an article by Val Williams, Paul Swift & Victoria Mason (School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK) published in Disability & Society Volume 30 Issue 5 2015
Abstract
The label of ‘intellectual disability’ can be a very blurred concept, because for those on the borders their label often arises from the interaction of the individual with their environment, from their socio-economic status, and from the social role which they choose to undertake.
This paper explores the contested notion of intellectual disability in the context of people who have been in trouble with the law in England, and contrasts their situation with that of people who have been protected by best interests decisions under the Mental Capacity Act (England and Wales). People who are on the ‘borderline’ of having an intellectual disability, like any citizens, have a range of intersecting identities.
Drawing on the notions of ‘interactional’ disability theory, we reflect on the shifting, relative nature of intellectual disability, and the need for the law to focus on support needs, rather than on impairment.
Tuesday, 31 May 2016
Friday, 27 May 2016
Ten interesting things that I found, some of which will delight you
==============================================
Where childhood memories go
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Chances are you don't remember much from before you were about three years old, and the way we narrate our worlds to ourselves is a big part of why.
Continue reading
==============================================
Go Ask Alice: What really went on in Wonderland
via 3 Quarks Daily: Anthony Lane in The New Yorker
Who reads “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? The answer used to be: Anyone who can read.
From the tangled tale of mass literacy one can pluck a few specific objects – books that were to be found in every household where there was somebody who could read and people who wanted to listen. Aside from the Bible, a typical list would run like this: “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” to which were later added “The Pickwick Papers” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Notice that Alice is not the sole adventurer. Every one of those titles contains the leading character, whose fate is to go on a journey, and whose mettle is tested in the process. Each explores a different landscape, or body of water, but all five traverse what you might call the valley of the shadow of life, profuse with incident. Three of the writers were men of God, and the two others began as journalists. Had you asked any of them to take a creative-writing course, the door would have closed in your face.
Continue reading
==============================================
A Sleep Researcher’s Attempt to Build a Bank for Dreams
via Research Buzz: Andy Wright in Atlas Obscura
For many people, listening to just one person describe their dreams is a nightmare. But for G. William Domhoff, it’s a calling; as a dream researcher, he listens to them professionally.
But even a dream doctor has his limits.
“As soon as people find out what I do, they want me to interpret their dream,” says Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of several books on dreams.
But dreams are a numbers game and Domhoff prefers to work with big data sets, not a single offering. Over the years he has collected and analyzed a vast library of dreams and is one of the founders of The DreamBank, an online archive of over 22,000 dreams. The database, which is available for the public to sift through, is an attempt to quantify one of the most ephemeral of human experiences.
Continue reading
==============================================
Take a Walk in the Woods to Feel Better
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
Researchers suggest the best remedy to break the cycle of depressing rumination is to go for a walk in the woods.
The researchers noted the importance of this study in their paper, writing that “[urbanization] is associated with increased levels of mental illness, but it’s not yet clear why.” They say with more than 50 percent of people living in urban areas and a predicted 70 percent moving to cities in 2050, they believe it's important to understand how scientists can mitigate these effects. One of the ways they believe is to get a little nature.
Continue reading
==============================================
A Primate’s Education
via Education State by Editors
Baby School
Newly arrived infants and very young orangutans spend the day in a forested nursery where they are cared for 24/7 by their babysitters. Their health is carefully monitored as many of them have come to the center severely malnourished and they are extremely susceptible to illness due to having compromised immune systems. Many of them had been raised as pets after their mothers were slaughtered and precious few have been lucky enough to survive the ordeal of life without the one person they depend on most: their mothers.
Continue reading and find out about Forest School followed by University.
==============================================
Base Station: 1906
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
New Hampshire circa 1906
“Base station, Mount Washington Railway, White Mountains”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative
View original post
==============================================
‘Why Grow Up?’ by Susan Neiman
via Arts and Letters Daily: a review by A. O. Scott in The New York Times
A great deal of modern popular culture – including just about everything pertaining to what French savants like to call le nouvel âge d’or de la comédie américaine – runs on the disavowal of maturity. The ideal consumer is a mirror image of a familiar comic archetype: a man-child sitting in his parents’ basement with his video games and his “Star Wars” figurines; a postgraduate girl and her pals treating the world as their playground. Baby boomers pursue perpetual youth into retirement. Gen-Xers hold fast to their skateboards, their Pixies T-shirts and their Beastie Boys CDs. Nobody wants to be an adult anymore, and every so often someone writes an article blaming Hollywood, attachment parenting, global capitalism or the welfare state for this catastrophe.
Continue reading
==============================================
Fountain Pen Factory: 1935
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1935
“Sheaffer fountain pen factory, Fort Madison, Iowa. Final act of the pen manufacture.”
