Every Day Is Special: reality

Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts

July 30 – Happy Birthday, Lisa Kudrow

Posted on July 30, 2017

Today is the birthday of a highly accomplished actor, producer, writer, and comedian. Lisa Kudrow is famous for everything from TV to movies, and from comedy to drama.

I wanted to highlight a reality program she produces: Who Do You Think You Are?

This TV show is all about genealogy. We can watch famous people researching their own families - and along the way, we can learn about how genealogists research family ancestry. Of course, being an hour-long show, we do not wallow in the parts of a family for which nobody can find any records - instead, we are treated to the best-of-the-best that genealogists were able to learn about each family.

Like history? You will dip in and out of various centuries in this show.

Like geography? You will follow the celebrities across the nation and the world.

Like drama? Every family has is tragedies and its surprises.

Kudrow was shocked to hear that
one of her ancestors was killed in
the Holocaust. But she was joyful
to meet a cousin she never knew -
someone who survived the Holocaust!

Kudrow's own family seems relatively boring and middle class. She was born in Los Angeles. Her mom was a travel agent, and her dad was a doctor. But her family ancestry - which she partially explored during the show - included hardships and tragedies. Her various ancestors immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, and her paternal great-grandmother was killed by Nazis in the Holocaust.

I liked this article about the series - it really lays out the kinds of things that I learned from Who Do You Think You Are?

Also on this date:

Art historian Giogio Vasari's birthday

International Day of Friendship

Independence Day in Vanuatu

Paperback Book Day

Anniversary of the invention of corn flakes

Birthday of the “Father of Television”

First Disney Foray into Technicolor

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

June 13 – Happy Birthday, Leon Chwistek

Posted on June 13, 2016

According to Leon Chwistek, there are four kinds of reality:

First, there is popular reality...also known as common sense. The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west – everyone knows that!

Second is physical reality...this is what we know from physics. For example, the Earth's rotation on its axis makes it seem as if the sun “comes up” and “goes down”...but the reality is that our planet is spinning around as it moves around the Sun.

Third, we have phenomenal reality...this is the impressions we get from our senses. For example, the nighttime sky gets steadily lighter, and there is a brightness in the sky on one particular spot on the eastern horizon. Clouds are rimmed with gold, and everything seems to be hushed in expectation. And then, suddenly, the sun flashes into the sky, quickly climbing onto and then above the horizon. And the birds begin to sing.

Fourth, and last, there is visionary reality...this is what we think we know from dreams, religious revelation, hallucinations. For example, you could dream that each day there was a brand new sun, rising dripping gold from waters surrounding the world, and plunging to its death at night.

Did Chwistek think that all of these kinds of reality were equally...real? Probably not. This Polish man, born on this date in 1884, was a university professor of logic, and he explored the philosophy of science as well as mathematics.

But he was also an avant-garde painter and a critic of literature and art.

And his four types of reality mapped onto four types of painting:

1- Primitivism

Henri Rousseau,
In a Tropical Forest Combat of a Tiger and a Buffalo

2- Realism

Jules Breton, The Song of the Lark

3- Impressionism

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle

4- Futurism

Umberto Boccioni, Elasticity

In other aspects of his all his various sorts of work, Chwistek defended common sense and physical reality over the claims of metaphysics and religions. To point out that people use the word “real” and “reality” in these various ways doesn't mean that all of these things ARE real!

Here are a few of my favorite Chwistek pieces: