LIN-AMENT. LIN FIRST HARVARD GRAD TO PLAY FOR NY KNICKS SINCE 1953-54

Jeremy Lin doing his thing for Hahvahd Hoops 2006-2010

Jeremy Lin is only the 3d player from Harvard to play in the NBA.

He was a terrific player not only at Harvard, but in the Ivies.  He established a line of records unmatched in Ivy League history, and along the way, the Harvard basketball team, which had never amounted to a bucket of warm spit until Lin and Coach Amaker arrived, found its way to the Ivy League title and the NCAA tournament.

My sons and I watched these guys, led by Lin, play a ferocious contest in the Palestra against their arch-rivals Penn in 2010, which was a double overtime contest, and as Harvard finally won, largely due to the intensity and refusal to lose of Lin, who kept penetrating, dishing off, shooting jumpers, and doing whatever it took to win, it seemed like a passing of the guard.

The Daily Pennsylvanian made pun of Lin's name back in 2009 at Penn, showing once again Philly was three years ahead of NYC media.

So it’s no secret why Lin is the 2d best player on the knicks in win shares per 48 minutes at .187 after Tyson Chandler’s .248; or why his PER approaching 25 leads the team.  Lin plays defense, doesn’t turnover the ball, and is efficient both on offense and defense.  Also, he hustles.  In the Ivy League, he led across a large number of categories, including points, steals, rebounds, assists, assist to turnover ration, etc. and established benchmarks for a guard across many such categories–in fact, all time records for a guard to have such all-around abilities.

What we saw, watching him two years ago, was a guy who refused to lose.  He could penetrate and score; penetrate and dish out to the three line; penetrate and dish to the man beside him after drawing the double-team;  penetrate and dish to the open man; had amazing peripheral vision; could drop the three or the jumper if left unattended; always could run the ball and locate the open man on the run; could play defense; could steal the ball; could rebound and start the break the other way; in short, he was a complete player.

And Lin never stopped to breath.  He was always in continuous motion.  Harvard had a lot of talented players, but they looked kind of confused unless Lin got them the ball and he was coordinating the offense.  He was, in short, a terrific and talented point guard who had game.

A lot of Penn players have played in the NBA, but not so much Harvard.  Hockey has always been the winter sport at Harvard, along with playing the stock market and inventing new financial instruments the SEC can’t regulate.

Three players including Lin played in the NBA:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/colleges.cgi?college=harvard#stats::none

first was

Saul Mariaschin

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/mariasa01.html

who was a 5 foot 11 inch player on the 1947-48 Boston Celtics.  The Celtics were in a predecessor league to the NBA, but who cares?

Here were Saul Mariaschin’s teammates on the Boston Celtics of 1947-48:

riebe, spector, sadowski, garfinkel with Saul Mariaschin Harvard Grad on 1948 Boston Celtics

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1948.html

Here’s another of his teammates from that legendary Celts team:

CHUCK CONNORS.  Yes, the guy who later played the RIFLEMAN on TV.  Lucas McCain himself.  And a 6’5″ grad of Seton Hall, which in 1947-48 would have made him a giant player.  And he was a CELTIC.  You can look it up.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/connoch01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Connors

Chuck Connors was a Celtic and played with Harvard Grad Saul Mariaschin in 1947-48

Chuck Connors also played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers!

And he was a TV Star!

Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain the Rifleman

Chuck Connors was a Boston Celtic and and Brooklyn Dodger

The second player that went to Harvard and played in the NBA was

Ed Smith

Edward Bernard Smith (Ed)

Ed Smith was a New York Knick in 1953-54.  On that Knicks team, Ed played with Vince “Moose” Boryla, Nate “Sweetwater” Clifton, Al McGuire and Dick McGuire, and the famous Ernie Vandeweghe, and others well-noted.

That 1953-54 Knicks team finished 1st in the Eastern Division, going 44-28 under the helm of the legendary Joe Lapchick.  And they played in the old Madison Square Garden, which many hold in as high esteem as the old Boston Garden.

Nate "Nat" "Sweetwater" Clifton of the 1953-54 NY Knicks played with Harvard's Ed Smith

and here’s ernie vandewege v bob cousy:

Bob Cousy and Ernie Vandeweghe Reaching For Ball

Of course, Ernie has some bloodlines. Kiki Vanderweghe was a great NBA player, and now his granddaughter is a professional tennis player:

CoCo Vandeweghe professional tennis player and granddaugher of Ernie Vandeweghe who played on the NY Knicks with Ed Smith in 1953-54. Ed was the last Harvard alum to play for the NY Knicks, nearly fifty years ago

ATHEISM – THE WORST “ISM” OF THEM ALL

Prof. Richard Dawkins was it again in yet another publication, arguing for the indefensible proposition, Atheism. As History has demonstrated, perhaps more than any other “ism”, including Communism, Nationalism Nihilism, Anarchism, Fascism and Nazism, Atheism is very likely the worst “ism” of them all, because Atheism lies at the heart of all of the other “isms”. And, making this ever worse is the fact that Prof. Dawkins is a respected Biology Professor, that he writes to undergraduates and graduate students, and that he should really know better.

Prof. Dawkins’ argument this time was framed and cloaked in scientific syllogism and enthymeme, to wit, that the scientific laws of physics and evolution (1) explain everything, and there (2) leave no room, according to Dawkins, for the actions of God, ergo, (3) God does not exist. A broad and sweeping argument, to be sure, but does it stand up under any sort of critical analysis?

We’ll examine the deeper logical argument of whether this is a proof of God’s non-existence in a moment, but first let’s examine whether this is a proof at all of anything.

I. ARE THERE SCIENTIFIC LAWS?

Initially, are there “laws” of physics or “laws” of evolution? Here, Dawkins has problems right off the bat. Modern scientific epistemology is sort of torn between two schools—the Thomas Kuhn school of paradigms and the Karl Popper-Carnap school of incremental advance of science. Dawkins seems to be resurrecting the Popper-Carnap school of epistemology—and yet right now, the Kuhnian school is ascendant.

What Kuhn basically says is that all scientific laws amount to is a reigning paradigm, and that science is a social process among scientists—meaning that scientific laws are not laws at all, but simply the best available paradigms which meet the approval of the current scientific community. This of course is a terrible oversimplication of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and subsequent editions, but let’s assume for the moment that you’ve read Kuhn, or been forced to read Kuhn. If you’re familiar with Kuhn, you would not make a statement such as was made by Dawkins about “scientific laws” proving that “God does not” and “cannot exist” because in Kuhn’s model of scientific induction and epistemology, men make scientific laws, and not particularly accurately all the time.

But let’s assume for a moment you’re a Popper-Carnap style epistemologist of science, and you believe in the intrinsic accuracy of the scientific laws. Even then, Popper and Carnap et al., accept Hume’s causality arguments and attacks on scientific “laws”, to wit, scientific law cannot explain “causation” but only a sort of probability tending towards a value between 0 and 1; or as Popper would put it, if I drop a ball five thousand times, it will fall to earth each time, tending to prove the “law” of gravity, but I still can’t be one hundred per cent certain that it will fall to earth the five thousand and first time, because of the causal arguments of Hume. All I have done is prove an increasingly likely probability of that causal association such that I might term it a scientific “law,” but what is termed a scientific “law” is really a correlation coefficient with a high degree of associative character, a high degree of probability, according to epistemologists like Popper and/or Carnap.

Likewise, if I have risen from bead a thousand times and seen the sun rise, that is tending to a probability of one that the sun is at the center of the solar system, but does not guarantee that I will rise to see the sun on the thousand and first day, because there is still not a causal relation, only an associative one. This is readily conceded by even the most formal of scientific epistemologists like Popper and/or Carnap.

Consequently, Dawkin’s notion of scientific “laws” fails because of the underlying failure of scientific epistemology. And yet Dawkins breezes over both the Kuhnian problem of paradigms and the Humeian problem of causation in violently asserting the overarching and complete validity of scientific laws, in spite of the fact that nearly all philosophers and historians of science and all scientists themselves are nearly unanimous in believing that there are no such things as immutable “laws” of science.

The fact is, just as there was no reality in the Matrix, there is nothing valid or solid about scientific laws. Scientific “laws,” including the vaunted “laws” of physics and “laws” of evolution asserted by Dawkins, are subject to constant and considerable subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) revision by scientists, and subject to paradigm change every 25-30 years or so as Kuhn describes. The late Stephen Jay Gould advocated a theory of not-so-incremental not-so-Darwinian evolution, which would have represented a major paradigm shift in the so-called “laws” of evolution, and increasingly, many empirical findings dispute the original theories and paradigms advanced by Darwin, who was, after all, just a good 19th century naturalist, albeit a brilliant one.

In many respects it is Galton, the statististician and cousin of Darwin, who has proven to be the better scientist in certain respects, of our time, since it was he who coined the phrase “regression,” a phrase without which social science itself would hardly exist today. Nor should we forget Mendel, whose observations were the foundations of modern genetics. It is not Darwin only who was the founder of modern molecular biology; there were many founders, and while Darwin might have been necessary, he was not sufficient.

Moreover, all scientific laws are subject to incremental change in light of empirical data, and all scientific laws are not really laws at all in light of the causal issues raised by the Humeian critique.

