Old-Man Project

Ann Althouse has an intriguing post up this morning which starts with a quote from a recent article by John McPhee in the New Yorker.  She remarks that it is part of:

. . . a collection of "saved-up, bypassed, intended pieces of writing as an old-man project, the purpose of which is never to end" — modeled on Mark Twain's "old-man project," his autobiography.

Althouse concludes:

McPhee's idea of the "old-man project" is that it's a way to stay alive, so it's not just long and sprawling. It's impossible to finish. That's the idea. I get it. It's like blogging. 

I get it too.

The Value Of Useless Knowledge

Happy New Year!

And what better way to start the new year than with a reminder of the value of useless knowledge?

If in retrospect we try to assess the influences, academic and personal, that shaped Erwin Panofsky’s mind, I think we must beware of seeing him as a man nurtured by the “great books” or by the works of the “great masters” only. On the contrary, it was the curriculum-shunned texts, often written in a language either intentionally obscure or outright abstruse, that he taught us to appreciate as true supports of our humanistic studies. “Who has read Hisperica famina?” he might ask members of his privatissimum. “Are you familiar with Lycophron’s Alexandra? Do you understand the significance of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus? Of Hiob Ludolph’s Assyrian studies? Of Kepler’s Somnium?” And when we shook our heads, he might add, “Gentlemen, you have yet to discover the value of useless knowledge.”

• William S. Heckscher, “Erwin Panofsky: A Curriculum Vitae,” Reprinted by the Department of Art and Archaeology from the Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, volume XXVIII, number 1, 1969, p. 8:

Since coming across Panofsky’s admonition, I’ve tried to keep it in mind, ironically finding it to be useful advice.

A German-born art historian, Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), spent most of his academic career in the U.S. after the Nazis terminated his appointment at the University of Hamburg.  Joining the faculty at the new Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton he became friends with colleagues Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli (who discovered the Pauli exclusion principle, which is different than the principle by which Paulie was excluded).

 
Panofsky’s most important work is reportedly Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939). I have not read it.

I'm Back!

Things are settling down at the new THC HQ so hoping to get back on a relatively frequent posting schedule.

One Thousand Posts

With tonight's nationwide celebration of the 1,000th post on Things Have Changed since it started in April of 2012, THC felt it appropriate to make this a post about itself.

THC thanks all of you who've taken the time to read any of these posts.

We also thought we'd take the time to review some of the essential background of Things Have Changed:

The Official Policy Of This Blog as explained by Mr Jimmy Stewart and friends.

The origin of The Name Of The Blog (our alternative title was Brilliant Mistake)

The Value of Useless Knowledge and the legacy of that crazy party animal, Erwin Panofsky.

Most Popular Posts 2012

We'll finish up the series with the ten most popular posts from the first year of THC:

1.  It remains by far the most popular post since this blog started, continuing to draw new readers:  One Hit Wonders 1964-68.

2.  Sly Stallone strikes again!  The review of The Expendables 2 includes our selections in the following award categories: Most implausible plot point; Best cameo; Hardest to guess if there is any difference between the actor on and off screen; Most difficult to understand actor; and Best sunglasses.

3.  On the evening of July 5, 1954 Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios for his first recording session.  The result was That's All Right.  You can learn the story behind what happened that night.

4. Homer Simpson's Paradox.  Woo hoo!  Closely related to Simpson's Paradox which once you are aware of it appears everywhere.

5.  A cable network's decision to fund and broadcast Oliver Stone's love poem to Joseph Stalin prompted this rant: Showtime's Agitprop

6.  Also about Joe Stalin but from a different perspective is one of the greatest novels ever written; Life And Fate. 

7.  THC's parody of a New York Times story apparently hit the mark. Did You See The NY Times Frontpage Story On Jon Corzine?

8.  Larry & Mark's Excellent Adventure is the tale of two old guys wandering around a Civil War battlefield.

9. All Possess Alike Liberty Of Conscience.  George Washington's 1790 letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island.  As relevant today as it was when written.

10. Perhaps some came looking for vacation rentals? Villas Of Ravello proved popular as have all of THC's Amalfi Coast posts.

