Clipmarks | enbar's Art, music and culture collection

"Lost" (the TV show) and religion

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:23:59 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Bookmarking this mostly to read later.

The 'Lost' Tribe

One of TV's most popular shows is also one of the most spiritual. So why aren't the Jews getting any love?

Lilit Marcus

One reason that Lost resonates with so many viewers is that it incorporates elements from many world religions. The show frequently refers to a mysterious string of numbers that add up to 108, a sacred number in Buddhism that represents the number of beads on a mala, or prayer necklace. A secretive group that might be behind the mysterious happenings on the island is called the Dharma Initiative. Lost boasts one of the most diverse casts on TV, with the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 coming from a variety of backgrounds (Nigerian, Korean, Iraqi, etc.) However, religious diversity is where the program fails. Because the majority of the passengers are from the United States, the show assumes them all to be Christian or nonreligious. The Iraqi soldier, Sayid, is Muslim, and has been shown praying on several occasions.

Tags: via:friendfeed, religion, popular_culture, television, media, contemporary, commentary, !toread

American Sign Museum website: historic signs and lettering

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:49:41 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: The museum is in Cincinnati, Ohio (800-925-1110), if you want to visit. I love this kind of stuff.

Clip Source: www.signmuseum.com

Come take a walk down Memory Lane and experience the only public sign museum in America. Click through our website, and find a treasure trove of information relative to the rich tradition of sign fabrication and design. You can also find news of sign preservation efforts throughout the country and even visit the Museum's permanent collection.

But better yet, arrange to visit the American Sign Museum: You'll get a one and a half hour personal tour of more than 150 vintage signs guided by the museum's founder himself-Tod Swormstedt. Swormstedt is the former editor and publisher of Signs of the Times magazine, a trade journal which celebrated its 100^th anniversary of continuous publication in May, 2006.

Click here for a video tour with museum founder Tod Swormstedt

Website Design by BrianTheBrush.com

Tags: fonts, art, history, museum, cool, post:tumblr

Illustrations of the "Harrowing of Hell"

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:57:17 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Happy Good Friday, everybody. Here are a few interesting historical images of the "harrowing of Hell" tradition drawn from various Christian iconographic sources.

Clip Source: www.patzinakia.ro

ILLUSTRATIONS

Anastasis

Tags: religion, christianity, image, history, primary_source, rels333, post:facebook(clip), post:tumblr(source)

Haeckel's "Art Forms in Nature" (1899) on the web

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 06:06:33 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: An incredible collection of illustrations of strange and beautiful shapes taken from nature: microscopic organisms, fungi, sea animals, etc. Hard to describe, but worth a look.

Clip Source: caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de


	Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur 1899-1904 HTML-Version herausgegeben von Kurt Stüber, 1999 Vollständige elektronische Faksimile-Ausgabe. Index aller 100 Tafeln Dieses Buch ist ein Teil von Kurt Stübers online-Library.

Tags: random_sh!t, cool, art, science, history, image, post:facebook(clip)

"Alison": a father's portrait of his daughter

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:14:52 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Three decades' worth of Jack Radcliffe's photographs of his daughter Alison. Extremely moving and beautiful images.

Clip Source: www.behance.net

Alison
By Jack Radcliffe

By Jack Radcliffe

When my daughter Alison was born, in the tradition of a new parent, I began to photograph her, initially in a separate and private body of work. However, in the process of documenting Alison's growth, I developed a passionate interest in human relationships and capturing intimate moments in the lives of family and friends.

This affected my photography in a profound way. Rather than the isolated subjects of my earlier work, I became interested in the strength of relationships, oftentimes using personal environments to amplify those conditions.

The camera, early in her life, became part of our relationship, necessitating in me an acceptance, a quietness. We've never had long photographic sessions, but rather moments alone or with friends.

I wanted to photograph her in all her extremes, and to be part of these times in her life without judging or censoring. Only in this way would I have a true portrait of Alison.

Tags: image, photos, photography, family, children, parenting

Slavoj Žižek on the Matrix, #2

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:20:32 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Another Žižek essay, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," from 2001. Also on my reading list. Looks more closely at the images of violence and devastation and their role in the popular, post-9/11 imagination.

