Those who've left the party

It's interesting that―while one group is coldblooded and the other warm-blooded―reptiles and birds share a common lineage, since they're all sauropsids. What a lot of people don't realize is that as mammals we also used to have an analogous cousin class. We're all synapsids, and the surviving synapsids (i.e. mammals) have warm blood. But there used to be a whole slew of coldblooded synapsids. In fact, they pretty much dominated the land before the End-Permian extinction. Which was some extinction. 

If the non-mammalian synapsids were still around they'd be easily confused with reptiles, probably. They were put on the back foot during the Triassic period, and obviously never recovered. And here we are now. Life is full of odd reversals, some of which take place over a longer time than we can wrap our heads around.

My front pages

Up until very recently I was unlikely to read a book I'd already read. There were exceptions, of course. But my feeling was that there was a lot of stuff out there that I'd like if only I discovered it, and more was being published all the time.

I'm sure there are still undiscovered treasures out there, and some of them I'll get to, although I'm not in a hurry. As for new things coming out, there's probably some quality there too, but...Well, it seems to be an uphill battle to get something interesting and/or original out. So I'm selective on that front. 

As far as nonfiction goes I'm always trying to learn new things, whether for research or just something to think about. And I'm more open to rereading old favorites now. They let me focus on what's important to me.

The lack of the shock of

 

One conclusion I took from reading Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New is that avant-garde envelope pushing is not a sustainable phenomenon. The period from the late nineteenth century to the middle twentieth saw a lot of bold art movements, starting with Impressionism and winding up with Abstract Expressionism, with Pop Art being a kind of denouement. This was something of a result of historical circumstances. You had a conservative art establishment at the beginning, sure to take scandalous notice of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist innovations. At the same time it was an artistically literate crowd. The fact that the Bourbons' collections had been made public after the French Revolution helped a lot here. 

The art world wasn't as innocent as all that for long, but there was still enough pent-up energy to sustain itself for 80-100 years. But that couldn't go on forever. Successive generations couldn't have the same impact, even if they had brilliant artists among them, because it was already understood that they were free to do anything.

The above picture is by a young painter (born 1993) named Louis Fratino. It made enough of an impression on me that I looked him up. His Wiki page says that he's part of something called "New Queer Intimism" which is "a contemporary art movement inspired by the immediacy and colorwork of Impressionism paired with the intimacy of everyday queer life." And I like some of what I've seen of his painting, but...Fernand Leger and Henri Matisse would have been about as shocked by his style as by his being gay, which is to say not at all.

Which is to say that this "New Queer Intimism" has some talented people associated with it, but the term is by definition tied to aspects of identity more than the process or intent of the work itself. With or without labels, the most rewarded artists of our time have gone all the way back to being Neoclassical. Not, as Jerry and George would say, that there's anything wrong with that.

Hands down the most remarkable blog post you will read this year

Wikipedia's neutrality policies are Swiss cheese at this point, for reasons anyone could have predicted. Still, it's style guide does raise some interesting topic. One is the matter of puffery, which they also call "peacock terms." There are words and phrases whose only conceivable purpose is to insist on the greatness of their subject, bypassing the reader's or listener's judgment. 

Case in point: Before about 2015, I can't remember anyone using the word "iconic." Oh, sure, the word existed, but it was basically left in the box. Then at some point everything became iconic this and iconic that, adding exactly nothing to most of the sentences affected.

Vulpes

 

Foxes are even less imposing than your average dog. Oh, they're more feral, and their teeth are no joke. Still, they're quite small and squishy. And their natural sound is somewhere between a meow and a bleat.

They're not wolves, in other words. They're in the same general family, but worlds away. Somehow they've found a niche, though. Aside from being cute―which of course they are―they're well enough adapted to survive millennia upon millennia.

You & I

Apple introduced the iMac in 1998. According to Steve Jobs, the lowercase "i" stood for "individual" and "inspire", among other things. Unstated but obvious was its connection to the capital "I", as in my self. Anyway, that was the start of "i" being at the head of Apple products.

A few years later, in 2005, YouTube was launched. Here the personal pronoun was undisguised. It's a proverbial tube, like what we call the TV set, but it's all about you.

There was a certain kind of individualist idealism at play here. Phony and patronizing, to be sure. But the technology had to be marketed and sold with the promise that it would empower you, raise all its users to the level of tycoons and princes.

That seems a long time ago now. Tech barons have taken to making Bond villain-like threats about how much their creations are going to destroy and make obsolete. Underneath, the attitude has always been "I'm more important than you." Now it's "I matter. My Tamagotchi matters. You do not."

New under the sun

Funny how words and phrases can shift on you.

Merriam-Webster dates the term "new wave" to 1960. They don't seem to have a reason to lie about that. For now I'm not going to go into the question of when Merriam does have reason to lie about something. But assuming this point of etymology to be accurate, the phrase dates to the time of the French Nouvelle Vague, i.e. Truffaut, Godard, etc.

Then there's new wave music. New wave rock became a current term in 1977 when it became apparent that punk itself wasn't going to make commercial inroads, at least not in America. It remained in use until about halfway through the 80s. Not necessarily referring to the same thing, though. I love Talking Heads and Elvis Costello. Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls are also fun. But the latter two were not doing what the former two did. The culture had changed, with language hard pressed to catch up.

"New wave" was used up to 1984 to describe new music. After that it faded out. But currently a lot of people assume that any popular music from the decade that wasn't rap, hair metal, or heartland rock must be new wave. Time monkeys with words and concepts too.