From Theodore Dalrymple’s Our Culture, What’s Left of It: Preface pages x-xi:
One might have supposed, in the circumstances, that a principle preoccupation of intellectuals, who after all are supposed to see farther and think more deeply than ordinary men and women, would be the maintenance of the boundaries that separate civilization from barbarism, since those [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2007
The Civilized and the Uncivilized
30 June 2007 – 5:21 pm
On the basis of the outgrowth of their innate capacities
13 June 2007 – 6:47 pm
Brian Lehrer: You raised three kids, didn’t you reward and punish them to promote desired behaviors?
Noam Chomsky: Well, we … see if you believe in [B.F.] Skinner’s doctrines you wouldn’t punish them. So if you’re talking about Skinner no wouldn’t punish them, you would reward them. But no, I wouldn’t say that’s the right way [...]
Further on Luminato
12 June 2007 – 6:08 pm
Today’s Star reports that ‘Luminato a big success, say organizer’. What is the measure of this success?
‘Attendance was estimated to be more than a million people over the course of the ten days, says festival co-founder David Pecaut. “As you may know we set out an objective originally of half a million, so we more [...]
Luminato?
11 June 2007 – 7:29 pm
The Toronto Star ran a story (Luminato: Success or big disappointment?) this morning offering readers the chance to compare and contrast two opposing views with regard to the inaugural Luminato festival. I missed almost all of the festival, which is to say, I didn’t find it very visible. I’m on Christopher Hume’s side that it [...]
On ‘Outdoor Air Conditioning’
8 June 2007 – 6:04 pm
From Sally McKay’s blog:
Timothy Comeau’s new work “Outdoor Air Conditioning” (reproduced below) demonstrates, contra the recent humiliating announcement by PM-for-the- moment Steven Harper that Canada will not meet the Kyoto targets, that in the visual arts at least, we are doing our bit. Comeau’s work raises the bar for art within a conceptual framework, adding [...]
A sense of luxury
3 June 2007 – 12:57 pm
It is a pity that the word ‘art’ carries with it, to a person not interested in the subject or not versed in its history, a suggestion of luxury and of superfluity, as contrasted with the utilitarian or the practical. Where this possibly derogatory tinge of meaning is not suggested, there is generally at least [...]