So are there laws of physics and of evolution which leave “no room for God?” Of course there aren’t. Just to take one example, the Darwinian paradigm of evolution was that evolution was gradualist. Darwin rejected sudden changes, and also rejected Lamarckianism. But both of these paradigms are and have been in the process of being assailed and replaced in the face of modern scientific evidence and new theory making by new groups of scientists. First, sudden catastrophic evolutionary change has gained a great deal of currency, c.f. Stephen Jay Gould, supra. The theory of sudden events such as asteroids plunging to earth and causing mass extinctions, and the notion that there have been five mass extinctions in earth’s evolutionary history, has gained real traction among scientists. And even more recently, changes in somatic dna and living animals have been re-evaluated in light of better understanding of molecular biology, prompting a re-evaluation of the paradigm on Lamarckian evolution.

As for the “laws” of physics, string theory is still controversial, no one has yet attained fusion in any controlled conditions dozens and dozens of years after it was predicted to be able to be done, scientists don’t know if the earth is warming or cooling, and if it is warming, whether humans or climate change cycles are to blame, there is still controversy over what the fundamental particles are, civilian use of nuclear power has run up against a stone wall in the united states (putting most physicists out of work), and nuclear proliferation has become a worldwide problem, perhaps proving that physics is yet to be the messenger of Armageddon and the doom of the planet through worldwide thermonuclear war.

So basically, the claims asserted by Dawkins about the laws of physics and the laws of evolution are wrong, wrong as to scope, wrong as to paradigm, and wrong even as to the claim that there are laws qua laws.

II. SCIENTIFIC LAWS AREN’T LAWS, AND EVEN IF THEY ARE, THEY DON’T EXPLAIN EVERYTHING

Secondly, do Dawkins assertions about the laws of physics and the laws of nature, e.g. that they “explain everything” and “leave no room for God”, carry any weight?

The obvious answer is, in light of this line of reasoning, a clear no. First, it’s obvious that the laws of physics and the laws of nature, in their current states, don’t explain “everything,” or anything close to “everything.” What they currently do is what all scientific laws do—they explain what’s obvious and well-settled, which is about the 20% of science you find in undergraduate textbooks—and the more advanced stuff is continuously debated among grad students, professors and advanced institute people at science conferences on a constant basis, over the internet, in academic journals, etc. as the scientific process is an ongoing continuous process.

A scientist who is arrogant and believes he already knows all the answers is no scientist at all. Such a man could not be a scientist, because a true scientist never believes the scientific laws are settled, never believes that all the scientific questions are answered, or that all the scientific issues have been explained.

Were that all true, as Prof. Dawkins erroneously suggests, then there would be no need to continue to experiment or for NIH or any other world or international scientific group to continue with biology or physics experiements. If we already know everything, why bother with seeking new knowledge?

The answer, the obvious answer is, we DON’T know everything, and we need to know a great deal more. We actually know very little. What little we do know we know pretty well, maybe with a probability of .80 or so, maybe .90, but as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the Pauli exclusion principle, molecular orbital bonding theory, the Church-Turing thesis and Godel’s theorem famously remind us, there are also things we can’t know within the framework of science and that we have to take on scientific faith.

Just to take an example from freshman chemistry—the notion of an electron cloud, electron shell, electron atomic orbital or electron molecular orbital. A “smear” of electron energy. The notion of electron “tunneling”. We really don’t know where the electron is, we can only guess where it is. Quantum mechanics, wave version and matrix version. Elegant mathematics, but still, electron electron, where is the electron?

For all that we know, we don’t know where the electron is, or where the electrons are, except that we know what region they’re in within a 99% region of probability. Or so approximately. That’s a far cry from a scientific “law” of physics. If Dirac and Heisenberg and Born and all their famous brethren were here, right now, none of them would claim that quantum mechanics or even quantum electrodynamics were scientific “laws” of a certainty sufficient to exclude the existence of God.

To the contrary, these theories were advanced modestly and no grand claims were made for them, as anyone reading the original papers (they’re available in historical reprints and online) would know. The authors were humble and careful in their work. This applies to almost all of the so-called “new physics” of the 20th century, going back to the original great three papers of Einstein of 1905.

III. NONE OF DAWKINS ARGUMENTS ARE A PROOF THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST – LOGICAL FALLACIES IN DAWKINS ARGUMENT

So to return to the initial question of this essay, is Prof. Dawkins argument a proof of the non-existence of God?

The answer is clearly no, because Dawkins is committing the logical fallacies of either Denying the Antecedent and/or Denying the Consequent. His arguments consist of an he implied syllogism and an enthymeme as follows;

(1) The scientific laws explain everything in physics & evolution.
(2) Since everything in physics and evolution is explained by sciene, God explains nothing in physics and evolution
(3) Since God explains nothing in physics & evolution, God does not exist.

It should be relatively clear, once we reduce Prof. Dawkins’ argument to atomistic syllogism/enthymeme, that it is clearly flawed, and commits logical fallacy, but let’s examine the logical fallacies further.

Imagine if the argument was stated this way:

(1) Physics & Evolution are remarkable.
(2) Physics & Evolution are unexplainable.
(3) If there is a God, God can explain the unexplainable.
(4) God can explain Physics and Evolution.
(5) Therefore there is a God.

I believe this accurately fills in the blanks of the “straw man” enthymeme that Dawkins is attempting to set up.

Now let’s take some converses and contrapositives. Let’s say Physics and Evolution ARE explainable, as Dawkins claims.

Dawkins argument there is as follows;

(1) Physics & Evolution are remarkable
(2) Physics & Evolution are fully explainable by the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Evolution.
(3) If there is a God, God can explain the unexplainable.
(4) God cannot explain Physics and Evolution.
(5) God cannot explain one or more instances of the unexplainable.
(6) Therefore there is no God.

We should immediately recognize the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent/denying the consequent here. The converse/contrapositive of changing physics and evolution to negations and God explaining same to not explaining same does not negate god’s ability to explain the unexplainable, or God’s UNIVERSAL existence.

There are several flaws in the logic here.

First is the instantiative assertoric error committed by Dawkins. To the extent that he states that “God exists” or “God Does not Exist,” he concedes, at least in some schools of thought, the existence of God qua God, via the assertoric and instantiative schools of philosophic thought. These basically assert if I state “a unicorn is blue” that unicorns must exist, somewhere in some potential universe, because I have conceived of unicorns in my mind and named them, e.g. given them a class appellation and attributes.

While there is controversy as to assertoric and non-assertoric logics, the fact remains that Dawkins was not careful to set forth whether his argument was one or the other, consequently, the old medieval Aristotelian argument that God exists because he named God, conceived of God and gave God attributes in his argument, means that he cannot turn around and then argue that God does not exist, because by stating or implying God’s existence, he concedes the fact of God’s existence by instantiative and assertoric principles.

In making this argument, it is important to distinguish between the statements “God is God,” “God exists” and “God has attributes.” Note the first is ontological, the second ontological-metaphysical, and the third is lexical and goes to class definitions. But in all three cases, Dawkins falls into logical error, because by merely naming God, he implies that God is God, God exists, and that God has attributes. Dawkins falls into the trap of assertoric discourse, because somewhere, in some religion, in some world, in some universe, there is a God, because he has conceived of one and named him, and given him attributes, and attempted to negate him universally, which cannot be done by definition. Moreover, God may even control physics and biology in those other worlds or universes or existences, since Dawkins’ arguments don’t address those worlds, universes or possible existences.

Second, Dawkins’s conclusion of a universal negation of God’s existence, is proceeding illogically and fallaciously, from an antecedent of God’s inability to explain some unexplainable particular events, when all that is claimed for God is God’s particular ability to explain some unexplainable particular events. The fact that God cannot explain a subset of “some unexplainable particular events” such as the laws of physics and the laws of evolution, in this world, in this universe, in Dawkin’s religion, does not result in the negation of the proposition that God can still explain some other unexplainable particular events in any or all religions in any or all worlds, etc. One cannot refute and effect negation of a “some x is y” statement by a “some x is not z” statement.

This would be clearer using first order predicate logic and the universal and particular quantifiers—I’ll get to that in a second—but let’s stick to Aristotelian logic for the moment.

Let’s see why dawkins is wrong:

(1) Physics & Evolution are remarkable
(2) Physics & Evolution are fully explainable by the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Evolution.
(3) If there is a God, God can explain the unexplainable.
(4) God can explain the unexplainable for some things in any and all possible religions in any and all possible worlds in any and all possible universes and in any and all possible realities.
(5) God transcends and is outside the explanation of, the laws of Physics, Evolution and Science.
(6) God cannot explain Physics and Evolution in this world in this universe and in this reality.
(7) God can explain the unexplainable for some things in any and all possible religions in any and all possible worlds in any and all possible universes and in any and all possible realities, except for and other than, Physics and Evolution in this world and in this reality and in Dawkins’ religion.
(8) Dawkins claims there is therefore not a God.
(9) However, Logic says there still is a God, since there are still events etc. that God still can explain other than physics and evolution in this world, etc.
(10) Dawkins argument does not invalidate the universal particular “God can explain the unexplainable” etc.set forth in argument (4) because it does not negate it for all instances of substitution value for “God can explain the unexplainable, etc.” set forth in argument (4) and thus commits the dual fallacies of denying the antecedent/denying the consequent as well as committing a logical fallacy of erroneous invalidation of a universal particular in first order predicate logic.

Notice what’s changed here, and feel free to draw your own Venn Diagram.

Argument 3 states that God can explain some unexplainables for all possible things for all possible religions for all possible worlds in all possible universes and in all possible realities.

Whereas Arguments 6 and 7 are particular existential instantiators—they quantify only as to God’s ability to explain physics and evolution. Negating them only negates some of the class of unexplainables which God can explain. It’s a subset of what God explains, not all of what God explains. Consequently, negation of them is not invalidity of God, God’s existence, God is God, or God’s attributes.

Here it is held that God can still explain some other unexplainable for all possible things, in all possible religions, in all possible worlds, in all possible universes, in all possible realities. Dawkins’ negation argument is fatally flawed, because in order to invalidate a particular universal, you have to show it’s false for ALL substitution instances of the particular universal. Dawkins fails to do this, and consequently his argument is a fatal instance of logical fallacy of denying the antecedent/denying the consequent, one of the oldest and best known logical fallacies.

Third, and note this, carefully, the thrust of this essay, is that Dawkins has actually failed to prove propositions (2), (6) and (7). So really, he’s failed to prove his premises as well, and if the premises fail, the syllogism also fails because if the premises are false, so are the conclusions.

So to summarize;

1) God exists on instantiative, assertoric grounds;
2) God exists because Dawkins fails to prove God’s existential invalidity and commits logical fallacies of denying the antecedent/denying the consequent; and
3) God exists because Dawkins fails to prove the truth of the premises of his argument and therefore the conclusions fail.

IV. FURTHER LOGICAL FALLACIES IN DAWKINS ARGUMENT

Of course, it would be a miracle if atheists like Dawkins were to make a logical argument in favor of their conclusions. People like Dawkins like to get to the conclusion first, and then make strained and illogical arguments full of logical and illogical fallacies in order to get to their ridiculous conclusions. That’s why their arguments seem so silly and so contrived.

In addition to all the foregoing, Dawkins commits the fallacy of the appeal to authority—he claims that because science—physics and biology in this case, and in particular the laws of physics and biology—are so accurate and their scientists so wonderfully supreme—that we should give up going to church and instead worship physicists and biologists.

Of course, this argument, when put in this form, is utterly ridiculous. Let’s atomize it;

1) Currently, you worship God.
2) God has great authority.
3) The Laws of Physics and the Laws of Evolution have Great Authority, as do the Physicists and Biologists.
4) The Physicists and Biologists are always right, and God is Always Wrong, when it comes to Physics and Biology.
5) Physicists and Biologists are Therefore Great Men.
6) Therefore, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, you should Stop Worshipping God, and God’s Laws, and instead Worship Physicists and Biologists, and the Laws of Physics and Biology Instead.

Now when atomized in this fashion, you can see what a silly, foolish, ridiculous appeal to authority Dawkins’ argument really is.

In fact, it’s really no different than Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus Octavian claiming that they were not merely men, but Gods walking the earth, and therefore men should worship them, because they were great, and they were always right about everything they did, because they had conquered the known world.

It’s precisely the same syllogism/enthymeme. Dawkins’ argument for worshipping science over God is the same argument that oriental kings have used for centuries for their divinity. It’s called the “appeal to authority.”

It goes something like this: “I’m in charge, I’m always right, therefore, worship me.” Notably, the early Christians rejected this argument wholesale and never, ever bowed down to either oriental or Roman monarchs, until the Roman Emperor became a Christian himself, and prostrated himself before God and Jesus every Sunday with the conversion of St. Constantine and his victory with the cross—“in this sign I shall conquer” (“nika”).

I seriously doubt that any clear thinking individual, including a scientist, wants to stop going to religious services and start bowing down to another scientist in lieu of God.

Maybe Dawkins wanted to be an oriental king in a former life.

VI. BELIEF IN GOD IS A MATTER OF FAITH, NOT LOGIC

Perhaps a couple of more points are in order.

First, faith in God is not a matter of rational or logical argument. Kantians and neo-Kantians, and many moral philosophers, have been influenced to a large degree by Protestantism, and especially the brand of Pietism which Kant himself espoused, all of which emphasize a close personal relationship between God and Man, unmediated by the Church or the clergy. This has led to the mistaken modern view that morality and even religion must be justified, somehow, by logical, rational or reasonable grounds.

This inference, which is highly Kantian (or neo-Kantian), only makes sense if you aren’t Catholic or Eastern Roman Orthodox; however, one billion people are Catholic and another 500 million are Eastern Orthodox, and all of those Christians believe in God because the Church tells them to, and salvation is through the Church and its sacraments, not through God or any personal relationship to God. God doesn’t talk to people in the Catholic or Orthodox churches, unless you happen to have been a saint or a prophet. And reasoning about God’s existence is entirely and totally unnecessary if you are Catholic or Orthodox, because God of course exists—why else would there be St. Sophia, the Eastern Roman Empire until 1453, or the Pope, or the Patriarch, or Constantinople, or the Crusades, or the Catholic Church, or the Seven Sacraments, or Communion, or Transubstantiation?

Likewise, if you are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, etc., you don’t need to think too much about whether there is a God either—it’s pretty much implicit with the territory. It’s a peculiarity of Protestant thought that we sit around thinking whether there is a God or not. Frankly, I have better things to do in Church on a Sunday morning than to think about whether God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit exist or not. Like remembering where I parked my car, or when the next church festival is.

Especially apt is that every year we have religious holidays, like Yom Kippur, Christmas, Easter, the Jewish New Year, Passover, that everyone respects with dignity and honor.

Those who are atheists shower disrespect and dishonor on those who would worship freely.

The founders of the USA put freedom of worship in the first amendment. They were silent as to freedom not to believe in god, and they never intended for atheism or lack of religion to be protected by the constitution, notwithstanding any court decisions of any kind to the contrary. theories of hla hart and decisions of church and state to the contrary, faith is a big element of socializing our youth to right and wrong, and i join those who call for a return of prayer to schools, and those who want faith-based programs for our troubled youth. crime rates are very high and a little prayer and a little church or services have been shown to be the only thing that can help troubled youth, as Prof. DiIulio has shown many times over.

Point being, belief is a matter of faith, God a big mystery, and really none of it has much to do with science at all. On top of which, the vast majority of people believe in God and go to church, and the vast majority of scientists, including famous scientists like Einstein, Newton, Pascal, to name but a few, believed in God and attended services. Even Galileo in the end was more worried about his mortal soul than his scientific theories, and ended up recanting before the church. It’s a modern conceit to see him as some kind of champion against the church. Galileo was a perfectly good catholic.

VII. ATHEISM WAS THE WORST ‘ISM’ OF ALL TIME

Finally, atheism has the most destructive of social movements in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. First advocated by the French proletariat during the French Revolution, it resulted initially in the French Terror and the killing of innocent tens of thousands and endless rivers of blood by means of the guillotine in the 1790s by the Directory, as famously described by Sir Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. The French Aristocracy was either killed or sent into hiding, and tens of thousands of intellectuals were needlessly and thoughtlessly butchered. Churches and clergy were shuttered and church properties seized.

But worse was yet to come under Napoleon. Even though one has to admire Napoleon as a military figure, Napoleon’s policies regarding the churches set in motion a series of consequences which were to have long-lasting and far-reaching effects. First were the hundreds of thousands if not millions who died in the Napoleonic Wars, the first true “World Wars” if you will. Second, Napoleon effectively dis-established the French Catholic Church and clergy; destroyed the Spanish Inquisition and seized the best lands of the Spanish Catholic Church, rendering that church impotent; hurt the Catholic Church badly all over Europe; and incited Nationalism of a secular character all over Europe, particularly in Italy, Germany and the Balkans.

Napoleon destroyed the settled character of the Catholic Church in Spain, France, Italy and many smaller countries, and left those countries in permanent political and social turmoil as a consequent result, turmoil that has persisted to the present day. France has been through five or six governmental and constitutional changes since the Revolution and lost her colonies and three different wars including the two world wars; Spain has been through a civil war and many political instabilities; Italy despite the Risorgimento remains a politically fractured country, albeit an economically sound one; and many smaller catholic countries remain marginal in the European sphere.

The orbit of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan States have been particularly unstable, leading to World War One due to Bosnian nationalism, and fractures between orthodox and catholic partisans in Croatia/Serbia and Ukraine/Russia during World War II which the Nazis exploited, along with fractures between catholics and jews with the Nazis exploited during World War II in Poland and other lands.

Atheism and nationalism were at the root of these difficulties; had the pre-1800 regime stayed in place, unaffected by the atheistic, nationalistic whirlwind of Napoleon, it is doubtful that a Bismarck or a Hitler, a Lenin or a Stalin, could ever have risen up from the ashes. Atheism was the spawning ground of dictators and communism, and of modern world war and of modern genocides.

In some places, nationalism was a good thing, such as the Lower Balkans, where Greece and Serbia and Bulgaria liberated themselves from the Ottoman Turk, but in Germany, secular atheistic nationalism eventually resulted in German military imperialism and the rise of the German military state, and, eventually, Adolf Hitler, who was himself quite the atheist at heart.