Most Popular Posts 2013

Following up on the Popular Posts 2014, THC went back and looked at the results for 2013.  Here's the Top Ten:

1.  A Falling Of Fortresses: The Schweinfurt Raids.  This was a surprise to THC but it was #1 by a large margin.  The tale of the daring US Air Force raids in late 1943 on German ball-bearing manufacturing plants which resulted in the loss of so many bombers that it led to a complete rethinking of the American aerial assault on Germany.

2.  THC's review of US census data from 1860 in Civil War Demographics got a lot of attention.

3.  The post on FDR's most important wartime aide: Who Was Harry Hopkins?  A controversial figure even today.  THC remains an admirer.

4.  Glad to see that THC's favorite American politician from the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was also popular with readers: Sam Houston: The Raven.

5.  Yes!  The Steely Dan Guitar Solo Series was a big hit.  You can buy a thrill.

6.  THC reviews a movie he refuses to see.  Find out why: The Company You Keep.

7.  Tarawa is where the United States began its offensive in the Central Pacific in November 1943.  The cost we paid in lives shocked the military and the public.

8.  Giuseppe Lampedusa's classic novel, The Leopard, portrays the decline of Sicilian nobility during the 19th century Risorgimento.  Beautifully written and recreating a melancholic world coming to an end.

9.  THC's recommended music to stay awake by when you're driving at 2am.  Take a look at the playlist for Late Night Driving Music.

And we had a tie for #10:

The battle between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones for AM-radio dominance from late 1964 to early 1967 was recounted in Beatles/Stones Face-Off.

THC's favorite Baseball Nickname series rounds out the list.  The following nicknames did not make the final cut:

Ducky-Wucky Medwick, The Yankee Clipper, Hit Em Where They Ain't, The Flying Dutchman, Goose Gossage, Mudcat Grant, Catfish Hunter, Double X, The Mad Hungarian, Spaceman Bill Lee, The Bird, The Big Hurt, The Big Unit, The Say Hey Kid, Oil Can Boyd, The Peerless Leader, Little Eva, The Georgia Peach, The Big Train, The Fordham Flash, The Reading Rifle, The Wild Horse Of The Osage, Poosh 'Em Up, Big Poison, Little Poison, Boom Boom Beck, Dizzy, Daffy, Bobo, Satchel, Stuffy, Gabby, Frenchy, Minnie, Pie, Yaz, Maz, Bucketfoot Al, The Man, The Splendid Splinter, Hondo, Stretch, Daddy Wags, The Toy Cannon, Sudden Sam, Hammerin' Hank, The Wizard of Oz, Pudge, Cool Papa and Pietro Redlight District Distillery Interests

Most Popular Posts of 2014

Thanks for reading!

THC has compiled this list of the 15 most popular posts from last year (in the course of which he also looked at 2013 and 2012 and will do Top Ten lists for those years in subsequent posts).  In some cases they've matched his favorites, in others he was surprised by the results.  And away we go:

1.   There must be a lot of Sly Stallone fans out there because this review of The Expendables 3 topped the charts.  Of course it was a pretty good movie.

2.  Being drowned by a wall of rapidly flowing molasses proved intriguing to many: Great Boston Molasses Flood.

3.  THC didn't realize till recently that the 1981 hit Tainted Love was actually a cover of a very good 1964 original.

4.  The story of my grandfather Louis and his voyage on the RMS Republic proved popular.

5.  THC's imaginary combination of the careers of Dazzy Vance and Sandy Koufax in Dazzy Koufax (with references to Van Lingle Mungo and The Big Lebowski) was his most read baseball post and the related Gibson Koufax Marichal Mashup was #12. 

6.  Eddie Coyle's Friend: George V Higgins got some attention.  THC is very happy with that.

7.  The review of Bill Bryson's book One Summer: America 1927 which featured the fates of the aviators that year (Flyboys) was of considerable interest as was a related post which finished at #8, TWA Flight 599, about the fateful 1932 plane crash that killed Knute Rockne and transformed aviation safety.

8.  See #7

9.  Looks like a lot of folks enjoy the guitar playing of The Edge of U2 and maybe some want to learn to play just like him!

