Math, Light, & Color – The 2015 Edition
Every year, for three weeks between semesters, Harpeth Hall offers an alternative curriculum for its freshmen and sophomores (Juniors and Seniors do off-campus internships and travel). I have taught a course on designing and making stained-glass windows that incorporates mathematical topics. My students always rise to the challenge, and this year was no exception.
The girls’ projects included a series of small windows representing the Platonic Solids, the Four-Color Theorem, Ptolemy’s Theorem, the Butterfly Theorem, Napoleon’s Theorem, Morley’s Trisector Theorem, and an Ulam Spiral, among many others.
I’d also like to recommend to my readers an excellent publication and blog devoted to fostering girls’ interest in mathematics: Girls’ Angle. Their latest blog post and print issue feature some pictures of previous Math, Light, & Color students’ work. If you are looking for an engaging and beautifully laid out resource for your math students, I highly recommend Girls Angle!
Without…
View original post 8 more words
Roine Stolt in the World of Adventures: The Birth of Third-Wave Prog
The Flower Kings, Back in the World of Adventures
1995 Foxtrot Music/Insideout Music
71 minutes; 10 tracks: Back in the World of Adventures; The Prince/Kaleidoscope; Go West Judas; Train to Nowhere; Oblivion Road; Theme for a Hero; Temple of the Snakes; My Comic Lover; The Wonder Wheel; Big Puzzle.
All lyrics and music by Roine Stolt (b. 1956).
In 1994, famed (justly so) Swedish guitarist, Roine Stolt, released a solo album under the title of the FLOWER KING. Less than a year later, he formed—around himself and the band he’d used for the FLOWER KING—the Flower Kings. It’s never quite clear who the FLOWER KING exactly is, but he seems be the embodiment of Jesus. Or, at the very least, a very peace loving Johannine hippie Jesus, and his betrayer is Judas Iscariot. In the opening song of the 1994 album, with the same name as the album, Stolt sings:
View original post 775 more words
A Classic Album: SIXPENCE NONE THE RICHER (1997)
Sixpence None the Richer
Twenty years ago, the almost entirely unknown (then) and barely remembered (now) Texas-Tennessee band, Sixpence None the Richer, released its second album, a pop masterpiece, This Beautiful Mess. The cover, a picassoesque homage with eye-popping reds and yellows, captivates today as much as it did two decades ago. Imagine a southern American version of The Sundays crossed with Nebraskan, Matthew Sweet, and a little bit of the poppiest aspects of XTC, and you’ll start to get a sense of this album. The best tracks, by far, are the least poppy songs: “Within a Room Somewhere” and “Disconnect.” Each is existential and necessarily plodding. Each gorgeously develops organically with hardly a pop hook in audible range—at least relatively speaking.
View original post 2,394 more words
Atropos Project – Equator (2013)
“Dead String Scrolls. Bring your own lyrics.” This is how New York musician John Quarles describes his creation, Atropos Project. While purely instrumental “prog,” John draws upon a variety of influences and experiences for his album, Equator. The beauty of this album is that it cannot be pigeonholed into one specific genre or sub-genre of rock. Musically, Atropos Project explores many different aspects of progressive rock.
John began his musical journey when he was in high school, playing drums for a variety of local metal bands. As he grew older, he began trying out different instruments, eventually settling on the guitar as his weapon of choice. Over the course of the last decade or so, through collaborating with other musicians, John began to pick up other instruments as well, including the keyboards. Equator is the product of those experiences. John cites bands such as Rush, Queen, Boston, and Kiss as his early…
View original post 529 more words
Rush Revamps its Website
Rush has completely revamped its website. It looks spectacular. www.rush.com
***
And, please check out some of our friends:
http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/main/Home.htm
Dawson, “The Claims of Politics,” 1939.
Source: Christopher Dawson, “The Claims of Politics,” SCRUTINY 8 (September 1939): 136-141.
Dawson, “Future of National Government,” 1935
Source: Christopher Dawson, “The Future of National Government,” DUBLIN REVIEW (1935): 236-251.
Reagan’s Creative Society, 1968
A nice contrast to Johnson’s supposed “Great Society”:
The Creative Society, in other words, is simply a return to the people of the privilege of self-government, as well as a pledge for more efficient representative government–citizens of proven ability in their fields, serving where their experience qualifies them, proposing common sense answers for California’s problems, reviewing governmental structure itself and bringing it into line with the most advanced, modern business practices. Those who talk of complex problems, requiring more government planning and more control, in reality are taking us back in time to the acceptance of rule of the many by the few. Time to look to the future. We’ve had enough talk–disruptive talk–in America of left and right, dividing us down the center. There is really no such choice facing us. The only choice we have is up or down–up, to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down, to the deadly dullness of totalitarianism.–Ronald Reagan, 1968
Stormfields 