8x10 acetate negative by Theodor Horydczak
View original post
==============================================
Dreams and Anna Karenina
via Arts & Letter Daily: Janet Malcolm in The New York Review of Books
Tatyana Drubich in Sergei Solovyov’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, 2009
We do not think of Tolstoy as a comic writer, but his genius permits him to write farce when it suits him. There is a wickedly funny scene in Anna Karenina that directly precedes the painful scenes leading to Anna’s suicide. It takes place in the drawing room of the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who, almost alone among the novel’s characters, has no good, or even pretty good, qualities. She embodies the kind of hysterical and coldhearted religious piety that Tolstoy was especially allergic to.
Continue reading
==============================================
How Pyrex Transformed Every Kitchen Into a Home-Ec Lab
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Ben Marks of Collectors Weekly says, “Pyrex turns 100 this year, so Hunter Oatman-Stanford reached out to Glen Cook, chief scientist at the Corning Museum of Glass, and Regan Brumagen, one of the curators of a Pyrex exhibition at the museum that continues through March of 2016. Hunter learned that Pyrex actually began as an industrial product used in everything from telescope lenses to railroad-signal lanterns, and that it was the wife of a Corning physicist who championed its application in the kitchen.”
Continue reading
OK, so we may not be able to get to see the exhibition but we can read about it.
Where childhood memories go
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Chances are you don't remember much from before you were about three years old, and the way we narrate our worlds to ourselves is a big part of why.
Continue reading
==============================================
Go Ask Alice: What really went on in Wonderland
via 3 Quarks Daily: Anthony Lane in The New Yorker
Who reads “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? The answer used to be: Anyone who can read.
From the tangled tale of mass literacy one can pluck a few specific objects – books that were to be found in every household where there was somebody who could read and people who wanted to listen. Aside from the Bible, a typical list would run like this: “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” to which were later added “The Pickwick Papers” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Notice that Alice is not the sole adventurer. Every one of those titles contains the leading character, whose fate is to go on a journey, and whose mettle is tested in the process. Each explores a different landscape, or body of water, but all five traverse what you might call the valley of the shadow of life, profuse with incident. Three of the writers were men of God, and the two others began as journalists. Had you asked any of them to take a creative-writing course, the door would have closed in your face.
Continue reading
==============================================
A Sleep Researcher’s Attempt to Build a Bank for Dreams
via Research Buzz: Andy Wright in Atlas Obscura
For many people, listening to just one person describe their dreams is a nightmare. But for G. William Domhoff, it’s a calling; as a dream researcher, he listens to them professionally.
But even a dream doctor has his limits.
“As soon as people find out what I do, they want me to interpret their dream,” says Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of several books on dreams.
But dreams are a numbers game and Domhoff prefers to work with big data sets, not a single offering. Over the years he has collected and analyzed a vast library of dreams and is one of the founders of The DreamBank, an online archive of over 22,000 dreams. The database, which is available for the public to sift through, is an attempt to quantify one of the most ephemeral of human experiences.
Continue reading
==============================================
Take a Walk in the Woods to Feel Better
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
Researchers suggest the best remedy to break the cycle of depressing rumination is to go for a walk in the woods.
The researchers noted the importance of this study in their paper, writing that “[urbanization] is associated with increased levels of mental illness, but it’s not yet clear why.” They say with more than 50 percent of people living in urban areas and a predicted 70 percent moving to cities in 2050, they believe it's important to understand how scientists can mitigate these effects. One of the ways they believe is to get a little nature.
Continue reading
==============================================
A Primate’s Education
via Education State by Editors
Baby School
Newly arrived infants and very young orangutans spend the day in a forested nursery where they are cared for 24/7 by their babysitters. Their health is carefully monitored as many of them have come to the center severely malnourished and they are extremely susceptible to illness due to having compromised immune systems. Many of them had been raised as pets after their mothers were slaughtered and precious few have been lucky enough to survive the ordeal of life without the one person they depend on most: their mothers.
Continue reading and find out about Forest School followed by University.
==============================================
Base Station: 1906
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
New Hampshire circa 1906
“Base station, Mount Washington Railway, White Mountains”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative
View original post
==============================================
‘Why Grow Up?’ by Susan Neiman
via Arts and Letters Daily: a review by A. O. Scott in The New York Times
A great deal of modern popular culture – including just about everything pertaining to what French savants like to call le nouvel âge d’or de la comédie américaine – runs on the disavowal of maturity. The ideal consumer is a mirror image of a familiar comic archetype: a man-child sitting in his parents’ basement with his video games and his “Star Wars” figurines; a postgraduate girl and her pals treating the world as their playground. Baby boomers pursue perpetual youth into retirement. Gen-Xers hold fast to their skateboards, their Pixies T-shirts and their Beastie Boys CDs. Nobody wants to be an adult anymore, and every so often someone writes an article blaming Hollywood, attachment parenting, global capitalism or the welfare state for this catastrophe.
Continue reading
==============================================
Fountain Pen Factory: 1935
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1935
“Sheaffer fountain pen factory, Fort Madison, Iowa. Final act of the pen manufacture.”
