Math Lesson With George Boole

Posted on 02 Nov 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1815, the great mathematician George Boole was born. He had quite diverse interests in math, including what I consider the most interesting thing in math: differential equations. The reason for this is that differential equations are kind of like alchemy. There are no rules for solving them and only the barest of guidelines. I suppose I like this because it is so much unlike what most people think math is. It is more intuition than anything else.

Boole, however, is mostly known today for something that was highly theoretical at the time but is now intensely practical: symbolic logic, or as we say today, Boolean algebra. Boole’s system was quite complex. His main interest was in mapping logic onto an algebraic formalism. What we use today are the ideas of AND (∧) and OR (∨) and so on. The AND operator is defined as follows:

    0 ∧ 0 = 0
    0 ∧ 1 = 0
    1 ∧ 0 = 0
    1 ∧ 1 = 1

It is remarkable just how powerful all of this is. And if I weren’t still sick, I might spend some time on it. Not that it is necessary, since you are almost certainly reading this on a computer. But it is amazing that when digital computers came into existence, all the mathematics had been worked out a century before.

Boole died young at the age of 49. Wikipedia provides a description that is both funny and pathetic. Mathematicians are not known for their practical acumen. Apparently, this is also true of their spouses:

One day in 1864, George walked two miles in the drenching rain and lectured wearing his wet clothes. He soon became ill, developing a severe cold and high fever. As his wife believed that remedies should resemble their cause, she put George to bed and poured buckets of water over him — the wet having brought on his illness. With neither spouse distinguishing good idea from bad, Boole’s condition worsened and on 8 December 1864, he died of fever-induced pleural effusion.

Happy birthday George Boole!

Antonio Canova

Posted on 01 Nov 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1757, the great Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova was born. He was an important artist in the development of neoclassicism. Baroque art probably found its most annoying expression in sculpture. Canova’s work is know for its refined simplicity. It is gorgeous work.

He was born to a family of stone cutters who created small statuaries. His grandfather taught him early how to draw and sculpt. You can see in the self-portrait above, that he clearly had talent in that regard. But his main interest was in sculpture and that is what he spent his career doing. By the age of nine, he was working in marble. It was through his grandfather that he made important contacts with patrons and with teachers. By his late teens, he had his own workshop.

In his mid-20s, he moved to Rome where he worked for a couple of decades. He seemed to spend the last section of his life back in Venice. All of that time produced great work. At the age of 30 he produced what is probably my favorite work, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss:

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss - Antonio Canova

And here is The Three Graces — started when he was in his late 50s and finished in his early 60s, shortly before his death:

Happy birthday Antonio Canova!

Marie Laurencin

Posted on 31 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

Marie Laurencin I really should know better than to leave the house. I feel very much like the Aztecs when Cortés came. You know that they weren’t defeated militarily. It is just that the Europeans, who lived in a world of filth and virus, brought unknown disease to the new continent. It is kind of hard to fight a war when 90% of your troops die of smallpox. Anyway, I just don’t get out much. So when I leave the house, I am under constant threat — especially from children, who I think we all know are evil, even if it isn’t there intention. Bottom line: I’m quite sick and without any medicine or even alcohol to help me through it.

On this day in 1883, the great cubist painter Marie Laurencin was born. But she was more than that. The self-portrait at the beginning of this article is almost neoclassical — plus it is multimedia, primarily charcoal. She started her studies doing porcelain painting. It was only later that she became involved in avant-garde. And the work that I most admire of hers is not cubist. In fact, she seems to have only done cubist work for a short period. For example, Jeune Femmes (“Young Women”) is from 1910:

But by 1928, she was creating work that looked more like, Portrait of Mrs Aitato, which reminds me a bit of Modigliani:

It’s all lovely. I always think that people like Laurencin aren’t better known because they are women. Sexism in the art world seems to be especially bad. Or used to be. I don’t know anything about the art world today.

Happy birthday Marie Laurencin!

