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On Architecture and Elegance

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:58:35 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

[Maillart's] bridge is endowed with a subcategory of beauty we can refer to as elegance, a quality present whenever a work of architecture succeeds in carrying out an act of resistance—holding, spanning, sheltering—with grace and economy as well as strength; when it has the modesty not to draw attention to the difficulties it has surmounted.

From philosophical historian Alain de Botton's inimitable The Architecture of Happiness, itself a paradigmatic illustration of the aesthetic elegance of well-engineered minimalism (be it architectural or textual).

The NYRB's synopsis of de Botton's work makes note of this:

The simplicity of his writing is not the product of a simple mind....

In The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) he remarked that "there are...no legitimate reasons why books in the humanities should be difficult or boring; wisdom does not require a specialized vocabulary or syntax."

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Both Robert Maillart’s Salginatobel and Isambard Brunel’s Clifton Suspension bridges are structures of strength; both attract our veneration for carrying us safely across a fatal drop—and yet Maillart’s bridge is the more beautiful of the pair for the exceptionally nimble, apparently effortless way in which it carries out its duty.

With its ponderous masonry and heavy steel chains, Brunel’s construction has something to it of a stocky middle-aged man who hoists his trousers and loudly solicits the attention of others before making a jump between two points

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whereas Maillart’s bridge resembles a lithe athlete who leaps without ceremony and bows demurely to his audience before leaving the stage.

Clip Source: www.greatbuildings.com

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Both bridges accomplish daring feats, but Maillart’s possesses the added virtue of making its achievement look effortless—and because we sense it isn’t, we wonder at it and admire it all the more.

Tags: architecture, elegance, bridges, bulidings, beauty, engineering, design, simplicity

101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:48:51 GMT

clipped by: swampfoxz
clipper's remarks: Carlin for pope!
This is one of the few humans that makes any sense at all.

Clip Source: blogzarro.com

101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

I don’t have pet peeves — I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!

A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?

I wanna live. I don’t wanna die. That’s the whole meaning of life: Not dying! I figured that shit out by myself in the third grade.

I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I’m an American — you know, you grow.

No one knows what’s next, but everybody does it.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.

“No comment” is a comment.

So far, this is the oldest I’ve been.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

Tags: carlin quotes

God isn't the problem, it's the followers that kill me!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 05:49:25 GMT

clipped by: ouyangwulong
clipper's remarks: Ross Douthat raises a very valid criticism of Christopher Htichens' book God is Not Great.

Most people attacking religion in books are going after God. I think this is a waste of time, normally promoted by personal grudges and emotional baggage. As a general rule, scientists should never try to prove a negative statement.

On the other hand, if Hitchens hasn't answered Douthat's question, allow me to offer my ten cents in the following response:

Clip Source: www.claremont.org

A review of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens

The book has been written with two main purposes in mind: to show that all religions are false, and to prove that their effects are near-universally pernicious.

He succeeds in demonstrating that many faiths are frauds and many prophets have been fakers, that believers commit all sorts of terrible crimes and that Buddhists are no more pacific than Southern Baptists, and that the Bible is neither a work of academic history nor a biology textbook. Then again, I was convinced of these points already, and hoped that Hitchens would pick a fight on more contested territory, such as the origin and nature of spiritual experience, which seems a more likely source for man's persistent religiosity

But like most apologists for atheism, he evinces little interest in the topic of religion as it is actually lived, preferring to stick to the safer ground of putting the godly in the dock

Tags: god, atheism, hitchens, religion, evil, right, left, prayer, faith, miracles