Activity from Kattullus
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"It's special to know that people I don't even know will take the time"
In Providence, Rhode Island, people blink lights every evening to bid goodnight to patients in a children's hospital. And not just people, but a hotel, night club and library blink their lights too. The tradition goes back to 2010 and was started by cartoonist Steve Brosnihan.
"an approach to the technique the Homeric singers used"
Homeric Singing - An Approach to the Original Performance is the website of Professors Georg Danek and Stefan Hagel. There they have a five minutes of their educated best guess of how ancient Greek bards would have sounded like, singing the epics of Homer accompanying themselves on a phorminx. [via Open Culture]
Bob Dylan is the 2016 Nobel laureate in literature
Images from old books about medicine and biology
Wunderkammer is a collection of high resolution images from old books in the Hagströmer Medical Library. Some of my favorites are sea anemones, nerve cells, rooster chasing off a monster, 16th Century eye surgery, muscles and bones of the hand and arm, elephant-headed humanoid and cupping. It can also be browsed by tag, broken up into subject (e.g. beast), emotion (e.g. strange), technique (e.g. chromolithography) and era (e.g. 18th Century). Once you've exhausted the pleasures of the Wunderkammer, venture into the Bibliotheca Systema Naturae, with scans from more books in the Hagströmer Medical Library, such as portraits of patients and Goethe's theory of optics.
What are good podcasts for discovering music?
So, due to a series of computer hard drive failures and cross-oceanic moves, I have no access to my music collection right now, and may never get it back. I've decided to look on it as an opportunity to start afresh and get into new music. I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I'd like to add one that's new music focused. Do you have any recommendations? Further specifications follow.
"never met a Spanish cape or Siberian squirrelfur lining he didn't like"
Matthäus Schwarz was a 16th Century German accountant with a taste for fine clothing who managed to parlay his fashion sense into a noble title. He documented his life and clothing in an illuminated manuscript that has been recently translated, annotated and republished as The First Book of Fashion by Professor Ulinka Rublack and Maria Hayward, and includes reconstructed outfits by Jenny Tiramani. The process of remaking one of Schwarz's outfits is shown here. As befits a scholarly tome about a work often likened to modern style blogs, there is a First Book of Fashion Tumblr. Schwarz's son, Veit Konrad, also made his own illuminated style diary, but did not continue after his father's death in 1574. A slightly inaccurate copy was made in the 18th Century, a scan of which is available on Wikimedia Commons. Prof. Rublack puts Schwarz in context as a man of the Renaissance.
"Around the world in the LRB Archive"
One Hundred Diaries is a map with links to a selection of a hundred short personal essays that have appeared in The London Review of Books throughout the years. The essays revolve around a place somewhere in the world , including Neal Ascherson writing about Ilullilat in Greenland, Jenny Diski writing about Christchurch in New Zealand, Perry Anderson writing about Nantes in France, Rebecca Solnit writing about New Orleans in the US, Hilary Mantel writing about Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Anneke van Woudenberg writing about Kilo in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What climate-specific learned behaviors does no one think to explain?
Can you give me examples of behaviors "everybody knows" who has grown up in a specific climate, but is never talked about so no one ever thinks to explain this to people new to this climate? I'm especially interested in examples of where this lack of forewarning has caused problems. My example below the cut.
"To read a Saki story is to hire an assassin."
One hundred years ago, a soldier named Hector Hugh Munro was shot in the head as he crossed no-man’s-land. The night had been dark. Some of the soldiers accompanying him had lit up when they stopped to rest, and the glowing cigarettes attracted a German sniper’s attention. His last words were reported to be: ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’ The soldier was perhaps the wittiest writer Britain had; his other name was Saki.–Ferrets can be gods, a short essay by Katherine Rundell on the Edwardian short story writer Saki. His stories are available online.
Map of Roads Leading to Rome
Explore the Peutinger Map is a website companion to Prof. Richard J. A. Talbert's Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Google Books, Amazon). It presents The Peutinger Map in different ways, including with overlays and lists of geographical features. But what's The Peutinger Map? Also known as Tabula Peutingeriana, it is a Medieval copy of highly stylized 4th Century map of the Roman road network, extending to India. Jacob Ford explains why it is often compared to modern public transit maps [pdf] and then redraws one section as a New York Metro map. Euratlas has scans of the Medieval manuscript stored at the Austrian National Library and Wikimedia Commons has a high quality scan of Konrad Miller's authoritative 1888 facsimile edition.
"Does Dolly Parton win?" Hogan asks. "Always," I answer.
