The Saunterer

Katharine Whitehorn on Westerns

    Though you probably don’t understand cluster analysis, a method of mathematical statistics, its basic tenant (believe it or not) figures in Katharine Whitehorn’s remark about film Westerns:

    I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one Western you’ve seen the lot; but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.

    (Quoted from page 90 of The Essential “Journal of Popular Film & Television” Collection, edited by Gary R. Edgerton and Michael T. Marsdon. Routledge, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Katharine Whitehorn, click here. For images of or relating to Katharine Whitehorn, click here.

Gilbert Murray on appreciating life

    Life, Gilbert Murray correctly sensed, is nothing unless we appreciate it:

    If life is to be enriched and ennobled, you must first of all have an appreciation of life. A man who refuses to feel and enjoy life destroys it at its very heart.

    (Quoted from page 24 of The Rise of the Greek Epic, by Gilbert Murray. Oxford University Press, 1934.)
    For a brief biography of Gilbert Murray, click here. For images of or relating to Gilbert Murray, click here.

John Powell on movies as an emotion machine

    John Powell tells how movies trigger emotions:

    Movies take us on emotional journeys, so much so that the psychologist E. S. Tan calls film “an emotion machine.” Unlike moods, emotions require a trigger, and films give us plenty of emotional triggers: joy at the reunion of a mother and a child, fear during a chase, relief after an escape. One way of looking at the combination of film and music is that the film provides a sequence of events to get emotional about, and the music deepens your emotional experience. Even when the action on the screen has no emotional content, music can be used to trigger an emotional response. One study scanned the brains of a group of viewers as they watched an emotionally neutral film clip and found that if fearful or joyful music accompanied the clip, the appropriate emotion centers of the brain were triggered, but there was a minimal emotional response to the film without the music, or to the music without the film. This is very useful to filmmakers, since life (and therefore any film) is full of periods when the visual action is emotionally neutral. By using the right type of music, the director can tip us off that this walk to the shops is going to end tragically or romantically.

    (Quoted from page 103 of Why You Love Music by John Powell. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.)

    For a brief biography of John Powell, click here. For images of or relating to John Powell, click here.

Patrick Curry on human overpopulation

    Sustainability is a sham. Eliminating overpopulation is the only solution to most of what threatens the environment. Hear Patrick Curry in his August 12 2016 letter to the Times Literary Supplement, page 6:

    In the issue of July 15, Richard Betts reviews two books on climate change, and Harry Johnstone two books on global hunger. Both reviewers and, so far as I can tell, all four authors tiptoe around the biggest elephant in these rooms: human overpopulation.
    It is simply not true that capitalism is the only cause of the ecological crisis. Sheer human
numbers are a primary driver of crashing biodiversity and mass extinctions, which Betts
rightly puts alongside anthropogenic climate change, as well as being directly implicated in
the demand for energy underlying the latter. As for global hunger, Johnstone seems to believe
that “enough food for all” is a plausible slogan, but it only takes a sufficiently high number of
“all” for it to become a fantasy. And we are already there, or—in terms of long-term
sustainability—well past it.
    Even Norman Borlaug described the Green Revolution (itself based on oil) as merely buying time for us to reduce our population, and that has not happened. The refusal to admit and
address it as a genuine problem is one reason.
    The organization Population Matters, supported by patrons such as Sir David Attenborough and Jane Goodall, does what it can. The silence in these reviews, however, remains far too typical. Apparently motivated by a fear of being called racist or misogynist, overpopulation denial shows a disgraceful lack of honesty and courage. It should be as untenable as climate change denial. A sign of true realism would be a comprehensive summit, comparable to last year’s in Paris on climate change, to initiate an urgent global programme, in the overdeveloped world just as much as the developing, to reduce human numbers as humanely and effectively as possible.

    For a brief biography of Patrick Curry, click here. For images of or relating to Patrick Curry, click here.

Rétif de la Bretonne on a difference between the young and the old

    Perhaps Rétif de la Bretonne has here put his finger on the reason that art museums appeal more to old than young people:

    The heart of youth is reached through the senses: the senses of age are reached through the heart.

    (Quoted from page 145 of A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness, by J. De Finod. D. Appleton and Company, 1903.)
    For a brief biography of Rétif de la Bretonne, click here. For images of or relating to Rétif de la Bretonne, click here.

