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Home » Open thread 11/11/23

Open thread 11/11/23

The New Neo Posted on by

Evolution? More like devolution. Maybe the technique gets better, but who cares? The incomparable Fracci, the first on the video (1971), is the only one whose dancing really interests me. Notice also that she dances faster than the others. Over the years, most dancers have gotten rather slow and not very fluid or expressive either, because they are concentrating so hard on their perfect show-offy technique and striking poses (the third dancer isn’t really as thin as she looks here; her video is somewhat distorted):

Comments

Open thread 11/11/23 — 41 Comments

  1. Music to ObamaMalleyBidenBlinkenSullivan’s ears: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/irans-raisi-the-only-solution-is-a-palestinian-state-from-the-river-to-the-sea/

    Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi tells a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders on Israel’s war with Hamas that the only solution to the conflict is a Palestinian state from the “river to the sea.” […]

    Raisi calls on those present to take a clear stand and choose what side they are on.

    “We want to take a historic and decisive decision regarding what is happening in the Palestinian territories. Killing civilians and bombing hospitals are manifestations of Israeli crimes in Gaza. Today, everyone must decide which side they stand on,” he says, calling to arm the Palestinians.

    He also calls for sanctions and an energy boycott against Israel, for charges to be brought against Israel and the US at the Hague, and for international inspectors at Israel’s nuclear facilities.

  3. Armistice Day. Please remember.

    Two things have altered not
    Since the world first began
    The beauty of the wild green earth
    And the bravery of Man.

    — “The Magpies of Picardy” by T.P. Cameron Wilson

  4. Neo: now we can accurately report that an errant Hamas rocket has hit the Al Shifa hospital :

    https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-772633

    It drives me crazy how to all the western media, including the Wall Street Journal, report that while Israel claims there’s a network of tunnels and command posts underneath the hospital, they can’t verify/confirm. And that since Hamas denies this, the issue can’t be settled. Meanwhile, the New York Times ran n extensive piece on the tunnels but failed to connect all the dots:

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/10/world/europe/hamas-gaza-tunnels.html

    Given all the evidence we have, what rational person could conclude that it’s Isreal that is lying? To believe that you have to believe that they, rather than Hamas, are bloodthirsty savages who take joy in the killing of innocents when they hit targets near hospitals. And that Israel is oblivious to the negative PR they get from such efforts. Oh yes. I forgot that Hamas gets little to no negative PR for their actions

  5. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a Christian. She says that neither Islam, whether radical or “moderate,” nor atheism, can save Western civilization, which is founded on Judeo-Christian teaching and traditions. All our freedoms and development come from these foundations, she says. She doesn’t say what church she has joined, only that she attends on Sundays.

    https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/

  6. Excellent interview with pragmatist Jared Kushner on the All-In podcast.

    The beauty of podcasts where the interviewee is given time to explain positions and why they did what they did. In this case the first half is about the middle east and the Abraham Accords and a path going forward.

    How did a liberal New Yorker join the Trump campaign (because it was his father-in-law). But he says it was the rallies that opened his worldview from his insulated New York culture to expose him to the middle class.

    From the body language (at least what I thought was body language) a couple of the interviewers appeared ready to defend the Palestinian cause, but Kushner’s detailed explanation of the issues changed the direction of the conversation.

    E153: In conversation with Jared Kushner: Israel-Hamas War, paths forward, macro picture, AI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EFk40AbO94

  10. Neo—I really enjoy these ballet clips. Ballet has fascinated me since girlhood and I always learn something.

    I read Gelsey Kirkland’s autobiography (her first one) where, IIRC, she was bemoaning the fact that ballet was sacrificing storytelling and expression for technique. She blamed Balanchine, who had a definite “look” in his mind, whether or not that look fit the material.

    I wonder if the focus on technique has also influenced women’s gymnastics, especially the floor exercises. Music almost seems a secondary consideration.

  11. Kate…
    Many thanks for the Hirsi Ali link.
    She’s always a worthwhile read… brilliant mind. Will be interesting to see where she goes from now.

