American Beauty by Randall Auxier Crispin Sartwell‘s book Six Names of Beauty is probably the broadest study of the idea of “beauty” ever written. It covers six different languages and their cultures (English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Japanese, and Navajo), but also ranges across dozens of fields of meaning departing from each. Each chapter…
by Randall Auxier [Editor: Flashing back to Empirical Magazine, I want to invite you to read Randall Auxier’s October 2012 article “Three Kinds of Soldier” in the pdf format that includes the original layout and photographs that went with the essay.] Three Kinds of Soldier
Picktures and Pieces 10 General Relativity: A Silly Theory Randall Auxier I have been greatly relieved to see someone finally exposed the whole sordid tale of Einstein’s quest for stardom and immortality in a thorough and honest way. Jimena Canales recent book, The Philosopher and the Physicist does what has long been needed. I have…
Governors for Ignorance by Randall Auxier I would have lost the bet, if I were a betting man. Under no circumstances would the state of Illinois elect a governor who would attempt the same assault on higher education that has been tried, with varying success, by the governors of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan. After…
A Train Leaves Boston . . . by Randall Auxier You suffered though algebra, especially those awful simultaneous equations in high school— if a train leaves from Boston and another from Chicago . . . and so on— but you might never have seen them as a sort of story, at bottom. The examples…
Freedom Summer and the Winters of Our Discontent by Randall Auxier “The adults here will back the young folks but will never initiate a program strong enough to do what needs to be done” — Robert Moses to Jane Stembridge, summer 1960. Civil-rights icon Robert Parris Moses is quiet. He studies a room, the…
Order in the Court by Randall Auxier Here is Mitch McConnell pounding on a little piece of wood instead of a Democrat. A gavel is an interesting symbol. Obviously it symbolizes authority, but more importantly, it marks beginnings and endings. The flow of time is interrupted by the opening rap, and a finite and…
A Window in Your Heart by Randall Auxier A gas station in Pennsylvania, just north of Gettysburg. $3.45 a gallon. There is music beneath the canopy as we feed our machines. I know it well, and so do you. . . . The Mississippi Delta is shining like a National Guitar . . . .…
Consumables and the Swedish Summer by Randall Auxier I don’t think you would want to be here in February. They say in Minnesota that if you don’t endure the winters, you don’t deserve the summers. How typical of the stoics who occupy these climes in the States. But I’m nonesuch. If these brave endurers of…
Dawn of the Draculae by Randall Auxier Among the five worst movie-going experiences of my life I would list Dawn of the Dead. It was the first R-rated movie I saw on my own (and I sneaked in with my friend Anthony, because he was legal at 17, but I was still 16). I had…