via 3 Quarks Daily: Jim Holt in The New York Times Sunday Book Review
The history of English prose can be seen as a dialectical struggle between two tendencies: plain versus grand. The plain style aims at ease and lucidity. It favors simply structured sentences, short words of Saxon origin and a conversational tone. It runs the risk of being flat. By contrast, the grand style – also called (by Cyril Connolly) “mandarin” – aims at rhetorical luxuriance. It is characterized by rolling periods decked with balanced subordinate clauses, a polysyllabic Latinate vocabulary, elaborate rhythms, stately epithets, sumptuous metaphors, learned allusions and fanciful turns of phrase. It runs the risk of being ridiculous.
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The stunning pen and ink drawings of Polish artist Wojtek Kowalczyk
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
Artist Wojtek Kowalczyk, as his beautifully hand-drawn bio shows, is an artist from Krakow, Poland. His Facebook page is regularly updated with new works, and I'm most enchanted with the monochrome works shown here.
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Stunning is the right word for these. Personally I don't care for them.
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If Scent Has A Hotline To Memory, It Seems Music Has A Hotline To Emotion
via 3 Quarks Daily: From The Sync Project
Music has the power to stimulate strong emotions within us, to the extent that it is probably rare not to be somehow emotionally affected by music. We all know what emotions are and experience them daily. Most of us also listen to music in order to experience emotions. The specific mechanisms through which music evokes emotions is a rich field of research, with a great number of unanswered questions. Why does sound talk to our emotional brain? Why do we perceive emotional information in musical features? Why do we feel the urge to move when hearing music? Through increasing scientific understanding of the universal as well as the individual principles behind music-evoked emotions, we will be able to better understand the effects that music-listening can have and make better use of them in an informed manner.
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Probably the only article you'll ever need to read about the Sphinx
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Before reading this article about the Sphinx, I knew just three things about it: It was large, it was old, and it was in Egypt. Last night I read “Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx”, by Evan Hadingham on Smithsonian.com, and learned a lot about the Sphinx. I love articles like this that fill one of the many holes in my knowledge about all the great things in the world.
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5 Fascinating Sites for Seeing and Exploring the Universe
via MakeUseOf by Justin Pot
Space. The final frontier.
If you love gazing at the stars, and beautiful pictures of galaxies, the Internet has a lot to offer. We’ve shown you apps for star-gazers before; today we’re going to talk about five more websites that let you learn about the universe.
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Old North Bridge: 1910
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1910
“Bridge to Revolutionary War monument, Concord, Mass”
The Old North Bridge and Daniel Chester French’s 1875 statue “The Minute Man”
5x7 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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Who was Jonas Salk?
via OUP Blog by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
Most revered for his work on the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk was praised by the mainstream media but still struggled to earn the respect and adoration of the medical community. Accused of abusing the spotlight and giving little credit to fellow researchers, he arguably become more of an outcast than a “knight in a white coat.” Even so, Salk continued to make strides in the medical community, ultimately leaving behind a legacy larger than the criticism that had always threatened to overshadow his career. We sat down with Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs, author of Jonas Salk: A Life, to get to know a little more about the mysterious researcher and virologist, as well as some of his personal and professional highs and lows.
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Buddhism and the Brain: Mindfulness in Modern Times
via Big Think by Derek Beres
Evan Thompson is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Colombia who specialises in cognitive science, Buddhism, and philosophy of mind. His latest book, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, investigates the intersection of brain science and Buddhism in an honest, non-judgemental fashion that’s true to neuroscience and psychology without negating the metaphorical value of millennia-old aphorisms. With an emphasis on dreaming and the complex facets of consciousness, Thompson does a wonderful job at connecting old Buddhist and Hindu concepts with contemporary learnings in the realm of the human brain. I recently chatted with him about these topics.
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Gorgeous and colorful vaulted murals of Rotterdam’s Markthal
via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Rotterdam wanted to honor the history of its public market by creating a space that felt open even though it was enclosed. The resulting Markthal has a beautiful vaulted ceiling adorned with bright murals of food.
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Buster Keaton’s Cure
via 3 Quarks Daily: Charlie Fox at Cabinet Magazine
Here he is, a little man in his trademark outfit of porkpie hat and rumpled suit. He ignores all conversational prompts, playing dumb and nodding a little as if out of beat with the situation, mid-daydream. “The American public would like to hear you say something. Would you say something? Go ahead,” Wynn cajoles him, “speak!” And upon these ventriloquist’s orders, Buster commences a routine that looks like a ludic premonition of the anguished choreographies found in Samuel Beckett’s plays. (Shortly before his death, he would appear as the solitary figure in Beckett’s metaphysically queasy 1965 short, Film). Carefully, the voice must be readied – the whole body is involved. He shrugs his shoulders a few times, bends his knees to ensure that he’s suitably limber, then performs some exaggerated respirations that make his chest swell and deflate like a ragged bellows. There’s a mysterious procedure of cheek massage and jaw agitation in which he looks like a gargoyle attempting to reverse the effects of amphetamines. He spritzes something into his mouth, the host looks quizzically on, and what shy laughter there was in the audience has receded like a weak breeze. Then, at last, he says “Hello!” in an eager innocent’s yelp. Wynn is astonished! His owlish eyes go wide, and Buster falls, exhausted, into his arms as the audience chuckles. Television is probably more accommodating to such outbursts of staccato weirdness than any other medium, but Buster’s act is much more than just an odd trick.
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