8x10 acetate negative by Theodor Horydczak
View original post
==============================================
Dreams and Anna Karenina
via Arts & Letter Daily: Janet Malcolm in The New York Review of Books
Tatyana Drubich in Sergei Solovyov’s adaptation of Anna Karenina, 2009
We do not think of Tolstoy as a comic writer, but his genius permits him to write farce when it suits him. There is a wickedly funny scene in Anna Karenina that directly precedes the painful scenes leading to Anna’s suicide. It takes place in the drawing room of the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who, almost alone among the novel’s characters, has no good, or even pretty good, qualities. She embodies the kind of hysterical and coldhearted religious piety that Tolstoy was especially allergic to.
Continue reading
==============================================
How Pyrex Transformed Every Kitchen Into a Home-Ec Lab
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Ben Marks of Collectors Weekly says, “Pyrex turns 100 this year, so Hunter Oatman-Stanford reached out to Glen Cook, chief scientist at the Corning Museum of Glass, and Regan Brumagen, one of the curators of a Pyrex exhibition at the museum that continues through March of 2016. Hunter learned that Pyrex actually began as an industrial product used in everything from telescope lenses to railroad-signal lanterns, and that it was the wife of a Corning physicist who championed its application in the kitchen.”
Continue reading
OK, so we may not be able to get to see the exhibition but we can read about it.
Tuesday, 24 May 2016
Trivial? Definitely not but these items aren't work either. Enjoy
The Battle of Marston Moor and the English Revolution
via OUP Blog by Michael J. Braddick
As a schoolboy I was told that on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, as the rival armies drew up, a sturdy yokel was found ploughing his fields. When brought up to speed about the war between King and parliament he asked, “What has they two fallen out again?”.
Continue reading
==============================================
The voice of Siri explains the art of the voiceover
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Voice actor Susan Bennett was the original voice of the iPhone assistant Siri. It's fun to hear her use different voices in this video, made by Vox.
Continue reading and watch the video
My son-in-law does voiceovers. I had not realised just how much hard work was involved.
==============================================
What Happens to Your Brain After 36 Hours Without Sleep?
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
Your brain does weird things when it goes too long without sleep. I remember friends regaling me with military tales of hallucinations from sleep deprivation training. Stories of talking to people who aren’t there, dreams merging into reality, and pink elephants.
Continue reading
==============================================
Eastbound Freight: 1943
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
March 1943
“Parmerton, Texas. Passing an eastbound freight on the Santa Fe Railroad between Amarillo and Clovis, New Mexico.”
Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information
View original post
==============================================
The Empty Bath
via Arts & Letters Daily: Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books
At sandy Pylos (as Homer calls it) on the western coast of Greece it’s still possible to see the bathtub of Nestor, who figures in the Iliad as an ancient, well-meaning but rather long-winded hero. Nestor’s bath is a substantial piece of decorated terracotta fixed into a weighty base. It has sat in its present position since the late Mycenaean period (1300-1200 BC), which is roughly when the historical figures behind Homer’s epics are thought to have strode the earth.
Continue reading
==============================================
Why do we get bored, and what is the point of boredom? The science of being sick and tired
via 3 Quarks Daily: Tosin Thompson in New Statesman
So, what is exactly is boredom?
The Oxford dictionary describes it as: “Feeling weary and impatient because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity”. For a feeling so common, it’s surprising that the word first appeared written down in 1852, in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. In it, Lady Dedlock says she is “bored to death” with her marriage. The late Robert Plutchik, a Professor Emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, created a “Wheel of Emotions” (extended in order of intensity) in 1980, and placed boredom after disgust, as a milder form of disgust.
Continue reading
================================================
Unmasking Origen
via OUP Blog by Mark S. M. Scott
” To be great is to be misunderstood”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
If the degree of misunderstanding determines the greatness of a theologian, then Origen (c. 185-254 C.E.) ranks among the greatest. He was misunderstood in his own time and he continued to be misunderstood in subsequent centuries, resulting in his condemnation—or the condemnation of distortions of his ideas—at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 C.E. Why has Origen been misunderstood? How do we understand him better? We need not agree with his theology, but we should at least do him the courtesy of trying to understand him before joining the chorus of his detractors or defenders.
Continue reading
================================================
A comprehensive collection of John Lennon’s visual art
via Boing Boing by Wink
In the years since his death, John Lennon’s whimsical artwork has appeared on baby bedding, greeting cards, T-shirts, prints, posters and even in a few slim books. But this volume is the most comprehensive collection of his visual works to date. The book includes early drawings inspired by Ivanhoe and other childhood reading, as well as Lennon's darkly funny, Thurber-esque cartoons of the mid-1960s. And it concludes with his gentle, almost Matisse-like sketches of family life with Yoko Ono and son Sean in the late 1970s. Together, you get a full sense of how Lennon used simple artworks to express himself throughout his life.