Atheism and disestablishment of religion weakened the German and Austrian churches and paved the way for the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the onset of World War I, and the Russian Revolution. The so-called secular states of Turkey and Iran, which for many years engaged in brutal internal repressions of their own peoples as well as ethnic progroms, were also based in part on the atheism and nationalism of the Napoleonic era and Russian Communistic era.

As we now know, the Iranian secular regime was swept under by a religious theocratic muslim regime in 1979, which has influenced many other Middle Eastern regimes in the same direction since then, and the Turkish regime is under heavy internal pressure to do the same, become expressly religious, muslim and theocratic again. But these are false theocracies manned by leaders trained for centuries in secular, atheistic violence and bloodshed, and not true religious leaders at all.

Soviet Communism was based on atheism, and hundreds of millions died under this regime, as documented by Solzhenitzyn in his Gulag Archipelago works. In 1937 & 1938 alone 500,000 priests were killed for the crime of being Russian orthodox priests.

More modernly, Chinse Communist atheism has resulted in the destruction of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhist shrines in the takeover and occupation of a sovereign nation since 1958, and the destruction of a religious nation and its thousand year old religious shrines, and the exodus of its highly respected religious leader, the Dalai Lama. The atheist Communist Chinese show no respect whatsoever for religion. They destroy religious relics in their own state as well, have destroyed the thousands’ year old cult of Confucianism in their own country, and do not tolerate the many catholics, Nestorians and other Christians and protestants attempting to worship God in their midst. Tens if not hundreds of millions have died in China, Tibet and other occupied regions over the issue of religion.

In short, Atheism has been responsible for the deaths of nearly a billion people on this planet since it was first officially sanctioned by the French Revolution in early 1789. It is a hideous doctrine and once in place, one responsible for moral indifference to the point of recklessness to human death and suffering.

VIII RELIGION AND FAITH EXPLAIN TO US WHAT IS RIGHT FROM WHAT IS WRONG MORE CLEARLY THAN LAWS ETHICS OR MORAL PHILOSOPHIES; ATHEISM RESULTS IN THE LOSS OF MORALITY AND AMORAL AND IMMORAL CONDUCT ON A VAST SCALE

One may wonder, why is Atheism responsible for the loss of morality, amorality and immoral conduct on such a vast scale as this? The reasons are fairly simple.

The moral philosopher or neo-Kantian may think it an easy matter to prove why the Holcaust or why a genocide or why the killing of an entire Church and its clergy is morally wrong and indefensible. Perhaps a lawyer may say it is a violation of international law. All of these words are nice words—but they are mere words.

And aren’t there always debates about this? Don’t the French deny killing anyone? And don’t the Turks deny an Armenian Holocaust? And the Germans admit a Holocaust, but never seem to do enough? And the Russians never seem to admit all their wrongs? And the Chinese say they’ve done nothing wrong in Tibet?

Morality and seeing right from wrong, it seems to me, cannot be a matter for moral philosophy, ethics boards or international legal commissions.

What is needed, in the end, are religious views to determine right from wrong. We know in our hearts what is right from wrong because we have a religious sense of things. No one is going to sit and read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and achieve some transcendental state of pure moral reasoning in the internet age; but it’s easy enough to go to mass or services and hear a sermon and let a priest or deacon explain with a story from the bible why this or that thing is wrong.

It would be my contention that without religion, without the Church and the Bible as frames of reference, we would not know, and I mean really know, that the Holocaust, Genocide, Extermination of entire churches and peoples and religions, are wrong and crimes against God and not merely crimes against humanity or laws.

The German people as a people made Nazism and state-sponsored atheism their religion for more than a dozen years, and consequently, amorality, immorality, and finally mass killing and genocide, seemed acceptable to them, first by degrees and eventually on a grand scale.

But this was not unprecedented. The same thing had happened before—in Revolutionary France—in Communist Russia—in Secular Turkey—anywhere that traditional religion was swept aside, a wave of butchery, savagery and killing swept the land, and the people forgot their first and foremost rule, thou shalt not kill.

The atheist has no moral compass. The atheist doesn’t believe in the ten commandments. The atheist kills one or many and feels the same about both. That is the bottom line. Atheism results inevitably in moral chaos and an utter loss of morality, leading to evil on a grand scale. All of the great killing sprees of modern history have been effected by godless states—atheistic states if you will.

Atheism is the worst ism of them all, because atheism is at the heart of communism, Nazism, socialism, fascism, all the other isms.

Religion tells us in Black and White, without shading, that these killings, these acts, these things are wrong.

Only the Atheist is capable of moral relativism in these matters.

Only the Atheist makes sophistical refutation of claims that he is a mass murderer.

IX. WHAT DOES THE BIBLE AND WHAT DOES GOD SAY ABOUT ALL THIS?

Compare these claims of moral relativism and legal defenses of state-sanctioned mass murder in atheistic states to what the Bible says;

Deuteronomy 53

1. And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and observe to do them.
2. Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.
3. Jehovah made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.
4. Jehovah spake with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,
5. (I stood between Jehovah and you at that time, to show you the word of Jehovah: for ye were afraid because of the fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying,
6. I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
7. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
8. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
9. thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me;
10. and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
11. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain: for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
12. Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as Jehovah thy God commanded thee.
13. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work;
14. but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou.
15. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore Jehovah thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.
16. Honor thy father and thy mother, as Jehovah thy God commanded thee; that thy days may be long, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee.
17. Thou shalt not kill.
18. Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
19. Neither shalt thou steal.
20. Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor.
21. Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s wife; neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s.
22. These words Jehovah spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them upon two tables of stone, and gave them unto me.
23. And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders;
24. and ye said, Behold, Jehovah our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this day that God doth speak with man, and he liveth.
25. Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us: if we hear the voice of Jehovah our God any more, then we shall die.
26. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?
27. Go thou near, and hear all that Jehovah our God shall say: and speak thou unto us all that Jehovah our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it, and do it.
28. And Jehovah heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and Jehovah said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken.
29. Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!
30. Go say to them, Return ye to your tents.
31. But as for thee, stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandment, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess it.
32. Ye shall observe to do therefore as Jehovah your God hath commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
33. Ye shall walk in all the way which Jehovah your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess.

Note that the existence of God is proven beyond all doubt by the express words of Deuteronomy. This passage was dramatized several times in movies, most notably with Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1950s Cecil B DeMille version of the Ten Commandments.

I’m inclined on faith to believe in it, and certainly more likely to believe in Deuteronomy and the Ten Commandments, and the word of the Lord God and Moses, than in anything Richard Dawkins writes down or brings down from his burning bush or his mountaintop.

Compare this to what Isaiah says in the Bible:

ISAIAH 2:4. And he will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

Compare this to Matthew 5:21-22:

Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
22. but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment;

Compare this to what St. Paul says in the Bible:

Romans 6

1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2. God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?
3. Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4. We were buried therefore with him through baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection;
6. knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin;
7. for he that hath died is justified from sin.
8. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him;
9. knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him.
10. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
11. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
12. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof:
13. neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
14. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace.
15. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid.
16. Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteouness?
17. But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered;
18. and being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness.
19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification.
20. For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness.
21. What fruit then had ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.
22. But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life.
23. For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

–art kyriazis philly
home of the world champion Philadelphia Phillies
Monday 9/28/09

AUGUST 24, 2009 – CENTENNIAL OF THE PREZ – LESTER YOUNG (1909-1959)

The Wall Street Journal’s Will Friedland has a really nice story in Wednesday August 19, 2009 at p. D19 on the Cenntennial of legenday bop saxophonist Lester Young’s birth (1909-1959) which occurs today, August 24, 2009.

This year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Lester Young, who passed away at age 49 in 1959. Jazz Giant, Jazz Legend, Jazz Colossus, these terms don’t do him justice. In Jazz Circles, he was known only as the President, or the Prez, a moniker hooked on him by none other than the late, great Billie Holiday, aka Lady Day, Queen of Jazz.

As Friedland writes, “Young…created a new approach to the saxophone and to jazz in general. His playing was, by turns, lighter and gentler than anything that had come before it, but also capable of driving with tremendous force and energy.” Id. at p. D19.

Friedland reviews a release from Fantasy Records (now owned by Concord, I believe) called “Centennial Celebration”, which contains a good deal of Lester Young live during his later years, with emphasis on the 1950s. This is probably a must-buy if you don’t have any of this material. Even if you do have it, it’s never a waste of money to buy a Lester Young CD just to get even one track you didn’t have before. Or download the one you don’t have.

When Ken Burns did his Jazz documentary stretching over a bazillion PBS hours not so long ago, there were two figures that stood head and shoulders over everyone else—Lester Young and Billie Holiday.

Before President Obama was born, before Hawaii was even a state or was issuing official state birth certificates, we already had a black president—and his name was Lester Young—or as Billie Holiday dubbed him—the President, or the Prez for short. Everyone else in jazz was the Vice-President, or the Vice-Prez—but there was only one President, and that was Lester Young. Because Lester Young ruled the roost, he was in charge, and everyone else was second best.

Lester Young was so good, that you basically need to own every track he every played on, but if you can’t afford that, the Ken Burns jazz sampler is a great place to start. There’s several different phases to Lester Young’s career, all of them fantastic. Video of Lester Young, with Basie, with Billie Holiday and solo, are also around, and these are worth viewing as well.