John Adams Was Not All Bad

Posted on 30 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1735, John Adams was born. When I was a kid, I thought quite highly of him. He had a nice wife and most of the best songs in 1776. It was only later that I learned about the four Alien and Sedition Acts. The republic had only been in existence for a scant decade and already Adams and his allies were trying to destroy it. I’m not saying that they weren’t right to have concerns. Armed rebellion was a very good possibility. But the Naturalization Act and the two Alien acts were just xenophobic power grabs. And the Sedition Act was nothing but an attempt to stop the political competition from talking. The truth is, I don’t see how any of the acts made an armed rebellion less likely. But I suspect the real concern — what conservatives are always worried about — was that democracy would work and the Federalists would be thrown out of power. Indeed, Adams would be the last Federalist president, and the party would be gone completely in Adams’ own life.

What Adams most symbolizes to me is the desire among many people in the early days of the United States to have hereditary rule. It is true that Adams said many things during his life, but it is clear what he thought. He did spend much of the later years of his life disavowing this belief. But that was just because Jefferson and company had beat up on him so much. When Adams had political power, he really did have classist beliefs. And I understand that. It is hard not to look out on the world and escape the conclusion that if only everyone listened to my wise self, all would be grand. But good sense always gets in my way. Adams had no such blocking mechanism.

(My ultimate dream is that I could be a kind of Kermit the Frog. I would be the calm in the middle of the storm of creative insanity. I could add that little bit of structure that they all need for greatness. Sadly, in humans — as opposed to the superior puppets — the creative insane tend to break off into their own creative twisters. Alas, my dream is destined to die with me.)

On the other hand, there is the Boston Massacre. Not only did it show some fortitude to take the case, it showed a good deal of open-mindedness. And in the case, he said something that conservatives of my age have lost sight of:

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

So I don’t think Adams was all bad. He wasn’t a slave owner! And he lost the 1800 election to Jefferson because of the South’s inflated population size because of the slave population, which were only citizens for the purpose of giving slave owners more political power. Ultimately, John Adams is no worse than Edmund Burke. And it is clear that neither man would be welcome in the modern conservative movement. And that’s shocking.

Happy birthday John Adams!

Akim Tamiroff

Posted on 29 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

Akim Tamiroff The internet started on this day 45 years ago. Well, sort of. That was the day that the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) established its first network link. Circuit switching is dead; long live packet switching! Exciting stuff. I’m sure the people working on the project were very pleased. I know what it is like to get technology like that working. It doesn’t matter that you know it is theoretically possible. When everything works it is an amazing feeling. Sadly, it is not a feeling that comes along very often.

On this day in 1899, the great character actor Akim Tamiroff was born. One of the great things about being a character actor is that you get to work a lot. Tamiroff was in more than 150 movies if we are to believe IMDb. And the variety of the films is remarkable. For example, he was in Preston Sturges’s silly The Great McGinty and Jean-Luc Godard’s genre defying Alphaville. I can’t find a clip from the latter film, but her he is in a very funny scene from the former:

Mostly, I know Tamiroff from his work with Orson Welles. He was in Touch of Evil, The Trial, and even the unfinished Don Quixote as Sancho. But I remember him as the old dope pusher Jakob Zouk in Mr Arkadin — the first character to be introduced and the last to be murdered by Gregory Arkadin. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of that either. (Well, one dubbed in Spanish.) So here he is in Topkapi. “Are you here officially?”!

I just learned that Boris Badenov on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was inspired by Tamiroff. I can think of no greater honor. But it makes me wonder about the awful feature film, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Why did they cast Jason Alexander? Everyone knows the modern Akim Tamiroff is Jon Polito!

Happy birthday Akim Tamiroff!

Bride of the Witness of Elsa Lanchester by Death

Posted on 28 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1902, the great actor Elsa Lanchester was born. She will always be associated with Bride of Frankenstein. She played both Mary Shelley and “the bride.” And she was wonderful. It’s kind of strange. I remember watching that movie on Creature Features with my older brother and sister when I was maybe 9 years old. I was terrified. Yet now it is a film I watch when I want to get cheered up. It’s so sweet — especially when “the monster” takes the hand of “the bride” and pats it gently. Of course, she doesn’t respond well.

