Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (5)

Science is arguably one of the most pivotal disciplines we as humankind have at our disposal.  I am grateful to have had good grounding and practice in it, as I labored at my PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University.  It has a prominent place in my Theory of Algorithms and in The Tripartite Model in particular.  So, for this week's articles, I share my posts on Google+ about a household-name scientist and his not-so-household-name colleague and how their fateful collaboration staked a horrific pivot in human history.  I had posted these as a linear narrative, but here I thought I'd do so more (I hope) as a serial drama, that is, in five parts.

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Einstein and Szilárd were utterly shocked at the destructive application of their scientific work.

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Consequently they dedicated the rest of their lives for humanitarian, peaceful purpose.

Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (4)

Science is arguably one of the most pivotal disciplines we as humankind have at our disposal.  I am grateful to have had good grounding and practice in it, as I labored at my PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University.  It has a prominent place in my Theory of Algorithms and in The Tripartite Model in particular.  So, for this week's articles, I share my posts on Google+ about a household-name scientist and his not-so-household-name colleague and how their fateful collaboration staked a horrific pivot in human history.  I had posted these as a linear narrative, but here I thought I'd do so more (I hope) as a serial drama, that is, in five parts.

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Ironically Einstein was excluded from the Manhattan Project, while Szilárd was involved but tightly monitored.

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The US dropped A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack.

Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (3)

Science is arguably one of the most pivotal disciplines we as humankind have at our disposal.  I am grateful to have had good grounding and practice in it, as I labored at my PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University.  It has a prominent place in my Theory of Algorithms and in The Tripartite Model in particular.  So, for this week's articles, I share my posts on Google+ about a household-name scientist and his not-so-household-name colleague and how their fateful collaboration staked a horrific pivot in human history.  I had posted these as a linear narrative, but here I thought I'd do so more (I hope) as a serial drama, that is, in five parts.

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Szilárd feared that Nazi Germany was on track to figuring this out, too, and would create their own bomb.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

So he persuaded the more famous, more credible Einstein to pen a cautionary letter to the US President.

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What happened next, however, was a deadly turn in human history: The US launched the Manhattan Project...

Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (2)

Science is arguably one of the most pivotal disciplines we as humankind have at our disposal.  I am grateful to have had good grounding and practice in it, as I labored at my PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University.  It has a prominent place in my Theory of Algorithms and in The Tripartite Model in particular.  So, for this week's articles, I share my posts on Google+ about a household-name scientist and his not-so-household-name colleague and how their fateful collaboration staked a horrific pivot in human history.  I had posted these as a linear narrative, but here I thought I'd do so more (I hope) as a serial drama, that is, in five parts.

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Physicists bombarded the nucleus with alpha particles, and it wasn’t working. Szilárd came up with a brilliant alternative (rf. Part 2: Einstein's Equation of Life and Death).

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Szilárd thought neutrons, which had no electric charge, would not be deflected by the positively-charged nucleus.

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Szilárd expected his method to produce more neutrons, and thereby start massive chain reactions of energy release.

Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd (1)

Science is arguably one of the most pivotal disciplines we as humankind have at our disposal.  I am grateful to have had good grounding and practice in it, as I labored at my PhD in clinical psychology at Northwestern University.  It has a prominent place in my Theory of Algorithms and in The Tripartite Model in particular.  So, for this week's articles, I share my posts on Google+ about a household-name scientist and his not-so-household-name colleague and how their fateful collaboration staked a horrific pivot in human history.  I had posted these as a linear narrative, but here I thought I'd do so more (I hope) as a serial drama, that is, in five parts. 

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Leó Szilárd was a Hungarian-American physicist, who solved a problem that Albert Einstein thought was too impractical to solve.

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It was a startling discovery and an enigmatic equation to say a small amount of mass (m) could produce phenomenal energy (E), that is, because of the large figure that is the speed of light (c).

An atomic bomb of the 'Little Boy' type, which was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan

Szilárd figured out how to enable Einstein’s equation, and it led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb. 

Geeks-r-Cool (3) on Algorithms

For this week's blog fare, I share recent posts on Google+ which I titled Geeks-r-Cool Friday!

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Not familiar with Missy Elliott, but I am into algorithms.

Speaking of algorithms, here is the first introductory lecture on my conceptual framework.  Just to show how much I really am into algorithms.

Still can't get enough of algorithms? In his TED Talk, Kevin Slavin shows us how really cool they are!

Geeks-r-Cool (2) on Circuitry

For this week's blog fare, I share recent posts on Google+ which I titled Geeks-r-Cool Friday!

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This is how circuitry works, boys and girls.  Really, trust me.  Truth, Scout's honor.

Bell Labs technicians prepare the Telstar 1 communications satellite before its launching in 1962

Speaking of circuitry, I just read an awesome account of Bell Labs' innovative wizardry: Inventing the Future.

Geeks-r-Cool (1) on Wind Turbines

For this week's blog fare, I share recent posts on Google+ which I titled Geeks-r-Cool Friday!

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Don Quixote is ready to tilt at errant, not to mention creepy, wind turbines.

Speaking of Don Quixote, here is Brian Stokes Mitchell as the Man of La Mancha with his stirring rendition of a musical and literary classic. 

Art has Value

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the last of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto. 

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A talented artist friend

When I lived in Dubai, a Filipino friend invited me to his first solo exhibition.  His paintings were astounding, both in breadth (they were huge) and in theme (they were profound).  His creative talent wasn't narrowed to painting, but extended to photography, sculpting and performance.  At this exhibition, for instance, we all wondered where the hell he was.  Two hours into it, and he still hadn't shown up.  Then he arrived, wearing exactly what he wore in a sizable self portrait, including clown makeup, and pulling the same red wagon depicted in that photograph.  He was like the Pied Piper, as he snaked through the crowd, picking up odd things on the floor, and us opening up, making way for him, and regathering behind him to follow along.  It was a tour de force show.

I was equally astonished, however, at how much he low-balled the pricing of his pieces.  It was par for the course for a lot of Filipinos in Dubai, that they hardly saw their true worth and hardly demanded it.  They smiled at whatever pittance they received, because after all they were the happiest people in the world.  But being dead bottom on the salary scale in an Arabian Business survey was emblematic, I thought, of how people and companies took advantage of their low salary expectations and how Filipinos themselves reinforced it with their acceptance and passivity. 

On the face of it, my artist friend was the same.  So a few days later, I got together with him, and asked him point black: If someone were to offer him 10 - 20 times more than the pricing he had set for any of his pieces, would he accept it?  I was glad to hear his response:  yes.  I wanted to advocate for him and to serve as his talent agent, and his response suggested that we had something to work with.  Had he said no, instead, there would have been little reason for us to go forward.

Art as the royal road to wealth

Consider the following documentary on very expensive paintings:

If this documentary doesn't take your breath away, then you may have little or no breath to begin with.  Certainly each artist may dream of a multimillion dollar windfall for his or her art.  For the vast lot of us, however, eking a living out of what we love most is a daily struggle or an impractical option altogether.

But how to determine art value?

A few years ago I spoke to a German friend, who at the time was pursuing her PhD in marketing and focusing on pricing as a specialty.  I asked her how the value of art was determined.  We chatted a bit, but mostly she just sent me a wealth of articles on the subject.  Evidently art pricing wasn't something she had looked into, as she really wasn't able to advise me.

I gathered the following were pricing determinants:

• Talent and renown of the artist
• Promotion, sales and marketing efforts
• Historical, social and political context
• Art market trends for particular genres
• Whim, ego and wealth of the art aficionado-collector

Over time, as my thinking advances and my knowledge grows, I will elaborate on these and other determinants. 

Dr. Ron Art in perspective

It took a few years to clarify the concept, create the platform, and launch it in earnest.  So when I spoke to the foregoing friends, this wide-ranging endeavor was still in its infancy.  I wanted to create art and engage others, but I also wanted to promote, negotiate and sell it.  (a) I've been posting stuff in methodic fashion, across Google+, Twitter and Facebook, and (b) writing articles like mad across several Blogger, Tumblr and Pinterest profiles.  (c) Plus I am working on specific projects, at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia.  Searching for a multimedia publisher for `The Song Poems
• Shakespeare Talks!  Staging `A Midsummer Night's Dream in the community
• Dramatis Personae.  Writing my play `The Room, as advocacy against housemaid abuse
• Art Intersections.  Planning my photography project `Real Beauty
• T'ai Chi Empower.  Teaching students and coaching leaders on T'ai Chi  

I'm not yet at the point of formulating the pricing for whatever I'm going to sell, but I'm getting there, for sure. I have struggled, admittedly, and that may continue, but for me there is little that is ennobling about struggling or suffering. I appreciate its inevitability, and I do my best to learn from it. But I plan to get past it and delve even more into art, and I plan to become wealthy at it.   

Art is simply not something to dish out for nothing.

Art is Never Completely Original

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the fifth of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto. 

The four points I've written about so far in my Art Manifesto - (a) art is cross-art by nature, (b) art is always autobiographical, (c) art is sensuous, and (d) art is synesthetic - came to me five years ago, but this fifth is a recent inclusion.  I crystallize it here.

We are all inviolably connected to each other, and we belong on long, billowing ribbons of life, since the beginning of life itself.  So while we may pull things together in a novel fashion, while we may take a radical leap of creativity, and while our work may strike others as duly original, the fact is we are never fully alone or isolated from others in the world.  Our art may be original to some extent, but never completely so. 

Literature

Consider the famous reflection by the English poet and cleric John Donne (Meditation XVII):

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

American novelist Ernest Hemingway drew from Donne for the title From Whom the Bells Tolls.  William Shakespeare, Donne's contemporary in the late-16th, early-17th centuries, drew quite a bit from his predecessors, and they from their predecessors, too, for instance, for `Romeo and Juliet:

• The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke, and Palace of Pleasure by William Painter were primary sources. 
• In turn, for his narrative poem, Brooke may have translated the Italian novella Giuletta e Romeo by Matteo Bandello.
• There are characters named Reomeo Titensus and Juliet Bibleotet in the works by Pierre Boaistuau, who translated some of Bandello's novellas into French, such as Histoire troisieme de deux Amants, don't l'un mourut de venin, l'autre de tristesse (The third story of two lovers, one of whom died of poison, the other of sadness, rf. A Noise Within).
• One Bandello story was La sfortunata morte di dui infelicissimi amante che l'uno di veleno e l'atro di dolore morirono (The unfortunate death of two most wretched lovers, one of whom died of poison, the other, of grief, rf. A Noise Within).

So one of the most famous works in literature and theater follows quite a lineage of art.

Film

`Stoker is very stylish 2013 film by South Korean director Park Chan-wook, and in its simplest, most obvious theme it is about the coming of age of a young lady.  But it's more complex than that, and quite a lot move and shift in the interiors of this family.  The acting - led by Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman - is simply superb. 

For the purpose of this article, I want to highlight American film talent Wentworth Miller, the screenwriter for `Stoker.  The name didn't ring a bell to me.  But because I love film, and I am obsessively curious about the background and crew, I Googled him.  I found out that he played the younger Coleman Silk in another beautiful, very curious 2003 film The Human Stain, also starring Kidman and Anthony Hopkins.

[Miller] used the pseudonym Ted Foulke for submitting his work, later explaining "I just wanted the scripts to sink or swim on their own."  Miller's script was voted to the 2010 "Black List" of the 10 best unproduced screenplays then making the rounds in Hollywood.  Miller described it as a "horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller".  Although influenced by Bram Stoker's Dracula, Miller clarified that Stoker was "not about vampires.  It was never meant to be about vampires but it is a horror story. A stoker is one who stokes, which also ties in nicely with the narrative."  Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt also influenced the film. Miller said: "The jumping-off point is actually Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. So, that's where we begin, and then we take it in a very, very different direction."

Reference:  Stoker.  

I have been enthralled with `Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) for a long time.  I watched that Hitchcock film (1943), and it too was superb.  I'm sure the inspiration for Miller is a bit more intricate than we can know, but an evocative name like "Stoker" and a conniving character like Uncle Charlie are the threads that stitch Miller to his creative predecessors.

  

Poetry

The influences to my poetry are many, but Shakespeare, and poets WH Auden and John Ashbery are prominent.  For example, my latest poem - Swan Song of Ophelia - is about one of the most tender yet enigmatic women in Shakespeare.  Auden wrote a breathtaking commentary on The Tempest, titled `The Sea and the Mirror, which in turn inspired me to write a long poem about a patient I worked with, who committed suicide.  Ashbery, along with surrealist painter Salvador Dali and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, were instrumental to the poetry I wrote in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But let's take one from my collection The Song Poems.  The idea is simple:  I take any music video I like from YouTube, then I let it take me wherever it wishes to take me.  These poems are an account of these journeys.

The following are the specific music videos that inspired me to write this song poem:

  

 

Nowadays social media, technology devices, and digital content all extend and tighten the ties that connect us to one another.  What I've captured here is just a small sampling of my argument that art is never completely original.  To come back to Donne, none of us is an island onto himself or herself.  There is no person born and raised in complete isolation, and biologically we are forever bound to our parents.   

Art simply gives us the means, the knowledge, and the opportunity to do what creative thing we wish to do with whatever and whoever came before us.