Abbeville’s celebration of animals in illuminated manuscripts
via Pages & Proofs by Richard Davies
Take a look at this new book from Abbeville Press – The Grand Medieval Bestiary: The Animal in Illuminated Manuscripts by Christian Heck, a leading authority on illuminated manuscripts. A book of 587 colourful images from illuminated manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages. Art historian Heck explains that the prevalence of animals in illuminated manuscripts reflects their importance during this period when agriculture was key to everyday life. Animals also appeared in many folk tales of the era.
There’s a couple more illustrations here
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Ruthless power struggles, show trials, forced confessions: The Church of Scientology or the Communist Party in its heyday? Take your pick... more
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Physicists Demonstrate First Laser Made From a Cloud of Gas
via New on MIT Technology Review
Clouds that lase are the first Earth-based versions of lasers that occur naturally in space, say researchers.
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The Gollum Diet: Cave Creatures from Around the World
via Britannica Blog by Richard Pallardy
Though the peregrinations of the intrepid Bilbo Baggins are the nominal focus of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (the first screen instalment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings prequel), many viewers will likely spend the early portion of the film impatiently waiting for its shadow star, Gollum, to make his first hissing, scrabbling appearance.
Olms (Proteus anguinus), Caves of Chorance, France.
Credit: SanShoot Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Richard Pallardy provides images of various creatures that might have made for variety in Gollum’s diet.
Warning: Some of them are distinctly spidery!
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
For love of women and art. Was Raphael a chaste saint who sublimated his passion into his work? Or was he a womanizer who died in the arms of his mistress?... more
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The Meteorology of Little House on the Prairie
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
If you read The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder's novel about narrowly avoiding starving to death during a ferocious winter on the South Dakota prairie, then you’ll remember how the trains stopped running because of the snowfall. In fact, that’s a big part of why Laura and her family were so hungry – their harvest had been lean and the train carried the supplies they were dependent upon.
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The Long Hall: 1908
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1908
“South corridor, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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And a more modern image taken from a different angle!
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
John Brockman’s Edge question for 2013 asks more than 150 intellectuals, “What should we be worried about?”... more
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76 things banned in the Bible, most of which are punishable by death
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
Milan - detail from facade of Duomo - Expulsion from Paradise
Image: Shutterstock
An oldie but goodie single-purpose Tumblr listing things banned in Leviticus, the banny-est of all scriptures. The sex stuff you can imagine (no bonking animals, dudes if you are a dude, divorcées, your grandmother, or your own children), but here are some particularly weird non-sex items in the list:
- Eating any animal which walks on all four and has paws (good news for cats) (11:27)
- Picking up grapes that have fallen in your vineyard (19:10)
- Mixing fabrics in clothing (19:19)
- Cross-breeding animals (19:19)
- Eating fruit from a tree within four years of planting it (19:23)
- Trimming your beard (19:27)
- Getting tattoos (19:28)
- Not standing in the presence of the elderly (19:32)
- Mistreating foreigners – “the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born” (19:33-34)
- Using dishonest weights and scales (19:35-36)
- Blasphemy (punishable by stoning to death) (24:14)
- Selling land permanently (25:23)
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Giant squid finally caught on video
via Boing Boing by Jason Weisberger
It was only a matter of time but it sure took a lot of it, Discovery Channel and NHK captured footage of a giant squid!
“Mankind finally confronts the greatest mystery of the deep as the first-ever footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat is revealed in Discovery Channel’s Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real, which premieres on Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 10/9c as the season finale of Curiosity. NHK will air their special on the first-ever footage of the giant squid in early January 2013.”
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