scrap paper of a blog

the role of literature and art in heidegger

2011-08-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

The simplest and most believable lesson, from Heidegger's "Language," is that language can exist without a speaker. Certain poems in undergrad anthologies are heavily, heavily footnoted to explain that the poet made revisions, often some years after writing the poem, but what is published in the anthology is the original; this is, the words themselves have become stronger than their original speaker. There are games of speculation that can be played about what inventions "would have been invented anyway" -- the handiest example is Mark Zuckerberg's acknowledgment that someone else would have "invented Facebook" if he hadn't -- and the same speculation is quite possible about works of literature. Ubiquitous novels like 1984 and The Great Gatsby, for instance, seem just a bit too appropriate for the contexts in which they rose to ubiquity; very possibly, some other authoritarian dystopia or some other loser-who-has-everything could be teaching the same lessons to the same public with the same success, in the absence of those aforementioned Penguin Classics.

Heidegger clearly believes that ideas are not from thinkers; ideas are from the universe, and the job of thinkers is not to create ideas, but to discover them. The function of speaking, as in Heidegger's example of "A Winter Evening," is that it "invites things in" (991), it makes present these possibilities that, in Heidegger, were already real in the realm of language. When the new arrivals, such as house and table, "unfold world" by their thinging, it suggests that their existence is far beyond the explicit limits of what is spoken. The sheer ideas of house and table carry a multitude of other facts with them, for instance, the existence of humans. Heidegger's point, here, is mostly clearly expressed in the saying that to make an apple pie from scratch, we must first invent the universe. "Winter Evening," when it summons a house and table, is invoking the universe.

Heidegger has contradicted himself a bit by saying how poetry makes truth, but for his views on calling and summoning (instead of creating) and on the fourfold, we must choose to believe that poetry is somehow representative. Poetry cannot just be representing narrow forms, as Plato restricted it all, but we can say it represents possibilities among infinite possibilities; certainly Heidegger's description of the threshold enlists poetry to represent something he already believed. So if poetry is a maker of truth, then, we should think of "poetry" as what we would normally call the poem's content, which, to Heidegger, certainly does create and multiple more truth. The poem itself is a piece of speech, while the truth is a piece of language. The great mass of unsaid truths, then, is simply encoded in unknown language and unknown poetry.

In his other writing, Heidegger has made a point of explaining the context-based difference between a thing (for using) and an object (for studying). The distinction of the two presentations is difficult with our examples of 1984 and The Great Gatsby, which are texts for studying, but whose study serves a kind of social function in spreading specific sets of truths and ideas; this is, they exist not just for the simple accumulation of wisdom and experience, but for directed employment and education, they are both object and thing. The quote from Hamann, "Language is thought" (986), and the accompanying invocation of the word "logos" go some way to explaining this contradiction. If we equate thought, the realization of pure truths, with language, the great mass of truths which exist, we define all truths by their being knowable. Truth can sometimes get packaged and commodified and used as a tool, because truth is meant for acquisition and exchange. Perhaps we can say that there is a sort of threshold or dif-ference between knowledge and education, wherein the spread of truth is made possible by the near proximity of learning a truth to possessing it -- after all, any complete remembrance or employment of an idea traces its proper course and asks us to learn it anew.

a sketch of nietzsche

2011-07-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche says a lot of strong things about language in "On Truth and Lying in the Non-Moral Sense," and he tears pretty hard at the concepts of truth and fact. In some ways this is just to provoke us, or to keep us alert about what we call "certainty," but it hits at a fairly common desire of ours to be comforted, to accept as truth those ideas that we find simplest or most encouraging.

We can demonstrate this by taking two serious and meaningful human "realities": the fact that it can be wasteful and destructive to worry about the past, and the fact that a single human life will not make much difference to the universe. Very likely, there have been more books written to guide us, morally, to the first truth than to the second, and almost certainly, we would have a preference for reading books with the first conclusion. In this way, we select the more appealing lesson and focus on that, and Nietzsche's analysis of human behaviour proves true.

But Nietzsche attributes all our thoughts to this habit. He complains of the ways in which language restricts and narrows the range of our thoughts, and in this way, he properly diagnoses something that is not a real problem. If we put all leaves in a class of "leaves," the information we leave out is information that deserves to be left out: since we are concerned with freedom, power, or happiness, what matters is not the pattern of veins in a leaf, but the fact that it came from a tree, that it is broad and thin, and that it is safe to step on. We narrow our ideas of a leaf to the "universals" which are most relevant. The same way, if I ask for a cup of coffee, I will receive something very close to my initial desire -- even if my request for "coffee" leaves out almost all information and detail about what kind of item I want, it will function just the same as if I had requested the coffee in more depth.

In literature, language is both a tool and a garnish. As a tool, no writer can describe with 100% accuracy how it feels to drink a cup of bad coffee, and to get closest to that 100% mark, one suspects they might have to borrow from different languages and end up conveying confusion rather than coffee. By Nietzsche's rules, this failure shows that language is flawed and that bad coffee cannot be truly expressed, especially since every bad cup of coffee is a different and individual experience. This is, all our words and expressed have become stale, and they only narrow our possibilities for sensation.

