Trivia (should have been 29 November)

At Ease: 1863
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave


“June 1863 Gettysburg Campaign. Fairfax Court House, Virginia. Capt. J.B. Howard, Office of Assistant Quartermaster, and group at headquarters, Army of the Potomac.”
Wet plate glass negative by Timothy H. O’Sullivan
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The Magical Illustration of Arthur Rackham
via Abe Books UK by Beth Carswell

Arthur Rackham was an illustrator in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in London in 1867. He began studying at the Lambeth School of Art at the age of 18, and soon found his passion and calling. The first of Rackham’s illustrations to be published in a book were in 1893, in The Dolly Dialogues. Rackham never looked back. From that first publication, illustration was his career until the day he died at age 72, of cancer.
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WARNING: Please keep a tight hold on your credit / debit card. Some of the books available do not come at a low price.
But they are so lovely that I want a whole shelf of them!

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Cézanne and the old masters
Anxiety of influence. While most Impressionists disavowed the old masters, Cézanne studied their works with painful precision… more

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Plato and contemporary bioethics
via OUP Blog by Susan B Levin

Since its advent in the early 1970s, bioethics has exploded, with practitioners’ thinking expressed not only in still-expanding scholarly venues but also in the gamut of popular media. Not surprisingly, bioethicists’ disputes are often linked with technological advances of relatively recent vintage, including organ transplantation and artificial-reproductive measures like preimplantation genetic diagnosis and prenatal genetic testing. It’s therefore tempting to figure that the only pertinent reflective sources are recent as well, extending back – glancingly at most – to Immanuel Kant’s groundbreaking 18th-century reflections on autonomy.
Surely Plato, who perforce could not have tackled such issues, has nothing at all to contribute to current debates.
Continue reading to find out that you could be wrong

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What We Mean When We Say “I Did Something I Didn't Want to Do”
via Big Think by David Berreby

One way to understand a nudge – a government policy that inclines you to make a particular choice, often without your awareness – is that it makes it easier for you to do what you really would have wanted despite your fallible human nature. But how do you know what you really want?
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I found this really interesting.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Friendship with Gore Vidal
“He looked like a down-and-out panhandler who had sneaked in off Duval Street to swipe a drink and a fistful of peanuts.” Gore Vidal at 83… more

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“Vampire grave” from the 13th century unearthed
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

An archaeologist found a “vampire grave” in Bulgaria where a Medieval skeleton lies with an iron spike through its chest.
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Shakespeare’s Invisible Hand in Economics
via Big Think by Jag Bhalla

Metaphors can be our shortest stories: their compact explanations often shape our view of the truth. But like stories taken out of context, badly mixed metaphors from biology and physics mislead many economists. And Shakespeare’s “invisible hand” is partly to blame.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Cyril Connolly’s masterpiece
“Approaching forty, sense of total failure.” And so Cyril Connolly quit journalism to write a masterpiece. The key, he believed, was to have an interest in but contempt for humanity… more

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The real-life Sherlock Holmes
via Boing Boing: Futility Closet

Sherlock Holmes was based on a real man, a physician who trained Arthur Conan Doyle at the University of Edinburgh. During his medical lectures, Joseph Bell regularly astonished his students with insights into his patients’ lives and characters.
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