Flöte und Flötenspiel : ein Lehrbuch für Flötenbläser / Maximilian Schwedler. Leipzig : J.J. Weber, 1910. viii, 136 p., [14] fold. leaves : ill., music, port. 18 cm.

Maximiliam Schwedler was an accomplished flute player and designer. In addition to serving as principal flute in the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Schwedler spent his time trying to make a conical flute that could compete with and surpass the success of Theobold Boehm’s cylindrical models (image 4).

Schwedler’s design, the Schwedler-Kruspe flute of 1885, makes many appearances in this text (see images 5 and 9), but so flutes related to the “usual suspects,” like Quantz and Boehm. The book covers a wide range of flute types and basics of design, but also spends time discussing how to play the instrument. To that end, there are diagrams illustrating how to produce a sound and proper posture (“Flötenbläser in guter haltung” vs. “Flötenbläser in schlechter haltung”).

There are also 14 foldouts in the back of the text that contain exercises and fingering & trill charts. All in all, not bad for a 150 page book on the flute.

 Christopher Hitchens Waterboarding

            Torture as a form of punishment was common not so long ago. Many countries around the world, primarily dictatorships still use torture as mean to achieve cooperation on a broad range of subject. But the developed western countries rolled the use of torture back in the last 2-3 decade.

             Since 9/11, America, the leader of the free world, the bastion of freedom has used torture to get useless information from prisoners it kept in black sites around the world. Called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, CIA used torture in violation of the International torture treaties that America is part of. President Bush tacitly approved of this, and his Vice-President Dick Cheney encouraged torture. Not only that, CIA hid the information about its program from the American public.

           Television and movies have also played a part in publics perception of torture as an effective mean to get information. Shows such as 24, Homeland, etc. used torture to create a hyper real scenario, where the viewers are encouraged to cheer the torture and sympathize with the people committing such acts. As a student of typecasting, media’s typecast of torture as a solution to problems is troubling to say the least.

In our class, we talked about moral absolutism. The ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. I have noticed a certain moral absolutism when it comes to learning from bad people. The idea that if a person is bad, they can not have a good idea is in my opinion unrealistic. Thinking in black and white like this hinders our progress. One example of a person who is a hero of the right wing is Ayn Rand. While I agree that most if not all of her ideas were horrible, there is still something that can be learned from studying Rand. But let's not get carried away here. Reading Ayn Rand might give us an idea of why some people are so adamant about the existence of the American Dream. Last but not least, we need to question the Republican politicians holding up Ayn Rand like the philosopher of the century. 

Is the American dream well and alive today?

Open any news channel or app today, a story about immigration is bound to pop up. Since the election of President Barack Obama, immigration has become one of the defining issue of the first Black POTUS.

America founded by immigrants from England, has been hypocritical in its treatment of immigrants. Immigration shaped the debate in America since the days of Irish immigration, and it is continuing to do so to the present. Immigrants have always been considered a “threat” to the American (Read Anglo-Saxon, White in the mid to late 21st century) way of life. Whether it’s Irish immigrants in the mid 19th century, Italians in the late 19th century, Jewish immigration in the 20th Century, or the Spanish or Asian immigrants in the present, immigrants have been seen as a threat to the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon, and later the white population in America. With the continuing battle over illegal immigration and nature of America, the word immigrant will continue to be part of American cultural dictionary for generations to come.

Fun Fact:

Is this the face of an average farmer in America?

In the recent times, the debates over food and how it is produced has intensified significantly.  We have had this debate on class.The foods found in supermarkets are almost always grown by large agro business. Farmers have become peripheral in the production of foods. While questions about food production are raised, one side of this debate that is not raised enough. Farming has become an issue in the debate of illegal immigration. Why? Because even though in our mind we have this image of our food coming from family farm run by farmers in trucker hat. The reality is illegal immigrants work the backbreaking farm jobs that are too low paid and have very long hours. American workers because of the wage and working condition do not take up these farm jobs. As a result, there is a vacuum for labor and illegal immigrants come in fill that vacuum. Farming and immigration are two issues that are now joined together, and one cannot be considered without the other.

Since the 17th century, when the world started to shift from a society dominated by farmers and small business owners to a society dominated by workers and industry, the meaning of the word, consumer has taken an outsize importance. Consumerism is an important tenant of capitalism and as such capitalism is created on the foundation that the public will consume in abundance. Capitalism can’t survive without the everlasting need to consume. In America, mass consumption is a religion. The 1920’s were the height of consumerist America, and great depression halted this. But since the end of World War 2, consumer culture has been on the rise, and has become the only way of life. Black Friday is only one of example of the extent to which American society has become a consumerist only society. Things are so bad right now, that Black Friday has been moved one day before to Thanksgiving what has been dubbed Gray Thursday. America as a nation has gone from making to consuming.