Lanchester had a long and distinguished career. She received two Academy Award nominations for Come to the Stable and Witness for the Prosecution. What I’m most taken with is that she exudes fun up on the screen. Her role as the chatty nurse Miss Plimsoll in the second of these could easily have been annoying, but with Lanchester it is just a delight. She and Charles Laughton were married their whole adult lives until he died. They starred in nine films together. Here she is talking with Dick Cavett about Laughton, Isadora Duncan, and how to pronounce her last name:

Some nice person put together four minutes of clips from various movies, with the Bride of Frankenstein music on top of it. I think her personality comes across really well even without dialog:

Let’s just end with one of her very last films, Murder By Death. In it, she plays a Miss Marple parody, Jessica Marbles. At the end of it, Dora Charleston (parody of Nora Charles from The Thin Man) says, “I like her; I really like her.” And I couldn’t agree more.

Happy birthday Elsa Lanchester!

Niccolò Paganini

Posted on 27 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

Niccolo Paganini On this day in 1782, the great violinist Niccolò Paganini was born. His father played the mandolin semi-professionally to subsidize his poor living in trade. As a result of this, Paganini learned to play the mandolin at the age of five. At seven, he switched to violin and was quickly recognized as a great talent. By the age of 18, he was an established professional musician in court and as a freelancer. Wikipedia, usually reticent to editorialize, noted, “His fame as a violinist was matched only by his reputation as a gambler and womanizer.”

Since we don’t have recordings of Paganini, people tend to focus on him as a composer. I don’t see it. He does have a nice ear for melody. But when he isn’t over-exuberant, he is maudlin. What’s more, there isn’t much in the way of counterpoint in his work. He apparently wrote on guitar. I think if it hadn’t been for his great ability on the violin and viola, no one would have noticed his compositions. But many (greater) composers after him — most notably Liszt and Brahms — based works on his melodies.

Paganini is best remembered for how he affected the way the violin is played. It isn’t so much true that he was an innovator. Most of his techniques such as left-hand pizzicato and harmonics had been around for a long time. But he used them so much in his compositions and performances that they became normalized. He did, it seems, develop new methods of fingering, although I’m not sure how widely these have been used; Paganini had extremely long fingers — to the point where it is speculated that he might have suffered from Marfan syndrome.

Here is his most famous piece, Caprice No 24 in A minor. I will allow that it is a charming piece of music. And here is a wonderful version of it with the all the Illényi kids playing the hell out of it. And that is fitting for Paganini:

Happy birthday Niccolò Paganini!

War Artist Vasily Vereshchagin

Posted on 26 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1842, the great Russian painter Vasily Vereshchagin was born. He is best known as a war artist. In the days before photography, armies had painters to immortalize their acts. The job wasn’t as much like a modern photojournalist as it was the poets who warriors have kept around for millennia to write songs of their exploits. Vereshchagin traveled all over the world documenting wars and a lot more. He was one of the first Russian artists to be highly regarded internationally.

At the age of eight, he was sent off to military school. From the age of 16 to 21, he was in the Imperial Russian Navy. At that point, he left and began studying art. A year after that, he was studying in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme (who I actually like a lot more). After studying there for a couple of years, he got a commission to travel with a Russian expedition to Turkestan. It was from these travels that my favorite of his paintings came, The Apotheosis of War:

This painting was not well received by the Imperial Russian Army, but most of his work was more traditional. After this time, he spent a couple of years traveling through India and Tibet where he did a lot of beautiful and, for him, unusual work. But by 1878, Vereshchagin was back with the Army at the Russo-Turkish War. His brother was killed during it and he was seriously wounded himself. Because he was actually a soldier, he saw war in a very objective way. And he didn’t like it. His work became more and more anti-war and didactic. For example, he was highly criticized for Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, but I have a hard time believing that it isn’t largely true. The British weren’t close to the worst colonial power, but they were nonetheless a colonial power.

Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English

In my research of war artists, I’ve found that few of them live to be very old. It is just too easy to die in war zones. If it isn’t the shelling, it is the disease. Vereshchagin was no different. He was invited to come and document the Russo-Japanese War. While traveling on the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk, it struck two mines and sunk. Vereshchagin did not survive.

