Round The Table - Discuss

Round table? Yes, and a very large mahogany top with oak chairs. What for?

To discuss literature, arts, sciences, history, politics; debate, discourse or even dialectic. This thread is a whiteboard to post your musings, brain pickings, learning or to roll that idea you wanted to share. There is no ordained format or subsumption into any category. It is a canvas to pin discussions on current affairs, documentaries, films, books, anything you always wanted to discuss but could never find a mooring to anchor it.

 

Talking of tables - apart from ikea, two other spring to my mind - 'The Algonquin Table' and 'King Arthur's Table'

Wikipedia entry reads -

"The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country."

But why this crowd was convened? To those of you, who are familiar with humorists Alexander WoollCott and Dorothy Parker, will know what a typical setting it would have been, yes, you are assured to totter home holding your jawbone having dislocated it with unrestrained guffaws. To understand DP and AW, you need to understand how they write, sample quotes below -

- She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B [speaking of Katharine Hepburn]
- If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
- Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
- Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

- Dorothy Parker

- All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening.
- At 83 Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's.

- Alexander Woollcott

Acute and caustic wit! What makes these humorists scorned and savoured at the same time, something in that unabashed tone to see things the way they are!

Coming to the Arthurian legend, who was Arthur for all the castle, moats and dinners we associate him with. And of course that table! But what is special about Arthur's table? An early text of Arthurian legend depicts the table as round with no head/chairperson to dichotomize in rectangular models. The historic Arthur is probably someone who fought against the invading Saxons. Nothing much is known except for varying versions through Middle Ages on his valor and wizard Merlin. That table - oak, pine, teak, elm, or is it even wood, table?

Is this true - Arthur's table?

 

Ansuya,

This is my only way to get out of the torpor to learn something meaningful these days, and challenge to remember it! This journal is me thinking-out-aloud. It is a scribble pad, do doddle on it when ever you can ...tschuss

 

There is no topic here, only ramble (that too insane as someone has copyrighted the saner version). With all the hefts, hops, loops we will be taking, I'm sure you will be there to extricate me when I'm stuck and need that 'wise' hand. Good to see you here.

 

Not a minute in our life passes without cursing the tendrils of technology constricting our expression and freedom, distancing us from the idyllic rube lifestyle; or hear, walk amongst someone who does that. Is technology really that bad - anathema, the modern Lucifer and the ultimate destroyer? Or do we need to twist that prism we are viewing it to obscure the glare and see through that gleam?

What distinguishes Eric Whitacre from other young (and dashing) contemporary composers? His vision! To those who are not big fan of ballads, operas and symphony (neither am I) his pioneering work on synchronized music will firm those drooping ears.

Today apart from his production works, Eric is known for his brainchild project called 'Virtual Choirs'. When Eric received a video from his fan singing one of his compositions, it spurred him to initiate VC. Collecting, editing, synchronizing audio/video from thousands of fans he produced Virtual Choir 2.0 which is breath-taking to say the least.

Below are links to TED talks on incorporation of Virtual Choir. Truly amazing, inspirational, sublime! When technology meets music, like never before.

Video links

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong - YouTube (recommended full video)
Eric Whitacre: Virtual Choir Live - YouTube (watch from slider at 9:00 onwards)

Reference

Full story on Eric in wikipedia

As my friends tell me when they send emails (hoisted from the abyss in spam), if this cannot move you nothing will, I hate it , but I need to borrow this phrase this time from them and sign off saying -'If this video does not bolt upright your hair, nothing will'

 

Georgina,

Your name almost sounds like a maiden lept out of a poetry pastiche from Georgian era
the likes of D.H Lawrence and Walter De La Mare. Thanks for gracing this thread.

Even I wondered all those witty verses in e-cards were copied from great writers, unacknowledged lest their ghosts file a lawsuit for royalty. I recently saw one of the quotes floating in FB, hmm, you don't want to know the 'kilroy is here' cartoon with it.

Loved the liners! Thanks for sharing and I'll make sure my shoes are safely tucked in my over-sized under-used Vuitton, next time I hang out in a pub.

 

Biology! Yes that subject I used to creep and crawl away from. If you are one of the many who draw 'mitochondria' like a baby bassinet with safety bars and cross-section of 'skin' as an aquarium with barbels from a carp projecting from the glass, welcome to the club.

I realized the reason we hate something is either we don't understand or don't try to understand. As the learned say - Get down to the brass tacks! Basics! Only if someone had screamed louder, loud enough for my malleus, incus and stapes (middle ear) to send an amplified electric pulse to my brain to jolt the importance of biological sciences, I'd have been a different person today and my biology teacher would ..(still have been the same).

'Cell' - how much do we know about the building block DNA, Cell and what happens every millisecond of our life in the microscopic world of invasions, battles, triumph that dwarfs every Goliathic tale. Cunning, devious, surreptitious - enter the world of inimitable warfare.

The documentaries which assisted me to understand the functioning of human body and immune system are

BBC Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell - YouTube
Inside the living body - YouTube

The BBC documentary is one of the best animated educational program I've seen in recent times. And if you hanker for some more adventure, visit - Fantastic Voyage (1966)