Nietzsche praises the artistic, or "intuitive" as he calls it, which takes us outside of the common range of ideas, but he does not include literature among these arts. Words are the hardened, inflexible artifacts of convention, but these artifacts can function as building blocks. Nietzsche would argue that art compares to literature as a statue compares to a lego statue, built of rigid unmoving pieces, but the role of words is to crystallize certain ideas and, yes, concepts. The singing painter could not, without words, express the sensation of heat; the best he could do is try to simulate its emotional effects. The music that reminds us of heat, really, is the music that we know to come from hot climates; the sensation of heat cannot be expressed through music -- but it can be expressed through words! Even if someone didn't know the words "heat" or "warmth" or anything, it takes a very simple explanation ("when you want a blanket") to convey what heat is. Even if "heat" were not coded to us with a word, we would recognize a fundamental sameness between the heat of a cup of coffee and the heat of a summer's day -- for instance, we'd notice that we enjoy coffee more when it is cold outside.

Nietzsche is right to argue against the sins of reduction-by-label or reduction-by-concept, but the fundamental patterns of nature can't be written off as human constructions of order. An egg from a bird will contain no other creature than a second bird. Rain from the sky is always made of water and always arrives in clusters. A person moves faster by walking on feet than on hands. If there are negligible or semantic exceptions to any of these "laws" or "facts," the exceptions are not enough to make us rethink the rules, not enough to take away the value of living and acting by these rules; this is, my umbrella need not be coffee-proof and need not be opened unless some rain has already fallen.

It is difficult to back up the ideas we think of as moral truths. But to back up the generalizations of language, these founding structures of literature, is absolutely essential. The reason language is accepted and made stale and not properly considered, of course, is that it has succeeded so many times for us that it is not necessary to reconsider. The word "coffee" could be called a lie because it has nothing to do with hot liquids, but every time I use the word to a waiter, I get a hot dark beverage for my ingenuity. If the word excludes other concepts from my consciousness, those concepts can be restored with language! Anyone can alert me at any moment to the ideas of "ground coffee" and "cold coffee," with more precision through language than would be possible through any other means. For instance, if I had never seen the word "coffee" on a large tin in my freezer, I might still have believed my sense of sight and thought that ground coffee was a type of dirt.

Language and literature cannot show the truth with perfect accuracy, but they can show almost all sensations with great accuracy and great simplicity. There are things that are very difficult to explain with language, such as emotional states or abstract concepts in math, but it should be noted that when people do try to express those ideas, language is almost always their tool of choice. By painting a sharp line between truth and lies, Nietzsche throws out the valuable performances of a medium which is not perfect, but is very, very close.

victorian men spitballing

2011-04-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

So there are two men, these two interesting men, who are male leads, love interests, romantic heroes -- or at least, almost that -- who aren`t especially manly. We often think of Victorian heroes as "smoldering" dark figures, Bronte figures, men who only ever speak when they're giving commands. But what is interesting is that for sheer hopeless dedication, the two best-loved men in our course are terribly feminine; they are men loved better for their gentility than for their overbearing testosterone.

It is a bit of license to compare Miss Clack's crush on Godfrey Ablewhite to the devotion that Tess Durbeyfield holds for Angel Clare. But there are certain unavoidable parallels. Both women, for instance, invest their men with some ultimate Christian virtue: the charitable Godfrey who cures all with smiles and who can do no wrong, and the harp-playing, gentle-speaking Angel, who so cares for Tess. These men each have Christian pedigree, Godfrey through his life as a civic hero, and Angel as a purebred clergyman, a man whose disconnection with faith is more a transcendence of Christianity than a want of morals. They both involve themselves in lower or less-respected strata of their society, in Angel's appreciation for farm life, and in Godfrey's habit of charity work -- or, more importantly, the charity work of old ladies. In turn, they each become fantasies for the lower-class women they mingle with. They are often identified with gentleness virtue even when they do not display those traits.

For the manners and the senses of propriety hanging over their novels, Angel and Godfrey are the perfect men to be so idealized, displaying in social graces what they can be said to lack in virality. Mr. Ablewhite, for instance, commits a grandiose act of martyrdom in burning his letter of exoneration, and Mr. Clare makes a scene of chivalry when he carries the four milkmaids across the stream. When women are attracted to these men, it shows them buying into the social rules and expectations that they represent -- possibly, it can be said, out of class aspirations. Miss Clack, who badly wants attention from her relatives, might like to be a "man about town" or a newspaper hero the way Godfrey is. Tess, who has always lived in service to her parents or her villainous "cousin," might like the class freedom that allows Angel to follow dairy-work as a test-career, to choose his own path and move on when he likes. Not just the fact of status, but the positions of these statused men, shows that they hold privileges lacked by their admirers.

Ultimately, neither man shows himself at all trustworthy or heroic. Independent of his legal troubles, Godfrey Ablewhite scoffs at Miss Clack when he thinks she isn't watching, and he {does something to cancel out his charity work in the last third of the book}. And Angel, when confronted with a harmless secret of his under-class wife, finds himself to be completely disillusioned by the common life he was invested in -- this is, his own sense of Victorian propriety trumps his love for Tess and his ability to do right. By betraying the women who love them, these characters reveal themselves to be the projections of kind-hearted, civilized gentlemen, rather than the genuine articles. This evidence of hypocrisy in the mannered Victorian upper-class fits exactly into the post-colonial moral conclusions of The Moonstone, and it fits comfortably into the punishing fatalism that underlies Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Angel Clare and Godfrey Ablewhite are both characterized by gentility and gentleness together, earning them the hopeless devotion of the vulnerable lower-class women they meet. As they disappoint the reader, these characters function, on behalf of their novels, to refute Victorian ideals and hierarchies.

questions from quiz practice today

2011-03-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

- fictionalized in last of mohicans
- blazed through the cumberland gap
- frontier hero
DANIEL BOONE

cronin-fitch experiment - two properties
CHARGE and PARITY
conditions for assymetry of these
according to saccharon conditions?
BARIONS

povert of the stimulus
NOAM CHOMSKY

poet - father of the renaissance
sonnets
PETRARCH
petrarch collection - scattered rhymes
CANZONIERE
laura married one of his ancestors
french, 120 days of sodom
MARQUIS DE SADE

all night vigil
tone-poem of rowing oars, dies irae, sharon
inspired by bocklin
the bells, isle of the dead
rhapsody on a theme of paganini
RACHMANINOFF

limits on federal power in the states
INCORPORATION of the bill of rights
equal protection clause of this amendment
passed after civil war
14TH AMENDMENT
other clause of 14th amendment
PRIVILEGES CLAUSE

lock of hair sent back, miss grey
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
- ang lee movie ft/ emma thompson

lecturer on medieval history
gets a sweet job
gives drunken speech
LUCKY JIM
green man, jake's thing
KINGSLEY AMIS
book of light verse
age of anxiety, funeral blues
WH AUDEN

eigenvalues
flavours with probability density
namesake oscillation
wolfgang pauli, violate energy conservation
electron, muon, tau
very light
NEUTRINOS

multiplayer game, jazz singer grace
kills architects in siren's alley
BIOSHOCK II

courted slew-foot sue
used rattlesnake as lasso
tough cowboy
PECOS BILL
train engineer
CASEY JONES
steel-drivin man
JOHN HENRY

lend a myth to god
seagull shedding rings? wings?
to an epic based on a brooklyn landmark
cutty sark, the bridge
HART CRANE

points in space with stationary things
LAGRANGE POINTS
poincare investigated ...
FREE BODY PROBLEM
matrix of first partial derivatives
JACOBI

fred program assesses output
release of ppi group
oxidizes luciferin
shotgun method involves cloning
SEQUENCING (OF DNA)

hero
very talented
you all love him
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
last director of german school
BAUHAUS
above ground on 8 columns
one giant room
FARNSWORTH HOUSE
- ocad building?

scandal involving mohamed al-fayed
act that replaced neutrality acts
no more control of newfoundland bases
"and carry"
CASH

black woman with three husbands
survives a hurricane
acquitted of teacake's death
JANIE CRAWFORD
their eyes were watching god
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
mulebone, harlem stories
LANGSTON HUGHES

centaurs trampled someone raped by him
tryst on floor of athena's temple
loses contest to athena
POSEIDON

african nation with settlers, 1800s
LIBERIA
ruled by spinoff of this w.h. harrison party
WHIGS
indigenous president who was tortured on tv
SAMUEL DOE
- charles taylor seems awful

married isabella and became king of jerusalem
edict of cheateaubriand
hapsburg-valois war
meddlesome priest, got rid of thomas becket
second husband of eleanor of acquitaine
HENRY II

was going to invade england
GERMANY
sea lion admiral
DONETZ
defendant at nuremburg
RUDOLPH HESS

quantal release of it
anatoxin a is its analog
used in cataract surgery
ACETYLCHOLINE

support groups for insomnia
FIGHT CLUB
FINCHER
ZODIAC

raw food, eat to live
flying object, mother-plane
dr. jacob created everyone
louis farrakhan
NATIOn OF ISLAM
- malcolm x

degenrate electronic states undergo distortion
YAN-TELLER EFFECT

honest thief
dreams of revenge on officer
epileptic
DOSTOYEVSKY

largest inlet is volga river
borders azerbaijan, kazakhstan
CASPIAN SEA
capital of azerbaijan
BAKU
mountain range by caspian sea, tirane
ELBRUZ MOUNTAINS

suggested 5 years for possessing cannabis
worst smile in the world
youtube videos of policy
sold gold reserves as chancellor of exchequer until 2007
GORDON BROWN

zemsky sobor, duma
RUSSIA
iceland's old parliament
ALTHING
only the lower house
SEJM

psychotic lapdog cuddles
orangedrink lemondrink man
INDIA
- god of small things rules

love of three orchids
PROKOFIEV
oboe, man eaten
PETER AND THE WOLF
CESAR CUI

stabs herself to escape torture
questo regia
the maestro died, he says
ministers ping-peng
nessun dorma
no one will reveal the guy's name
chinese princess
TURANDOT

moira escapes
HANDMAID'S TALE
MARGARET ATWOOD
ORYX AND CRAKE

reaction with two carboxylic acids
palladium catalyst
espy hybridization
two high bonds
carbon-carbon triple bond
ALKYNES

of miracles, missing shade of blue
matters of fact vs. relations of ideas
ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
dialogues concerning natural religion,
treatise of human nature
DAVID HUME
school with hume
EMPIRICISM

portrait of castiglione
copy of nichomachean ethics
RAPHAEL

surrounded by guard cells
STOMATA
deserts and alpine places
only open at night
include cacti
ZEROPHYTES
orchids and other plants
EPIPHYTES

the ship huascar, engevos
WAR OF THE PACIFIC

three in a giorgione painting

pentagon structures
cylindrical variants are carbon nanotubes
buckyballs
FULLERENES

criticized how to do things with words
french post-structuralist
writing and difference
DERRIDA
quotes rousseau on language
introduces deconstruction
OF GRAMMATOLOGY
commentaries on iraq war
frankfurt school, public sphere
rational ideal speech situations
communicative action
HABERMAS

