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Classics at UT
Mar. 7th, 2007 07:34 pmMagical Interlude
At the open house last Saturday, I had a little time after checking out the yurt before my next session so I went over to the HRC to check out cartoons from the 1920s. Just outside the building was a magician doing both original and historic tricks. The first one I saw was great. He had a cassette tape playing instructions on how to do magic, and he acted like he was following the instructions. Except he misheard "banana" whenever the speaker said "bandana." And of course it was the kind of instructions where they don't tell you everything in the right order. "But of course you have palmed the bandana," as he looks up at us, surprised. "And it is now hidden in your left hand," as he opens his left hand and finds nothing in it. But in the end, the banana that he had squished up inside the bag isn't really in there after all. Ta da!
Cartoon Interlude
Then I slipped in for a bit of cartoon watching. It's not always obvious in new art forms which techniques were invented earliest. I am here to tell you that creative laws of physics were already being thoroughly explored in the 1920s. Just in case you were wondering.
Tour (Intro)
Finally it was time to go to the classical tour of the university "beginning at the Tower, through the Roman-style 'six-pack' and ending at the Greek amphitheater behind Jester Hall." That's pretty much all he covered. Still, I learned a few interesting things.
Alphabet History
In the back of the base of the tower, there are a lot of letters from various alphabets. Our tour guide gave us an interesting story about those letters. First are some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, examples of some of the first writing. Wikipedia's alphabet entry explains that some hieroglyphs were syllabaries used to transliterate foreign words and such.
Then there is the entire Phoenician alphabet, from which all current alphabets are derived except Korean, which was invented by a King. According to the wikipedia entry on Hangul, it was created to be easier for Koreans to read than the Chinese characters and it succeeded. It says this writing system has been in and out of favor ever since and is now used in both North and South Korea.
Next is Hebrew and then Greek, which both came directly from the Phoenician. The Greeks invented vowels.
Next is the Roman alphabet, which I am using right now!
There are also the names of a lot of famous people inscribed all over that building chronologically from right to left on the two sides of the base (that aren't the front or back). There are also the crests of important universities such as Harvard (duh) and the University of Mexico (oldest in the Americas), but of course not our rival state school.
Domes
The tower faces the capitol with formal gardens between. Our capitol building has the now ubiquitous dome, made from metal. Before the 1900s, the two largest domes were the Pantheon in Rome and the Sophia in Constantinople, made of concrete. They kept the domes from caving in on themselves by making the concrete lighter as you go up. I can't imagine.
Seal
The seal of UT shows an open book floating over a star, which is the pictorial version of the Latin words below the graphic: "Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis" or Learning is the Bulwark of the State. (And here I thought it was taxes or maybe production.)
I also learned that "gymna" means "naked," so a gymnasium is a place where you run around naked. Someone said they thought that's what a dorm was. The tour guide explained that no, "dormitory" comes from "dormir," to sleep.
Amphitheatre
At the cute little amphitheatre I learned a little more about ancient Greeks and the beginning of theatre. I'd heard recently that the Greeks had invented plays. Our tour guide said they invented tragedies and comedies. The platform at the bottom of the amphitheatre he called the orchestra. This comes from "orche," to dance, so "orchestra" is the dancing place. This is where the chorus would dance.
If you make a sound while at the center of the orchestra, it sounds like you have a microphone (a good one with no static) and is really cool.
One or two actors would separate from the chorus and eventually the actors gained in importance and the chorus became less and less important until now it has disappeared. And that is the history of theatre!
And here's a little more. Stadiums began being the length of races. There would be rows of people on each side of the raceway. Then the Romans built coliseums which allowed many more people to watch races. And now we can have huge stadiums with really big scoreboards.
At the open house last Saturday, I had a little time after checking out the yurt before my next session so I went over to the HRC to check out cartoons from the 1920s. Just outside the building was a magician doing both original and historic tricks. The first one I saw was great. He had a cassette tape playing instructions on how to do magic, and he acted like he was following the instructions. Except he misheard "banana" whenever the speaker said "bandana." And of course it was the kind of instructions where they don't tell you everything in the right order. "But of course you have palmed the bandana," as he looks up at us, surprised. "And it is now hidden in your left hand," as he opens his left hand and finds nothing in it. But in the end, the banana that he had squished up inside the bag isn't really in there after all. Ta da!
Cartoon Interlude
Then I slipped in for a bit of cartoon watching. It's not always obvious in new art forms which techniques were invented earliest. I am here to tell you that creative laws of physics were already being thoroughly explored in the 1920s. Just in case you were wondering.
Tour (Intro)
Finally it was time to go to the classical tour of the university "beginning at the Tower, through the Roman-style 'six-pack' and ending at the Greek amphitheater behind Jester Hall." That's pretty much all he covered. Still, I learned a few interesting things.
Alphabet History
In the back of the base of the tower, there are a lot of letters from various alphabets. Our tour guide gave us an interesting story about those letters. First are some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, examples of some of the first writing. Wikipedia's alphabet entry explains that some hieroglyphs were syllabaries used to transliterate foreign words and such.
Then there is the entire Phoenician alphabet, from which all current alphabets are derived except Korean, which was invented by a King. According to the wikipedia entry on Hangul, it was created to be easier for Koreans to read than the Chinese characters and it succeeded. It says this writing system has been in and out of favor ever since and is now used in both North and South Korea.
Next is Hebrew and then Greek, which both came directly from the Phoenician. The Greeks invented vowels.
Next is the Roman alphabet, which I am using right now!
There are also the names of a lot of famous people inscribed all over that building chronologically from right to left on the two sides of the base (that aren't the front or back). There are also the crests of important universities such as Harvard (duh) and the University of Mexico (oldest in the Americas), but of course not our rival state school.
Domes
The tower faces the capitol with formal gardens between. Our capitol building has the now ubiquitous dome, made from metal. Before the 1900s, the two largest domes were the Pantheon in Rome and the Sophia in Constantinople, made of concrete. They kept the domes from caving in on themselves by making the concrete lighter as you go up. I can't imagine.
Seal
The seal of UT shows an open book floating over a star, which is the pictorial version of the Latin words below the graphic: "Disciplina Praesidium Civitatis" or Learning is the Bulwark of the State. (And here I thought it was taxes or maybe production.)
I also learned that "gymna" means "naked," so a gymnasium is a place where you run around naked. Someone said they thought that's what a dorm was. The tour guide explained that no, "dormitory" comes from "dormir," to sleep.
Amphitheatre
At the cute little amphitheatre I learned a little more about ancient Greeks and the beginning of theatre. I'd heard recently that the Greeks had invented plays. Our tour guide said they invented tragedies and comedies. The platform at the bottom of the amphitheatre he called the orchestra. This comes from "orche," to dance, so "orchestra" is the dancing place. This is where the chorus would dance.
If you make a sound while at the center of the orchestra, it sounds like you have a microphone (a good one with no static) and is really cool.
One or two actors would separate from the chorus and eventually the actors gained in importance and the chorus became less and less important until now it has disappeared. And that is the history of theatre!
And here's a little more. Stadiums began being the length of races. There would be rows of people on each side of the raceway. Then the Romans built coliseums which allowed many more people to watch races. And now we can have huge stadiums with really big scoreboards.