My Virtual Brunch With Dolly Parton is an autobiographical essay by Heather Hogan of Autostraddle about growing up as a gay, southern Dolly Parton obsessive.
Vote the quidnunc kid #1 Tolkien limerick summarizer
Three rings for the elves, full of might;Our very own elected #1 the quidnunc kid has retold the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in limerick form and posted it on his profile page. Includes footnotes, also in limerick form. Rumors abound of an audiobook version.
Dwarves seven, men nine - that sounds right!
And one for their Lord? Sure!
He lives down in Mordor -
Where the shadows (and weather) are shite.
Essays by Rosa Lyster
The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek is a humorous essay by Rosa Lyster about driving people mad by pretending she doesn't know a common cultural touchstone, such as Žižek, Twin Peaks or The Beatles. This is her second essay for The Hairpin, after My Dad Reads ‘Wuthering Heights’ For The First Time, which is how her dad rediscovered a love for reading fiction. Her essays have been published here and there, and she writes an essay a week on her website. The latest essay is about Peanuts and being an older sister.
It's basically first seaon Serial meets schlocky TV murder mystery
Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder [iTunes] is podcast documentary in ten episodes about the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987. The main producer, Peter Jukes, is a TV screenwriter and political activist who became obsessed with the Morgan murder and has turned that obsession into a podcast. He is not the only one still interested, as the UK government set up the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel to review the case and look into "police handling of the murder investigation" and "connections between private investigators, police officers and journalists" after years of pressure by Morgan's family. So far there have been four episodes, with new ones coming each week.
Driving in a big circle around Iceland
Route One is a 24 hour live broadcast by Icelandic state television RÚV of a drive on the Ring Road, which goes all the way around Iceland. Underneath a procedurally generated 24 hour remix of a new Sigur Rós song called Óveður will be playing. It starts now.
"Jesus said to them, My wife."
The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus' Wife is an article by Ariel Sabar about his quest to trace the providence of a manuscript fragment in which Jesus refers to his wife. The trail leads from Harvard through old East Germany to the Floridian swingers' scene.
Neanderthal Speleofacts
Neanderthals built mysterious cave structures 175,000 years ago which have been recently discovered in southwestern France. Walls were fashioned from stalagmites, and the area lit up with fireplaces. The French National Scientific Research Centre has released photos and a video about the site.
"Of Albions glorious Ile the Wonders whilst I write"
Poly-Olbion is a cycle of 30 poems describing England and Wales, county by county, composed by Michael Drayton in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. It was published in two parts, 1612 and 1622, along with sumptuous black and white maps engraved by William Hole meant to be colored in by its buyers. Now Poly-Olbion will be republished as a coloring book entitled Albions Glorious Ile. The Poly-Olbion Project website is worth exploring, as well as its blog and tumblr.
"Beautiful country burn again."
"This is not about Patricia Hearst. It is about me and the peculiar vacuum in which I grew up, a vacuum in which the Hearsts could be quite literally king of the hill." Joan Didion's notes for a never written story about the Patricia Hearst trial.
"There's no point in writing it all down if nobody ever reads it."
One breezy afternoon in 2001, two friends of mine, Richard and Dido, were mooching around a building site in Cambridge when they came across a battered yellow skip. Inside were 148 handwritten notebooks. Some were crammed into an old bottle box that had jaunty green print on the side: "Ribena! 5d!" Most were scattered across the bricks exultantly. A few had royal emblems from George VI's time. Others were bright, bubblegum colours, tangerine and mushy-pea green. A chalky jotter that Dido picked up broke like chocolate. Inside, the rotted pages were filled with urgent handwriting. Running up one of the margins were the words, "Hope my diaries aren't blown up before people can read them – they have immortal value." There was no name or return address on the books. The diarist was simply "I" who had lived, and then died, and been pitched in a skip.– Diary of a somebody: could I solve the mystery of 148 lost notebooks? is an essay by Alexander Masters about the writing of his new book, A Life Discarded.
"disappearance of the poet, who cedes the initiative to words"
Encrypted is an essay by New Yorker critic Alex Ross about French 19th Century poet Stéphane Mallarmé, and the difficulties he poses for translators and scholars. Notoriously the most bourgeois of avant-garde poets, his life has proved difficult to write about. So perhaps it's best to just go straight for the poetry. The Electronic Poetry Center has a nice page on his late masterpiece, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard, with the original and several translations.
