via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
The Buffalo River, city ship canal and flour mill elevators circa 1911
“A busy section of the canal – Buffalo, N.Y.”
8x10 inch glass negative
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John Muir: mystic of the American wilderness
via 3 Quarks Daily: Stefany Anne Golberg at The Smart Set
For five days John Muir tried to seduce Emerson into the wild – the mountains are calling, let us run away! Muir sang to him, let us go to the show! But Emerson’s companions would have none of it. Emerson is too old for nature, they told Muir; he could catch his death of cold. It is only in houses that people catch colds! Muir protested – there is not a single sneeze in the Sierra! The tottering Emerson, tempted, was inclined to agree with his friends.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Music, nationalism, Christianity
To understand the decline of classical music, you need to understand what once made it great: nationalism and Christianity… more
Breaking the mould and including this fascinating picture with something that is "via Arts and Letters Daily"
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The beauty and wisdom of mathematics
via Boing Boing by Clifford Pickover
Sofia Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya (1850–1891), the first major Russian female mathematician and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe, once wrote, “It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.” I stumbled across this quote as a student, and, at the time, I wondered what poetry and mathematics could have in common. This seed grew into my current interest in mathematics, mathematical art, and inspirational quotes by diverse people intrigued by mathematics.
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Arctic Monkeying: Contrasting Visions of Canada’s Northeast
via Big Think by Frank Jacobs
Paris in the 18th century was the hotbed of scientific cartography. But the shape of the Earth’ continents was only as definite as the next explorer’s tall tales. Clans of cartographers bitterly quarreled over how to map the sweep of newly discovered lands, and how to fill in the blanks. This quartet of four contrasting maps on a single sheet is a fossilized reminder of that disputatious era – and a curious, early example of comparative cartography.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Blame the dog
Roughly 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals dwindled and then vanished from Eurasia. What caused this die-off? Modern humans and their dogs… more
I spent rather more time than was necessary on this story, i.e. I actually read it rather than skimming to decide whether to include it.
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Electric eel are like living TASERs
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Vanderbilt University biologists studied how electric eels can zap their prey with 600 volts from even a few meters away. Turns out, the fish are like living TASERs. Professor Kenneth Catania and his colleagues published their work in the journal Science.
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Atheism: Above all a moral issue
via OUP Blog by Michael Ruse
The New Atheists – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens – are not particularly comfortable people. The fallacies in their arguments beg to be used in classes on informal reasoning. The narrowness of their perspectives are remarkable even by the standards of modern academia. The prejudices against those of other cultures would be breathtaking even in the era when Britannia ruled the waves. But there is a moral fervor unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. And for this, we can forgive much.
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via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Against self-criticism
Self-criticism is integral to our sense of self. What does this unrelenting, unforgiving, internal nag want? Adam Philips hazards an answer… more
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The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte
via 3 Quarks Daily by Caroline Weber in The New York Times
This year [2014] marks the bicentennial of the death of Josephine Bonaparte, but Napoleon’s empress has been having a moment for some time now. In the past two decades, she has starred in at least 20 new biographies, six museum exhibitions and six novels. Three editions of her correspondence have also appeared during this time, as have many more studies (of Napoleon and other Bonapartes) in which she features.
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