Pieces of Culture: Hamlet

Enjoy. While I haven't seen the whole film, this appears to be a fine adaptation of Shakespeare's play, using a 19th Century setting.

Modest Proposal-An Update

It is one of the more mysterious things about humanity, that oftentimes that two different individuals or groups of individuals arrive at the same idea independently. This occurred in the development of the theory of evolution by natural selection by both Darwin and Wallace and in the development of calculus which both Newton and Liebnitz stumbled upon.

This seems to have occurred in my case, when I was informed that my proposed system of people dropping in and picking up books for free already existed in many coffee shops including locally:

Regardless, I plan to go ahead with this project of mine, having been approved by my instructor, who has even most generously given me offers of aid. If readers have any further ideas, I ask that you comment to share them. 

Book Notes: Jude the Obscure

I've started Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, which was a classic of 19th Century realism. The novel appears to be tragic going by the descriptions on the cover, but the beginning is rather similar to Dickens's Great Expectations, involving young boys in the English countryside (Jude in this case and Pip in Dickens's novel) yearning for a better opportunity. However, most fortunately, there is little of Dickens's forced humour in this book and instead opens promisingly with a melancholic departure of a beloved schoolmaster from Jude's village.  In addition I am especially eager to read this because as a work of realism, it will provide a vivid portrait of English life during Queen Victoria's reign. I hope for the best from Mr. Hardy's pen.

A Modest Proposal

As most readers will realize, this blog was set up as part of an assignment in my English class although I've always intended to get into blogging. Also as part of my English class, I have to do an innovation project which as seen in last week's post starts with asking the question "What If?'. So I intend to pose my "what-if" question to-day and elaborate on it further to encourage others to do something similar.

The "what if" question I posed for my innovation project was "what if students could obtain free used books for their classes or for general knowledge and enlightenment?". As a result I have come up with the idea of a book exchange at my school. The basic premise of such an exchange would be that used books would be donated by an individual or a library and then people could pick up the books they wish to possess either for free or for a small fee (most used library book stores I've seen charge books at no more than one or two dollars and sometimes far less). Many of the books that would be donated would be books assigned by a class or on a reading list so that students would have a copy of their own that they could write in and so forth without having to purchase it at a relatively high price at a bookstore or waiting for weeks for a shipment to arrive. But, just like the library, there'd be other books to educate or entertain students independently of a teacher's direction.

I hope others will be inspired to follow this area and set up book exchanges at their own school libraries with it being extended to textbooks in colleges. This can even be implemented in workplaces and places of worship to promote life-long learning. Perhaps this may indeed do the same for books what the health insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act is doing.

Two Men Who Asked "What If?"

Asking the question "what if?" is part of what makes us human as it shows us imagining something that does exist not yet  and then use our creative powers to answer it ourselves. To-day I'd like to show two men who asked this question and thus show how fruitful the answers to this question can be.

The first of these men is Rod Serling who created the television show Twilight Zone. It asks "What if...?" and then dramatically depicts Mr. Serling's often clever answer to that question. I've begun watching the series lately (having already seen many episodes in school classes), and my favourite of the ones I've seen so far asks the question "What if one could delay death?" in the episode "One For the Angels":

The second man who asked "What if?" is Japanese anime and manga artist Leiji Matsumoto. One of his most famous series, Galaxy Express 999 about an orphaned boy named Tetsuro who travels across the Galaxy with a mysterious woman named Maetel in order to fulfill his mother's dying wish then he gain a cyborg body, asks two major "What if" questions: "What if there was a an express train that travelled through the stars of space?" and "What if humans could gain cyborg bodies that greatly lengthened their lives?". In each individual episode of the series, Matsumoto asks a "What if?" question such as "What if there was a planet where some people glowed in the dark like fireflies?" and explores its potential consequences. Incidentally the entire series can be legally watched with English subtitles on Crunchyroll.com.

Featured Music-Blue Danube Waltz (Vocal Version)

The "Blue Danube Waltz" by Johann Strauss the Younger is quite a popular musical piece, but many people don't know there are actually lyrics to it. I intend to remedy this with this wonderful vocal version by the Wiener Sängerknaben:

Featured Music-Battle Hymn of the Republic

Excellent rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" by the Robert Shaw Chorale, a truly superb musical group.

An Introduction

First of all, I would like to welcome any and all readers to this blog known as Torchlight. In this post I hope to show to readers the inspiration behind the blog along with some information about myself and what the blog will cover in the future.

The name Torchlight was derived from a fictional political history of the future entitled Dawn of a System and posted on Alternate History.com by a man going by the handle of "Noravea". This future history (in the form of both newspaper articles and short vignettes) begins with a fictional political blog named Torchlight and its initially mysterious author growing in influence during the 2016 Presidential Election. Eventually the author reveals himself as one Nicholas Caeus who sees his career steadily rise as he forms a new political movement based on the values of bipartisanship and pragmatism. After being elected Congressman and then Governor along with restructuring the Republican Party into the National Republican Party under his control, Caeus is elected President of the United States in 2032 only to soon find himself confronting a global war...

While the future history depicted here is certainly not optimistic and not one I wish to see become our future, there were many elements in it that were inspirational. Nicholas Caeus himself is an admirable figure who overcame a difficult youth including an abusive father, to become a honest and bold political leader dedicated to the American people. Meanwhile the movement Caeus helped start with his blog and then leads is refreshing in light of actual politics as seen with the impending government shutdown and the debt ceiling battle, as it shows Republicans and Democrats working together to pass commonsense policies that move the country forwards. Especially notable was Caeus' success in pushing many people of the Millennial generation into politics and ending the apathy about politics amongst this generation which has been detected in many studies.

As a result I have named this blog Torchlight, in the hopes that it too may do some part (however minor) in improving and moving forward the political discourse of this country and in getting people of my generation into participating in politics. By way of disclaimer, I ask everyone to remember that I am not Noravea and that this blog does not represent his political views nor that of the fictional characters of his story.

Regarding this website itself, I hope to make it a blog with both a wide focus and a large amount of content. The primary focus of this site will be on the politics, and thus much of the content will be commentaries of varying lengths on current events by this author and other contributors. There will also be longer feature articles which will be explore certain issues or events in-depth with a strong focus on its background and history and the potential solutions to the plan. Other features will include "Point and Counterpoint" where two contributors will give the opposing arguments on a certain issue or matter and the "Roundtable" where several different contributors will give brief commentary on a matter.

However like periodicals such as the Atlantic or the New Yorker, I do not intend Torchlight to solely focus on political matters. Besides pure politics, it will first of all, cover materials that are strongly related to politics such as economics and demographics with a focus on analysis and connecting them to politics. In addition there will be posts covering history, science, and similar topics of general interest in the interest of enlightening readers. Torchlight also harbours some ambitions of posting matters relating to theology but this cannot be guaranteed  unless appropriate contributors are found. Finally there shall be articles relating to culture including reviews of books, films, TV shows, plays, artwork, and music.

Besides articles by Torchlight itself, there will be links to sites, articles, pictures, and videos that will be of interest to the reader including links to newspapers articles on the day's major stories.

Finally Torchlight intends to devote some of its material to the region of Southern California (as indicated in the URL of this site) where the contributors live. As a result there will be some articles and pictures here relating to the region's natural landscape, climate, history, politics, demographics, culture, architecture, and so forth.

I hope Torchlight will be of great interest to readers in the future and especially fulfill the goal stated above of getting young people thinking about and involved in politics.

Sincerely Yours,
Casey Cho