Continue reading
================================================
Model Tea: 1918
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
San Francisco, 1918
“Buick at Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park”
The styling: Early Perpendicular
Glass negative by Christopher Helin
View original post
via OUP Blog by Michael J. Braddick
As a schoolboy I was told that on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, as the rival armies drew up, a sturdy yokel was found ploughing his fields. When brought up to speed about the war between King and parliament he asked, “What has they two fallen out again?”.
Continue reading
==============================================
The voice of Siri explains the art of the voiceover
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Voice actor Susan Bennett was the original voice of the iPhone assistant Siri. It's fun to hear her use different voices in this video, made by Vox.
Continue reading and watch the video
My son-in-law does voiceovers. I had not realised just how much hard work was involved.
==============================================
What Happens to Your Brain After 36 Hours Without Sleep?
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
Your brain does weird things when it goes too long without sleep. I remember friends regaling me with military tales of hallucinations from sleep deprivation training. Stories of talking to people who aren’t there, dreams merging into reality, and pink elephants.
Continue reading
==============================================
Eastbound Freight: 1943
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
March 1943
“Parmerton, Texas. Passing an eastbound freight on the Santa Fe Railroad between Amarillo and Clovis, New Mexico.”
Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information
View original post
==============================================
The Empty Bath
via Arts & Letters Daily: Colin Burrow in the London Review of Books
At sandy Pylos (as Homer calls it) on the western coast of Greece it’s still possible to see the bathtub of Nestor, who figures in the Iliad as an ancient, well-meaning but rather long-winded hero. Nestor’s bath is a substantial piece of decorated terracotta fixed into a weighty base. It has sat in its present position since the late Mycenaean period (1300-1200 BC), which is roughly when the historical figures behind Homer’s epics are thought to have strode the earth.
Continue reading
==============================================
Why do we get bored, and what is the point of boredom? The science of being sick and tired
via 3 Quarks Daily: Tosin Thompson in New Statesman
So, what is exactly is boredom?
The Oxford dictionary describes it as: “Feeling weary and impatient because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity”. For a feeling so common, it’s surprising that the word first appeared written down in 1852, in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. In it, Lady Dedlock says she is “bored to death” with her marriage. The late Robert Plutchik, a Professor Emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, created a “Wheel of Emotions” (extended in order of intensity) in 1980, and placed boredom after disgust, as a milder form of disgust.
Continue reading
================================================
Unmasking Origen
via OUP Blog by Mark S. M. Scott
” To be great is to be misunderstood”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
If the degree of misunderstanding determines the greatness of a theologian, then Origen (c. 185-254 C.E.) ranks among the greatest. He was misunderstood in his own time and he continued to be misunderstood in subsequent centuries, resulting in his condemnation—or the condemnation of distortions of his ideas—at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 C.E. Why has Origen been misunderstood? How do we understand him better? We need not agree with his theology, but we should at least do him the courtesy of trying to understand him before joining the chorus of his detractors or defenders.
Continue reading
================================================
A comprehensive collection of John Lennon’s visual art
via Boing Boing by Wink
In the years since his death, John Lennon’s whimsical artwork has appeared on baby bedding, greeting cards, T-shirts, prints, posters and even in a few slim books. But this volume is the most comprehensive collection of his visual works to date. The book includes early drawings inspired by Ivanhoe and other childhood reading, as well as Lennon's darkly funny, Thurber-esque cartoons of the mid-1960s. And it concludes with his gentle, almost Matisse-like sketches of family life with Yoko Ono and son Sean in the late 1970s. Together, you get a full sense of how Lennon used simple artworks to express himself throughout his life.
Continue reading
================================================
Model Tea: 1918
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
San Francisco, 1918
“Buick at Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park”
The styling: Early Perpendicular
Glass negative by Christopher Helin
View original post
Monday, 16 May 2016
Dreams meeting reality? A gendered perspective on the relationship between occupational preferences in early adolescence and actual occupation in adulthood
an article by Susanne Alm (Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Sweden) published in Journal of Youth Studies Volume 18 Issue 8 (2015)
Abstract
On the basis of longitudinal data from Sweden (n = 15,211), the article offers a gendered perspective on the relationship between occupational preferences during early adolescence and actual occupations in adulthood. Theoretically the study is based on socialisation theory and devaluation theory.
The analyses show that preferences for one’s future occupation were stronger among those who came to make gender-typical choices, than among those who chose a gender-atypical occupation. However, a gender difference was also found in that girls who came to choose a male dominated occupation showed a stronger preference for their future occupation in adolescence, than boys who came to choose a female dominated occupation.
Results also showed that at a general level, the occupations in adulthood were even more gender segregated than the preferences in adolescence. This was particularly true for girls, who in adolescence expressed a stronger preference to work in a male dominated occupations, than they would later actually do.
Abstract
On the basis of longitudinal data from Sweden (n = 15,211), the article offers a gendered perspective on the relationship between occupational preferences during early adolescence and actual occupations in adulthood. Theoretically the study is based on socialisation theory and devaluation theory.