First there’s the Count Basie years, from around 1935-1940, where Lester “leaps in” on countless classic tracks with the Count Basie Band. According to Friedland, Mosaic Records has recently issued a 4 CD set last year covering this period, but it’s covered on many of the compilations of either the best of Count Basie or the best of Lester Young. This stuff is just fantastic, the best big band jazz ever recorded.

Then there’s his work with Billie Holiday. Here, one just says, wow. These two were so born to work together. Billie Holliday’s best tracks are with Lester Young playing; Lester Young’s best playing is with Billie Holliday singing. This is the best jazz ever laid down on vinyl in U.S. history. It’s covered in part in the Ken Burns samplers of both Lester Young and Billie Holiday, fortunately.

There is also the final appearance of them both on CBS television in 1956 or 1957 for a special jazz show with several other jazz giants, which is caught on LP, CD as well as on video somewhere, and a good thing too, since both Young and Holliday would both be dead in just a couple of years’ time. This is a must-have session as well.

Then there is the body of Lester Young’s solo work, almost all of which is essential. I could rhapsodize about all of it, but there’s particular stuff that’s really great, such as the live in DC dates from 1956, which produced more than one CD/LP. This stuff is terrific, and very fine indeed. It’s well-represented on the “Centennial” CD reviewed by Mr. Friedwald. Lester Young’s solo 50s work doesn’t try to follow what others are doing during the 1950s—and that’s kind of what makes it great.

Lester Young is essentially a romantic at heart, and this comes across in all of his playing.

Of the great boppers, I’ve always preferred Lester Young to Charlie Parker—while I know Parker is technically great and plays fast and improvises crazily and so forth, but Lester Young is really the finer ballad player, and yet can still bop and swing as well as anyone, improvise, and also accompany his vocalist, or play in a big band. In short, there was nothing Lester Young couldn’t do with a saxophone.

One comment about Young, and it’s discussed by Friedwald as well, is Young’s terrible experiences with the United States Army during World War II, and particularly with segregation. Friedwald descrbes this as a “nightmarish year he [Young] spent in the detention barracks, in the segregated armed forces during World II, which certainly exacerbated the chronic alcoholism that contributed to his [Young’s] death at age 49. (Friedwald, WSJ, 8/19/09 at p. D9. The liner notes to LESTER SWINGS (see infra) state that “his sensitivity in these matters was certainly aggravated by his traumatic army experiences of 1944 and 1945, until it amounted almost to a form of disability. Several people who knew him at the time have remarked on this. It took only one aggressive or unfriendly present to upset his equilibrium.” “Von Hangman is here,” he would mutter, as gloom descended. On the other had, when things were goint well, he could be the life and soul of the party.

So what we know about Lester Young is that he was a supremely gifted musician; he was a sensitive and tortured soul; a sensitive and open man with his feelings and emotions; and when it came to institutional racism, he was no Jackie Robinson; he could not stand up to inhumane treatment, and nearly collapsed under its weight. That he survived at all is a testament to his inner artistic strength and will to survive to play another day, and the twelve years of artistic production we have from 1946 to 1958 are, in my view, supremely brilliant and as gifted as his pre-war output.

Lester Young, if you see him play on video, had that kind of sideways way of playing, that was wholly unique, plus the famous pork pie hat he always wore, which when he passed away in 1959, gave rise to one of the world’s greatest jazz compositions, by Charles Mingus, “Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat,” which has been covered by a zillion artists, including even an incendiary fusion version by Jeff Beck and Jan Hammer during the crazy 1970s. I’m not sure what Lester Young would have thought about fusion, but then again, Lester might have leapt right in.

Lester Young’s was a long and happy administration, and long may it rule, happy 100th birthday to Lester Young, the Prez. I hope that the Ken Burns Jazz Documentary re-runs on PBS sometime, and if it doesn’t run in its entirety, I sure hope they re-run the parts about Basie, Young and Holliday again, because those were smoking hot. It’s not that we don’t love Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker, but Lester Young was the Prez for a reason—he had the sweetest sound, the most beautiful, and the music he made will last forever.

Happy 100th birthday to a true American legend, Lester Young, our only other officially recognized African American President.

DISCOGRAPHY – LESTER YOUNG

KEN BURNS JAZZ – THE DEFINITIVE LESTER YOUNG (VERVE 314 549 082-2) (2000) nineteen perfect tracks, compilation. Nice booklet with photos. Great place to start. A+++

THE PRESIDENT PLAYS WITH THE OSCAR PETERSON TRIO (VERVE 831 670-2) (West German Pressing, Polygram). Lester Young, tenor sax, Oscar Peterson, piano, Barney Kessel, guitar, Ray Brown, bass, JC Heard, drums. Recorded NYC November 28, 1952. 13 tracks with alternate takes, 61:49. A+

LESTER YOUNG: THE COMPLETE SAVOY RECORDINGS (SAVOY JAZZ SVY 17122 2CD Set with booklet). This outstanding two CD set collects rare material recorded for Savoy in 1944, 1949 and 1950 by Lester Young with the likes of Billy Butterfield, Hank D’Amico, Johnny Guarnieri, Dexter Hall, Billy Taylor and Cozy Cole (April 18, 1944); a session with the Earle Warren Orchestra (see, he really was the Prez!) (April 18, 1944) (too many greats to mention, but Harry Sweets Edison, Jimmy Powell, Earle Warren, Freddie Green, Jo Jones, to name but a few). The Lester Young Quintet (and this is rare); Lester Young tenor sax, Count Basie piano, Freddie Green guitar, Rodney Richardson bass, Shadow Wilson drums (May 1, 1944). These six tracks are worth the price of the entire 2 CD set. Fantastic. Lester Young and Count Basie in a small group setting. Wow! And this is all Disc One! Disc Two starts out with Lester Young Sextet, Lester Young tenor sax, Jessie Drakes trumpet, Jerry Elliot Trombone, Junior Mance, piano, Leroy Jackson, bass, Roy Haynes drums. (June 28, 1949). (10 tracks). Lester Young Quintet. Lester Young Quintet, Lester Young tenor sax, Jessie Drakes trumpet, Kenny Drew piano, Kenny Shulman bass, Jo Jones drums. April 2, 1950, live in Chicago (10 tracks). This 2CD set has a lot of outtakes, but also has a lot of rare material from great bands, and covers a hard to find period of Young’s career, unless you have the original Savoy 78s or 10” vinyl. Stupendous. A+++.

LESTER SWINGS – LESTER YOUNG (VERVE 314 547 772-2) (1999). According to the CD, “This CD contains some of the most memorable masterpieces from Young’s enigmatic and memorable Verve studio recordings. These recordings can be found in their entirety on the 8-CD set THE COMPLETE LESTER YOUNG STUDIO SESSIONS ON VERVE.” www.vevemusicgroup.com. thirteen tracks, 64.22. This CD covers the highlights of Lester Young’s solo and small group career from 1946-1958, and is thus the cream of the crop. Absolutely vital. A+++

LESTER YOUNG TRIO WITH NAT KING COLE AND BUDDY RICH SUPERVISED BY NORMAN GRANZ (VERVE 314 521 650-2) 1994) (Mfd for BMG direct marketing under license. This is an interesting CD. There are a total of fourteen tracks totaling 60:41. Tracks 1-10 are recording with Lester Young on tenor sax, Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich on drums, playing as a trio, recording April 19, 1946 in Los Angeles, CA. This was originally issued on vinyl as 10” Norgran LP MGN and before that as Lester Young Trio Vols I & II on Mercury/Clef MGC 104 & 135, 1074 with just 8 tracks; two outtakes are included here. Tracks 11-14 are recorded with Lester Young, Harry Sweets Edison on trumpet, Dexter Gordon on tenor sax, Nat King Cole on piano, Red Callendaer & Johnny Miller on drums, and Cliffor Juicy Owens on drums, recording summer 1943 or 1944 Los Angeles, CA, and originally released on vinyl 78 Clef/Mercury 15003/8900. Some of the tracks on this CD are 78 to CD transfers. This is a very fine CD preserving some very famous session tracks with Lester Young and Nat King Cole now considered classic. A+.

LESTER LEAPS IN: HIS GREATEST RECORDINGS 1936-1944; LESTER YOUNG. (ASV Ltd. Living Era CD AJA 5176 MCPS MONO) (Made and printed in England) (ASV Ltd., 1 Beaumont Avenue, London, UK, W14 9LP). (1995). “lester young with count basie, billie holiday, teddy Wilson, buck clayton, bill coleman, dicky wells…and other jazz greats!” what else do you want to know? 24 tracks, 75:40 total playing time. This is pretty much prime Lester Young material. A+++.

LESTER YOUNG LIVE IN DC VOLUMES I AND II 1956 I don’t have the CD info on these, but they’re classics and easily found on the internet.

youtube links:

lester young with billie holiday

this is billie holiday doing fine and mellow from the cbs special in 1956 with lester young and an all star band. with coleman hawkins and gerry mulligan. wow! A++++

a famous clip of lester young and allstar big band doing the “jitterbug jam” check out those dancers swinging to lester’s solo! with Harry Sweets Edison and many others. A+++

count basie band with lester young at randall’s island ny

lester young in a nice video

lester young and great band – pennies from heaven

same band – blues for greasy

http://www.kerouacalley.com/young.html

multimedia directory of lester young videos etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Young

wikipedia article on lester young

theres more youtube video out there of lester young–these are just some highlights.

here’s another discography and list of books on Lester Young from a fan website:

http://www.nme.com/artists/lester-young

Discography

albums.

