Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Indirections To A Better World The Zibaldone , or by full title Zibaldone of thoughts, is a personal journal which contains a large amount of notes written between 1817 and 1832 by Giacomo Leopardi. The title comes from the characteristic of literary composition, as a mixture of thoughts, like the namesake Emilian dish that consists of an amalgam of many different ingredients, and sometimes the term is used to describe a confused heap of people. Although the term was known even before, after the composition of Leopardi the term is used for annotation of notebooks or diaries of random thoughts. "Zibaldone" can also be used disparagingly for speeches or writings without logic, messy, made of heterogeneous ideas. In this original sense, commonplace books were collections of such sayings, such as John Milton's commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to include any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual.  

  Incidental Anecdotal Antidotes The individual’s memory of many surprising moments, of dawning comprehensions of an interrelated significance to be existant among a number of what had previously seemed to be entirely uninterrelated experiences, all of which remembered experiences engender the reasonable assumption of the possible existence of a total comprehension of the integrated significance, the meaning, of all experiences. R. Buckminster Fuller The mythic or iconic mode-of-awareness substitutes the multi-faceted for point-of-view. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Thanks to Richard Grove and Associates for the best interview with John Taylor Gatto.

Holonic Documentary Death, genius, the morality of slaves, deconstructing taxonomies, and more! I ran into this in a media magazine: years ago someone asked a kid whether he liked TV or radio better. He said radio because the pictures were better. (I think it must have been in the fifties when the radio had dramas and serials...not just doggerel music....but that's a guess.) Works for me. RE: a related story Posted by: davidg on Feb 9, 2008 6:57 PM Song Clip: G Love And The Special Sauce- This Ain't Living Thanks for the clip of the Technocracy spokesman to James Corbett, The Corbett Report Episode 217

Horse's Mouth Hypomnemata The hypomnemata is a special type of notebook used in ancient greek society by variety of common people such as tradesmen, philosophers, theologians, and students to keep personal records and formulate opinions about the experience of the self. This habitual type of personal notekeeping was coming into vogue in Plato's time (ca. 4th century BC) and represents one of western culture's earliest technological advancements to create a conscious logos. The hypomnemata constituted a material memory of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering these as an accumulated treasure for rereading and later meditation.

The March Of Folly It's modern to use history as a kind of closet in which we can rummage around, pull influences from different eras, and make them into collages or pastiches. People are doing this with music all the time. I hear it in, say, Christina Aguilera's new album, or in the music of Sufjan Stevens. from The Ballad of Henry Timrod By SUZANNE VEGA NYT Published: September 17, 2006 One can name all kinds of great men [sic] who were not very gifted. They acquired greatness ... all of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning first to construct the parts properly before daring to make a great whole. They allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. Friedrich Nietzsche …irregularity -- that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment -- is an essential part and characteristic of beauty. Charles Baudelaire

Diversified Portfolio From Winter at Zarathustra's House to God's Playroom, with many timely stops and starts between. The daily paper is a good example of a happening because everything that’s in it happens at the same moment. The dateline is the only organizing principle in a newspaper.  There is no connection between the items otherwise than the datelines. And if you take away the dateline from any newspaper whatever, you have a quite handsome surrealist poem. Marshall McLuhan, Contemplating Me Utterance alone can heal the ailing spirit. Irving Layton

We Could Play Today! Deconstructing work, school, development-- and much more! We assumed that nothing would be published from the very beginning. So the private world of my friends became the center of our artistic activities, rather than the public world of publishing, media, universities and literature. Allen Ginsberg SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In 1878, Thomas Edison perfected the phonograph, a machine that could record sounds and play them back. There had been some primitive prototypes before, but his version was a major improvement. And what were the first sounds to be immortalized on Edison's phonograph? The rush of the wind in the trees? A dramatic reading of the Song of Songs? The cries of a newborn infant? Nope. Edison recited the nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." When you make your own breakthrough in communication sometime soon, Scorpio, I hope you deliver a more profound and succulent message. Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology the poem...