----

testified on behalf of aaron burr
vetoed a road construction
wife divorced a guy too slow
francis blair and kendall
kitchen cabinet
fight with nicholas biddel
7th president
ANDREW JACKSON

john batman
keith windshuttle
violence on aborigines
AUSTRALIA
social conservative replaced john howard
KEVIN RUDD
children moved from their homes
LOST GENERATION
- like hemingway!

abduction of proserpina
dog, lizard horse hourglass pig snout
weighing scale beside wing-ed angel
knight, death, and the devil
trampled peasants
melancholia i, four horsemen of the apocalypse
woodcut man
ALBRECHT DURER
- painted also a rabbit

herculean shore
aeneas from the trojan shore
i carry your heart with me
E.E. CUMMINGS

structure collapses in 1882
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY
our town
THORNTON WILDER
entrobus family survives everything
non-actors play roles
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

cleans the sewers out beneath mumbai
some stay dry while others feel the pain
youtube man in white tshirt
tay zonday
CHOCOLATE RAIN

3 gymnopedes composer
mentor of poulenc and friends
ERIK SATIE
group of composers in france
LOS SIX
ox on the roof, african mythology, creation de monde
DARIUS MILHAUD

conditional phenotype
potential difference in metal in seebec effect
wavelength of blackbody (inverse)
kinetic energy of molecules in something
kelvins
TEMPERATURE

henchard sells his wife
MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
THOMAS HARDY
eustacia vye, someone runs an inn
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

ruled by whisselbachs?
BAVARIA

movement of distribution
VARIANCE
regression technique, best fit
LEAST SQUARES
electric flux law, german
CARL GAUSS

bruner's gland, meyer's hatches
bile and pancreatic juices, villae
duodenum to emilium
stomach to large intestine
SMALL INTENSTINE
- not posting picture of small intestine

supreme council allowed nazi party of america
jewish chicago suburb
SCOKEE
teenpop skinheads
PRUSSIAN BLUE
neonazi parties are illegal
but jean-marie le pen is kind of a fascist still
FRANCE

opera where leporello gives catalogue
MOZART
- tha's don giovanni

psychologist, finalism, final goals, jan smuts
ADLER
domination of inadequacy
INFERIORITY COMPLEX
book about teleology by adler
NEUROTIC CHARACTER

major calendar stands a guy up
bridge party fails
marabar caves, mrs moore
dr aziz accused of raping adela quested
e.m. forster
A PASSAGE TO INDIA

coco river, san juan river
ochotel, metagalpa on rio grande
bluefields port, mosquito coast
caribbean sea, border honduras and costa rica
NICARAGUA

man launched bay o pigs invasion
hired robert mcnamara
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY (SR.)
secretary of state, test-ban treaty
DEAN RUSK
aid program for latin america
uruguay, seen as failure in 70s
ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS

beat henry iii
saw help from alfonso of poitou at cairo
son of blanche of castille
led 7th crusade, 1226-1270
french king and saint
SAINT LOUIS IX

photographer of japanese internment
migrant mother
DOROTHEA LANGE
f64 founder, yosemite photog
ANSEL ADAMS
wife of erskine caldwell
MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE

symphony for organ and orchestra
brass opening for taxtime work
used camptime races and spoken word
themes from simple gifts, martha graham
hoedown
AARON COPLAND

february 16 question dump

2011-02-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

- father worked in bogs
- death of a naturalist
- irish
- translated beowulf
SEAMUS HEANEY

- carries out aerobic reactions
- marsh gas output
- no peptidoglycin
- extremofiles
ARCHAEA

- commentaries on gallic war
JULIUS CAESAR
- ap urbe condita?
LIVY
- governor of numidia
- wrote of catiline conspiracy and jugurthine wars
SALLUS

- thoughts of laughter
- direct realism
- attacked berkeley and spoke for the vulgar
- induction is impossible
SCOTLAND
- david hume

- poet of ithaca and waiting for the barbarians
CONSTANTINE CAVAFY
- the greek passion
- last temptation of christ
- zorba the greek
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS
- nobel prize for action este
ELYTIS

- swallowed rays of sun
- washed ears of donkey
- wrote 500 characters
- "he who knows does not speak"
- tao te ching
LAO TZU

- middle ground between tough and tender
- if god satisfies us, it is true
PRAGMATISM
- pluralistic universe
WILLIAM JAMES
- animal runs around a tree
SQUIRREL

- transcribed by schumann
- one called the hunt
- detachE style
- devil's chuckle (13th), with trills
- recorded by itzhak perlman
- rachmaninoff wrote variations
- paganini
24 CAPRICES

- winning side aided by polish, innocent xi
- winged hussars, kara mustafa
- sobieski defeats ottomans
2ND SIEGE OF VIENNA

- quantization of charge
DIRAC EQUATION
- speed of light is constant
- time dilation
SPECIAL RELATIVITY
- wave function letter
PSI

- with m cells and p cells
- geniculate nucleus
- tapedum lucidum
- horizontal and amikine cells
- tays sachs
RETINA

- orange marsupial
CRASH BANDICOOT
- orange fruits named for island
- 100 for extra life
WUMPA FRUIT
- boss drops tnt crates
RIPPER ROO

- poster of snoopy
- trail of phone rings
- chapter titles tell story
- analytical "lotaria"
- man reading tell novels
- about "you, the reader"
- calvino
IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELLER

- convention army captured
- victory for horatio gates
BATTLE OF SARATOGA
- gentleman johnny
JOHN BURGOYNE
- fort near oriscani
- site of treaty with iroquois
FORT STANWIX

- opera about one-man army
- desolee
- man disguises as rebel in el capitan
- washington post, liberty bell
SOUSA

- tricked into drinking wine
SINBAD
- elephant-eating birds
ROC
- wise bird
- rescues zal the albino
SIMURGH

- discredits natural theology
- says things exist in space
- refutation of idealism
- clarified in prolegomina
- metaphysics must stick to a priori ideas
- immanuel kant
CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

- poem of madeleine and porphyro
EVE OF ST AGNES
- ode on a grecian urn
JOHN KEATS
- companion "thy high requiem"
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

- i and i, separated by tree
- self-protrait with spanish flu
- red-haired woman vampyr
- the frieze of life
- man grasping face on bridge
- norwegian expressionist
EDWARD MUNCH

- philip the arab
- sponsor of zurvan zoroastrianism
- fell at cadicia
SASSANID DYNASTY
- heraclitus invaded armenia for them
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
- region ruled by safavids, parthians
IRAN

- dominant at low reynolds numbers
- amontan's law: independent of area of contact
FRICTION

- boiling point
- related to volatility
VAPOR PRESSURE
- alternate to clausius-caperon equation
ANTOINE EQUATION
HENRY'S LAW

- seven manifestations of evil
- drinking song
- woman knocks down portrait
- magical rose? of agathe
- max gets magic bullets
- opera by carl maria von weber
THE FREESHOOTER

- demonstrating innate knowledge
MENO
- divine of human talent of poet?
ION
- defence of corrupting the youth
APOLOGY

- colony at seurat
- acquired bombay in catherine of braganza's dowry
- malacca
BRITAIN

- antiparticle of positron
ELECTRON
- 173.3 gev quark
- shortest lifetime of the quarks
TOP
- one quark and one antiquark
MESON

- confession from count fosco
- protagonist on archaeological dig
- man stealing laura's fortune
- woman escaped from asylum
- wilkie collins
WOMAN IN WHITE

- prelude from building of the boat
- tone-poem in lemankainen suite
SWAN OF TUANELA
JEAN SIBELIUS
- based on maeterlinck play
- characters at spinning wheel
PELIAS AND MELISANDE

- most are juhal, some are ukal
- epistles of wisdom
- sixth fatimid caliph (disappeared)
DRUZE

- pansy is the daughter of madame merle
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
- washington square
HENRY JAMES
- incurable disease
- kate proy and martin dansher plot for money
WINGS OF THE DOVE

- legendre p/5 shows divisibility
- hilbert's tenth is unsolvable because of these
- binet's formula
- ways to tile with dominoes
- f(n) = f(n-1) + f(n-2)
FIBONACCI NUMBERS

- successor of novotny
- resigned from hockey riots
ALEXANDER DUBCEK
PRAGUE SPRING
- peaceful revolution
VELVET DIVORCE

- married a woman with a child
- lord of biscay
- 30,000 residents of limoges were killed?
- died in plague
- poitiers, crecy, calais
- successor to edward iii
EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE

- the tower mountain
- mondego river
- coimbra and figuera de faz
- south known as algarth
- duro river
- capital with bieksa and alphama
- earthquake in 1755
- tagus river

- not transduction or transfection
CONJUGATION
- plasmid
F (OR FERTILITY) PLASMID
- featured in bioshock??

- syncretism in religion of java
- islam observed
- anti-anti relativism
- thick description
- interpretation of culture
- deep play: notes on the balinese cockfight
CLIFFORD GEERTZ
- some nice puns

- banned from men's club over spitoon incident
- tarpan restum
- passersby call the man reinhart
- golden day with mr norton
- enemy of dr bledscoe, caribbean man
- stealing electricity
INVISIBLE MAN
- ralph ellison

- epicurus accused
- petronius executed
PISONIAN CONSPIRACY
- emperor made horse a consul (not caligula)
- blamed christians for the great fire
NERO
- epic about pompei in lesbos: pharsalia
LUCAN

- why do we complain of nature?
- exiled to corsica
- on the shortness of life
- man asks to be deified
- the pumpkinification of claudius
- involved in pisonian conspiracy
- stoic, committed suicide
SENECA THE YOUNGER

- house of asterion
- the zahir?
- book of infinite pages
- unifinished novel is the same as labyrinth
JORGE LUIS BORGES
- ficciones

- loves the daguerrotypist
- leaves her country for hepizibah
PHOEBE PYNCHON
- novel of colonel pynchon
HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
- marble faun, birthmark
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

- intervention in pullman strike
- front porch campaign
- mckinley wins
1896

- animism and egocentrism
- ages 2 to 7
PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE
- four-stage swiss psychologist
JEAN PIAGET
- concept with glass of water shape
CONSERVATION

- eats dog meat
- beheading contest with demon
- foster brother ferdiad
- killed guard dog and offered to serve in place
- fought mab
- cattle raid of cooley
CUCCHULAINN

- declining lubeck merchants
BUDDENBROOKS
- death in venice
THOMAS MANN
JOSEPH

- kapusczinski equation
- decreases with ionic radius
- reaction of metal and nonmetal
- born haber cycle gas phase
- symbol u
CRYSTAL LATTICE ENERGY

- painting of black-hat man
- upturned mustache
LAUGHING CAVALIER
- artist of gypsy girl
FRANZ HALS
- honeysuckle bower
- hippopotamus hunt
PETER PAUL REUBENS