The analyses show that preferences for one’s future occupation were stronger among those who came to make gender-typical choices, than among those who chose a gender-atypical occupation. However, a gender difference was also found in that girls who came to choose a male dominated occupation showed a stronger preference for their future occupation in adolescence, than boys who came to choose a female dominated occupation.
Results also showed that at a general level, the occupations in adulthood were even more gender segregated than the preferences in adolescence. This was particularly true for girls, who in adolescence expressed a stronger preference to work in a male dominated occupations, than they would later actually do.
More trivial items for you to enjoy
June, Moon, Tune: What is this thing called love?
via Arts & Letters Daily: Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker
On a freezing noon hour in April, people gather in Central Park, as they do each year, to read and listen to Shakespeare’s sonnets, complete, out loud, and in sequence. Together, the readers narrate, episodically, one of the strangest love stories on record. First, the poet urges a handsome young man to get married and have sex with a woman not from love or even lust, the woman remaining unnamed and unpictured, but, weirdly, from a selfish desire to make more kids as good-looking as he is. Then the poet confesses that he is in love with the young man, while trying to convince himself that good looks have a good moral effect in the world. The next set is all about the poet wanting desperately to have sex with a dark-haired woman—but then, having done it, the poet feels so insanely guilty about it that he doesn’t enjoy it anymore, or enjoys it only as he is actually doing it, while before and after he feels awful.
Continue reading
==============================================
Why Employers Should Choose to Install Nap Rooms Over Coffee Makers
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
The benefits of naps cannot be overstated. Past studies have shown a nap can help us recuperate lost hours of sleep and restore our worn-out synapses. Scientists from the University of Michigan are looking to add to this body of research with their latest study, which argues the benefits of naps during office hours.
Continue reading (some interesting links)
==============================================
Robert Goodwin on 16th-century Spain
via Prospero
Robert Goodwin is research fellow at University College London and author of Crossing the Continent 1527-1540 (2009) and Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519-1682 (2015)
“Centre of the World”? Really?
Yes.
I’m going to quote my book here: “On Halloween, 1519, a lone carrack reached the shores of southern Spain and sailed up the Guadalquivir, the Great River of the Moors, to Seville, capital of Andalusia, a region known to medieval Arab poets as paradise on earth. The first ship to reach Europe from the newly conquered coast of Mexico, the little Santa María had 'so much gold on board that there was no other ballast than gold,' or so it was reported to King Charles. At that moment, the modern Western world was born and globalization began.”
Continue reading
==============================================
The Campus Crusaders
via Arts & Letters Daily: David Brooks in The New York Times
Every generation has an opportunity to change the world. Right now, college campuses around the country are home to a moral movement that seeks to reverse centuries of historic wrongs.
This movement is led by students forced to live with the legacy of sexism, with the threat, and sometimes the experience, of sexual assault. It is led by students whose lives have been marred by racism and bigotry. It is led by people who want to secure equal rights for gays, lesbians and other historically marginalized groups.
I could almost hear the “but” in those two paragraphs. It’s not long coming!
Continue reading
==============================================
How do we remember the Battle of Waterloo?
via OUP Blog by Alan Forrest
From the moment the news of the victory was announced in London, Waterloo was hailed as a victory of special significance, all the more precious for being won on land against England’s oldest rival, France. Press and politicians alike built Waterloo into something exceptional. Castlereagh in Parliament would claim, for instance, that Waterloo was Wellington’s victory over Napoleon and that ‘it was an achievement of such high merit, of such pre-eminent importance, as had never perhaps graced the annals of this or any other country till now’. It had been a decisive victory, perhaps even an iconic victory, and certainly, in the British public’s eyes, a British one. In the moment of victory Waterloo was hailed as a national triumph and a testimony to British martial qualities of grit and stoicism in the face of the enemy. The contribution of the other nations that contributed to the Allied army (Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, Nassauers, even the Prussians) was singularly overlooked.
Continue reading
==============================================
Mind Your Own Business
via 3 Quarks Daily: Barbara Ehrenreich in The Baffler (image by Lisa Haney)
At about the beginning of this decade, mass-market mindfulness rolled out of the Bay Area like a brand new app. Very much like an app, in fact, or a whole swarm of apps. Previous self-improvement trends had been transmitted via books, inspirational speakers, and CDs; now, mindfulness could be carried around on a smartphone. There are hundreds of them, these mindfulness apps, bearing names like Smiling Mind and Buddhify. A typical example features timed stretches of meditation, as brief as one minute, accompanied by soothing voices, soporific music, and images of forests and waterfalls.