Happy birthday Vasily Vereshchagin!

Georges Bizet

Posted on 25 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1838, the great composer Georges Bizet was born. Had he lived longer, he doubtless would have been hugely influential — especially with regard to opera. But he died suddenly and young. So he exists as a kind of idiosyncratic bit of musical genius in the second half of the 19th century. He is especially known for his great melodies and I think in this way (and many others), he is comparable to Mozart. Sadly, most of Bizet’s professional life was spent arranging and orchestrating the works of others — skills that also shine brightly in his own work.

Bizet’s focus was on composing for the human voice — both opera and song. But he was also a fine composer for orchestra. In fact, the only real success he had during his life was the suite he created based upon incidental music he wrote for the play L’Arlésienne by Alphonse Daudet. But that doesn’t mean the rest of his orchestral music wasn’t great. Take, for example, Petite Suite based upon his Jeux d’Enfants, which was a collection of a dozen piano duets. It is a wonderfully charming work:

Probably the biggest reason that Bizet did not have success as an opera composer during his life is because he worked with poor librettos. In particular, two of his later operas — Les Pêcheurs de Perles and La Jolie Fille de Perth — are great from a musical standpoint, but make weak drama. I don’t tend to think about that much; to me it is all about the music. But that wasn’t the case for the audiences at the time.

Bizet’s last composition is his greatest and his most renowned, Carmen. Sadly, the first performance of the opera did not go well. Ironically, it didn’t go well for the one of the reasons that it has become a classic: it is racy. It tells the story of Jose who is led astray by the seductress Carmen. And after abandoning everything in his life for her, she dumps him for a toreador. In a fit a jealousy, Jose stabs Carmen to death. Here is the last number from the opera, “C’est toi! – C’est moi!” There are no English subtitles, but it should be clear enough what’s going on. Let me just note that after the stabbing, there is a small fantasy sequence. Carmen wasn’t secretly in love with Jose; this is just his brief delusion. Regardless, this is beautiful production:

Happy birthday Georges Bizet!

Sarah Josepha Hale Had a Little Lamb

Posted on 24 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

Sarah Josepha Hale Before getting to the birthday, on this day in 1947, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Disney ratted on Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance. But maybe “ratted” is the wrong word, because he didn’t actually disclose any information. He just figured they were commies. And how did he know? They were part of the 1941 animators’ strike. Like most conservatives then and now, any liberal cause from workers’ rights to civil rights to environmental regulation must be a communist plot. There are many reasons why people generally have a bad opinion of Walt Disney today. This is one of them. But I mostly only care that his cartoon shorts sucked. Thank God for Warner Bros!

On this day in 1788, a truly remarkable woman was born: Sarah Josepha Hale. She was a prominent writer and editor, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s start with the fact that she was born just after the US Constitution was ratified, and she lived until well after the Civil War and shortly before the Progressive Era. As Mr Rochester would have said, she was tenacious of life.

Her parents were very liberal and so they educated her the way that they would have educated a boy. Of course, she could not go off to college, so she was largely self-taught. She became a school teacher in her early twenties but married two years later. Over the next nine year, she had five children. And then her husband died. According to Wikipedia, she worn black the rest of her long life “as a sign of perpetual mourning.” I mention it only because I love stuff like that.

A year after her husband’s death, she published her first book of poetry, The Genius of Oblivion. And then, four years later she published her first novel, Northwood: Life North and South. Her politics were fairly conservative by modern standards, but for their time, she probably was as liberal as most Democrats — maybe even me. She was against slavery, but for sending the slaves to Liberia. That was in 1827, which probably made her more liberal than Lincoln some years later. But even though she lived to 1879, she never believed in women’s suffrage.

She is considered the most important person for making Thanksgiving a holiday. I’m not at all interested in that. But I am interested in a book she wrote in 1830, Poems for Our Children. It contained perhaps the most famous poem in America:

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about
Till Mary did appear.

Why does the lamb love Mary so?
The eager children cry;
Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,
The teacher did reply.