  12. March Hare:

    It has influenced gymnastics. But gymnastics is a sport, so it makes more sense to emphasize technique in a sport. Ballet is an art – at least, it used to be.

  13. neo:

    Once again I am in awe of your eye for ballet which you share with us, as well as the remarkable dancers themselves. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known I could appreciate ballet as well as be aware of its evolution — or devolution, as you note.

    I was entranced with Fracci, but I didn’t realize how special her performance was, She looked good and freakishly skillful, but ballet dancers are supposed to look good and freakishly skillful, so what’s new.

    Then the others followed. They looked good and freakishly skillful, but the unity was missing. I ended up staring at their feet and toes and thinking, “Wow, She can sure stand up on her tippy toes.” En pointe. (Hey, that’s French!)

    So it becomes a trick, like Kate Winslet dancing at the steerage party in “Titanic,” which, as it happens I was watching this afternoon. (OK, I know everyone doesn’t love “Titanic.”)

    –“Titanic 3D | “Third Class Dance” | Official Clip”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erAQ9LkftwA

    Then there was the third dancer, who looked like the spindly Queen Mother Alien emerging from the Mother Ship in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.:” ‘I guess they compressed the horizontal for some reason.

    I watched the video twice to check my impressions. Fracci emerges as a revelation. Her hands and shoulder work are perfection.

    You don’t know what you’ve missed until it’s gone.

  15. Kate,

    I second (third?) the gratitude for the Hirsi Ali essay. I was not aware of her choice. The whole essay is interesting.

    Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: “Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

    Strange, like Russell I always assumed fear was why many people embraced religion, but, unlike Russell it never factored into my deliberations on it. And, now that I do embrace religion I see many of the great apologists were also not drawn to faith from fear.

    As Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains, atheism is liberating because of what it lacks. When I found myself growing in faith and understanding what belief in God means I knew that it atheism would be a simpler path.

    It’s odd to me that so few scientists understand faith. The scientific method works by testing hypothesis and going with what matches test results. It doesn’t matter how beautiful a theory is if the data don’t support it. People who are conversant in quantum mechanics and see daily that the inner workings of matter are completely unrelated to how they appear outwardly forget this as soon as they walk out of their labs into the “real” world.

    Humans have run the atheism experiment many times and it has been as successful as mixing ammonia and bleach and expecting an apple pie. We have 100 plus years of test results with hundreds of millions of people as data points. But the consistently disastrous results cannot mean the hypothesis is flawed, it’s just that we haven’t done the experiment properly.

  16. David Harsanyi has an article at the Federalist titled “The Populist Right Is Leading The GOP Into Irrelevancy.” He blames the Republicans’ losses on the party’s populist turn. I think he’s right to say that the party’s new blue collar majority hasn’t turned up — and that online Republicans are living in a bubble and not in touch with the country as a whole, but he’s wrong in thinking that the pre-Trump Republican Party had a winning recipe. Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney? The party’s been in trouble for 30 years. Suburbanites were drifiting away from the Republicans even before Trump.

    He’s rather too contemptuous of efforts to turn around deindustrialization, and perhaps contemptous of blue collar Americans as well. He doesn’t even mention immigration — the big issue separating Trump from the old mainstream conservatives. And he makes the bizarre claim that “right-wing institutions” embraced the populist turn after 2016. A few, maybe, but most didn’t by any stretch of the imagination. Anyway, it’s a provocative article. What does happen if the Trump majority doesn’t materialize?

  17. And, now that I do embrace religion I see many of the great apologists were also not drawn to faith from fear.

    Rufus T. Firefly:

    Exactly. Atheists do not get this.

    I wasn’t an atheist when I encountered Joan of Arc. But I for sure knew I wasn’t a Christian and I would never be a Christian again. However, after Joan I knew I had to walk part of her path. So I went back to church.

    What a catastrophe! I had some sort of born-again experience while walking a labyrinth in a San Francisco Episcopalian church on Good Friday.

    It was beautiful and profoundly disorienting. I was in a very strange trance for six months. I still have not recovered.

    Orthodox Christians probably would not accept me as Christian. I don’t worry about labels anymore. However, something changed irrevocably for me that Good Friday.

    But it was not about fear and whatever I might say to an atheist or an agnostic would make little sense.

  18. A salute to all veterans on this Veterans’ Day.

    It’s late, but I just wanted to say a word about Veterans’ Day. There’s a lot going on and it seems like the day has faded into the background this year.

    Anyway, to all my fellow veterans, I hope you had a wonderful day. It was a privilege to serve in the company of stout-hearted men and women.

  19. Thank you J.J
    My mother always wore a poppy on Armistice Day.
    ‘A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray…’
    Why is this still not a thing?
    Thanks for the Carla Fracci clip, Neo.
    Truly incomparable. The very definition of ‘carriage’.

  21. }}} Maybe the technique gets better, but who cares?

    I’m not really big on the topic, but, I note that the latter two seem to be spending almost all their time en pointe (sp?), but doing a lot less of the leg maneuvers the first two are doing at 0:25, 1:05, and 1:45…?

    I am sure being en pointe for so long is difficult, but, it’s not “interesting” all by itself. Yes, they do some pirouettes, but that’s about all the embellishment they do.

  22. }}} can save Western civilization, which is founded on Judeo-Christian teaching and traditions.

    As I have noted earlier in other threads, PostModernism is aimed at the two primary underpinnings of Western Civilization:
    1 — The inheritance of Greek Thought and Ideal
    2 — The Judeo-Christian ethos.

    And that is why PostModern Liberalism is a social cancer eating away at Western Civilization, by attempting — and doing a very successful job, so far — to destroy its foundations.

  23. }}} It’s odd to me that so few scientists understand faith. The scientific method works by testing hypothesis and going with what matches test results.

    Actually, many scientists understand faith, they just aren’t vocal about it because it’s very un-PC, so they get lots of crap if they do. But, if you listen to some of the old masters, they are pretty vocal about it. The best is the one by Heisenberg:

    “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
    — Werner Heisenberg —

    Feynman also was known for his support of religious belief (I haven’t investigated his own convictions):

    I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible. And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God — an ordinary God of religion — a consistent possibility?

    Yes, it is consistent. Despite the fact that I said that more than half of the scientists don’t believe in God, many scientists do believe in both science and God, in a perfectly consistent way. But this consistency, although possible, is not easy to attain, and I would like to try to discuss two things: Why it is not easy to attain, and whether it is worth attempting to attain it.

    The fact is, Science and Religion do not generally intersect. They solve different problems. Science is about the known and knowable. It’s about things that can be “proven”** by a specific, detailed methodology, when that methodology is followed correctly (not following it correctly has, in the Soft Sciences, resulted in The Decline Effect so problematic these days)

    Religion is about how one processes things that are unprovable and unknowable: “Why does the universe exist?” “Does life actually mean anything in the grand scheme of things.” “What is/should be my purpose on this planet?”

    Occasionally, things shift or interact, but it’s usually because of human questions or issues. Two obvious examples are Euthanasia and Abortion. Science suggests one thing, Religion another. But, for the most part, it is problematic when people attempt to force one into the position of the other. Evolution is an example of this, with Creationism a ridiculous attempt to paint the ideas of the Biblical Creation under science-like explanations. But they aren’t Science, because they aren’t testable or verifiable. There is nothing you can point to and say, “we can run an experiment on this, and if it fails, then we know Creationism is false”.

    And don’t take that wrongly — Science — and Evolution — say nothing whatsoever about the existence of God. At most, they suggest what methodology he might have used. “Oh, but Bishop Usher blah blah blah…” Give me a break. If you think the Bible should be taken literally all the time, you need to spend one HELL of a lot more time studying the Bible. Because it’s subjective as hell — this is why there are so many sects, and why WARS have been fought over those subjective interpretations — and certainly there are passages that, taken literally totally contradict themselves. The Bible is meant to inspire — so God nudges you to look at THESE verses when you need one nudge to the right sense of What He Wants Of You, and these OTHER verses when you need some other nudging.