"you can't help but want to live in a world like that" - Matthew Kielty
The Raycat Solution is a 15 minute documentary by Benjamin Huguet about an idea proposed in 1981 by philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri that by genetically engineering cats to be living Geiger counters, we could create a warning system for radioactive waste that would last at least ten thousand years. The idea languished for decades until Matthew Kielty did a feature on it for the 99% Invisible Podcast in 2014 [previously on MeFi]. Now biologist Kevin Chen is trying to bring the Ray Cat Solution to life.
What eating game did parents play with their babies before airplanes?
I've been playing the "airplane game" with my son lately while feeding him. I've seen that game pop up in media from all over the world, so it seems pretty ubiquitous today. I'm curious, are there any records about baby feeding games from before there were airplanes?
Little Labors
The Only Thing I Envy Men is an essay about women writers by Rivka Galchen, taken from her book Little Labors. The book focuses partly on writing by Japanese women, especially the 11th Century writers Sei Shonagon and Murasaki Shikibu, authors of The Pillow Book and Tale of Genji respectively. The latter has recently been retranslated, and was the subject of a lengthy article in the New Yorker by Ian Buruma.
Four Victorian Songs Analyzed by Joanna Swafford
Songs of the Victorians is a website about four songs composed in Victorian England. The history behind them reveals forgotten details of the era: Juanita was composed by Caroline Norton, a pioneering feminist; The Lost Chord was a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter first published in a feminist journal, then set to music by (yes that) Arthur Sullivan; a part of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Maud, which employs the cryptographical language of flowers, is set to music by Michael William Balfe and Sir Arthur Somervell, the former allowing performers to disguise or emphasize the disturbed emotions of the original, the latter makes the mental distress plain. The website was designed by digital humanities blogger and professor Joanna Swafford as a prototype for Augmented Notes, a system for highlighting sheet music visually while playing a sound file.
"Being Iceland, it gets complicated."
Saga Thing is a podcast [iTunes link] about the Sagas of the Icelanders by Professors Andrew Pfrenger and John P. Sexton. The format is simple, the two of them discuss a single saga over the course of one or more episodes. Then they render judgment at the end, on such issues as the quality of its nicknames, witticisms, characters and bloodshed. If you need a refresher on the medieval literature and history of Iceland, Saga Thing has you covered with three introductory episodes (1, 2, 3), or you could listen to the BBC's In Our Time episode about the sagas. Andy and John also have a few short episodes on related topics, such as the gruesome blood eagle, dueling and Norse remains in Newfoundland.
Who foresaw the dominance of Trump?
In the last nine months I read lots of pieces written by smart and knowledgeable people explaining why Trump was never going to be the Republican nominee, and wasn't going to come close. Though it's far from a done deal, it's clear that he's at least close. Did any analysts out there foresee a scenario like what we have today, with Trump winning three of the first four nominating contests? I would be interested in reading more of their analysis, to mix in with my regular batch of writers who were wrong on this.
Podcast: Serial: S01 Update: Day 01, Adnan Syed’s Hearing
Serial is going back to the Adnan Syed case for a few short daily episodes about a new hearing focusing on whether his trial lawyer was negligent. In this first episode, Asia McClain takes the stand.
Feeling sheepish
I feel very sheepish about having neglected this page for this month. I severely underestimated how much time I would have for a new project.
"And when you let them in, you don't grimace"
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who built a barbed wire fence around his country to keep out the migrants, was also [at a Brussels summit]. He saw, and enjoyed, seeing [Angela] Merkel in a fix. He took the floor and said: "It is only a matter of time before Germany builds a fence. Then I'll have the Europe that I believe is right." Merkel said nothing at first, a person present at the meeting relates. Only later, after a couple other heads of government had their say, did Merkel turn to Orbán and say: "I lived behind a fence for too long for me to now wish for those times to return."-The Isolated Chancellor: What Is Driving Angela Merkel? by Markus Feldenkirchen and René Pfister of Der Spiegel.
Big dinosaur leaves faint tracks
A few months ago, I went searching for the truth about that missing bone. I was not the first — plenty of others have sought the largest dinosaur that has ever lived. What I found was a quest that has driven some people toward maniacal competition, some to conspiracy theories and others to disregard scientific consensus. It drove me to a little rocky outcropping on a hill in rural Colorado known as Cope’s Nipple.—The Biggest Dinosaur In History May Never Have Existed by David Goldenberg is about Amphicoelias fragillimus, a species of sauropod dinosaurs described by famed paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope from a single, enormous bone, which later went missing. It may have been the biggest of the big, as explained by Prof. Ken Carpenter [pdf] or a fiction created by a typo [pdf], as argued by Cary Woodruff and John R. Foster.
