via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“The Great Locks, Chicago Drainage Canal, Lockport, Illinois”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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How Our Minds Work = Hard To See
via Big Think by Jag Bhalla
How our own minds work is hard to see.
Here are some once-tempting views about why we do what we know we will rue
Some of the theories are obviously, imo, a load of garbage but since they were advanced more than two thousand years ago I’ll let them pass – interesting anyway.
The more modern interpretations of human behaviour are equally interesting but different!
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Mapmaking mystery. How did a 13th-century cartographer do work so accurate that you could still navigate the Mediterranean with it?… more
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10 Beautiful Bookshops That Will Stop You in Your Tracks
via AbeBooks by Jessica Doyle
A bibliophile cannot walk past a bookshop without slowing their step. We will linger at the window, gazing through the glass at stacks of books we have not yet read. We hover, telling ourselves we must read the pile on the nightstand before buying another. But we can’t resist the lure. Before long, we open the door, sounding the tiny bell that rouses the shop cat. We’re in, and we’re going to be a while.
The only thing that tops a bookstore full of amazing books, is a beautiful bookstore full of amazing books – a bookstore so charming not even a TV-addict can resist it. Many stunning bookstores list their books for sale on the AbeBooks marketplace, so we rounded up a few of the most alluring storefronts from Paris to Boston and everywhere in between. Even those immune to the magnetic pull of the smell of old books will stop dead in their tracks at the sight of these pretty AbeBooks bookstores, so before you step inside to bury your nose in a book, take a moment to enjoy the view from outside.
More here and if you scroll down to the comments you’ll find more suggestions of places to visit.
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Here’s how to decide whether to keep a book or get rid of it
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
I own more books than I can read in a lifetime. I need to try out Erik Knutzen’s system for cleaning his bookshelves.
Continue reading and then please come here and make me follow the rules!
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
G.K. Chesterton inveighed against pessimism, determinism, pragmatism, even impressionism. Yes, Impressionism: “It puts what one notices above what one knows”…more
This review tells me a lot more about the man whose works I have admired since my father helped me to learn “The Rolling English Road“. I can still manage most of it without any prompting.
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A Rocket Scientist Redesigns the Kitchen Saucepan
via Big Think by Teodora Zareva
Dr. Tom Povey is a professor of Engineering Science at Oxford University who designs cooling systems for jet engines. In the early 2000s, inspired by his love of the outdoors, he started working on a small side project pursuing a more efficient pan for the times he would go camping. Many years later that project turned into a line of kitchen pots that use 40% less gas than the conventional ones.
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What Is Life? Is Death Real?
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
What Is Life? Is Death Real? Neither of these questions are answered in this video, but the narrator has an appealing authoritative voice, and the animation is fantastic.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Brecht in America. His reception was grudging at best, obtuse and reactionary at worst. The problem? He fell victim to the professoriate… more
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Can Hermaphrodites Teach Us What It Means To Be Male?
via 3 Quarks Daily: Carl Zimmer in This View of Life
The vinegar worm (officially known as Caenorhabditis elegans) is about as simple as an animal can be. When this soil-dwelling nematode reaches its adult size, it measures a millimeter from its blind head to its tapered tail. It contains only a thousand cells in its entire body. Your body, by contrast, is made of 36 trillion cells. Yet the vinegar worm divides up its few cells into the various parts you can find in other animals like us, from muscles to a nervous system to a gut to sex organs.
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