Continue reading
==============================================
Before Wolf Hall: How Sir Walter Scott invented historical fiction
via OUP Blog by Kathryn Sutherland
Historical fiction, the form Walter Scott is credited with inventing, is currently experiencing something of a renaissance. It has always been popular, of course, but it rarely enjoys high critical esteem. Now, however, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s controversial portraits of Thomas Cromwell (in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), James Robertson’s multi-faceted studies of Scotland’s past (in The Fanatic and And the Land Lay Still), and Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the genre has recovered serious ground, shrugging off the dubious associations of bag-wig, bodice, and the dressing-up box.
Continue reading
==============================================
The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne
via 3 Quarks Daily: Claire Preston at Literary Review
When Thomas Browne, physician and natural philosopher, went hunting in the 1650s in books, on beaches, and in hedgerows for quincunxes in nature and culture, he discovered them in the structure of pine cones, the battle formations of the Greeks, the angles of incidence of light upon the retina, and the planting patterns of orchards. It turns out the quincunx (imagine the corners of a diamond with a dot in the middle) is everywhere.
Three and a half centuries later, on a psychogeographic Brownean pilgrimage between Bury and Norwich, Hugh Aldersey-Williams found in those same hedgerows quincuncial hubcaps, which in turn prompted a meditation on that most modern of molecules, the pentagonal buckminsterfullerene. Browne’s apparently eccentric observational exercise amounts to a rule in nature, one he was able to identify with an indifferent set of magnifying lenses, the naked eye, and shanks’s pony. The instruments were primitive, but his slender quincuncial essay The Garden of Cyrus (1658) (its first known reader called it “no ordinary book”) epitomises the imagination of this most intellectually open and adventurous of Renaissance polymaths.
Continue reading
I had to hunt through the archives for the article but I thought it was worth it.
==============================================
Hard not to see
via Arts & Letters Daily: James Panero in The New Criterion
On the new Whitney Museum, designed by Renzo Piano
View from the Hudson River. Photographed by Karin Jobst, 2014.
For many years, the French writer Guy de Maupassant insisted on eating lunch every day at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. The reason, he explained, was simple: the restaurant offered the only spot in Paris where he could look out and not have to see the Eiffel Tower.
Such a thought may come to mind when sitting on the bank of couches overlooking the Hudson River from the fifth floor of the new downtown home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. With uninterrupted panoramic views through eighteen-foot-high floor-to-ceiling windows, sixty feet above the West Side Highway, one cannot help but feel a sense of awe at watching the sun arch over the passing ships, illuminating the buildings on the opposite shore and sweeping across America unfurling to the west. But the greatest satisfaction of these front-row seats may come from the knowledge that, unlike those people on the streets and sidewalks and ships below, or the museum-goers behind us, from here we may look out and never see the new Whitney Museum of American Art.
Continue reading
==============================================
10 Books About Love Everyone Should Read At Least Once In Their Life
via Lifehack by Casey Imafidon
What books trigger the lover in you? The best love stories are the classics. They offer a logical and lucid angle on the topic, offering you not just the thrill, but also a better understanding of love.
Continue reading and find out what Casey has included as the other nine books to read.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker
On a freezing noon hour in April, people gather in Central Park, as they do each year, to read and listen to Shakespeare’s sonnets, complete, out loud, and in sequence. Together, the readers narrate, episodically, one of the strangest love stories on record. First, the poet urges a handsome young man to get married and have sex with a woman not from love or even lust, the woman remaining unnamed and unpictured, but, weirdly, from a selfish desire to make more kids as good-looking as he is. Then the poet confesses that he is in love with the young man, while trying to convince himself that good looks have a good moral effect in the world. The next set is all about the poet wanting desperately to have sex with a dark-haired woman—but then, having done it, the poet feels so insanely guilty about it that he doesn’t enjoy it anymore, or enjoys it only as he is actually doing it, while before and after he feels awful.
Continue reading
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Why Employers Should Choose to Install Nap Rooms Over Coffee Makers
via Big Think by Natalie Shoemaker
The benefits of naps cannot be overstated. Past studies have shown a nap can help us recuperate lost hours of sleep and restore our worn-out synapses. Scientists from the University of Michigan are looking to add to this body of research with their latest study, which argues the benefits of naps during office hours.
Continue reading (some interesting links)
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Robert Goodwin on 16th-century Spain
via Prospero
Robert Goodwin is research fellow at University College London and author of Crossing the Continent 1527-1540 (2009) and Spain: The Centre of the World, 1519-1682 (2015)
“Centre of the World”? Really?
Yes.
I’m going to quote my book here: “On Halloween, 1519, a lone carrack reached the shores of southern Spain and sailed up the Guadalquivir, the Great River of the Moors, to Seville, capital of Andalusia, a region known to medieval Arab poets as paradise on earth. The first ship to reach Europe from the newly conquered coast of Mexico, the little Santa María had 'so much gold on board that there was no other ballast than gold,' or so it was reported to King Charles. At that moment, the modern Western world was born and globalization began.”