    Because the Bible necessarily speaks to billions of people at different life stages and experiences and situations and problems. How can there be one single exact meaning to be taken to provide that? It’s ridiculous. The Bible is meant to inspire, to open you to His guidance. To make that little voice in your head carry on the dialogue with Him that you need to have.

    So — The Bible’s “this begat that begat the other” and so forth is, even if a specific, actual list of some events of history, is hardly a conclusive and total summary of all of history.

    At most, Evolution says that God did one of two things, offhand:
    1 — He used a specific set of techniques, over a vast amount of time, to guide things to where they are, now. These techniques were His deliberate mark in the fossil record (and were designed to not Require Him to happen… which is another philosophical discussion)
    2 — He did it some other way, but deliberately dropped those clues into the process to lead people to find a scientific explanation for how He did it, as an alternative.

    I’m open to a third option, but those two seem necessary and sufficient to explain Evolution while still leaving Him shit tons of room to actually do whatever He actually did.

    =============
    ** “Proven” in the sense of “have confidence in”, not “yes, this is absolutely incontrovertibly true for all situations. Science offers a “reliability value” to a given assertion. There is — should always be — a manner of doubt applied to such.

  27. huxley,

    For me Good Friday is one of the most important/significant Holy days on the church calendar. I certainly enjoy the Christmas season and there are many other traditions and days I enjoy and/or find inspirational, but Good Friday has always been very unique for me. It’s a bit confusing when I try to explain to others. Each year I try to keep Good Friday holy and I have had many, impactful experiences associated with Good Friday observances.

    I wish you an enlightening and rewarding journey as you continue to “recover.”

  28. AesopFan,

    Thanks for those two links. I will listen to both when I have some time (busy day today).

    I’ve mentioned Douglas Murray before, as has neo. In my mind he’s been the most spot on regarding the current atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and the West’s ignorance in addressing it. He has also said, many times, although he cannot accept faith (he has tried, but doesn’t feel the spark), he has concluded people should live as if they have Judeo/Christian faith as it is the best path for successfully navigating the world*. I hear a lot of other pundits and public intellectuals reaching a similar conclusion.

    This goes back to my point about scientists and atheism. One is supposed to accept all hypotheses without prejudice, run the experiment and analyze the data.

    How does one look at the data out of Israel; life expectancy, crops per acre, personal material wealth, life satisfaction, physical health, human rights, equality under the law, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM… and compare it to all other nations sharing similar terrain, meteorology and natural resources and not conclude the Jews are on to something? And, also, the Islam experiment does not work.

    How does one compare the same statistics from atheist nations like the USSR, North Korea and China with those of Christian nations and not conclude the atheist experiment does not work?

    When comparing the success of the communist collective nature of ants to humans’ attempts at communism, biologist Edward O. Wilson famously said, “Good ideology. Wrong species.”

    Why do so few intellectuals fail to make that connection with humans and economic systems and religion?

    *I’m paraphrasing and my words are nowhere near as appropriate or mellifluous as the brilliant, Mr. Murray’s.

  29. Murray is gay reputedly so he may understand the threat a little more clearly than musket morgan

  30. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear

    A common argument. I am not religious, but I find most anti-religious arguments both trivial and boring. Its universal appearance in diverse cultures, despite differences in the details, suggest there is something fundamental about it. It seems to have accompanied the development of music and art, it is part of what we are. It is likely closely related to how we perceive the world, that we are not foreign objects dropped into the pool, we are part of it.

  31. How does one compare the same statistics from atheist nations

    There is more wisdom in the New Testament than can be found in Marx.

  32. Open Thread Russo-Ukraine war, weapon systems

    More “Game Changers” (and Failures) in Ukraine – From Starlink & Electronic warfare to Hypersonics – Perun

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaWVrphbHXI

    Timestamps
    00:00:00 — More Game Changers
    00:01:25 — What Am I Talking About?
    00:02:43 — System Shaping Battlefields
    00:09:56 — Kinzhal And Storm Shadow/SCALP
    00:26:12 — TB-2 And Orlan
    00:40:51 — Communication
    00:48:53 — Electronic Warfare
    01:05:30 — Conclusions
    01:06:43 — Channel Update

    Playback speed seems a bit faster than normal …..

