Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

In another month or so, I'll be composing (for another blog) a list of the top five big Music-related stories of 2012. Five is a good number for this, because my entries for JustSheetMusic tend to be around 1,000 words each, and it is difficult to say anything worthwhile about any one such story in less than 200 words. Perhaps I will get out of the way, through some sort of unlisted mention, the fact that the BBC has been torn by a sex scandal around the activities of the late TV host Jimmy Savile. This is a "music" story only because of the nature of the program that made Savile famous, Top of the Pops.   That isn't enough for my list. The actual stories may be listed from fun to somber, thus: 1. The Ravinia Festival this year teamed up Patti LuPone with Patricia Racette. 2. Rihannas new album,  Unapologetic , which seems to have incited polarized reactions. Legends, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Bruce Sp., also gave us new albums. 3. Fiona Apple is ba...

Meanwhile, in the baseball world, the Orioles/Yankees played a truly epic five-game series to determine which of them would get into the League Championship. [Can include usual grousing here about how the seasons have gotten too long, going into November is ridiculous, remember tjhe lyrics from a certain Broadway show, etc.] Game three of the series went 12 innings, and ended in a Yankee victory, putting them up two ganes to one. Raul Ibanez was the hero. Game four was another marathon. This one went 13 innings, and this time the Birds eeked it out, on a RBI double from the bat of J.J. Hardy, to make the final score 2 to 1, and to tie the series at 2 games each. It is fair to surmise that after those two back-to-back marathons, both bullpens were exhausted. Something had to give. Unfortunately (for my personal biases) it was Baltimore that "gave." I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan, so my natural reaction in such situations is that the team to root for is the team tha...

The Olympic Games begin in London on July 27. For the particulars, you can go here. As regular readers of the precursor of this blog, Pragmatism Refreshed , will tell you, I have developed an interest in the career of Chinese track star Liu Xiang. Liu won the gold for his signature event, the 110 meter hurdles, in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He set the world record for that event at a meet in Lausanne in 2006. Sadly, he was unable to compete in the Beijing Olympics, on his "home turf" if you will, because of a chronic inflammation in his right Achilles tendon. There have been conspiracy theories about this, but I suspect the humdrum medical account is the accurate one. At any rate, he has long since returned to competitions, and in fact he set a new world record, completing his event in just  12.87 seconds, in a competition in the US (Eugene Oregon) earlier this year. So: how will he do in London? We'll all find out together. When? Round 1 of the men'...