Continue reading
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The Campus Crusaders
via Arts & Letters Daily: David Brooks in The New York Times
Every generation has an opportunity to change the world. Right now, college campuses around the country are home to a moral movement that seeks to reverse centuries of historic wrongs.
This movement is led by students forced to live with the legacy of sexism, with the threat, and sometimes the experience, of sexual assault. It is led by students whose lives have been marred by racism and bigotry. It is led by people who want to secure equal rights for gays, lesbians and other historically marginalized groups.
I could almost hear the “but” in those two paragraphs. It’s not long coming!
Continue reading
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How do we remember the Battle of Waterloo?
via OUP Blog by Alan Forrest
From the moment the news of the victory was announced in London, Waterloo was hailed as a victory of special significance, all the more precious for being won on land against England’s oldest rival, France. Press and politicians alike built Waterloo into something exceptional. Castlereagh in Parliament would claim, for instance, that Waterloo was Wellington’s victory over Napoleon and that ‘it was an achievement of such high merit, of such pre-eminent importance, as had never perhaps graced the annals of this or any other country till now’. It had been a decisive victory, perhaps even an iconic victory, and certainly, in the British public’s eyes, a British one. In the moment of victory Waterloo was hailed as a national triumph and a testimony to British martial qualities of grit and stoicism in the face of the enemy. The contribution of the other nations that contributed to the Allied army (Dutch, Belgians, Hanoverians, Nassauers, even the Prussians) was singularly overlooked.
Continue reading
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Mind Your Own Business
via 3 Quarks Daily: Barbara Ehrenreich in The Baffler (image by Lisa Haney)
At about the beginning of this decade, mass-market mindfulness rolled out of the Bay Area like a brand new app. Very much like an app, in fact, or a whole swarm of apps. Previous self-improvement trends had been transmitted via books, inspirational speakers, and CDs; now, mindfulness could be carried around on a smartphone. There are hundreds of them, these mindfulness apps, bearing names like Smiling Mind and Buddhify. A typical example features timed stretches of meditation, as brief as one minute, accompanied by soothing voices, soporific music, and images of forests and waterfalls.
Continue reading
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Before Wolf Hall: How Sir Walter Scott invented historical fiction
via OUP Blog by Kathryn Sutherland
Historical fiction, the form Walter Scott is credited with inventing, is currently experiencing something of a renaissance. It has always been popular, of course, but it rarely enjoys high critical esteem. Now, however, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s controversial portraits of Thomas Cromwell (in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), James Robertson’s multi-faceted studies of Scotland’s past (in The Fanatic and And the Land Lay Still), and Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the genre has recovered serious ground, shrugging off the dubious associations of bag-wig, bodice, and the dressing-up box.
Continue reading
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The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne
via 3 Quarks Daily: Claire Preston at Literary Review
When Thomas Browne, physician and natural philosopher, went hunting in the 1650s in books, on beaches, and in hedgerows for quincunxes in nature and culture, he discovered them in the structure of pine cones, the battle formations of the Greeks, the angles of incidence of light upon the retina, and the planting patterns of orchards. It turns out the quincunx (imagine the corners of a diamond with a dot in the middle) is everywhere.
Three and a half centuries later, on a psychogeographic Brownean pilgrimage between Bury and Norwich, Hugh Aldersey-Williams found in those same hedgerows quincuncial hubcaps, which in turn prompted a meditation on that most modern of molecules, the pentagonal buckminsterfullerene. Browne’s apparently eccentric observational exercise amounts to a rule in nature, one he was able to identify with an indifferent set of magnifying lenses, the naked eye, and shanks’s pony. The instruments were primitive, but his slender quincuncial essay The Garden of Cyrus (1658) (its first known reader called it “no ordinary book”) epitomises the imagination of this most intellectually open and adventurous of Renaissance polymaths.
Continue reading
I had to hunt through the archives for the article but I thought it was worth it.
==============================================
Hard not to see
via Arts & Letters Daily: James Panero in The New Criterion
On the new Whitney Museum, designed by Renzo Piano
View from the Hudson River. Photographed by Karin Jobst, 2014.
For many years, the French writer Guy de Maupassant insisted on eating lunch every day at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. The reason, he explained, was simple: the restaurant offered the only spot in Paris where he could look out and not have to see the Eiffel Tower.
Such a thought may come to mind when sitting on the bank of couches overlooking the Hudson River from the fifth floor of the new downtown home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. With uninterrupted panoramic views through eighteen-foot-high floor-to-ceiling windows, sixty feet above the West Side Highway, one cannot help but feel a sense of awe at watching the sun arch over the passing ships, illuminating the buildings on the opposite shore and sweeping across America unfurling to the west. But the greatest satisfaction of these front-row seats may come from the knowledge that, unlike those people on the streets and sidewalks and ships below, or the museum-goers behind us, from here we may look out and never see the new Whitney Museum of American Art.