Marjorie Ingall on how to solve society’s worst problems

    Here’s how: Exchange all the incompetent mothers for Jewish mothers. In reviewing Marjorie Ingall’s book Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children, Jennifer Bleyer writes in The New York Times Book Review, August 28, 2016, page 8:

    On the value of independence, she points out that the ancient practice of a bar mitzvah at age 13—whatever its glitzy evolution in the New World—is to publicly announce that a kid is not a “wee, unreliable, undependable, footloose-and-fancy-free child anymore. The family stands before the community saying, ‘Look! We have made an accountable human being!’” On the value of discipline, she explains that the Hebrew word for sin, chet, is an archery term that means “missing the mark,” and extrapolates that Jewish parenting has commonly been about warmly but firmly guiding children to gain the self-control, self-motivation and sense of responsibility they need to hit their marks, whatever they may be, and face the consequences when they don’t.

        Apparently Jewish mothers also have the good sense to have few children. Loads of children would so stretch them they wouldn’t have enough time to be good Jewish mothers. We suggest that a better world starts with smaller families, one or at most two children, followed by mothering guided by the precepts of Jewish mothers.

    For a brief biography of Marjorie Ingall, click here. For images of or relating to Marjorie Ingall, click here.
    For a brief biography of Jennifer Bleyer, click here. For images of or relating to Jennifer Bleyer click here.

Eliane Elias on what mothers ought to be

    Damnable it is that the world’s mothers go in for quantity of children rather than concentrating their finances on having one or two and raising them to be quality. Eliane Elias tells of her mother:

    Well, the person who was really supportive, who noticed my talent from a young age, I mean besides my teachers, was my mother. The music comes from her side of the family. She created an environment for me to be able to try and do what I wanted to do with music. She sought the best teachers and went after the best programs for me to learn and grow, and made her home a welcoming environment for me to practice, to receive musicians to rehearse and to do whatever I felt I wanted to do with music. It was unusual. I was very different than the other kids. I had a very different way of looking at life and my interests still continue to be quite different now from most women.

    (Quoted from page 63 of Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz, by Chris Becker. Beckeresque Press, 2015.)
    To hear the pleasant singing of Eliane Elisa, click here.
    For a brief biography of Eliane Elias, click here. For images of or relating to Eliane Elias, click here.

Jonathan Swift on when and when not to try to reason with a person

    Whenever people growing up are indoctrinated into beliefs, no amount of reasoning is likely to undo it. Reasoning may only shift ideas that were acquired by reasoning. As Jonathan Swift put it:

    You do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into.

    Expect religion to be around forever.

    (Quoted from page 31 of “Why Is Religion Natural?,” by Pascal Boyer. Page 25 of the March/April 2004 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.)
    For a brief biography of Jonathan Swift, click here. For images of or relating to Jonathan Swift, click here.
    For a work biography of Pascal Boyer, click here. For images of or relating to Pascal Boyer, click here.

James Wines on the difference between cities in Italy and in the U. S.

    A planner of public spaces, James Wines explains why visiting Italy from the U.S. is so prized:

    Those Renaissance and Baroque guys knew about the value of sunlight, creating light and shadow. Most public buildings, it just glances off the surface and that’s about it. I try to be as natural as possible. In Rome, everywhere you go, there is someplace to sit. Here, landscape is too contrived, it looks as cold and hard as the pavement itself. If people look good to each other in public space, they are much more likely to use it. You just activate them enough so they’re having enough fun that they’re smiling and active and engaged.

    (Quoted from page F6 of the 21 July 2016 issue of The New York Times.)
For a brief biography of James Wines, click here. For images of or relating to James Wines, click here.

Groucho Marx was one of the first calling for saner automobile design

    Groucho Marx wrote the president of the Chrysler Corporation the following letter dated December 1, 1954:

Dear Mr. Colbert:

    My mother always told me that if I had anything of importance to discuss, to go to the top.
    Each year the motor manufacturers hammer home the idea of more horsepower. I realize a reasonable amount of power is necessary, but I think it would be much smarter if emphasis were placed on safety rather than on additional speed. Perhaps the ads next year should read, “prettier, faster and safe.” I also think that if a device could be installed on the carburetor (I understand there are such things) that would eliminate the belching of carbon monoxide through the city streets, the Chrysler Corporation could create an enormous amount of good will, particularly in big cities where the carbon monoxide problem is especially acute.
    Every morning the front page reports of people killed in auto accidents. A good percentage of these fatalities could be eliminated if the motorist had a reasonable amount of protection. The average car driver in a modern automobile is a sitting duck. There is nothing to protect him. The records show he would be far safer on a battlefield.
    Your new cars look good, but the fact of the matter is that all the new cars look good, and I firmly believe that the first automobile company that starts stressing safety instead of speed will win far more than its share of the business.
Sincerely yours,
Groucho Marx

    (Quoted from pages 170-171 of The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Grouch Marx. Simon and Schuster, 1967.)
    For a brief biography of Groucho Marx, click here. For images of or relating to Groucho Marx, click here.