December 26, 2014
The Fenton Art Glass Company was founded in 1905 by brothers Frank L. Fenton and John W. Fenton in an old glass factory in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Originally, they painted glass blanks from other glass makers, but started making their own glass when they moved across the Ohio river to Williamstown, West Virginia, and built a factory in 1906. The first year for glass production was 1907. Frank Fenton was the designer and decorator. From 1905 to 1920, the designs made there were heavily influenced by two other glass companies: Tiffany and Steuben. But the many different colors were the work of Jacob Rosenthal, a famous glass chemist who is known for developing chocolate and golden agate glass. Towards the end of 1907, the Fenton brothers were the first to introduce carnival glass (metallic or iridescent glass), which later became a popular collector’s item.
During the Great Depression and World War II, Fenton produced practical items (such as mixing bowls and tableware) due to shortages. At the same time, they continued creating new colors. Towards the end of the Great Depression they also produced perfume bottles for the Wrisley Company in 1938. The bottles were made in French opalescent glass with the hobnail pattern (similar to the studs on the sole of a hiking boot). In 1939, Fenton started selling Hobnail items in milk glass (opaque or translucent glass, often in white). Hobnail milk glass would become the top-selling line and allowed the Fenton company to expand.
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November 20, 2014
Alan Moore (b. 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books including ‘Watchmen,’ ‘V for Vendetta,’ and ‘From Hell.’ Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history (though he prefers the term ‘comic’ to ‘graphic novel’), he has been called ‘one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years.’ He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon.
Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and features such themes in his fiction, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult ‘workings’ with ‘The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels,’ some of which have been released on CD. Despite his own personal objections, his books have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films. He has stated that much of his work is designed to be ‘unfilmable’ to expose difference in the two mediums.
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November 17, 2014
Irony is when something happens that is opposite from what is expected. In literature, it is sometimes used for comedic effect, but it is also used in tragedies. There are many types of irony, such as ‘dramatic irony’ (when the audience knows something is going to happen on stage that the characters on stage do not), ‘Socratic irony’ (when a teacher feigns ignorance to his students), ‘cosmic irony’ (when something that everyone thinks will happen actually happens very differently — as opposed to ‘situational irony’ that only affects a small group or individual), ‘verbal irony’ (an absence of expression and intention or the use of sarcasm), and ‘ironic fate’ (misfortune as the result of fate or chance).
The word ‘irony’ comes from Ancient Greek (‘eironeia’: ‘dissimulation, feigned ignorance’), in specific terms it is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event characterized by an incongruity, or contrast, between what the expectations of a situation are and what is really the case, with a third element, that defines that what is really the case is ironic because of the situation that led to it. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used to underscore the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes (understatement used to emphasize a point by denying the opposite) can highlight one’s meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.
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November 13, 2014
Christopher Nolan (b. 1970) is a British-American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He created several of the most successful films of the early 21st century, and his eight films have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide. Having made his directorial debut with ‘Following’ (1998), he gained considerable attention for his second feature, ‘Memento’ (2000). The acclaim of these independent films afforded Nolan the opportunity to make the big-budget thriller ‘Insomnia’ (2002), and the more offbeat production ‘The Prestige’ (2006); which were well-received critically and commercially. He found popular success with ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy (2005–2012), ‘Inception’ (2010), and ‘Interstellar’ (2014). He runs the London-based production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife Emma Thomas.
His films are rooted in philosophical and sociological concepts, exploring human morality, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. Experimentation with metafictive elements, temporal shifts, elliptical cutting, solipsistic perspectives, nonlinear storytelling and the analogous relationship between the visual language and narrative elements, permeate his entire body of work.
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November 12, 2014
Form follows function, a principle associated with modernist architecture and industrial design in the 20th century, holds that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended purpose, not aesthetics or tradition. The authorship of the phrase is often, though wrongly, ascribed to the American sculptor Horatio Greenough, whose thinking to a large extent predates the later functionalist approach to architecture. Greenough’s writings were for a long time largely forgotten, and were rediscovered only in the 1930s; in 1947 a selection of his essays was published under the title ‘Form and Function: Remarks on Art by Horatio Greenough.’
American architect, Louis Sullivan, Greenough’s much younger compatriot, who admired rationalist thinkers like Greenough, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, and Melville, coined the phrase in his article ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered’ in 1896 (some fifty years after Greenough’s death), though Sullivan later attributed the core idea to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio the Roman architect, engineer and author who first asserted in his book ‘De architectura’ that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of ‘firmitas, utilitas, venustas’ – that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful. Here Sullivan actually said ‘form ever follows function,’ but the simpler (and less emphatic) phrase is the one usually remembered.
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November 10, 2014
‘Prometheus Rising‘ is a book by Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1983. It is a guide book of ‘how to get from here to there,’ an amalgam of psychonaut Timothy Leary’s 8-circuit model of consciousness, spiritualist Georges Gurdjieff’s self-observation exercises, Polish semiotician Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics, occultist Aleister Crowley’s magical theorems, Sociobiology (the study of the evolutionary bases of behavior), Yoga, relativity, and quantum mechanics among other approaches to understanding the world around us. Wilson describes it as an ‘owner’s manual for the human brain.’