  33. There are some really, really dumb people out there.

    Just ran across a Youtube clip of an adult woman trying to pay for something at a big box store–Walmart?–using a card labelled “Credit Card” in big red letters, with an outsized series of numbers in red below, and with a Mattel logo on the corner of the supposed “credit card”–obviously taken from some sort of kid’s playset–and the woman seemed genuinely mystified that the store wouldn’t accept the card.

    And it also looked as if the very clunky orange “cell phone” she was supposedly talking on seemed like it might have been from the same playset.

  34. @ Chuck > “There is more wisdom in the New Testament than can be found in Marx.”

    There is always more wisdom in truth than in error.

    @ Rufus > “Why do so few intellectuals fail to make that connection with humans and economic systems and religion?”

    Because following your connections does not yield endorsements of the things that they really want to do, and may actually forbid them.
    Their goals precede their rationales.

  35. Rufus T. Firefly on November 11, 2023 at 10:26 pm said:
    “It’s odd to me that so few scientists understand faith.”
    With a nod to the later comments by OBH and Chuck:

    Well, it seems they are developing better and better understanding, with evolutionary psychology, modern psychology, brain/MRI studies, etc. Michael Shermer, Nicolas Wade, Jerry Coyne, Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett, Paul Bloom, Robert Wright, and others describe some of what has been explored or hypothesized so far. For me, as a non-believer, an “ah-ha” moment occurred a few years ago when I realized the obvious fact that since many of the very smart people I knew were also very devout and faith oriented, that our evolved mental capabilities must have created both rational/intelligence elements and faith oriented elements (i.e., that people of faith — including the many on this thread — were not “stupid” for their beliefs but evolved and were born that way.] The development of intelligence helped to develop better tools and organization, etc., and faith helped people trust and cooperate among themselves. Both characteristics would have aided survival of early hominid species, up to the advanced stages achieved by homo sapiens.

    These and many other mental and physical capabilities appear to exist to a greater and lesser extent among all people. There are also many examples of non-believers becoming believers, and vice versa. People also change among various religions, as well (a la Ms. Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warriq, and the various ISIS “brides”). This suggests there is an interplay among our mental components where sometimes the more logical/ rationale part dominants and other times/places when the faith element takes over.

    RTF also says later in his comment: “… Humans have run the atheism experiment many times …. We have 100 plus years of test results with hundreds of millions of people as data points.” It so happens I listened today to a 14 minute video from Sam Harris, where he points out those failed/failing totalitarian systems were not so much atheist (non-believing views) as ideological beliefs followed as devoutly and faithfully as a substitute for religion.

  36. OBloodyHell on November 12, 2023 at 9:40 am said:
    “And don’t take that wrongly — Science — and Evolution — say nothing whatsoever about the existence of God. At most, they suggest what methodology he might have used.”
    “… At most, Evolution says that God did one of two things, offhand:
    1 — He used a specific set of techniques, over a vast amount of time, to guide things to where they are, now.”

    I would suggest a version 1.5 of your options: whoever or however the universe was created, it appears to be real, but probably even more complicated at the quantum and relativistic levels than we currently can know or guess. Same for life and biochemical reactions, and the brain’s structure* and associated neurological responses, etc. But if you want to believe this was done via a divine source, then consider the power and beauty of the idea of evolution by survival of the best adapted, at all levels of application. This “system” allows for maximal continuation of “something” when conditions and environments change, but it can all see be “random” within the restrictions of the “laws of nature (or physics)”. I suspect most nonbelievers doubt the reality of divine revelation among selected humans on a small planet in a normal galaxy, at given times over the last 10,000 or more years, but your vast amount of time could lead to some brains interpretating dreams, hallucinations, trances, etc. in a way that supports religious views and practices, as though they did have a direct divine connection. But there was no “guidance” beyond establishing the initial system of evolution itself.

