A portico is a covered porch, often with columns. A colonnade is a long sequence of columns. An entablature is a horizontal decorative band resting on top of a series of columns. Entablatures are commonly divided into the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice. A capital is the topmost section of a column, which helps to carry the load. Styles of capitals include doric, ionic and corinthian.

Deracinate – to pull up by the root, to remove from its native culture.

Enconchado – an artistic technique that employs inlaid mother of pearl.

An interesting article in the American Sociological Review posits that people use cultural taste (e.g., musical preferences) to reinforce boundaries between themselves and those they don't like. In other words, we use our musical preferences to help define our group and individual identities and to distinguish ourselves from other people with different musical preferences, usually elevating our choices above their preferences. The opera-goer looks down on the country music fan, and the country music fan resents and disdains the snob bish opera fan.

The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that stretches about 8-9 degrees either side of the ecliptic (the region of the sky through which the Sun appears to move). The Sun, Moon and planets (except for Pluto) appear in the ecliptic. The zodiac is relatively narrow because most of the planets have orbits that are only slightly inclined to that of the Earth.

It is Wagner week. I've been watching a 2016 performance of Tristan und Isolde on Met on Demand and reading the chapter on Wagner in Schonberg's The Lives of the Great Composers. Apparently Nietzsche was among Wagner's many admirers, which got me listening to the episodes on Nietzsche in the Philosophize This podcast.

The first of these episodes talks about True World Theories, which people often subscribe to in order to answer the question "what is the meaning of life?" These theories hold that there is an imperfect material world in which we live and a perfect "true" world (heaven, the forms) that we can aspire to.

The second episode discussed the concept of "Will to Power", which is described variously as self-actualization, realizing one's true potential and self-expression. It is why we do things above and beyond self-preservation. Actually, Nietzsche never gives a very detailed or exact definition of the term.

I found myself thinking about identity and how we actively shape our sense of self - I am an artist, I am an intellectual, I am a country boy. I wonder if the will to power is akin to our efforts to define and inhabit our chosen identities.

A peripeteia or peripety is a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances, especially in a literary work.

The Berlin International Film Festival, usually called the Berlinale, is one of the "Big Three" film festivals in Europe, alongside the Venice Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival.

Here is a list of the most-assigned films in Film Studies courses.