Bøker av Todd van Buskirk

The phrase (after Christian Bok) does a variety of things: It cites him as the author of an earlier work ("The Great Order of the Universe") that inspired Van Buskirk who used the words. It adds another layer of meaning to the work who cites the author - now readers can look at both and see how the two are similar or differ. It creates a history about the topic under discussion that both informs and questions. It may constrain the current author to follow similar form, discuss similar topics or alternatively it might answer the previous poem, or offer a different view or.... even lead to something entirely new. In general, it honors the spirit of poetry by saying "this poet made me think". "The Great Order of the Universe" is a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the LEGO patent. Source: Poetry (July/August 2009)

It's hard to argue that word problems, or puzzles, used as they are in our schools as disposable exercises, could be lived with over time, and seen to have inexhaustible levels of meaning (as a parable in the religious sense), particularly poetic meaning about the depths of human experience. There is certainly the element of the indescribable involved in mathematical concepts, particularly those that deal with infinity, or with entities that exist perhaps only as mental images. Although word problems do reflect historical situations of their authors, is it stretching the metaphor to claim that word problems mediate the ultimate reaches of the reality of man? That they involve eschatological crisis, or that they express the drama between human beings and God?

In a 1793 text called On the Sublime (Vom Erhabenen), Schiller argues that the mathematical sublime ought to be labeled the theoretical sublime. Most contemporary theorists feel uncomfortable about ascribing significance to inaudible relationships to music; we tend to assume that there should be some meaningful relationship between analysis and auditory experience. Now consider that any entity in a music system is a "thought-object." A music object cannot sound or be heard unless it is somehow converted into a thought-object. In order to generate a particular music object usually several thought-objects have to interact and finally undergo a synthesis process. The music domain is made of many different classes whose objects finally influence the performance. As a first approach, our music model distinguishes the following classes: Instrument, Generator, Note and Score. It is important to note that Van Buskirk's music model is object-oriented and not "event-oriented."

Note: the painting in the book is printed in black and white. The Lulu preview shows the painting in color. Debates have arisen as to whether all biographies are fiction, especially when authors are writing about figures from the past. All history is seen through a perspective that is the product of our contemporary society and as a result biographical truths are constantly shifting. So the history biographers write about will not be the way that it happened. It will be the way they remembered it. On the other hand, the Art Newspaper named eighteen "Van Goghs" in public collections that had been downgraded as fakes or are works of questionable authenticity. Most of them were taken off display, including pictures in the Van Gogh Museum, the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Art scholars and expert historians alike constantly challenge and raise issues about van Gogh's oeuvre and presumably will continue to do so.

The Beach Boys "Smile Sessions" box set caused much internet discussion and debate among fans of the legendary unfinished album "SMiLE" from 1966/67. The pages and pages of scholarly debate contrasted with mindless banter regarding prices, shipping and content was a phenomenon to behold, and a fascinating look into pure obsession. No attempt was made to use the most interesting bits from the discussions. The author simply chose a discussion -- warts and all -- encompassing boring mindless banter mixed with insightful comments on "SMiLE" to reveal the "story" on the reception of a long awaited box set. The results are a surreal journey into a strange mythology. The second edition contains the corrected text.

Publishing public domain and PLR books is a numbers racket to some degree. It will depend on the niche and the earlier recognition of that author and work. The quality on these vary intensely. Some of the more recent ones are better written and edited. Now they are coming with high-quality covers and source files to edit them fully. Like public domain, there are essentially limitless competition out there with all these copies. But also like public domain, you will see that mostly they have been poorly edited or poorly marketed and are really no competition at all. In East Asian tradition, an anthology was a recognised form of compilation of a given poetic form. In this model, which derives from Chinese tradition, the object of compiling an anthology was to preserve the best of a form, and cull the rest.

The Indiscerniblity of Identicals is the principle that if two objects are absolutely identical then they must be indistinguishable from one another with respect to all of their properties. But does that include the context of the identical objects? The notion of identical gives rise to many philosophical problems, including: 1. What does it mean for an object to be the same as itself? 2. If x and y are identical (are the same thing), must they always be identical? Are they necessarily identical? 3. What does it mean for an object to be the same, if it changes over time? (Is applet the same as applet+1?) 4. If an object's parts are entirely replaced over time, in what way is it the same?

Individual sheets of paper accurately represent a lot of things, but is the world one of them? Even a math word-problem can become a powerful testimonial to the presence of the world if the problem begins and ends with an accurate representation of itself. Perhaps the 'quotidian viewpoint' doesn't measurably move the needle on our engagement in interesting stories. They're 'real world' so we are disarmed of their usual question, "When will I ever use this?" There is a second axis we focus on less. That axis looks at work. It looks at what we do as humanity. That work can be real or fake also. The fake work is narrowly focused on precise, abstract, formal calculation. It's necessary but it interests us less. It interests the world less also. Real work - interesting work, the sort of work we might like to do later in life - involves problem formulation and question development.