    *Today I happened to find on my bookshelf a 28 page booklet from 2003, Netter’s Atlas of Neurophysiology and Neuroanatomy. It provides an incredibly detailed breakdown of the components of the brain, as named/described, along with a detailed diagram of the various types of neurons and synaptic interfaces, etc., all also having a variety of specific names. Just learning all of these names would be a monumental task (at least for this layman), but we do develop and use such descriptive naming to help communicate among us about what we know or perceive. Then again, describing what we perceive is not the same as being able to fully explain how it works.

    Another minor discovery I had recently was that I had thought the brain had 100 billion neurons (10^11) and each neuron might have up to a thousand synaptic connections to other neurons (10^3), giving a total of 10^14 connectivity complexity. But then two sources I trust mentioned the real number of synaptic connections per neuron was 10,000 (10^4), thus increasing the total connectivity complexity to 10^15 instead.

  37. AesopFan on November 12, 2023 at 10:59 pm said:
    @ Chuck > “There is more wisdom in the New Testament than can be found in Marx.”
    “There is always more wisdom in truth than in error.”
    I consider the various religious scriptures to be attempts to document the prior experience of mankind with their developing civilizations and large population interactions. Certain practices and laws were found to be more useful than others. We in the Western world generally concur that some of the Judeo-Christian ideas can and did lead to a more successful win-win culture and environment for human interactions and flourishing. That these laws and ideas were also promoted by priests and kings and caliphs as part of cementing their social and political control over selected groups was also a factor.

    Chuck on November 12, 2023 at 4:34 pm said:
    “Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear.” Fear of natural forces/ events where the natural causes were unknown; and fear instilled by “leaders” against “the other” groups to help in-group bonding and cooperation (oh, and control!)

    [Religion’s]” … universal appearance in diverse cultures, despite differences in the details, suggest there is something fundamental about it.” Perhaps Chuck did not mean it quite the way I described our evolved dual logic/faith elements above, but we seem to agree on “something” being fundamental. 🙂

  38. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:21-24 (ESV)

    We can discern God though nature, but the message of Christianity, that God, though Jesus Christ, suffered an ignominious sacrifice to demonstrate what love is and to restore our relationship with Him– which was severed by our willful disobedience.

    Because of our nature, God has provided everything for our redemption. There is nothing we can do, except humble ourselves.

    “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
    And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.””     1 Corinthians 1:27-31 (ESV)

    As Scripture says elsewhere, “the righteous shall live by faith.”

    I would say our reason can bring us to the realization that the message of Jesus makes the sense. I wouldn’t trust a religion that required me to earn my redemption.

  39. R2L,

    It’s not sound science to base a conclusion on a sample size of N = 1, but my personal experience was not as you describe. I never felt I had an “evolved” part of my brain to deal or not deal with faith. I looked at the whole thing very rationally and there was certainly a time when I would have preferred that atheism was the correct answer. This was my point about fear. I wasn’t afraid there may be no God. I can’t speak for Bertrand Russell, but to my thinking a world with no God was more comforting than a world where God may exist.

    In other words, from what I know of my own, inherent, evolved nature, and from what I remember of the years I spent pondering the subject; I don’t think I would have faith had I not spent years intentionally asking questions, observing, learning and growing. Had I chosen, instead, to spend that time learning to play the tuba I’d have tuba skills but no faith.

    I should add, from a Christian perspective my path is not recommended or even encouraged. I still don’t think I have the “faith of a child,” and it seems I don’t yet even have the faith of a mustard seed. But, as anecdotal evidence of one person on a journey I’m pretty confident my conclusions were not reached through a ”
    more logical/ rationale part”     battling for domination with a “faith element.”

  40. I don’t think that I am a Philistine, but I will admit to being a Nerd (retired).
    To me, once you get beyond spastic tweens and old men, dancing is just moving from pose to pose gracefully.
    Ballet has always held the poses for a noticeable period longer than other forms of dance, but, looking at those videos, it’s become worse (for some definition of worse).
    Thanks for the videos. I haven’t been exposed to this much ballet since I left a job where my boss’s daughter was a fine arts major.

  41. I see that my opinion has been better expressed:

    The truth of the matter, as Edmund Burke saw, is that “man is by his constitution a religious animal.”

    Taken from Roger Kimball.

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