- father of moab and hamon
- chooses land
- offers daughters to mob
LOT
- saves angels from rape
- looked back and wife turned into pillar of salt
- seduced by his daughters (drunk)

- 1997 mars mission
- paired with sojourner
PATHFINDER
- saturn orbitted
CASSINI and HUYGENS
- uranus and neptune
- twin went to titan
- sounds of earth
VOYAGER II

- spectraline in lithium test
- missing link between big planets, red dwarfs
- failed stars, no hydrogen fusion
BROWN DWARFS

- sculpture in world war one memorial
TABLE OF SILENCE
- romanian sculptor
CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI
- metallic animals
BIRD IN SPACE

trivia practice - questions recap

2011-02-09T16:17:00.000-08:00

- vaginas covering body
- slayed Vritra
- god of storms and rain
INDRA

- cobbler hans sachs is helpful
- walther loves ava
- singing contest
- richard wagner
MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBURG

- made fun of holland
- `The Garden,`Ùpon Appleton House`
- time`s winged chariot
- world enough and time
ANDREW MARVELL

- tax on negative externalities
ARTHUR PIGU
- tax on foreign exchange markets
TOBIN
- Progress and Poverty
- tax on land
HENRY GEORGE

- all humans have 83 problems
- son of Mahamaya
- married Yasudara
- encountered diseased mon, corpse, monk
- fire sermon
- four noble truths
BUDDHA

- triphenolphosphene and akylhalyde
YLIDE
- phosphonial ylides
WITTIG REACTION

- spinless particle
- carries electromagnetic force
PHOTONS

- loves Duc De Namour but joins convent
PRINCESS OF CLEAVES
- sienkiewicz
QUO VADIS
- umberto eco
- william baskerville
NAME OF THE ROSE

- joseph ubara yager gets her pregnant
- employed by sally tomato
- Òther voices, other rooms`
- holly golightly
TRUMAN CAPOTE

- two girls with flowers and lanterns
CARNATION LILY LILY ROSE
- madame x
JOHN SINGER SARGEANT
- woman flailing arms
EL JALIEL

- battle of dirachium
- vespers
- capital Palermo
SICILY

- association of british colonies
NEW ENGLAND
- governor of new england, isle of wight
- also a friend of queen elizabeth
DUDLEY
EDWARD ANDROS

- secretes mucus
- sodium glucoses cotransporters
- electrlytes into the lumin of it
SMALL INTESTINE

- mountain range in east australia
GREAT DIVIDING RANGE
GREAT BARRIER REEF
- north part of great div range
- borders taurus strait
CAPE YORK

- rotten apples theory
- ontological argument
- limiting all unsure beliefs
- deceiving demon
DESCARTES

recommended: three-minute philosophy

- cayuga hime is from the moon
BAMBOO-CUTTER
- murasaki
TALE OF GENJI
- myth collection
- popular with national learning movement
KOJIKI

- karl marx alley
- vertical integration
- prestige
- Bertolt Brecht
- egon krenz
- secret police: stasi
- honecker
- before reunification
EAST GERMANY

-golliwog`s cakewalk
DEBUSSY
- three movements after whistler
NOCTURNE
- creator of nocturnes
- irishérussian
JOHN FIELD

- end of a linked list
- null type
POINTER
- sends you along

- terpsichore
MUSES
- epic muse from iliad and odyssey
CALLIOPE
- in Sappho
ERATO
- muses of erotic (eratic) things

- father of the poor
- prince alfonso
- getulio vargas
- isabel abolished slavery
- house of braganza
- ruled by pedro ii
BRAZIL

- f(a)=f(b)
- f`(c)=0 somewhere
ROLLE`S THEOREM
- endpoints joined
MEAN VALUE THEOREM
INTERMEDIATE VALUE THEOREM

- under tomin and lemin
- 8 humoresques
DVORAK
- new world symphony

- opposed to the turks
- vatican, france, and HRE
- against venice
LEAGUE OF CAMBRAI
- warrior pope
JULIUS II
- founded by man who married a borgia
FERRARA

- the hour and the ghost
- epigraphs to sonnet of sonnets
- `who has seen the wind`
- nursery rhymes in sing-song
- `come buy, come buy`
- goblin market
- sister of dante
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

- tolland addressed this outlook
- all things are one
PANTHEISM
- identifies god with nature
ETHICS
BARUCH SPINOZA

- act named for man killed in wyoming
- fixed civil rights act
- cancelled goodyear lawsuit
- matthew shephard act
- restored funding for abortion groups
BARACK OBAMA

- forms fetal skeleton
- intramembranous ossification
ENDOCONDURAL OSSIFICATION
- fused to determine age
- growth plates
EPHESES
- turn to osteocytes
OSTEOBLASTS

- jonathan turnbull
- settled by thomas hooker
- case western reserve
- demise of federalists
- hartford convention
CONNECTICUT
- capital hartford

idaho: famous potatoes
rhode island: hope

- kipling says it ends in oppression and shame
- tribute
- ethelred gave up
DANEGELD
- defended wessex from danes
- the great
ALFRED
- became kind in 1013
- son of harald bluetooth
SVEN FORKBEARD

- baby looking at franz snyder
- family portrait
- procession of the knights of the guard
- stuff for whitehall
- iconography
- from antwerp
- 35 of henrietta maria
- painted charles i
ANTHONY VAN DYCK

- jim leslie killed
- tie tie walden
GOD`S LITTLE ACRE
- lloyd benzie
- tobacco road
ERSKINE CALDWELL
- message for genevieve
- made in ten days that shook the world
USSR

- berrypicking song
- feud with edmund wilson
- housekeeper anesia
- marriage to fat general
- dancing with olga
- best friend lensky (duel)
- pushkin
EUGENE ONEGIN

- type of magnetism
- curie`s law
PARAMAGNETISM
- doesn`t occur above curie point
FERROMAGNETISM
- 2d form with onseger
EISING MODEL

- pathway
KREBS CYCLE

note: leafs better than senators now?