10.  Is Christopher Walken The Burt Bacharach Of Acting?  You'll need to read the post, if you haven't already, in order to find out.

11.  The ancient Roman city of Dura Europos on the Euphrates piqued reader's interest.

12.  See #5

13.  A lot of the readers went out to the ballgame with us on Ballpark Tour 2014.

14.  Many peeked at THC's list of his Favorite Songs of 2014.  Wonder if they agreed?

15. A very fast riser in the charts is the recent post Top 5 Reasons We Ended The Cuba Embargo.

One Year Later

One year ago today was the first Things Have Changed post and 410 posts and 26,015 pageviews later THC is still at it!

Thanks to all of you readers and commenters - except for you spam bots (you know who you are!).

This year we'll occasionally repost some of THC's favorite posts on their anniversary dates (hmm, if we do that all the time THC wouldn't need to write anything new this year).  In fact, here is the very first post.

THC also pledges to further enhance the quality and quantity of third-person self-references.  For that purpose we have retained the coaching services of Mr Ricky Henderson.  THC asked Mr Henderson to introduce himself to readers and he's requested that we pass on his response:

"Ricky doesn't need any introduction.  Everybody knows what Ricky is capable of."

As a reminder, THC does take requests for posts.  If not for faithful reader JS we would not have had the pleasure of learning about the Knights Hospitallers (see The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of).

Finally, we are announcing that after lengthy deliberations, THC's Board of Directors has decided not to amend the current Official Policy Of This Blog despite numerous pleas to improve the accuracy of THC posts.  As a reminder (and warning) we are reposting that policy:

The Value Of Useless Knowledge

A sentiment enthusiastically endorsed by this blog!  From Laudator Temporis Acti [Official THC Motto: "Prowling The Internet So You Don't Have To"]:

William S. Heckscher, "Erwin Panofsky: A Curriculum Vitae," Reprinted by the Department of Art and Archaeology from the Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, volume XXVIII, number 1, 1969, p. 8:

If in retrospect we try to assess the influences, academic and personal, that shaped Erwin Panofsky's mind, I think we must beware of seeing him as a man nurtured by the "great books" or by the works of the "great masters" only. On the contrary, it was the curriculum-shunned texts, often written in a language either intentionally obscure or outright abstruse, that he taught us to appreciate as true supports of our humanistic studies. "Who has read Hisperica famina?" he might ask members of his privatissimum. "Are you familiar with Lycophron's Alexandra? Do you understand the significance of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus? Of Hiob Ludolph's Assyrian studies? Of Kepler's Somnium?" And when we shook our heads, he might add, "Gentlemen, you have yet to discover the value of useless knowledge."

And now THC will lay some useless knowledge on you.

Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), whom I'd never heard of before running across the reference above, was a German art historian who spent most of his academic career in the U.S. after the Nazis terminated his appointment at the University of Hamburg when they came to power in 1933.

In 1935 he was invited to join the faculty of the new Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton where he became friends with physicists Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli (see, "Is this really my lot, Wolfgang Pauli I'm not" by The Cambodian Brothers (1978)).
 
Panofsky's most important work was Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939).

Navigating The Blog

I've recently added some features to Things Have Changed to make it easier to navigate and find stuff.

On the left-side there are two new features at the top:

The first is Critical Info which contains key posts about the blog, including this one.

Below it is Posts By Category.  If you are interested in finding all posts on a specific topic, or a post which you can't otherwise find but know the subject matter you can click on the relevant category.  About 95% of the posts to date are labeled in one or more of the listed categories.

The right-side also has two new features located about halfway down the column:

The first is Some Of My Favorite Posts which links a number of posts, mostly from the first months of the blog, that I particularly like.

The second is Most Popular Posts, showing the five posts with the most pageviews.  One-Hit Wonders (1964-68) is by far the most popular post.  I'll occasionally update this section.


Also, below is the text of the May 3 post with additional navigation information.

Had questions from some folks who don't read many blogs.  Key things to know:

The blog looks different depending on whether you are viewing it on a PC/Tablet or a Mobile Device.

Using This Blog

Had questions from some folks who don't read many blogs.  Key things to know:

The blog looks different depending on whether you are viewing it on a PC/Tablet or a Mobile Device.