Neutrinos: Ghosts of the Universe

Neutrinos: Ghosts of the Universe

Neutrinos and their weird subatomic ways could help us understand high-energy particles, exploding stars and the origins of matter itself. Why, after millions of years of steadily lighting the cold darkness, does a supergiant star suddenly explode in a blinding blaze of glory brighter than 100 billion stars? What exotic objects in deep space are […]

Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms

Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms

There is a Francis Bacon pope in Tate Liverpool that is barely a squeak from high camp. It shows the pontiff in sumptuous purple robes, raising his dainty little hands in a fit of girlish horror. It is a very strange addition to the long sequence of screaming popes; indeed this pontiff is not screaming […]

Arkaim: Russia’s Stonehenge and a Puzzle of the Ancient World

Arkaim: Russia’s Stonehenge and a Puzzle of the Ancient World

Everyone’s heard of Stonehenge.  You could probably venture into the Amazonian jungle and seek out an untouched tribe of hunter-gatherers, spend months gaining their trust and learning their language, fighting off dysentery while you’re at it, and when their chief finally makes you an honorary member of their society, against the emphatic advice of his […]

Where The Walls Still Talk

Where The Walls Still Talk

Tales from the legendary hotel-slash-commune that housed Jackson Pollock, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, and Sid Vicious—told by residents like Rufus Wainwright, Betsey Johnson, R. Crumb, and Andy Warhol. Wll vanish before the city’s merchant greed, Wreckers will wreck it, and in its stead More lofty walls will swell This old […]

10 Rules for Students and Teachers Popularized by John Cage

10 Rules for Students and Teachers Popularized by John Cage

Avant-garde composer John Cage started out as a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg. He greatly looked up to the exiled Austrian as a model of how a true artist ought to live. Cage, in turn, inspired generations of artists and composers both through his work – which incorporated elements of chance into his music – and […]

Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty

Friedrich Nietzsche on Why a Fulfilling Life Requires Embracing Rather than Running from Difficulty

A century and a half before our modern fetishism of failure, a seminal philosophical case for its value. German philosopher, poet, composer, and writerFriedrich Nietzsche (October 15, 1844–August 25, 1900) is among humanity’s most enduring, influential, and oft-cited minds — and he seemed remarkably confident that he would end up that way. Nietzsche famously called […]

Kung Fu Hustle

Kung Fu Hustle

The first kung – fu movie that I watched back in the 70’s was called ” Karate, The Superior Youngster” and it’s  first scene begins like this:  GANGSTER: (from the top of the cliff) ” Karate , come and kiss my feet ! “ KARATE ( from  the bottom of the cliff ) “Why don’t you […]

Social Moulds and Their Consequences

Social Moulds and Their Consequences

Can we really discuss any type of individualization without being aware of the imposed limitations? Which of these limitations are we willing to acknowledge? Do we acknowledge only those that suit us, and discard the rest as irrelevant or even false? Can we truly – having in mind our habituation to comfort, to company which […]