* Lester Young Quartet And Count Basie Seven – 1950 (Mercury)
* Lester Young – ()
* The Immortal Lester Young – 1951 (Savoy)
* The Lester Young Trio – 1951 (Mercury)
* Count Basie And Lester Young – 1951 (Jazz Panorama)
* Collates – ()
* Pres – 1951 (Mercury/Norgran)
* Kansas City Style – 1952 (Commodore)
* Battle Of The Saxes – 1953 (Aladdin)
* King Cole-Lester Young-Red Callender Trio – ()
* Lester Young-Nat King Cole Trio – 1953 (Aladdin/Score)
* Lester Young – His Tenor Sax – 1953 (Aladdin)
* The Lester Young Trio – 1953 (Clef)
* The President Plays – 1953 (Verve)
* With The Oscar Peterson Trio – 1954 (Norgran)
* Pres Meets Vice-Pres – 1954 (EmArcy)
* The President – ()
* Lester Swings Again – 1954 (Norgran)
* Pres And Sweets – 1955 (Norgran)
* The Pres-ident Plays With The Oscar Peterson Trio – 1955 (Norgran)
* Lester Young – ()
* It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) – 1955 (Norgran/Verve)
* The Jazz Giants “56 – 1956 (Verve)
* Tops On Tenor – 1956 (Jazztone)
* Lester Young And His Tenor Sax, Vol. 1 – 1956 (Aladdin)
* Lester Young And His Tenor Sax, Vol. 2 – 1956 (Aladdin)
* The Masters Touch – 1956 (Savoy)
* Lester’s Here – 1956 (Norgran)
* Pres And Teddy – 1956 (American Recording Society/Verve)
* Lester Young-Nat “King’ Cole-Buddy Rich Trio – 1956 (Norgran)
* Swingin’ Lester Young – 1957 (Intro)
* The Greatest – 1957 (Intro)
* Going For Myself – 1959 (Verve)
* Laughin’ To Keep From Cryin” – 1959 (Verve)
* The Lester Young Story – 1959 (Verve)
* Memorial Album – 1959 (Epic)
* In Paris – 1960 (Verve)
* The Essential Lester Young – 1961 (Verve)
* Lester Warms Up – Jazz Immortals Series, Vol. 2 – 1961 (Savoy)
* Pres – 1961 (Charlie Parker)
* Pres Is Blue – 1961 (Charlie Parker)
* A Date With Greatness – 1962 (Imperial)
* The Immortal Lester Young, Vols. 1 – ()
* 2 – 1962 (Imperial)
* The Influence Of Five – 1965 (Mainstream)
* Town Hall Concert – 1965 (Mainstream)
* Chairman Of The Board – 1965 (Mainstream)
* 52nd Street – 1965 (Mainstream)
* Prez – 1965 (Mainstream)
* Pres And His Cabinet – 1966 (Verve)
* In Washington, D.C., Vols. 1-5 – 1980 (Pablo)

Books

bibliography.

* Lester Young – Lewis Porter
* The Tenor Saxophone And Clarinet Of Lester Young, 1936-1949 – Jan Evensmo
* Lester Young – Dave Gelly
* You Got To Be Original Man! The Music Of Lester Young – Frank BÃchmann-Møller
* You Just Fight For Your Life: The Story Of Lester Young – Frank BÃchmann-Møller
* A Lester Young Reader – Lewis Porter
* No Eyes: Lester Young – David Meltzer
* Lester Leaps In: The Life And Times Of Lester “Pres” Young – Douglas Henry Daniels

–art kyriazis, philly south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

RIP GEORGE RUSSELL THE JAZZ WORKSHOP

George Russell, one of the Jazz Legends, died last week in New York City, a death that went all but unnoticed except in the New York Times, which had a fitting obit to the jazz legend.

Russell’s album “The Jazz Workshop” from 1956 is a legendary work, and for years commanded very high collectors’ prices in mint first edition, usually more than a hundred dollars. It was an amazing work.

Russell, as the NYT obit noted, invented modal dissonant jazz—dense harmonic dissonant chord changes which he described in his “bible of modal jazz”, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation, published in 1953 and again in 1959. (thanks to the New York times 7/30/09 for this).

The effect on the jazz world was dramatic. Miles Davis and John Coletrane immediately picked up on modal jazz, starting with the album “Milestones” in 1958 (they were still in the same band) and then Davis struck gold with his all time classic “Kind of Blue” a year later in 1959 (the fifty year legacy edition was recently released by Columbia in a two cd edition).

From here to the wild modal jazz explorations of miles and coletrane of the 50s and 60s, and to the free jazz of ornette coleman, and the fusion jazz of the 60s and 70s, was but a short step. Dissonance and freedom from tonality was all the rage for the next 25 years.

The movement raged on into rock and blues. Ray Manzarek explained “Light My Fire” as a “modal chromatic inversion” of Coletrane’s “My Favorite Things”; the Grateful Dead and other groups began to improvise and jam along modal jazz lines each and every night, as did more blues-based groups like Eric Clapton and Cream. By the 1970s, modal jazz and jazz-rock fused into jazz-fusion and groups like Mahavishnu Orchestra led by John McLaughlin produced stupendous works like “The Inner Mounting Flame,” while more mainstream artists like Al DiMeola, Jean Luc-Ponty and Weather Report experimented with jazz fusion and modality throughout the decade.

Perhaps my favorite modal work was 1967′s “Nefertiti”, by the legendary Miles Davis lineup which included Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter & Tony Williams. Sublime and spectacular.

George Russell was completely forgotten by then, but he was the father of it all. No one remembered that Russell was the composer of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Cubano Bop” and “Cubano Be Cubano Bop” in the late 1940s, or that Russell continued to teach and play in the new york area for years, or that Russell received a McArthur Fellowship in 1988.

George Russell was one of my favorite jazz figures precisely because he was obscure but influential and brilliant. He never sought out the spotlight, fame, money, fast cars or the attention of pop stardom. He was, to the end, a musician’s musician. He will be missed.

–art kyriazis, Philadelphia, PA
the birthplace of dizzy gillespie & john coletrane

In Memoriam: David Carradine, RIP 2009

The late David Carradine was an amazing actor. Not only for the influential TV Series “Kung Fu”, which was the #1 TV series for several years in the early 1970s, and probably spawned more interest in the martial arts than almost any other single influence or other factor; but also for many other roles he played, such as playing Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby’s minor classic “Bound for Glory”, which plays on TCM from time to time.

I had an acquaintance once here in Philly who was a lawyer, this was in the 90s, who had come here from LA, who had been Robert Altman’s personal attorney in LA during the 1970s. He told me some interesting stories about Bob Altman, David Carradine, Barbara Hershey and Altman’s son, who was the composer of the “MASH” theme, “Suicide is Painless.”

It seems that the Mash theme was so successful, that Altman’s son made far more money than his dad, and that he, Carradine and Hershey were inseparable during the 1970s, and they all lived more or less in Topanga Canyon in a commune like arrangement, living like hippies more or less, and getting into all kinds of trouble back in those days. My friends’ job back then was, from time to time, to bail out David Carradine, Barbara Hershey, and Bob Altman’s son, from jail, or get them out of whatever situation they were in, and then hush it up quietly and make it go away.

David Carradine lived a life of Riley. He slept with the lovely Barbara Hershey when she was young and beautiful, living as young and carefree LA hippies in the hills of LA in the free days of the 1970s, and they even had a love child out of wedlock.

In addition to Hershey, Carradine was married FIVE times and had children by most of those wives as well. He had a productive love life, to say the least.

Quentin Tarantino was brilliant to cast Carradine in the Kill Bill Vol I and Vol II series, and seeing Carradine playing the flute, barefoot, in black and white, as Kwai Chang Caine incarnate on the big screen in Kill Bill II was one of the most incredible screen moments I will ever remember. Sheer brilliance. And then to turn that character inside out into a monstrous killer from the peaceful shaolin monk that he was on TV in the 1970s–that was really something. A masterpiece of cinema homage to a wonderful TV show.

I don’t need to add that Carradine was fantastic in Kill Bill Vol 2.

Here again is a post I previously posted at http://pedrofeliz3b.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/the-sayings-of-kung-fu-the-first-season/

These are from the actual Kung Fu Show, carefully transcribed from episodes and scripts, and are the actual sayings of either Kwai Chang Caine or his Master.