- radical reformation people
- dirk willems
- delaying baptism until adulthood
ANABAPTISTS
- refugee church in strasbourg
- kicked out of geneva
JOHN CALVIN
- jacob ammin
MENO SYMONS

- worked with the free, young hegelians
- influenced by moses hess
- families are obstacles to progress
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

- imperial bao dai
- nyugen van thiu
SOUTH VIETNAM
- 1954 battle
- beat the french
DIEN BEIN PHU
- converted buddhists to christians
NGO DIN DIEM

- depicted headless by thomas nast
- goat retreating from washington
- resigned senate and then lost
- appointed a collector
- opposed by garfield
- agreed with halfbreeds
- declined supreme court
ROSCOE CONKLING

- film with razor violence
- dali plays bounded priest
UN CHIEN ANDALOU
- director, also made l'age dor
LUIS BUNUEL
- faceless man
- dream sequence
- hitchcock and dali
SPELLBOUND

- people in prison
- bad college lecture
- mugwumps versus reptiles
- work for islam inc
- dr benway
- tangiersish interzone
- william lee
- by william burroughs
NAKED LUNCH

- music from atalee, son and stranger
- music from first walpurgisnight
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
- first american ballet
NY CITY BALLET
- midsummer night's dream music
- scottish and italian symphonies
MENDELSSOHN

-------

new round

- postponed state of the union speech
- 3 paps
- feyman used a glass of water
- peggy noonan praised them
- "high flight" read
- christina mcauliffe
CHALLENGER DISASTER

- mural directly on plaster walls
FRESCO
- life of christ
- arena chapel
GIOTTO
- basilica of st francis
- teacher of giotto
CIMABUE

- 720X720 ft expedition hall
- collaborated with decorator lily reich
- taught in his own building: crown hall
- chicago buildings
- farnsworth house
- seagram building with johnson
- international style
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

- nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
e.e. cummings
- "upsofloating manybells down"
- sang his didn't, danced his did
anyone lived in a pretty howtown
- "deepest secret nobody knows"
- "i am never without it"
i carry your heart with me

- proposed by harry hess
- explains continental drift
- leads to plate tectonic theory
- new crust formed at ridges
SEAFLOOR SPREADING

- stereoisomers
- symmetry can't be drawn
DIOSTEREOMER
- alpha and beta
- in ring sugar
ANOMERS
- chain of monosaccharides

- asking bells to ring
- man trusted that god was love
- nature, red in tooth and claw
- 131 sections
- ABBA quatrains
- better to have loved and lost
- tennyson
- arthur henry hallam
IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.

- green door behind brown curtain
- four uneven lamps
- green ceiling
- clock says 12:15
- vase of flowers, bottles, chatting couple
- heads resting on tables
- devil's furnace
- same time as yellow house
- joseph ginoux in white by pool table
- in arles
- van gogh
NIGHT CAFE

- human sacrifice by three methods
- celtic and gaelic leaders
DRUIDS
- pliny says you climbed oaks for it
MISTLETOE
- holiday with bonfires
- origin of halloween
- costumes
SAMHAIN

- inverted torch logo
- lives on lemnos or in cave
- son of erebus and nyx
- brother of thanatos
- father of morpheus and others
- has dreams of mortals
- god of sleep
HYPNOS
- pokemon?

- russians abandoned sevastopol
CRIMEAN WAR
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
- black sea fleet beat turkish fleet
- home of diogenes
SINOPE

- blamed for fire of smyrna
- frustrated with union and progress party
- amasia circular
KEMAL ATATURK

- nihilist
BAZUROV
- fathers and sons writer
- also, "hamlet and don quixote"
- also "superfluous man"
IVAN TURGENEV
- first story in A Sportsman's Sketches
KOR AND KALINICH

- memory of dung beetle
- visits lonnie on deathbed
- invests in motors
- affairs with secretaries
- long lecture from aunt emily
- woman on mardi gras trip
- binx billing
- walker percy
THE MOVIEGOER

- alternating light and dark bands
CHLOROPLASTS

- ignores culture
- supported by beaudrillard and derrida
POSTMODERNISM
- language games
- rise of computers create a postmodern condition
JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD
- history of sexuality
- coined "biopower" and "epistene"
MICHEL FOUCAULT

- served sausage during lent
- published 67 articles
- said eucharist was symbolic
- doctrine of real presence
- johann ech
- zurich
ULRICH ZWINGLI

- vartions on corelli
- first symphony ruined by drunk conductor
RACHMANINOFF
- choral third symphony
THE BELLS
- composer of carnival
- hand was ruined
- married clara
- rhenish symphony
SCHUMANN

- half-silvered mirror
MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT

- treatise with sketches
FOUR BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE
- architect inspired jefferson
- villa rotunda
ANDREA PALLADIO
VILLA BARBARO

- orchard for a dome
- keeping the sabbath by staying at home
- tighten breathing in presence of snake
- swelling of the ground
- "narrow fell in the grass"
- carriage with immortality
- "because i could not stop for death"
EMILY DICKINSON

