Trivia (should have been 18 October)

YWCA: 1906
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Circa 1906
“Y.W.C.A. building, Detroit”
Once again the interesting stuff is at the periphery – note signage at right advertising Cracker Jack and the services of a “bell hanger”
8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co
View original post

==========================================
DIY rolling-ball clock
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Christopher Blasius sells plans (€40) to make a Serpina "rolling ball clock" whose timekeeping is accomplished by rolling a ball around a laser-cut wooden frame, causing the frame to see-saw and sending the ball in the opposite direction.
Continue reading

==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate

History of hogsheads, kegs and puncheons
Beer, whiskey, wine, grain, tobacco, molasses, cement, fish, coins: The barrel is far from a simple idea… more

==========================================
Chimps Outplay Humans in Brain Games
via 3 Quarks Daily by Madhuvanthi Kannan in Scientific American

We humans assume we are the smartest of all creations. In a world with over 8.7 million species, only we have the ability to understand the inner workings of our body while also unravelling the mysteries of the universe. We are the geniuses, the philosophers, the artists, the poets and savants. We amuse at a dog playing ball, a dolphin jumping rings, or a monkey imitating man because we think of these as remarkable acts for animals that, we presume, aren’t smart as us. But what is smart? Is it just about having ideas, or being good at language and math?
Continue reading

==========================================
The City of Literature: Books Set in Paris
via AbeBooks.co.uk by Jessica Doyle
Hemingway wrote, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
It’s a book lover’s dream to wander the very streets that inspired Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and so many others. You might step into the Salon at 27 rue de Fleurus where Gertrude Stein mentored Ernest Hemingway, or have a drink at the café littéraires Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore, the long-ago haunts of James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and their fellow The Lost Generation writers.
Continue reading
WARNING: This is a market place. Keep a hold on your credit and/or debit cards.

==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate

Invention of the Jewish nose
Whether tapered, snout-like, or hooked, the Jewish nose displays a remarkably diverse history in Christian art… more

==========================================
The life of a hoarder
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

Corinna Kern documented the life of George Fowler, a compulsive hoarder. In her photographs is "a closeness between the young woman behind the camera and the old man in front of it." [Itsnicethat via Digg]

==========================================
Wow
via 3 Quarks Daily by Maniza Naqvi

This is the letter “wow”
Just Wow! At every turn, and corner in Istanbul — you are bound to say — Wow.
The obvious example is, of course, at the Basilica of Aya Sofiya—built by Emperor Justinian in 537 AD. Legend has it, that Justinian wanted this magnificent Eastern Orthodox Church, in its beauty and scale to rival Solomon's great Temple. So that even Solomon would have been Wowed.
Continue reading

==========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate

Who killed Van Gogh?
The case for Van Gogh’s suicide is tarnished by bad history, bad psychology, and bad forensics. So if he didn’t shoot himself, who did?… more

==========================================
Stonehenge was a circle
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Stonehenge’s remains suggest a circle, but archaeologists have finally proven it after a drought revealed what lay beneath the grass.