Perhaps Hale’s greatest legacy is that she pushed early American publishing away from English writers. At the time, most American magazines contained mostly reprinted work from our recent captors. And you can easily see why. American artists of all kinds were generally of an inferior quality. We just hadn’t set up the kind of institutions that are necessary to help young artists to maximize their potential. But obviously, the only way to do that was to encourage the publication of American writers as Hale did.

In addition to her work with magazines, she managed to publish almost fifty books in her lifetime. She lived a remarkable life.

Happy birthday Sarah Josepha Hale!

Here’s Johnny!

Posted on 23 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1925, the comedian Johnny Carson was born. When I was a kid — a little kid, because my parents were, well, permissive — I liked him well enough on The Tonight Show. Unlike the adults who watched the show, I liked it more when there were guest hosts. Two of my favorites were David Letterman and David Brenner. But I thought that Carson was funny. I enjoyed watching his show. Of course, I remember thinking that Bob Hope specials were so funny and when I’ve had a chance to see them as an adult, I’ve been horrified. (The movies are just fine.)

But Carson did tell one of the funniest jokes I have ever heard. It involves our current governor who just so happens to have been our governor then. In case you didn’t know it, Brown had a reputation for being, well, very California. People referred to him as “Governor Moonbeam.” Having told you that, I will just quote from last year’s birthday post:

The Democratic National Convention was going on. Jerry Brown had run for president and he came in a distant third. But he was still an important presence at the convention. Carson said (more or less), “A reporter ask Brown if it bothered him that a lot people thought he was a new age hippy. And Brown responded, ‘Well, you give good karma out, you get good karma back.'” Okay, that’s a solid joke. But it died. Carson got nothing from the audience. So he ad libbed, “How about: he said it while meditating on ten pounds of raw liver?” I died. To this day, I think it is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. No one agrees with me. I guess you had to be there.

Carson started doing magic as a young man. He continued with it through college before thinking better of it. But he clearly never lost his interest as you could see on the show where he often booked magicians — often even good ones. And of course, there was my absolute favorite part of his show, Carnac the Magnificent. The best part of this clip is when Carnac says that he needs quiet and Ed McMahon says, “You’re getting a lot of it tonight.”

I could give you an overview of Carson’s rise to fame, but there really is nothing more boring than than the stories of people who worked in radio and the early days of television. It is always the same, “He did one thing here and then he moved and did a different thing there and then he was at yet another place doing yet another thing.” It ends with, “And in 1962, he reluctantly took over The Tonight Show.” And he did the show until 1992 when they gave it to Jay Leno. Leno, you may recall from the early days of Late Night With David Letterman. That was when Leno worked as a comedian. By the time he took over The Tonight Show, Leno was working in another medium that I could never quite figure out. Carson, on the other hand, could always make me laugh. Here’s a parody of Columbo that I rather like:

Happy birthday Johnny Carson!

American Revolutionary John Reed

Posted on 22 Oct 2014 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1887, the journalist John Reed was born. I suppose at this point, he is best known from the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds. But he really ought to be known for his firsthand account of the Russian revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. It was used as the blueprint to Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece, October: Ten Days That Shook the World. Reed died in Russia a year after the book was published in 1919. He was a hero of the early days of the Soviet Union and buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis with much pomp and circumstance.

Reed was a political radical and it is generally hard to separate his journalism from his activism. It is easy to dismiss him. The Soviet Union was hardly a bastion of freedom and equality even when he died. And under Joseph Stalin, whatever dream remained died forever. But given the excesses of capitalism through the time and increasing now, it is hard to see Reed in a bad light. I think the right path was the one we were on until about a half century ago: progressive income taxes, strong unions, a strong social safety net. These are the things that stop young idealists like Reed from thinking a workers’ revolution was necessary.

What I find most interesting about Reed is how he continues to fascinate people. He did lead an amazing life that is very much in keeping with his Romantic hero reputation. The film Reds didn’t much exaggerate what he did — including his treks between Russian and Finland. And he just happened to be at the center of the biggest political event in more than a century. And then he died young, still in the middle of it all. It’s impressive to me, because it is so different from any life that I could ever imagine living. And I’m fine with that.

Happy birthday John Reed!

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