- kills arthur jarvis
- preacher stephen, son absalom
KUMALO FAMILY
- alan paton book
CRY THE BELOVED COUNTRY
- editor of fitzgerald, hemingway
MAXWELL PERKINS

- mendelssohn, smetana
- "from my life"
- serioso and harp by beethoven
- gross fugue
- rosamunde and death and the maiden by schubert
- adapted into adagio for strings
STRING QUARTET

- heavy mass and wire, swinging
- in boston
FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM
- motion in this field
CHAOS THEORY
- force does not cause toilet thing
- non-intertial
CORIOLIS EFFECT

- founded by shuler
- head converted to judaism, got paintings
- unmarked envelopes
- scandal with employment minister
- liliane bettancourt
- cosmetics
L'OREAL

- language with mahabharata
- third-most common in india
TELUGU
- family with malaylam and tamil
- found by white-ellis
DRAVIDIC LANGUAGES
- many prexifes
- also in turkish and hungarian
AGGLUTINATION

- barbed wire destroyed by mark one
- ferdinand foch and douglas haig
- first use of tanks
THE SOMME
- includes cambrai
- charles the simple created it
- broke off from noustria
- william longsword
- robert guiscard
NORMANDY
- founder of normandy
- changed name after losing chartres
ROLLO
- dukes of normandy
- son of henry ii
RICHARD

- chamber of deputies during 1848
- said the french liked strong leaders
- criticized legislative branch
- wrote democracy in america
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

- battle with races
BLADENSBURG
- city home to national intelligencer
WASHINGTON (DC)
- war ended by treaty of ghent
WAR OF 1812

- can change index of refraction
- charge density over vacuum permitivity
- force of test charge
ELECTRIC FIELD

- pindaric ode progress of poesy
- death of horcace walpole's cat
THOMAS GREY
- mute inglorious milton
- the curfew tolls
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
- leads but to the grave
PATHS OF GLORY

- affair with maman and therese levaseur
- opens bible to romans 13:13
- 13 books, comment on genesis
- devout mother monica
- memoirs by rousseau and augustine
CONFESSIONS

- itaipu dam
- second-largest in south america
- converges with uruguay
PARANA
- water with devil's throat
IGUAZU FALLS
- border with argentina by iguazu
PARAGUAY

- woman cheats with piano lessons
- mr l'hereux
MADAME BOVARY

- cavity fuses with blastoceal
ANCANTERON
- germ layer
- middle of three layers
MESODERM
- sonic hedgehog homologue
- chordata
THENODOCOUR

- evidence on olympic discus
- redistribution of land to perioikoi
- pausianas led coalition at plataea
- two kings
SPARTA

trivia update (jan. 2010)

2011-01-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

Hi there --

This is a calendar update, to outline the Trivia Club's plans for the coming months.

"Practices," a.k.a. "club meetings," a.k.a. "couch time" will happen at 4pm on Mondays and at 5:30pm on Wednesdays all through the winter semester.

On January 15, Waterloo hosts THUNDER. This tournament has a tradition of using hard questions (check out last year's questions), but if you can get through that part, there's a seven-round side-tournament on Harry Potter questions. U of Ottawa is sending at least one team out to play in this one.

The next Saturday, January 22, U of T is running Terrapin Invitational. The club isn't organizing a trip to this one, but if a bunch of you are interested, we could probably send a team.

On February 5, U of Ottawa is hosting SCT -- this is, a qualifier tournament where most of the Canadian schools visit us and play for their shot at U.S. Nationals. A bunch of us have been laying the groundwork to host this event, and with up to 20 teams visiting, we will need plenty of moderators and scorekeepers. We might get a house team to play, but we'll need to make sure we've got enough volunteers first -- consider this an "all hands" event.

Some of the Ottawa high schools are running a hybrid tournament (mixed academic and pop culture) called BLASTOISE on March 19. That is not for a while, but our teams will each need to write packets well in advance. If you submit your packet before January 28, your team will get a pretty big discount on entry fees.

I hope to see a whole bunch of you at practice and tournaments in the coming months.

Thanks,

-Brendan

2010-11-25T19:02:00.001-08:00

2008-04-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

2007-11-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

2007-03-04T22:06:00.000-08:00

2006-10-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

2006-06-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Chris went to Egypt this March.
I had back surgery this March.
I'm electing to post his pictures instead of mine.

This is a peace monument between Egypt and the USSR.

The dogs in Egypt are very tired.

This is a man made of towels. Hotel staff like to set traps for the guests in Egypt.

This photo was taken from a boat. The men here are trying to sell merchandise to the photographer and his friends.

This is the largest forest in Egypt. Trees look like fountains there.

I think this is from Prague. Prague is on the way to Egypt.

This how some people live in Egypt. It's brown and gray.

This is a banner. It's also from Prague.

These are snowflakes. You can catch them on your tongue.

These are some people on a camel. For Chris's privacy, I won't say which one is him.

This is Prague. Chris describes Prague as an ugly city with nice cathedrals.

This monster was knocked over by vandals. It's laying an egg.

I hope that this presentation taught you a little about Egypt, and just maybe a little about yourselves.

Photography by Chris
Narration by Brendan

Chris as Camel Rider #1
Nick as Camel Rider #2
Sparky as Sleeping Dog
Snowflakes as Themselves

Special Thanks to the beta-testers.

2006-06-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

2005-12-31T19:18:00.000-08:00

Burma

2005-11-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

MTV

2005-09-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

Illustrations

2005-08-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

Movies

2005-08-02T12:51:00.000-07:00