"The FBI remained on the Seeger beat"
Folk musician Pete Seeger was under investigation by the FBI for decades from his time as a soldier during World War II until the 1970s. David Corn of Mother Jones magazine got over 1700 pages of surveillance reports, which have been released online. Seeger first came to the attention of the FBI because he wrote a letter protesting calls to strip all Japanese-Americans of citizenship and deport them. [via RÚV]
"I’m getting to be a rather old Santa Claus. A little lonely as well"
In 1963 Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated a letter from Santa Claus for the Finnish post office, which was inundated with letters to Santa. It has now been scanned and posted by the Moomin company on its blog as part of its regular series of letters from Tove Jansson.
RIP Rosie Roach
"A professor at Texas A&M University posted these photos to Facebook. 'There has been a dead cockroach in the Anthropology building's stairwell for at least two weeks. Some enterprising person has now made her a little shrine.'" Things escalated from there.
Book: The Blind Assassin
If The Blind Assassin was a layer cake, the layers would be the impossibility of true love, the inexorable destructive force of time, and chocolate. The frosting is pulp and newspaper. It's a remarkable novel, if only for the way Margaret Atwood weaves together three wildly different genres into a whole. There's the gentle comedy of old age about an old woman living a rather solitary existence in a small Southern Ontario town. There are her reminiscences of her life and family, an old-fashioned bildungsroman or family saga. Then there's a story about a doomed romance and pulp science fiction. Each on their own a very good book, but together form a great one.
Book: Second Foundation: "Search by the Foundation"
"Search by the Foundation" is my favorite story in the original Foundation series. Part of it is nostalgic, as I have vivid memories of reading the story as a young boy, but another part of is that it's in this story that you see most of the mundane, everyday world of the series, and it's a fun world to visit. You read about life in the suburbs and traveling by regular transport, and most importantly, you see a lot of the setting through the eyes of Arkady Darrell, a fourteen year old girl. My youthful self, falling headlong into science fiction fandom, was thrilled to find an easily relatable hero. Today, I'm impressed by how skilfully Asimov used this different perspective for expert world-building. And young and adult me agree, Arkady Darrell is the most purely fun protagonist to read about in the Foundation series, with the possible exception of Salvor Hardin.
Book: Second Foundation: "Search by the Mule"
Second Foundation is the only one of the original Foundation books that feels like a coherent whole. The two parts, originally titled "Now You See It—" and "—And Now You Don't", feel like they were conceived in one go. Nevertheless, they are quite different from each other, even if both center on the hunt for the elusive "Second Foundation" set up by Hari Seldon. The first section, "Search by the Mule" might just be the weirdest story in the original Foundation trilogy. It brings to an end the narrative of Han Pritcher and The Mule from the previous story, and climaxes in a psychic duel that feels like something out of E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series.
Book: Foundation and Empire: "The Mule"
In the imaginary science of 'Pataphysics there's the concept of the "clinamen", or "swerve". As method in the arts, it can be roughly paraphrased as: "To create art you must first create a system. Once you have the system, you must introduce an anomaly which brings the system into a state of chaos. Then you have art." To put it bluntly, until writing "The Mule", Asimov's Foundation series was a perfect system, described by the imaginary science of psychohistory. Things were moving predictably to a predicted end. But then there came a swerve, in the form of "The Mule", a warlord not predicted by Hari Seldon. And in the titular character, Asimov created one of the most interesting anti-heroes of early science fiction.
Book: Foundation and Empire: "The General"
"The General" is the last of the classic Foundation stories. In it Asimov tackles the central dynamic head on, setting the "living will" of a single human being against the "dead hand" of psychohistory. It should be no surprise, and indeed is no surprise to modern readers, that the long arc of history doesn't bend around brilliant individuals. There are other characters than the titular general, but Bel Riose is the only one that matters. He knows exactly what he's up against, and backs himself to win. He's undoubtedly the purest example of a tragic hero in the series.
"For 438 days, he lived on the edge of sanity."
Lost at sea: the man who vanished for 14 months by Jonathan Franklin. Salvador Alvarenga is a fisherman who fishes off the Pacific coast of Mexico. In November 2012 his boat was carried out into the Pacific by a storm. He survived until he drifted ashore in the Marshall Islands, over ten thousand kilometers from where he'd left shore.
Book: Foundation: "The Merchant Princes"
"The Merchant Princes" is set fairly shortly after the events of "The Traders". The changes heralded in the previous story have become the new status quo. Or almost, the traders are still nominally under the control of the old political order, who fear the independence of this new class. Master Trader Hober Mallow gets sent to the planet Korell to investigate troubling reports that may indicate the arrival of a Seldon Crisis.