Grasshopper, we will miss you…

The Sayings of Kung Fu, the First Season
By pedrofeliz3b

From the Crane, we learn grace and self-control.
The Snake teaches us suppleness and rhythmic endurance.
The Praying Mantis teaches us speed and patience.
And from the Tiger, we learn tenacity and power.
And from the Dragon, we learn to ride the wind.
All creatures, the low and the high, are one with nature.
If we have the wisdom to learn, all may teach us their virtues.
Is it good to seek the past? If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present; but if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.
When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.
You must walk the rice paper without leaving any marks. This will signify that you can walk without making any sounds.
The outer strength, the strength of the body, withers with age. The inner strength, the Chi, remains and grows stronger with age.
The right of vengeance belongs to no man.
A Shaolin priest can walk through walls.
A man cannot live his whole life in fear. To hide such feelings is to increase them 1000 times.
If you tell a man he is less than a man often enough, he will come to believe it.
All life is sacred. I would not take pleasure in the death of any man.
Fear is the enemy. He who conquers himself is the greatest warrior.
To hate is like drinking salt water; it only makes the thirst worse.
I have seen the silkworm; it spins a thread that it may be seen. Hate is the thread and the tomb you weave; it will not save you from your suffering.
The mind and the body and the spirit are one. When the body expresses the desires of the mind and the spirit, the body is in tune with nature, the act is pure and there is no shame. Love is harmony.
Each journey begins and also ends. Life is such a journey, yet it is full of journeys within which begin and end.
Seek always peace. To endanger one, endangers all. In such times, the soul must be the warrior. The soul sees always. What the soul sees cannot be denied.
Discipline your body that you may find greater strength. Be one with all that is without one’s self.
Where the tiger and the man are one, there is no fear, there is no danger.

Part II

I have three treasures which I hold and keep: the first is mercy, for from mercy comes courage; the second is frugality, from which comes generosity to others; the third is humility, for from it comes leadership.
How shall I hold these treasures, Master? In memory?
Not in memory, but in your deeds.
Peace lies not in the world but in the man who walks the peaceful path.
To reach perfection a man must develop equally compassion and wisdom.
Shall I treat every man the same? Yet the flower beneath the water knows not the sun. Other men, not knowing me, will find me hard to understand.
As far as possible, be on good terms with all. Accept the ways of others; respect first your own.
Look beneath the surface of the pool to see its depths.
Rock crushes scissors. Paper covers rock. Scissors cuts the paper. Each in turn conquers the other; there is no stronger or weaker. This is the harmony of nature.

Part III

Ten million living things have as many different worlds. Do not see yourself as the center of the universe, wise and good and beautiful. Seek, rather, wisdom and goodness and beauty, that you may honor them everywhere.
A man may tell himself many things, but is a man’s universe made only of himself?
If a man hurts me and I punish him, perhaps he will not hurt another.
And if you do nothing?
He will believe he may do as he wishes.
Perhaps. Or perhaps he will learn that some men receive injury but return kindness.
If you sow rice, you will grow rice. If you sow fear, you will grow fear.

THE SAYINGS OF KUNG FU THE FIRST SEASON STARRING DAVID CARRADINE CLASSIC TV SERIES AVAILABLE ON DVD THIS OR ANY OTHER HOLIDAY SEASON

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion philadelphia phillies

Tags: Art Kyriazis, arthur j kyriazis, Arthur Kyriazis, Clasic TV Series, David Carradine, DVD, Kung Fu, Kyriazis, Sayings of Kung Fu, Sayings of Kung Fu the First Season

THE WORLD’S SHORTEST BOOKS by Mark J. Leonardo, Esquire, Attorney at Law, Malibu, California

The World’s Shortest Books:

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY COUNTRY
by Oscar Winer Jane Fonda & Cindy Sheehan .
Illustrated by Michael Moore
________________________________________

MY CHRISTIAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS &
HOW I HELPED AFTER KATRINA
by the Revs Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton
_______________________________________

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BILL
by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
________________________________

Sequel:
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HILLARY
By former President Bill Clinton
___________________________________

MY LITTLE BOOK OF PERSONAL HYGIENE
by Osama Bin Laden
___________________________________

THINGS I CANNOT AFFORD
by Microsoft Chair Emeritus Bill Gates
____________________________________

THINGS I WOULD NOT DO FOR MONEY
by NBA Rebound Champion Dennis Rodman
_________________________________

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE
by Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore & Sen. John Kerry
_______________________________________

AMELIA EARHART’S GUIDE TO THE PACIFIC
___________________________________

A COLLECTION of
MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES: REASONS TO LOVE LIFE.
by Suicide Doctor Jack Kevorkian
__________________________________

TO ALL THE MEN I HAVE LOVED BEFORE
by Ellen de Generes & Rosie O’Donnell
____________________________________

GUIDE TO DATING ETIQUETTE
by former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson
__________________________________

THE AMISH PHONE DIRECTORY
_______________________________________

MY PLAN TO FIND THE REAL KILLERS
by Former Heisman Winner O.J. Simpson
_________________________________________

HOW TO DRINK & DRIVE OVER BRIDGES
by Senator Ted Kennedy
___________________________________

MY BOOK OF MORALS
by former President Bill Clinton
with introduction by The Rev. Jesse Jackson
*******************************************************

AND, JUST ADDED:
Complete Knowledge of Military Strategy!
By House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi

Mark J. Leonardo, Esq.
THE LAW OFFICES OF MARK J. LEONARDO, ESQ.
784 Latigo Canyon Road
Malibu, California 90265
(310) 456-7373
(310) 317-7261 (fax)

MARK LEONARDO IS NOT JUST ONE OF THE BEST ATTORNEYS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA–HE’S ALSO A GREAT PIANO PLAYER, A WONDERFUL FATHER, AND HE’S PERSONAL FRIENDS WITH FELLOW DETROIT NATIVE KID ROCK!!!! (WELL, HE USED TO BE UNTIL THE KID SPLIT UP WITH PAM ANDERSON). MARK IS ONE RIGHT ON DUDE!!! CALL HIM FOR ALL YOUR LEGAL PROBLEMS IN CALI!!!! AND, SINCE HIS OFFICE IS IN MALIBU, YOU CAN GO SURFING AT MALIBU POINT AFTER YOUR BUSINESS MEETING OR JUST HIT THE BEACH AT ZUMA…..

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the non-steroid using world champion philadelphia phillies

THE KINKED SUPPLY DEMAND CURVE

In an astonishing demonstration that the bad economy is driving people to do almost anything to keep their lifestyles afloat, the Philadelphia Daily News of Monday March 23, 2009 at pp. 8 & 28 reports an AP story by Karen Hawkins, “In Hard Times Sex Does the Trick: Porn, Adult Clubs doing well…and hiring”, in which it is stated that:

“The tough job market is prompting a growing number of women across the country to dance in strip clubs, appear in adult movies or pose for magazines like Hustler. Employers across the adult entertainment industry say they they’re seeing an influx of applications from women who…are attracted by the promise of flexible schedules and fast cash. Many have college degrees and held white-collar jobs until the economy soured. ‘You’re seeing a lot more beautiful women who are eligible to do so many other things,’ said Gus Poulos, general manager of New York City’s Sin City gentleman’s club.

According to the article, stripping dancers at a club like upscales Rick’s Cabaret in Miami or NYC can “make $100,000 to $300,000 a year in cash.” In Rhode Island, a club called “Foxy Lady” held a job fair to fill 35 positions, and was swamped with more than 150 job applicants, according to co-owner Tom Tsoumas.

To be fair, on the one hand, one supposes it’s great that women have the opportunity to earn this kind of money on the free market.

On the other hand, it seems kind of horrible that women would go from doing white collar jobs to stripping off their clothes for drunken strangers in a bar, or worse, to getting ravaged repeatedly by viagra-driven male pornstars in front of multiple cameras for megabucks just to maintain their cushy standard of living.

Is this what the dreadful recession of 2008-09 has wrought? Or are stripping and porn just respectable mainstream occupations nowadays, which is probably the more likely conclusion. For a long time, the left wing and the right wing used to be able to agree that porn was one thing they all hated, because the right wing fundamentalists were against it, and so were the left wing feminists and activists.

For all the brouhaha rained down upon them by the feminists, and I had friends who used to go on night raids to spray paint ads for penthouse in Manhattan back in the day, the adult entertainment sectors continue to be the fastest growing and most viable sectors of the internet economy and the real economy.

These industries have obliterated their moral and legal opposition in both the right and left wings, it would seem to me. Moreover, they are openly accepted in many other corners of the world, and I need not list the cities or countries in which this is true, notwithstanding AIDS and a host of other reasons to regulate such behaviors.

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t want my daughter to work in such an industry, and I’m certain you wouldn’t want yours to either. I think when you frame the question that way, you see what is essentially wrong with this industry. It’s come a long way from Hugh Hefner publishing elegant centerfolds of Marilyn Monroe back in the 1950s.

And of course, we have that infamous Supreme Court Justice, I can’t remember which one it was, who said of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” That’s a classic line.

The Supreme Court used to watch every single minute of every single dirty movie that came before them before ruling. That was itself singular and odd. There was one justice who didn’t watch them because he thought they were all protected by the first amendment, but I can’t remember which one it was.

There’s an old rumour that a famous Philadelphia DA used to screen all the allegedly obscene movies down in the DA’s office back in the 60s and 70s for all the DAs, or maybe it was back in the 1950s. A lot of the people involved are now judges and bigshots, so no one wants the rumor repeated much anymore today, but it’s just an unsubstantiated rumor. But it’s a good one.

John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy were each president of the “Smokers Club” at Harvard back in the 1930s. It’s listed on their freshman and senior yearbooks and facebooks. That could have been about smoking, but “smokers” also meant, back in the 1930s, illicit pornographic films. Given JFK’s and RFK’s collective predilections for women, it’s possible they were in charge of getting the “good films” for their classmates. Again, this is an unsubstantiated rumor, or subject to interpretation. You decide. JFK had a hot affair with the 40s filmstar Gene Tierney, around 1945-46 when he got out of the navy, so probably JFK didn’t need to study film to know what he was doing.

