King Tut Letter

Read my letter to the editor on the King Tut Exhibit controversy at the Dallas Museum of Art.

A Few Articles on Music

Here are two interesting articles about music and contemporary music. The first deals with the influence of music on infants. There we learn it's not so much the Mozart Effect as the Wide Variety of Music Effect -- that the important thing is to have complex and simple music across the spectrum. The article ends with Steven Pinker dismissing the value of having your children listen to music by referencing Judith Rich Harris's idea that parents have no effect on their children's personalities or tastes -- which if true, I would be a huge fan of 80's hair metal and/or country music and not The Beatles. Teens and people in their 20's may stray away from their parents in rebellion, but in the end, older adults come around to become who their parents were trying to raise.

The second article deals with the fact that nobody really likes new classical music. Though people like Schoenberg have been around for 70 years now, they're still not actually popular. This is certainly enough time for people to have been raised on the music, yet still it's not considered popular. Babies don't like it, and don't seem to get used to it. In fact, it seems that there is a range within which we appreciate music, and much new classical music is outside that range. So why the "popularity" of new classical among critics and art elites? Precisely because the average person can't stand it, they love it. They don't actually love it, of course, but they insist they do, and that it makes them better people to love it, precisely because no real human being can stand it. It's a way to maintain their elite status, by insisting that bad music is good.

THe Burden of the Humanities

I highly recommend this essay by Wilfred McClay, The Burden of the Humanities. Understand this article, and you will understand the need for The Emerson Institute.

Turner's Poems

Please leave comments and questions about Fred Turner's poems here.

Freedom Evolves

Please leave comments and questions about Troy Camplin's essay Freedom Evolves here.

The New Classicism and Culture

For those who want to know about the kind of classicism EIFC is about, read this article by Frederick Turner: The New Classicism and Culture. You should also read Turner and Poppel's The Neural Lyre about why poetry necessarily is rhythmic/patterned and has line lengths.

The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences

Everyone should read The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences from The New Atlantis. It is the beginning of an idea that should be investigated further. Especially the barely-touched-on ideas in the arts.

Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks is an architect who is beginning to do work based on fractals, complexity, and self-organization. Here is a short interview with him.

His earthworks are amazing.

Tax Song

Tax Song

Emerson Institute Interview

You can now access the interview I gave to Grizzlygroundswell.