via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
From September 1938, a reminder of the days when doing laundry meant hauling water from a well or spigot, then boiling it in a cauldron over a fire: “Old and sick, mine foreman’s wife does washing in front yard. South Charleston, W.Va.”
Photo by Marion Post Wolcott for the Resettlement Administration.
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Neil Gaiman Salutes Douglas Adams: Why Books Are Sharks
via Scholarly Kitchen by David Crotty
The Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture is held every year to raise funds for Adams’ favorite causes, Save the Rhino and the Environmental Investigation Agency. Hopefully I don’t have to tell you who Adams was and what he wrote. But you may not know about one of his lesser works, and in my opinion, one of the best popular science books ever written, Last Chance to See. If you haven’t yet read it, you’ll learn much about endangered species and find your heart being broken even as you laugh out loud.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Love songs RIP
Does the rise of hip-hop mean the end of the love song? Yes, says Terry Teachout. Rap is loveless music for a post-marital world… more
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Roman Slaveowners were the First Management Theorists
via 3 Quarks Daily: Jerry Toner in Aeon (photo by Paolo Cipriani/Getty)
The Romans thought deeply about slavery. They saw the household as the cornerstone of civilised society. Similarly, the modern corporation is the bedrock of the industrial world, without which no kind of modern lifestyle, with all its material comforts, would be possible.
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Don’t blame Sykes-Picot
via OUP Blog by James Gelvin
What do Glenn Beck, Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State, and Noam Chomsky have in common? They all place much of the blame for the current crisis in the Middle East on the so-called “Sykes-Picot Agreement,” a plan for the postwar partition of Ottoman territories drawn up during World War I.
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I thought I knew a fair amount about this area at this point in history; my grandfather served in Palestine during WW1 but this I did not know about except as a passing reference.
Very interesting.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Madness and meaning
Even in an age of science, we cannot escape lunacy’s long history of frippery and superstition… more
An interesting essay with stunning illustrations.
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New alloy of iron and aluminium as good as titanium, at a tenth of the cost
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Titanium alloys are lightweight, strong, crack-resistant, and fatigue-resistant. This makes them useful in aerospace applications. Unfortunately titanium is also expensive – around $3 a pound.
Steel is strong and cheap (30 cents a pound), but much heavier than titanium, making it unsuitable for jets. Aluminum is light and cheap (84 cents a pound) but weaker than steel or titanium.
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William Hazlitt: Danger is a Good Teacher
via Big Think by Big Think editors
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was an English man of letters, a writer and literary critic held in the same esteem as luminaries such as Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Hazlitt was and still is considered the greatest critic of his age, a reputation based on his astute observations and keen humanistic essays. Hazlitt was also a painter; the above picture is a self-portrait. Despite his legendary acclaim, many of Hazlitt’s writings are currently out of print. A key theme in his writings is the importance of experience over abstraction, an idea quite evident in the quote below.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn, and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) – neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Einstein as a Jew and a philosopher
We know about his science, his politics, his philosophy – what else is there to know about Albert Einstein? Not least: his sense of humor… more
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Aggressive prayers, curses, and maledictions
via 3 Quarks Daily: Elizabeth McAlister in The Immanent Frame
This speech form is known as imprecatory prayer, from the Latin, imprecate, “invoking evil or divine vengeance; cursing.” The use of scripture as a form of imprecatory prayer has long been covertly practiced by both Christians and non-Christians. But the slogan to “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109.8” circulated openly on t-shirts and bumper stickers during the 2008 presidential race. Similarly, Reverend Wiley Drake, the second vice-president of the First Southern Baptist Church, issued in 2006 a statement claiming that his prayers for the death of a slain abortion provider George Tiller had been answered. These instances give us a rare display of imprecatory prayer in the US public sphere, and constitute prime examples of the use of negative prayer in American political life and beyond.
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