Friday, October 31, 2008

Aerial View Venice, California (Postcard)


I assume that if my cabana in Venice existed when this postcard was made, you'd be able to see it (sort of). It would be somewhere in the upper left corner.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Aerial View by Night, Venice, Cal. (Postcard)


I just got a new scanner in my office.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Lawn at UVA


I've probably posted this photo before, but someone just marked it as a "Favorite" on Flickr, which led me to look at it again. It does a decent job of conveying what the lawn at UVA is like.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Dulles Airport


August 2008

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Experimental Philosophy

"If tortured criminals were dissected while their bodies were still warm, one would see the same movements in their hearts that one observes in the muscles of people whose heads have been cut off." Julien Offray de La Mettrie, "Man a Machine"

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Best of Motown


This is a single CD length mix of the best of Motown that I made a while back. The last track is kind of a weak link.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Venice-of-America's Midway Plaisance in 1906


This is a better picture of Venice's Midway than the postcard I posted earlier this week.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Hellcats of the Navy (1957)

Maybe I just like sub movies too much, but I thought this was pretty damn good. Things get pretty interesting when questions are raised about whether some of the difficult choices that Ronnie makes as a captain might be based more on self-interest than the good of his sailors or the Navy. Ronnie's response is twofold: (i) he claims that his critics are projecting their own inability to act on more than self-absorbed feeling onto him, and (ii) he starts to doubt his own ability to act on more than self-absorbed feeling. Gonna use this for ethics class. (Other, related topics that come up include: whether an action benefiting me shows that it's self-interested, the usefulness (or lack thereof) of ethical principles, the distinction between judgment and feeling.)

This movie reinforces my sense that sub movies are all about the structure of good judgment.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Postcard


I think this would make a pretty awesome postcard. From the Big Lebowski location guide.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

A paradigmatic instance of bullshit?

I submit that McCain's and Palin's assertion that Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist" is a paradigmatic instance of bullshit. When McCain repeated this nonsense at last night's debate, I think it might have been best for Obama to stop the conversation, turn to McCain, and say "Do you really believe that?"

Monday, October 13, 2008

Hyde Park and Venice

To my knowledge, none of the books on either the history of Venice-of-America or the history of the Chicago Exposition notes the following (rather obvious) similarity:

The Golden Door of Louis Sullivan's Transportation Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair:

The entrance to the Dancing Pavilion at Venice-of-America:

People have noted that Abbott Kinney's Venice-of-America contained a Midway, which was in conscious emulation of the Midway at the Chicago Exposition. Venice-of-America's Midway consisted mostly in amusements that Kinney purchased from the 1903 St. Louis World's fair. Here's a postcard view of the Midway at Venice-of-America: