself http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/john-hersey-the-writer-who-let-hiroshima-speak-for-itself

'Kiss me, my boy, for we'll never meet again.' o

One of my favorite bits from Brooke Shields' breakout flick... Bellocq: What will become of her now? Madame Nell: What's going on with you? You don't have to worry about her. She's made a lot of money. She can do as she likes. Bellocq: She's - she's only... She's completely alone. Madame Nell: Bellocq, you're in love with her. Bellocq: Don't be absurd. Madame Nell: I've seen it a hundred times. I am old. And life is so long.

All 3 movies are on Netflix now! Just in case you didn't know

Javier Munoz, the actor now playing Alexander Hamilton is a HIV positive gay man who also battled cancer! See the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/javier-munoz-hamilton_us_5783f983e4b0344d515080da?section=

We rented the sequel, forgetting how bad that sequel is. Our loss.

Been looking for this on the interwebs for ages and finally found it.

floc·ci·nau·ci·ni·hil·i·pil·i·fi·ca·tion ˌfläksəˌnôsəˌnīˌhiləˌpiləfiˈkāSHən/ noun noun: floccinaucinihilipilification the action or habit of estimating something as worthless. (The word is used chiefly as a curiosity.). A jocular coinage, apparently by pupils at Eton College, combining a number of roughly synonymous Latin stems. The word was inspired by a line in the Eton Latin Grammar that gave a rule for certain verbs that take an object in the genitive case: "Flocci, nauci, nihili, pili, assis, hujus, teruncii, his verbis, aestimo, pendo, facio, peculiariter adduntur."[1] This translates literally to: "To these words—aestimo, pendo and facio—irregularly are joined…

A shock; one of the first greats of his generation to go. RIP http://www.theguardian.com/music/live/2016/jan/11/david-bowie-dies-of-cancer-aged-69-reports

Colorful! The roaring (drunk) 20s: literature's biggest party animals http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/18/roaring-20s-literature-parties-writers

Transcript of all the episodes of 'I, Claudius.' If you liked it on TV, it reads almost as well as it performed. http://www.angelfire.com/tx4/cus/scripts/iclaudius-transcript.html

I snagged this one from http://www.daddysreviews.com/news: <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3wHjJUdN16k?feature=player_embedded"frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> But there's lots more. The idea is to have ordinary people, real people tell stories from their lives in their own voice and overlay that with animations illustrating the story. My PBS station plays these from time to time, mostly on Sunday night. ---- Sorry but you have to click through on the embedded code to see the video. I'm doing something wrong but just what that is escapes me at the moment.

Jubilo Allen Tate To Arthur Mizener Hit mus be now de Kingdom comin And de year of Jubilo . . . Tail-spinning from the shelves of sky See how it dips and tacks and tosses To cast a beam in the mind's eye: Who will count the gains and losses On the Day of Jubilo? Public accountant with double entry Enter in red war's final cast In the black column the pacing sentry, Old women picking the hogs' mast For the Day of Jubilo Lean to the crowded air and hear, Eavesdropper, how it goes inside Your own deaf and roaring ear: Boys caress the machines they ride On the Day of Jubilo After the dry and sticking tongue After our incivility Who w…

These lists are usually fairly ridiculous but this one I like a lot. His selection and also his notes on each title: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list

For today's students, evidently English is a second language. Paradise Lost in plain English http://www.paradiselost.org/lmg/Book-1.html

Online text (pirated alas but anyway) of SF genius Stanislaw Lem''s novella GOLEM XIV about a military supercomputer that achieves consciousness and proceeds to lecture mankind about evolution and consciousness. One of my favorite pieces of SF of all time. http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/ego/science_fiction/lect1.html

What a great time waster instructional resource! http://www.samueljohnson.com/index.html

Go Set a Watchman will be published in July.

Delightful! Lawrence Ferlinghetti: 'Most of the poets were on something, but somebody had to mind the shop' The publisher of the Beats talks about Ginsberg the showman, the Albert hall happening and how one of his own poets emptied the City Lights till http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/lawrence-ferlinghetti-interview-poets

Vacationland Vacationland is a truly odd film. You'll either love it or hate it, depending on your basic preferences. It is certainly unique in its genre. The best way to describe it is to imagine if Wes Anderson made a film about lower-class gay teenagers. Nothing really happens in the film in any linear sense; we simply get to see snapshots of what life would be like as a gay teen in northern Maine 20 years ago. It is set in the slums of Bangor, Maine, and they seem as bleak and desperate as any housing project anywhere. Everyone in town is poor, and no one seems to have much hope for the future. The main characters are Joe, who is popular because he's very good l…