via 3 Quarks Daily: James Reidel in the NYRB
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh made Franz Werfel (1890-1945) one of the world’s most celebrated and controversial authors after it first appeared in German in 1933. He had worked a miracle for Armenians around the world, taking what might have been a footnote in the history of World War I – the deportation and mass murder of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority – and writing an epic that anticipated the ominous events unfolding in Germany as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power. The erosion of civil rights, the singling out of a minority for the nation’s problems, and the state-sanctioned violence perpetrated against it were becoming a reality for German Jews and this made Musa Dagh seem the work of a prophet.
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Found this gem hidden amid the creased romance novels in a thrift store
via AbeBooks by Richard Davies
I found this 1972 Penguin paperback edition of A Clockwork Orange in a thrift store at the weekend. I could see row after row of creased romance novels and then spotted some orange spines, so I reached in to see what the books were.
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Changing Stories Across Mediums
via MakeUseOf by Justin Pot
If previous seasons are any indication, a subset of Game of Thrones fans are going to be yelling this a lot at their TVs for the next few Sundays. They’ll probably tweet, and leave angry comments, about changes they don’t like.
They shouldn’t.
Mediums have different strengths and weaknesses, and adapting a text from one medium to another sometimes calls for substantial changes. Perhaps no one understood this better than legendary science fiction author Douglas Adams.
And then we have the story, or stories, about Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which you can read here
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Minding your stems and crowns
via OUP Blog by Frederick B. Essig
Since evolution became the primary framework for biological thought, we have been fascinated – sometimes obsessed – with the origins of things. Darwin himself was puzzled by the seemingly sudden appearance of angiosperms (flowering plants) in the fossil record. In that mid-Cretaceous debut, they seemed to be diversified into modern families already, with no evidence of what came before them. This was Darwin’s famous “abominable mystery”.
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Even if I hadn't been fascinated by the subject matter I think I would have chosen this item on the basis of the picture. I love flowers.
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Aphrodisias and Rome: now and then
via A Don’s Life by Mary Beard
I have just had a really flying visit to the site of Aphrodisias in Turkey, the Greco Roman city that has probably produced more important Roman discoveries over the last fifty years or so than anywhere else: Roman inscriptions by the ton have been found and published, but amongst other things uncovered pride of place must go to the "Sebasteion", the sanctuary of the imperial cult and to the extraordinary array of sculptured panels with which it was originally decorated (showing emperors in various poses and scenes from Greek myths). 80 of these survive from an original 200.
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Destination India
via OUP Blog by Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
What would it be like driving overland from London – East of Suez and over the Khyber Pass – to India ? Day by day and mile by mile, we found out, recording our impressions and experiences of people, landscape, and encounters as we drove a 107″ wheel base Land Rover from London to Jaipur. The year was 1956; the months July and August. Our 5,000 mile journey took us across the ecological and cultural limes distinguishing Europe from Asia and into the Indian subcontinent. As freshly minted PhDs, 26- and 28-years-old, we were open to adventure and to knowledge of the other. Funded by a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training fellowship, we found ourselves positioned at the cusp of the area studies era generated by the end of colonial rule.
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Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat
via 3 Quarks Daily: Jennifer Ouelette at The New York Times
On a cold January day in 1947, Erwin Schrödinger took the podium at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin and triumphantly announced that he had succeeded where Albert Einstein had failed for the past 30 years. Schrödinger said he’d devised a unified theory of everything that reconciled the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. His announcement caused a sensation in the international press, which shamelessly played up the David and Goliath angle, much to Schrödinger’s discomfort and Einstein’s irritation. It nearly destroyed their longstanding friendship. Matters became so acrimonious at one point, with rumors of potential lawsuits, that another colleague, Wolfgang Pauli, stepped in to mediate. A full three years would pass before the estranged friends gingerly began exchanging letters again.
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London mapped to show the emotions in Victorian literature
via Boing Boing by Clive Thompson
Behold the “emotional geography” of Victorian literary: A map that shows the “feeling and sensations” connected with various city locations in 19th-century novels. There are some surprising findings.
Continue reading and find those very surprising things.
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Guns, herbs, and sores: inside the dragon's etymological lair
via OUP Blog by John Kelly
While St. George is widely venerated throughout Christian communities, England especially honors him, its patron saint, for St. George’s Day on 23 April. Indeed his cross, red on a white field, flies as England’s flag.
St. George, of course, is legendary for the dragon he slew, yet St. George bested the beast in legend alone. From Beowulf to The Game of Thrones, this creature continues to breathe life (and fire) into our stories, art, and language; even the very word dragon hoards its own gold. Let’s brave our way into its etymological lair to see what treasures we might find.
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Fruits and Vegetables Are Trying to Kill You
via 3 Quarks Daily: Moises Velasquez-Manoff in Nautilus
You probably try to exercise regularly and eat right. Perhaps you steer toward “superfoods,” fruits, nuts, and vegetables advertised as “antioxidant,” which combat the nasty effects of oxidation in our bodies. Maybe you take vitamins to protect against “free radicals,” destructive molecules that arise normally as our cells burn fuel for energy, but which may damage DNA and contribute to cancer, dementia, and the gradual meltdown we call aging.
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