This Week in the Blogosphere: A Special Christmas Music Edition

Because this is the first week of advent, I thought that more important than sharing my week’s meanderings around the web, was to do my part to help you prepare for the season. Of course, you can always check out my delicious profile to see what I’ve been sharing. But to get your holiday spirit brewing, here are some of my favorite Christmas songs:

Go Tell it on the Mountain, Bob Marley & the Wailers

Little Drummer Boy, Michael Franti & The Blind Boys of Alabama

Let It Be, Paul McCartney

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, The Good Lovelies

The Rebel Jesus, Jackson Browne



Christmas Song, Dave Matthews Band

Does music theory provide a code for platonic philosophy?

One writer said that the history of Western philosophy is a series of foot notes on Plato, and that’s almost not an exaggeration. But with little more than a cursory glance, one sees how non-constructive Plato’s writings actually are. While Plato’s theoretical debates and dialogues pose innumerable questions—to which the history of Western philosophy is indeed a set of possible answers—it’s not at all clear what Plato himself might answer…or so it seems. Jay Kennedy, a professor at Britain’s University of Manchester, claims to have cracked a code hidden in Plato’s writings: As musical theory was nearly sacred to the Ancient Greeks, prof. Kennedy has identified a series of arguments that appear along “scales” in Plato’s dialogues that seem to provide a key to Plato’s own belief. PRI’s David Barron interviewed Dr. Kennedy on yesterday’s edition of The World.  Listen to the full interview here.

Christmas Music

To get you into the Spirit, here are some of my favorite Christmas songs:

Jim Croce – Don’t Mess Around with Jim