Clip Source: web.mit.edu

WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL
By Slavoj Zizek, 09/15/2001

The Wachowski brothers' hit Matrix (1999) brought this logic to its climax: the material reality we all experience and see around us is a virtual one, generated and coordinated by a gigantic mega-computer to which we are all attached; when the hero (played by Keanu Reeves) awakens into the "real reality," he sees a desolate landscape littered with burned ruins - what remained of Chicago after a global war. The resistance leader Morpheus utters the ironic greeting: "Welcome to the desert of the real." Was it not something of the similar order that took place in New York on September 11? Its citizens were introduced to the "desert of the real" - to us, corrupted by Hollywood, the landscape and the shots we saw of the collapsing towers could not but remind us of the most breathtaking scenes in the catastrophe big productions.

Slavoj Žižek on the Matrix

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:16:20 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: This is Žižek's famous 1999 essay, "The Two Sides of Perversion." I'm clipping it because I intend to read it; the bits I've looked at are very good.

Clip Source: www.lacan.com

Inside the Matrix: International Symposium at the Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe

October 28 1999

The Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion
By Slavoj Zizek

When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film - namely, to an idiot. A man in the late 20ies at my right was so immersed in the film that he all the time disturbed other spectators with loud exclamations, like "My God, wow, so there is no reality!"... I definitely prefer such naive immersion to the pseudo-sophisticated intellectualist readings which project into the film the refined philosophical or psychoanalytic conceptual distinctions.(1)

The key opposition is here the one between Frankfurt School and Lacan: should we historicize the Matrix into the metaphor of the Capital that colonized culture and subjectivity, or is it the reification of the symbolic order as such? However, what if this very alternative is false?

The Sopranos: a critical essay

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 04:58:22 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: This is actually a serious, reflective, and perceptive essay on the Sopranos. It's worth a read.

Clip Source: www.nybooks.com

A Northern New Jersey of the Mind

By Geoffrey O'Brien

The Sopranos

a television series created by David Chase

Dr. Melfi: "What are you afraid's going to happen?"

Tony: "I don't know! But something. I don't know!"

—The Sopranos, season one, episode one

At the start The Sopranos had the piquancy of a new invention. Television had fostered a claustrophobia of hemmed-in expectations, a culture of flat character types and pat endings. The space into which The Sopranos inducted us had the messy picaresque randomness of the real world, yet every detail—every tune heard in passing, every remark overheard at the next table, every artifact glimpsed in the background of a crowded room—glistened as if singled out with obsessive mindfulness. In texture and form it seemed something altogether new to television.

Tags: television, popular_culture, violence, psychology, review, commentary

Flickr + Library of Congress: Flickr Commons

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:36:20 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: What a great idea. Collaborative tagging and description for publicly-owned, historic photos. Some creative thought re copyrights as well -- they've introduced a new designation, "No known copyright restrictions." Cool.

Clip Source: flickr.com

Photo by George

The Commons

Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections.

The Commons Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world's public photo collections.

The Library of Congress Pilot Project

Back in June of 2007, we began our first collaboration with a civic institution to facilitate giving people a voice in describing the content of a publicly-held photography collection.

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

You're invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress' collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments.*

The Library of Congress has a Prints and Photographs Online Catalog comprised of over 1 million images (and growing) that have been available online for over 10 years.

Tags: library, museum, photos, image, resources, flickr, tagging, history, check_this_out, post:tumblr

PublicRadioFan.com: find & download public radio programs

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:16:44 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Great database of downloadable, archived public radio shows.

Clip Source: www.publicradiofan.com

PublicRadioFan.com
Sunday 10:11p EST [change time zone]

Non-music programs on now

Listings included: non-music programs on now (Sunday 10:11p EST)
Sorted by: program title
You can choose different options by selecting advanced options.
Also, you can permanently change some of the default settings for this type of page.

Change display format:
sort by program category
sort by station name
sort by station region
sort by time
display as a grid

Schedule Guide

Program Finder

Station Finder

Tags: radio, audio, journalism, npr, podcasting

Robert Browning, "Bishop Blougram's Apology"

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:41:24 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Browning's reflections on faith, skepticism, and tradition. I haven't finished the whole thing yet.