Book: Foundation: "The Traders"
The next jump forward in the Foundation storyline takes us well into the second century of the 1000 year plan (which, incidentally, was the original name of the the first book). A merchant from the Foundation on a trading mission to a distant planet runs afoul of local laws and customs. Another trader, Linmar Ponyets, is sent to save him.
Book: Foundation: "The Mayors"
Compared to the previous story, there's a lot more going on in "The Mayors". While "The Encyclopedists" is a bit bare bones, this story is painted on a much bigger canvas. Political intrigue, deluded mobs and huge warships flying through space all feature. All of this is familiar from space opera, both modern and contemporary to the Foundation series. But in this story, it isn't the most destructive weapon that wins the day, but the soft power of religious authority.
Book: Foundation: "The Encyclopedists"
Science fiction fandom was introduced to the Foundation and psychohistory in a 1942 short story called "Foundation". When it was collected in a book, it was renamed "The Encyclopedists". It is the story of a library on a worthless planet on the far edge of a collapsing empire. And it's the story of a small city mayor who rises to the occasion presented to him by history, becoming one of the most beloved heroes of science fiction, Salvor Hardin.
Book: Foundation
The Foundation Trilogy is the space epic's space epic. It follows the history of The Foundation for centuries, from its beginnings as a library on a rinky dink planet on the edge of the Milky Way, to burgeoning galactic empirehood. But before there's a Foundation, there's one guy with a plan, Hari Seldon.
Introducing the Monthly Random Fiction Book Club
Hello! I have started a book club called Kattullus' Monthly Random Fiction Book Club. I want to explain a little how I'm thinking of running it. Each month will feature one work of fiction, chosen by me (suggestions welcome). The rules I've set myself is that at least half the months will feature works by women, and that at least a quarter of the works will be translated. I'm hoping to tailor the types of posts to each work, because books are varied beasts.
The 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature is Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexievich is the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature: "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich is a Belarusian writer and is unusual among Nobel laureates in that she is primarily a non-fiction writer. Her most famous book is Voices from Chernobyl, and you can read an extract in The Paris Review. You can read more about her books on her website and read excerpts in English. John Lloyd wrote a long review of her book Zinky Boys for the London Review of Books. And you can read an interview with her on the home page of her American publisher, Dalkey Archive.
The Ballad of Steinbjørn Jacobsen
I Sing for You an Apple is an account by writer and translator Eric Wilson of "escorting a Faroese poet-hero around the USA" in 1978. The poet-hero from the Faroe Islands was Steinbjørn Berghamar Jacobsen, who wrote fiction, poetry, plays and children's books in the language of his North-Atlantic archipelago. His works have not been translated into English, but they have been set to music. On Tinna og Tám he reads his own poems, accompanied by Kristian Blak and Heðin Ziska Davidsen (YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 ). And after his passing in 2012, two of his children, Kári and Eyð Jacobsen, made an album, Tungl, where they turned his poems into indie songs (YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
"to write in cafés is such a cliché that it needs no explanation"
In London, the coffeehouse offered the threat not of male homosexuality but rather of a different kind of dangerous male-on-male behavior, namely "wasting time." Coffee itself was often thought to be disgusting — a few of the names used by detractors were "syrup of soot," "a foreign fart," "a sister of the common sewer," "resembling the river Styx," "Pluto's diet-drink," "horsepond liquor" — but even for those who thought coffee led to medical problems, especially impotence, it was not as threatening as the spaces where it was drunk. Some perceived the coffeehouse as pure waste, a corrupting influence on London society, while others celebrated it with a strange enthusiasm.– Writing in Cafés: A Personal History by food historian Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft.
Ryan Adams covers Taylor Swift's 1989
1989 as covered by Ryan Adams (except "Clean", for some reason). Blank Space is my favorite. It's available on iTunes (including "Clean"). You can read an interview with him or read about the backstory in USA Today.
Indian Philosophy Without Any Gaps
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps is filling in gaps by starting a new podcast feed [iTunes link] dedicated to the history of philosophic traditions other than the one that started with the Ancient Greeks. The first tradition covered will be Indian philosophy, but the series will move on to Africa and China, and perhaps elsewhere as well. The primary author of the India episodes is Prof. Jonardon Ganeri but Prof. Peter Adamson will co-write, present each episode, and probably come up with illustrative examples involving giraffes, Buster Keaton, and his non-existent trapeze-artist sister. [Adamson's main History of Philosophy podcast previously and subsequently]