The book, which examines many aspects of social mind control and mental imprinting, provides mind exercises at the end of every chapter, with the goal of giving the reader more control over how one’s mind works. Wilson also discusses the effect of certain psychoactive substances and how these affect the brain, tantric breathing techniques, and other methods and holistic approaches to expanding consciousness. The book’s take on transactional analysis became the main seed thought for ‘The Sekhmet Hypothesis’ (suggesting a link between the emergence of youth culture archetypes in relation to the 11 year solar cycle), specifically the idea of applying the life scripts to pop cultural trends.
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November 9, 2014
The Sekhmet Hypothesis was first published in 1995 by author Iain Spence. It suggested a possible link between the emergence of youth culture archetypes in relation to the 11 year solar cycles. The hypothesis was published again in 1997 in ‘Towards 2012’ and covered in 1999 in ‘Sleazenation’ magazine. Spence eventually abandoned the idea as not based in scientific fact, pointing to Strauss-Howe generational theory as a better model of social change.
The origins of the hypothesis can be traced back to philosopher Robert Anton Wilson’s book, ‘Prometheus Rising,’ in which he makes a singular correlation between the archetype of the flower child with the mood of friendly weakness. Spence extended the comment into a study of various youth archetypes and linked in their behavior to transactional analysis (a theory of human interaction). The idea of linking pop culture to the solar cycles had been influenced from remarks made by modern occultist Peter J. Carroll, in his book, ‘Psychonaut.’ Sekhmet is the Egyptian goddess of the sun.
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November 9, 2014
‘The Caine Mutiny‘ is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by American author Herman Wouk. The book grew out of Wouk’s personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships. The mutiny of the title is legalistic, not violent, and takes place during a historic typhoon in December 1944. The court-martial that results provides the dramatic climax to the plot.
The story is told through the eyes of Willis Seward ‘Willie’ Keith, an affluent, callow young man who signs up for midshipman school with the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army during World War II. After barely surviving a series of misadventures that earn him the highest number of demerits in the history of the school, he is commissioned and assigned to the destroyer minesweeper USS Caine, an obsolete warship converted from a World War I-era destroyer.
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November 8, 2014
Bathroom singing is common because the hard wall surfaces, often tiles or wooden panels, and lack of soft furnishings, create an aurally pleasing acoustic environment. The multiple reflections from walls enrich the sound of one’s voice. Small dimensions and hard surfaces of a typical bathroom produce various kinds of standing waves, reverberation and echoes, giving the voice ‘fullness and depth.’
This habit was first reported (with an attempt of explanations) in the 14th century by Arab historian Ibn Khaldun. In Chapter 1 of his ‘Muqaddimah’ writes: ‘Likewise, when those who enjoy a hot bath inhale the air of the bath, so that the heat of the air enters their spirits and makes them hot, they are found to experience joy. It often happens that they start singing, as singing has its origin in gladness.’
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November 7, 2014
In sociology, taste is an individual’s personal and cultural patterns of choice and preference. It is drawing qualitative distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods, and works of art. Aesthetic preferences and attendance to various cultural events are associated with education and social origin. Different socioeconomic groups are likely to have different tastes, and social class is one of the most prominent factors structuring taste. The concept of aesthetics has been the interest of philosophers such as Plato, Hume and Kant, who understood it as something pure and searched for the ‘essence of beauty,’ the ontology of taste. But it was not until the beginning the early 19th century that the question was problematized in its social context.
In his aesthetic philosophy, Kant denies any standard of a good taste, which would be the taste of the majority or any social group. For Kant, beauty is not a property of an object, but a judgement based on a subjective feeling. He claims that even if a universal, non-relativistic ‘good taste’ does exist, it can not be empirically identified, or found in any standards or generalizations, and the validity of a judgement is not the general view of the majority or some specific social group. Taste is both personal and beyond reasoning, and therefore disputes over matters of taste never reach a finite conclusion. Kant stresses that our preferences, even on generally liked things, do not justify our judgements.
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November 4, 2014
Commedia [kuh-mey-dee-uh] dell’arte [del-ahr-tee] is a form of improvisational theater that began in Italy in the 16th century. The actors often wore masks and the stories were often about the cunning pursuit of love, money, or simply food. The genre developed several stock characters that represent fixed social types, such as foolish old men, devious servants, or military officers full of false bravado including Harlequin (comic servant), Pantalone (rich old miser), Colombina (tricky slave wife), Pulcinella (disfigured trickster), Pierrot (unrequited clown), and Scaramuccia (roguish clown).
Stock characters can be divided into three groups, ‘Innamorati’ (‘The Lovers,’ who are never masked nor well developed as characters), ‘Vecchi’ (‘The Old People,’ often the Lovers’ parents, who get in the way of their romance), and ‘Zanni’ (‘The Servants/ Commoners,’ always hungry, and often responsible for the Lovers finding their way to the altar). Characters such as Pantalone, the Venetian merchant; Dottore Gratiano, the pedant from Bologna; or Arlecchino, the mischievous servant from Bergamo, began as satires on Italian ‘types’ and became the archetypes of many of the favorite characters of 17th- and 18th-century European theater.
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October 26, 2014
The red pill and its counterpart, the blue pill, are popular culture symbols representing the choice between embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red pill) and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill).
The concept was popularized by the 1999 film ‘The Matrix,’ in which the protagonist is offered the choice of remaining in the fabricated reality of a computer simulation, living the ‘ignorance of illusion,’ or the freedom to live the ‘truth of reality’ even though it is a harsher, more difficult life.
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