Clip Source: whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au

Bishop Blougram’s Apology

Robert Browning

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demireps
That loves and saves her soul in new French books—
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They’re classed and done with.

Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there’s a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you’ll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that’s Schelling’s way!
It’s through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They’d say, “What’s strange? Blougram of course believes;”
And, seventy years since, “disbelieves of course.”
But now, “He may believe; and yet, and yet
How can he?”

Tags: religion, literature, poetry, christianity, roman_catholicism, !toread

"People who are just meat now, man" (Denis Johnson, short story)

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:39:10 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I love this writer. He's a genius. I need to get his most recent book. This is an excerpt from "Steady Hands at Seattle General," a short story of his almost entirely in dialogue form, published in the collection "Jesus's Son" (1997, I think).

Clip Source: www.cockscrow.com

"What do you see?"

"How did I get so fat, when I never eat?"

"Is that all?"

"Well, I don’t know. I just got here."

"What about your life?"

"Hah! That’s a good one."

"What about your past?"

"What about it?"

"When you look back, what do you see?"

"Wrecked cars."

"Any people in them?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"People who are just meat now, man."

"Is that really how it is?"

"How do I know how it is? I just got here. And it stinks."

"Are you kidding? They’re pumping Holdol by the quart. It’s a playpen."

"I hope so. Because I been in places where all they do is wrap you in a wet sheet, and let you bite down on a little rubber toy for puppies."

"I could see living here two weeks out of every month."

"Well, I’m older than you are. You can take a couple more rides on this wheel and still get out with all your arms and legs stuck on right. Not me."

"Hey. You’re doing fine."

"Talk into here."

"Talk into your bullet hole?"

"Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I’m fine."

Tags: literature, fiction, violence, psychology, post:facebook(clip)

Fritz Eichenberg, Quaker artist: an oral history

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:41:36 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: Eichenberg is famous for his illustrations of Russian novels and for his friendship and collaboration with Dorothy Day. He died in 1990; this interview was done in 1979 for the Smithsonian.

Clip Source: www.aaa.si.edu

Interview with Fritz Eichenberg
Conducted by Robert Brown
At the artist's home in Peace Dale, Rhode Island
May 14 1979 and December 7, 1979

ROBERT BROWN: What do they see in it now, do you think?

FRITZ EICHENBERG: They see what I saw in the beginning: the redemption through suffering. You don't necessarily look for suffering but it's built in. Man is a very fragile being. He does his best to corrupt the environment in which he lives. We have now the problems of pollution and nuclear energy and we have gone through a disastrous war. We lost more than the war. We lost our integrity and our standing in the world to a large degree. Whatever I could do as a kind of conciliator coming from the other side I tried to do. That's one of the reasons why I was picked out to go to the Soviet Union for the State Department, at the time. I met thousands of Russians and shook hands with them. They saw my work and they saw I understood "the Russian soul," as they said.

Tags: art, interview, history, oral_history, social_justice, religion, christianity

R.J. Ellman, "To a Frustrated Poet"

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:06:50 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I really like this poem. See also http://snipr.com/1wozg

Clip Source: writersalmanac.publicradio.org

Poem: "To A Frustrated Poet," by R.J. Ellmann, used by permission of the poet.

To A Frustrated Poet

This is to say
I know
You wish you were in the woods,
Living the poet life,
Not here at a formica topped table
In a meeting about perceived inequalities in the benefits and allowances offered to
employees of this college,
And I too wish you were in the woods,
Because it's no fun having a frustrated poet
In the Dept. of Human Resources, believe me.
In the poems of yours that I've read, you seem ever intelligent and decent and patient in a way
Not evident to us in this office,
And so, knowing how poets can make a feast out of trouble,
Raising flowers in a bed of drunkenness, divorce, despair,
I give you this check representing two weeks' wages
And ask you to clean out your desk today
And go home
And write a poem
With a real frog in it
And plums from the refrigerator,
So sweet and so cold.

Tags: literature, poetry, art, post:facebook(clip)

I Only Have Eyes For You

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 19:52:15 GMT

clipped by: thisnamecantbetaken
clipper's remarks: Wink, wink.

Clip Source: www.art-dept.com