Sunday, August 05, 2012

The Mind In the House of the Red Lemmings

The Sheep of Versailles

12 comments:

Mr roT said...

Yeah, Tecs threw me out of the Dept. because I wouldn't toe the party line in believing fervently that Coanda invented the proton or something.

Tecumseh said...

Herr Rott, Herr Rott. The proton was never "invented": it was simply discovered. By Ernest Rutherford.

On the other hand, the jet engine was invented. In 1910. By Henri Marie Coanda. It's an empirically provable assertion.

Arelcao Akleos said...

Coanda apparently did more damage to Herr Rott's psyche than Blondie did to Ugly.

Arelcao Akleos said...

"But this was not a matter of political correctness alone: it was collective thinking in its most blatant form. There were striking parallels to what Czeslaw Milosz in The Captive Mind analyzes as the intellectual’s not-unwilling accommodations to Party orthodoxy. Milosz was interested not only in the compulsions of totalitarianism but in the significant emotional and psychological attractions of the Communist system: the reassurances and rewards of ceding responsibility for judgment, and the manifold reasons why an intellectual could find himself at home in conformity."

Milosz. Now there is someone who will never make the required reading lists of our Graves of Academe

Tecumseh said...

Probably not. Still, he's being remembered. For instance, at the Beinecke Library. That's a wonderful building, by the way. You guys ever been there? It's worth the detour.

Arelcao Akleos said...

I haven't. Should find a pretext to go by there.

Mr roT said...

Meh, Gordon Bunshaft is OK, but smells like Mies van der Rohe. Further, Tecs' buddies Charles McKim, H.H. Richardson, and Philip Johnson> were much better.

Mr roT said...

Blondie.

Tecumseh said...

Herr Rott, Herr Rott. What does it take to make you more kulturny? I was talking about the translucent walls that let the sunlight in: that's pretty much unique, at least for a library. This feature is needed in order to better preserve the ancient manuscripts, which are priceless. Eg, one of the Gutenberg Bibles is there.

Mr roT said...

That looks like more Mies van der Rohe!
This guy was boldly imitative!

Tecumseh said...

Maybe so. But the Beinecke Library looks much better than the Johnson Library< also designed by Bunshaft.

Mr roT said...

Of course, everything is crap compared to this masterpiece.