Anyway, to summarize, guess this is what they meant when they taught us about the kinked supply & demand curve back in freshman economics.

Art Kyriazis Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Phillies

CHRISTIANS, STOICS, SPARTANS & SAMURAI: THE CONQUEST OF DEATH

Indifference to death is the supreme claim of a successful moral theory. Mortality, the biblical threescore and ten years we are given on this earth, is and was the human condition for the ancients and the moderns. Transcendence of mortality therefore becomes a categorical imperative for any moral theory to attain success.

At a recent alumni dinner where there were a number of attorneys, i asked some of my colleagues around the table if they had given any thought to the afterlife. Most of the people at the table looked at me as if I had landed from another planet. I pressed the point, and asked, you get ready for trials, but what about the ultimate trial, the final trial, the final judgment in the life to come? Don’t you want to be ready for that? Again, blank faces and almost no thought given to the concept in the slightest. I found this interesting, and wanted to give it some thought. This essay was the result.

Maybe this is what is wrong with the legal profession today. Lots of ethics courses, but no courses as to the essence of ethical thought–the soul and its salvation. And yet Plato and Aristotle, especially Plato, write about the soul, about lawyers and the salvation of the soul in the life to come, and about ethics, almost to the exclusion of all else. And of course, Christianity absorbs Plato through neo-Platonism, and a lot of Aristotle too. So have we forgotten everything we learned back at the dawn of Western thought? Have we forgotten that you can’t take it with you, to paraphrase a famous play we used to read in prep school? That a rich man will find it harder to get into heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? That Lazarus will be by God’s side while the rich man will be burning from thirst in hell? Have we forgotten all of this in our search for worldly rewards?

I assume we all agree here that Bernie Madoff is definitely going to hell, but we’re not sure what level of Dante’s Inferno he’s being assigned at present.

So here are a few comments on four ethical systems that have given plenty of thought on this matter, and incidentally, most every lawyer in the greco-roman world was at the very least, a stoic or a christian.

Characteristically convergent in the three moral systems of Stoicism, Spartanism and Samurai/Bushido is the conquest of death through roughly parallel means. Christianity in its neo-platonic formulation through the Hellenistic church fathers, starting with Clement of Alexandria and running through the Greek Church Fathers, St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Chrystostomos, and finding its eventual final expression in St. Augustine, a much later Latin church father, also conquers death as well.

As St. John Chrystostomos so memorably puts it, “Death, Where is Thy Sting?” However, Christian eschatology and cosmology sharply distinguish it from the Stoic, Spartan and Samurai traditions. There will be a second coming, and a second judgment, a final judgment, but so long as the Christian adheres to the seven sacraments and worships through the Church, his salvation is ordained, and he or she will be saved in the life to come. Here, we are speaking of the early Eastern Christian church, 100 AD – 1000 AD, as opposed to the later Western church, 1000 AD – present, which was split by the east-west schism, the Albigensian Crusade, the 4th Crusade, the Crusades in general, the Protestant movements, and so on. The early Church, by contrast, was relatively unified (setting aside the Arian, Manichean and Nestorian and other heresies, which are not material here) and was constituted by its seven ecumenical councils as a unified and generic whole. Even as to the schismatic churches of the Near East, the churches of Nestorianism and so forth, which had millions of adherents up through around 1400 AD in Syria, Iran, China and many other areas where the majority religion was either Muslim or other, the message was the same, that death could be overcome by salvation through the Church.

By Stoicism we refer to the ancient Greek philosophy which emerged in Athens at the stoa, which is best known by the work of greek philosophers such as Epictetus, and follow it to its most perfect expression in the Roman philosophies of such writers as Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. The Roman/Latin followers of stoicism, of whom there were many, were comfortable with stoicism, since it was perfectly suited to a milititaristic society ruled by capricious and arbitrary imperial factions which could change suddenly and without warning, often with drastic policy implications. Because conditions were constantly volatile at the micro level, even though there was an overall “pax Romana,” stoicism was an ideal philophy.

We note in this introduction the essentially dual character of stoicism, as both a military and an ethical philosophy, one ideally suited to the greek or roman warrior or pacific citizen alike. The warrior at peace in stoic tranquility could perform his military assignments with a minimum of moral concern either for his enemy’s or his own death; likewise the citizen going about his tasks was also able to work hard, indifferent to illness, suffering or the exigencies of mortality, and to the machinations of politics and the state.

Turning to the Spartan way of life, which was essentially a philosophy and ethical system, again we see a military and ethical system in place. First, we define the Spartan system as that system in place in Ancient Sparta from roughly 700 BC to approximately 350 BC, when the Spartan State began to lose its military supremacy to Thebes, and lost its martial character and started to blend shortly thereafter into the larger Hellenistic World created by Alexander the Great and his Successors.

During their time of glory, the Spartan method of training and educating their men and women was legendary throughout the ancient world, and it has come down to us even in the present day. The very word “spartan” connotes sparse, spare, lean and other similar adjectival synonyms. That a spartan soldier would fight to the death was a given; that he was happier to die gloriously in battle than to die and old man in his village was well-known. Thus even Pericles was known to quote the Spartans in saying that a good death in battle could wipe out a lifetime of evil deeds. But the Spartans virtue was a sort of corporate virtue, not the individual Achaean virtue or heroism of Achilles or Ajax; Spartans fought as a team. Their methods were legendary; their morality their code.

Finally we have the samurai, who lived by the code of bushido. In this moral code, elaborated on many occasions by learned samurai, the samurai warrior, who was always a learned man fluent in poetry, calligraphy and the arts, as well as the martial arts and the sword, was to consider himself at all times as if he was already dead. This core, bedrock principle of bushido, along with the zen Buddhist principles of “no mind” or “empty mind”, encapsulate bushido’s essential qualities—the clear-minded warrior, ready to strike, unafraid of death because in his mind, he has already died, and thus is already prepared for death. Such an adversary must have been dangerous indeed.

That there are parallels between these three systems with regards to their attitudes towards death and mortality is self-evident from our brief discussion. A longer exegesis would examine all of these systems in greater detail, but this brief review suffices to carry across the general motive and ethical points.

Art Kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

Books Read and Planning to be Read – Summer 2004

This is from a list I sent in to the local paper back in 2004 that I found on my computer. It’s interesting.

Books Read (all Non-Fiction) (NF)

Bernstein, Leonard. Findings. 1982. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY. The Maestro writes.

Boylan, Jennifer Finney. She=s Not There: A Life in Two Genders. With an Afterword by Richard Russo. 2003. Broadway Books, New York, NY. A virtual must-read if you haven=t read it yet.

Bryant, Howard. Shutout: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. Introduction by Roger Kahn. 2002. Beacon Press, Boston, MA. The dark underbelly of the Red Sox is racism; a must-read.

Mazower, Mark. Inside Hitler=s Greece: The Experience of Occupation 1941-44. 1993. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. (Especially Chapters 19 & 20, AThe SS & the Terror System@ & AGreek Jewry & the Final Solution@, valuable for their accounts of the fate of the 250,000 plus Sephardic Jewish Greeks of Thessaloniki, a six hundred year old community virtually wiped out by the Nazis, and the heroism of the Greeks, unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, to save them from the Germans; this material is difficult to find in other sources.).

Peyser, Joan. Bernstein, a Biography. 1987. Beechtree Books, New York, NY. Great read.

Books Planning to Read This Summer (all Non-Fiction) (NF)

Hadju, David. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina & Richard Farina. 2001. North Point Press, a Division of Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, NY. Lots of Dylan books, but only this one also attempts a bio on Dick & Mimi Farina.

James, Bill & Baseball Info Solutions. The Bill James Handbook 2004; The Complete up-to-date statistics on every major league player through last season. 2003, ACTA Publications, Chicago, IL. The Ultimate Baseball stat book by the best baseball stat company in the game. Excel-lent!

Lewis, Michael. Moneyball. 2003. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, NY. The author of Liar=s Poker does baseball. How the As win spending 20% as much as the Yankees; there is a secret.

Ryding, Erik S. & Rebecca Pechefsky. Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere. 2001. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Mahler=s apprentice conductor, Walter is the link between Mahler, Mitropoulos, Bernstein and the modern generation of conductors. He is essential to understand.

Schmidt, Eric von & Jim Rooney. Baby Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years; Second Edition with a New Preface. 1993. (1st ed. 1978). University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA. Burn “A Mighty Wind”; this is the real thing.

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

The Cult Of Relics Denise Levertov

My father’s serviette ring,

silver incised with a design

of Scotch thistles, the central medallion

uninitialed, a blank oval.

The two massive

German kitchen knives, pre-1914, not-stainless steel,

which my mother carefully scoured with Vim

after each use.

My daily use

of these and other such things

links me to hands long gone.

Medieval con-men disgust and amuse us;

we think we’d never have fallen

for such crude deceptions-unholy

animal bones, nails from any old barn,

splinters enough from the Cross to fill

a whole lumber-yard.

But can we

with decency mock the gullible

for desiring these things?

Who doesn’t want

to hold what hands belov’d or venerated

were accustomed to hold?-You? I?

Who wouldn’t want

to put their lips to the true chalice?