JD Salinger

"I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
- J.D. Salinger

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L'educazione di Richard Feynman

"No pressure. Just lovely, interesting discussions."

Trascrizione dell'audio inglese...

My father had taught me to notice things, and one day I was playing with what we call an express wagon, which is a little wagon which has a railing around it, for children to play with - they can pull it around. It had a ball in it, I remember this, it had a ball in it. And I pulled the wagon, and I noticed something about the way the ball moved. So I went to my father and said:
“Say, pop, I noticed something: when I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, it rushes to the back of the wagon. And when I’m pulling along and I suddenly stop, the ball rushes to the front of the wagon. Why is that?”
And he said:
“Nobody knows. The general principle is that things that are moving try to keep moving, and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard. This tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why it’s true.”
Now, that’s a deep understanding. He doesn’t just give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something, and knowing something. Which I learned very early.
He went on saying:
“If you look closely, you’ll find the ball does not rush to the back of the wagon. It’s the back of the wagon that you’re pulling towards against the ball, but the ball stands still… Or as a matter of fact from the friction starts to move forward, really, and doesn’t move back.”
So I ran back to the little wagon, and set the ball up again, and pulled the wagon from under, and looking sideways I saw that indeed he was right. The ball never moved backwards in the wagon, when I pulled the wagon forward. It moved back relative to the wagon, but relative to the sidewalk it was moving forward a little bit, and the wagon caught up with it.
So that’s the way I was educated by my father. With those kind of examples and discussions.
No pressure, just lovely, interesting discussions.

Commento di un utente di Youtube:
How can you have a child like Feynman? Be a cool father like his was.

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Little Tornado

Little Tornado

Aimee Mann

Little tornado

Bane of the trailer park
Lifting houses
To leave your mark

Little tornado
Noah can build his ark
But he will never disembark

Make it go faster, Baby go faster
Make it go twice the speed
Of you and me

Oh, no, no we don't
No we don't know

ascolta mp3  qui

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Esploratori

Arte di ascoltare e mondi possibili - Come si esce dalle cornici di cui siamo parte
di Marianella Sclavi 
"Un buon ascoltatore è un esploratore di mondi possibili. I segnali più importanti per lui sono quelli che si presentano alla coscienza come al tempo stesso trascurabili e fastidiosi, marginali e irritanti, perché incongruenti con le proprie certezze."
Le 7 regole dell'arte di ascoltare

e ancora...

A una spanna da terra - Una giornata di scuola negli Stati Uniti e in Italia e i fondamenti di una metodologia umoristica
"Perché lo stile umoristico di osservazione funzioni, bisogna partire con una certa leggerezza, molta curiosità e una conoscenza di prima mano (per immersione) dei problemi che vogliamo indagare. E specialmente bisogna stare attenti ai passi falsi. Non per evitarli, ma al contrario per osservarli con particolare cura: in una prospettiva umoristica, sono la strada maestra della conoscenza. (...) L'ironia dice una cosa per intendere il suo contrario e mira contro qualcun altro, lo humour demistifica e mette sia gli altri che noi stessi nel quadro..."

(durante una riunione di classe, al Romolo e Remo:)
prof.ssa Clerici (storia dell'arte): "Io oscillo fra momenti di carognaggine e abissi di bontà. Non uno che, interrogato, di fronte a una figura che deve decodificare, invece di mettersi a raccontare cose preistoriche, si fermi un momento a chiedersi: 'Cosa ne faccio?'..."
Marianella Sclavi: "Cosa ne faccio è una domanda 'ingenua'. In questa classe nessuno fa mai domande ingenue. Le domande sono formulate per lo più in modo tale da avere come obiettivo principale non quello di ottenere delle risposte ma quello di informare l'interlocutore che chi parla sa molte cose, è parte di un'élite culturale..."

La signora va nel Bronx 
... come si vive, cosa si pensa "dall'altra parte della barricata".

Valutare con umorismo
intervento al convegno "La bravura di ogni giorno"
"Alcuni anni fa mi hanno invitato a Torino a fare una relazione alla CGIL-scuola, sulla valutazione nella scuola. Io, nella mia ignoranza, ho preparato un po' di materiale, sono andata lì, la sala era piena di insegnanti e ho cominciato a parlare di valutazione: dove per me era assolutamente ovvio che 'valutazione nella scuola' voleva dire valutazione degli insegnanti. Le facce di queste persone, man mano che parlavo, diventavano sempre più verdi, i loro corpi sempre più rigidi: era come se io li attaccassi. Tant'è che a un certo punto mi sono interrotta e ho detto: "Dovreste proprio vedere le vostre facce!".

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J&D

JACK

Jack and Diane   di John Cougar Mellencamp

Jack and Diane nel Backup Pack di Andrew Vachss

...
Se aveste mai dormito con un gatto

o con un cane adagiato sopra al grembo,

ora sapreste che la metamorfosi è possibile -

che uomo e gatto e cane sono

entità volatili cangianti: nel sonno

condiviso scompaiono le stinte

gerarchie tra cavalieri e fanti.

Franco Marcoaldi, Animali in versi (Einaudi)

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What Do Kids Know?

"Noi possiamo chiudere col passato, ma il passato non chiude con noi."

Magnolia (1998)
scritto e diretto da Paul Thomas Anderson

Secrets of Magnolia - Simboli e riferimenti nel film
Mappa dei protagonisti
La battuta più famosa di Tom Cruise
La video-recensione di un ragazzino americano su Youtube

"I like to think of this film as a... now don't laugh at me... as a twizzler.  A twizzler has many strands. Each one is a different story, and then you ravel them all together to make one giant picture. Uh! You've got to watch this."
La recensione di Roger Ebert sul Chicago Sunday Times
"After we have felt the pain of these people, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know."

La recensione più bella...

Breaking of the Cycle, 14 January 2003
Author: aerives (aerives@caltech.edu)
utente del sito http://www.imdb.com/

I spend my life analyzing patterns in DNA, and I believe I fell in love with Magnolia for the embedded patterns and well-placed logic that organizes this gorgeous superstructure of a movie. In the introduction the narrator recounts instances of eerie co-incidences. Throughout the main story, the narrator suggests to the viewer that there is more to reality than "just" co-incidences. The events we witness are not just random co-incidences because there is a logic behind them: sometimes it is the past echoing into the future; sometimes it is the echo of eternal archetypes, recreated by ever-present circumstances. When watching the movie, consider the young black kid's words in the opening line of his rap, "Presence - with a double ass meaning".

Coincident echoes reverberate throughout Magnolia. Featuring four separate "kid" stars, Stanley, Donnie, Jack aka Frank and Claudia, the movie absolutely resonates with the same story played across multiple octaves. The story is cyclical in nature with snapshots of different parts of the cycle captured in a single day. We have seen the same incorporation of the cycle-of-life theme in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie nights", in which the cyclic rise, fall and replacement of a pornstar echoes the same story found in the classic "All about Eve" (1950), which stars Bette Davis and chronicles the cyclical nature of a rising, scheming theater star. In the constant self-reference of P.T. Anderson's Magnolia, this theme is expressed by the elder gay barfly, "...just a spoke in the wheel....Things go round 'n round..."

But Magnolia recounts the cycle and then transcends it as the four Buddhas-to-be reach their personal epiphanies and learn to break the numbing cycle of uncaring, un-sentient living. Self-referentially, the movie tells us that showbiz, both the formally staged variety and our everyday masquerades, is an echo of real life; and real life is an echo of the past. Both the narrator, the characters Jimmy and Donnie all remind us "The book says 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'" And Jack's "Seek and Destroy" persona is all about attempting to eradicate the past. But the past is ever-present and very alive as it echoes throughout the movie. The falling frogs are echoed in the falling scubaman, both scooped up in freakish storms/accidents and dropped on a city full of people/burning trees. All these echoes are echoed by all the people and frogs physically falling everywhere in the movie. Are we constantly condemned to fall into the past?

The movie is clearly based on a super-symmetrical blueprint carried in P.T. Anderson's head. Consider the two main parallel stories: Jack/Claudia, respectively, are the son/daughter of Earl Partridge/Jimmy Gator, two showbiz philanderers dying of cancer and their passive wives Lily Partridge/Rose Gator (flower/animal). The two fathers Earl and Jimmy are desperately seeking to reconnect with their children, Jack and Claudia, each of which deeply resents their own father for past wrongs. Despite the kid's loathing of their fathers, Earl's womanizing is echoed in Jack's systematic womanizing, while Jimmy's child abuse is echoed in Claudia's systematic drug abuse. The cycle appears to continue with the present repeating the past. Will they break the cycle?

The two grown-up "kids" are echoed by the present whizkid Stanley Spector and the past whizkid Donnie Smith, both of who are or were star's of the TV game show, "What do kid's know?". That these four characters share an affinity outside of the other well-drawn characters is supported by a super-symmetry, which organizes and informs us about the four kids. First, all four kids are struggling with childhood's stolen or being stolen by their parents: Stanley's obsessive and driving father, Donnie's greedy exploitative parents, Claudia's abusive father and passive mother and Jack's absent and uncaring father.

More symmetries abound. For example, the senses: Claudia's nose, constantly snorting cocaine (smell); Stanley Spector's eyes constantly reading books (sight); Jack's ear constantly pressed to his cell phone listening to his many handlers (hearing); Donnie's constant obsession with his teeth and his eventual mouthful of blood (taste). Another symmetry, each of the four kids is on a stage: the withdrawn Claudia resides in her living room in front of the TV/stereo entertainment center; Stanley spends his time at the TV studio; Donnie spends his time at the public bar; Jack at the auditorium. The character's symmetries are sometimes forced but clear: Stanley pees on himself, Donnie falls with his head in the toilet and Claudia's noted use of the phrase "piss and shit" is only said by one other character, Jack, her symmetrical counterpart. Last, each of the kid's is echoed in a different medium: we see scenes of both past and present whizkids, Stanley and Donnie, on the TV; we see pictures of Frank TJ Mackie in the porn magazines, we see Claudia's self-portrait as a girl in the painting "It did happen". The past thus manifests itself both physically as well as psychologically and we can appreciate this from four different angles.

What do kids know? With their epiphanies breaking at various parts of the movie, they all seem to reach a similar conclusion: How to break the cycle of uncaring, mechanical living. KINDNESS: Consider Stanley's admonishment to his father "Dad, you have to be nicer to me". HONESTY: Consider Claudia's plea to Policeman Jim, whose name echoes her father's name, "I'll tell you everything and you tell me everything and maybe we can get through all the piss and shit and lies that kill other people..." Jack's COURAGE in facing his father's death and stepping up to take care of Linda, thus echoing the care he gave his mother, Lily. Donnie's LOVE: "I really do have love to give..." Of the four epiphanies, none is more touching than Claudia's unexpected and knowing smile directly at the viewer in the last second of the movie. What do kids know? They know that "...it's not going to stop 'till you wise up."

Wise Up  di Aimee Mann, dal film "Magnolia" (video)

Save Me  di Aimee Mann, dal film "Magnolia" (mp3)

commenti da blog e forum di cinema:
an emotional trekking / relentless, unhypocritical, unashamed and timeless / kids know more than people think / antidote to modern cynicism / we are part of something greater / Curring has a problem with listening /Magnolia is reality and reality is hard to take

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Un giro al museo

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

Grazie a(Valeria) del  forum di Fahrenheit

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