“Multiples: Works of art theoretically made in unlimited numbers—in contrast with works made in traditional editions—which are slightly altered in style from their originals. Multiples by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and others were introduced in the 1960s, when they were promoted by private art galleries.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
The Weekly Text for 5 September 2025, for some reason, is this reading on coeducation and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I have only the faintest idea of why I developed this material; I vaguely recall a class that didn’t believe me when I told them that men and women were–and are (e.g. Smith, Mount Holyoke, both part of the Five College Consortium, which includes my alma mater, Hampshire College)–educated separately in many colleges and universities in the United States.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Bauhaus: (German, ‘house of architecture’) A school of architecture and design, founded in Weimar Germany, in 1919 by Walter Gropius. The school stressed functionalism in art and tried to unite the creative arts and the technology of modern mass production with 20th-century architecture. In addition to more strictly architectural studies, courses in painting, handicrafts, the theatre, and typography were given by outstanding artists, including Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Functionalism, or the international style, in architecture and a number of examples of industrial design, such as the tubular lighting and steel furniture of Marcel Breuer, were first developed at the Bauhaus. In 1925, the school moved to the buildings designed for it by Gropius in Dessau; three years later, Mies van der Rohe became its director.
The Bauhaus was attacked by Hitler’s regime, and in 1933 it was forced to close. However, its great influence on modern architecture and design continued in Europe and the U.S. through its masters and students.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
This week’s Text is a reading on Charles Ponzi accompanied but its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
In the fall of 2008, when the United States economy crashed and nearly took the rest of the world down with it, I had just accepted a job at an economics-and-finance-themed high school in the Financial District in Manhattan. I rode the 2 or the 5 train from the North Bronx to the Wall Street Station. My school was on Trinity Place, right across the street from Zuccotti Park. In other words, I worked right in the middle of the Financial District while the place was–metaphorically–going up in flames. It was a weird time: the streets were weirdly quiet, and the restaurants and bars, usually full of boisterous traders, were dead.
Then came Bernie Madoff. My students couldn’t understand what he’d done, but several of them sure were interested. These documents are some of the fruits of my labor that sought to educate these kids about, well, rip-off artists.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Lazlo Moholy-Nagy: (1895-1946) Hungarian painter, photographer, and art teacher. After studying law in Budapest, he went to Berlin in 1919, and in 1923 he took charge of the metal workshop of the Bauhaus as well as the Bauhaus-book series of publications. As painter and photographer he worked predominantly with light, His ‘photograms’ were composed directly on film, and his ‘light modulators’ (oil paintings on transparent or polished surfaces) included mobile light effects. As an educator, he developed a widely accepted curriculum to develop students’ natural visual gifts instead of specialized skills. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, he went to London and then to Chicago, where he organized and headed the New Bauhaus.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“absurdity: The experience of absurdity is a common theme in the work of novelists such as Dostoevsky and Kafka, as well as in the many varieties of existentialism. The early essays of Albert Camus and his first novel The Outsider are classic modern expressions of this experience. The realization that existence is absurd arises from the sense of futility and meaninglessness provoked by the perception that there is a divorce between the human aspiration towards infinity and the finite nature of actual human experience, or between the intellectual desire for rationality and the irrationality of the physical world. The world is experienced as something unintelligible, and as the product of random combinations of events and circumstances. Although the experience of the absurd can induce s suicidal despair, the realization that there is no God and that human beings are not immortal can also produce an exhilarating sense of freedom and inspire a revolt against the human condition. There is a somewhat tenuous connection between the literary-philosophical notion of the absurd and the themes of the Theater of the Absurd.”
Excerpted from: Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Penguin, 2001.
If memory serves, I wrote the documents in this week’s Text, to wit a reading on Alan Turing and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet early on in my career for a computer-obsessed young fellow. Alan Turing certainly remains an fascinating figure. And if the 2014 motion picture The Imitation Game indicates anything, it is that there is still popular as well as historical interest in Turing.
It’s probably worth mentioning that the T in the acronym CAPTCHA stands for “Turing.” The full name is “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“trade war: A situation in which two or more nations restrict one another’s exports. Trade wars are ancient and modern. Until Adam Smith and the contemporary physiocrats. No thinkers believed in free trade. All economists believed that the best policy was to maximize one’s own exports; many added that it was good to restrict others’ imports. If pursued worldwide, such policies were obviously self-defeating, but that does not lessen their attraction to individual national policy makers. The Napoleonic Wars were largely a trade war between France and her allies and the UK, which caused serious damage to third parties, such as the USA.
The nineteenth century saw the heyday of the bilateral trade treaty and the invention of the most favored nation clause. Between them, these devices restricted the scope for trade wars. However, the revival of protection in the 1920s and 1930s revived trade wars. Since the 1960s, world trade politics has become multilateral rather than bilateral (GATT, World Trade Organization). This has not eliminated trade wars, but has made them multinational also. If the EU declares war on US hormone-fortified beef and export subsidies, then the USA may declare war on EU luxury goods and Caribbean bananas.”
Excerpted from: McLean, Iain, and Alistair McMillan, editors. Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“Warsaw Uprising: (August-October 1944) Insurrection in Warsaw in World War II that failed to prevent the pro-Soviet Polish administration from gaining control of Poland. In July 1944, as Soviet troops approached Warsaw, the Polish underground was encouraged to stage an uprising against the Germans. Though wary of Soviet promises of self-government, the Polish home army of 50,000 troops attacked the weakened German force and gained control of most of Warsaw in four days. German reinforcements then bombarded the city with air and artillery attacks for 63 days, The approaching Red Army halted, and the Soviets refused to allow aid from the Allies to the beleaguered Poles, who were forced to surrender when their supplies ran out in October; the Germans then deported the rest of the city’s population and destroyed most of the city itself. By allowing the Polish home army to be eliminated, the Soviets diminished potential resistance to their establishing political domination for Poland in 1945.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Biographical Films: Since attention to historical detail ruins filmed drama, the essential property of biographical cinema is that it improves in quality by not telling the truth.
These films, whether describing the lives of American presidents or criminals, French generals or Russian kings, are among the beneficiaries of the ‘big lie’ idea. As a result they have helped to create a modern mythology which erases the Western idea of intellectual inquiry and returns to the pre-intellectual tradition of mythological gods and heroes. This is the context in which the portraits of John Kennedy, James Hoffa, Napoleon and so on can most easily be understood.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.