Continue reading
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10 Books About Love Everyone Should Read At Least Once In Their Life
via Lifehack by Casey Imafidon
What books trigger the lover in you? The best love stories are the classics. They offer a logical and lucid angle on the topic, offering you not just the thrill, but also a better understanding of love.
Continue reading and find out what Casey has included as the other nine books to read.
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Let's have another ten "trivial" stories
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10 Mind-Blowing Illusion Paintings That Make You Look Twice
via Lifehack by Deji Akingade
In life and in art, perception is reality. Things aren’t always what they seem to be… or are they? Over the years, artists have tried to used the power of illusions with mind-blowing paintings to challenge the human mind. Their works often leave us in awe, as we are left to ponder on the details of creating such strong and enlightening images.
Continue reading
================================================
The 50 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time
via Flavorwire by Jason Bailey et al
Last month, Empire magazine released the results of their online poll of the greatest movie characters of all time, and it was, well, depressingly predictable — pretty much the same crop of characters you see every time one of these lists is made or polls are taken, a slight reordering of the same homogenous assortment of blockbuster protagonists. And to be sure, some of them have earned their iconic status, but there are also plenty of remarkable cinematic creations who don’t get their due. So in an attempt to compile a more up-to-the-moment ranking, Flavorwire’s movie buffs – Jason Bailey, Alison Nastasi, and Judy Berman – put our heads together, and reached out to a couple of our favorite film scribes – Nathan Rabin and Sheila O’Malley – to come up with this definitive (read: totally subjective) ranking of cinema’s most memorable characters.
Have a look and see whether you agree
================================================
What 4,000 years of hallucinations have taught us about our brain
via OUP Blog by Gary L. Wenk
Over the past 40 years, many of my students have shared their personal experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. They are typically more fascinated, than frightened, by the experience. About 60 years ago the scientist C.H.W. Horne commented that “It is remarkable that one characteristic which seems to separate man from the allegedly lower animals is a recurring desire to escape from reality.” He was referring to the widespread use of hallucinogens by young people during the middle of the last century. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is how long humans have been documenting their use of hallucinogens. Cultures and religious rituals have been developing around the use of hallucinogens probably for as long as humans have been consuming the plants, fungi, and animals that evolved around them.
Continue reading
================================================
Crate & Barrel: 1864
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“City Point, Virginia. Federal headquarters during the Siege of Petersburg, 1864-65. Unloading vessels at landing.’
Wet plate glass negative
View original post
================================================
Changing languages
via OUP Blog by Aidan Doyle
In the literature on language death and language renewal, two cases come up again and again: Irish and Hebrew. Mention of the former language is usually attended by a whiff of disapproval. It was abandoned relatively recently by a majority of the Irish people in favour of English, and hence is quoted as an example of a people rejecting their heritage. Hebrew, on the other hand, is presented as a model of linguistic good behaviour: not only was it not rejected by its own people, it was even revived after being dead for more than two thousand years, and is now thriving.
Continue reading
================================================
The Sisyphus Machine creates beautiful patterns in sand
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Bruce Shapiro makes mesmerizing and impermanent sculptures with commercial motion-control gear, as used in robotics to less artistic ends. He's been doing it for 25 years, he writes, creating kinetic sculptures that embody his love of technology.
Continue reading
================================================
When You Put Shelter Animals in Pet Stores, Something Amazing Happens
via Big Think by Teodora Zareva
Pets are adorable. But our love for pets produces some very unadorable facts. For example, in the U.S. alone there are 70 million stray dogs and cats, and of them only 6 to 8 million enter shelters. Of those that are in shelters, around 30 percent are purebred, and 90 percent are healthy and adoptable. Yet, only 18 percent of owned dogs and 16 percent of owned cats have been adopted from shelters. For most people, the go-to place for getting a pet remains the pet store. This encourages two types of cruelty – one that occurs in puppy mills that breed purebred dogs, and another that occurs in the overcrowded shelters where some of these same dogs go, after being abandoned by their owners.
Continue reading
================================================
The Evolutionary Roots of Altruism
Do altruistic groups always beat selfish groups? A new book claims they do.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Melvin Konner in The American Prospect
With a little teamwork, these ants turn themselves into a bridge for their friends to walk over in Kerala, India
David Sloan Wilson opens his new book, Does Altruism Exist?, with an old conundrum that has animated many late-night dormitory debates: If helping someone gives you pleasure, gains you points for an afterlife, and enhances your reputation, is it really altruism? Wilson wisely decides to put acts before motives: “When Ted benefits Martha at a cost to himself, that’s altruistic, regardless of how he thinks or feels about it.” Great. But what does “cost” mean in that sentence? Does it mean “cost” after considering all those benefits, or not?
Continue reading
================================================
The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield
via 3 Quarks Daily: Pierce Butler at Commonweal
Katherine Mansfield – writer of short stories, friend and literary compatriot of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence – had a gift for arousing strong opinions. The reckless abandon with which Mansfield threw herself into sexual relationships with both men and women, and the acerbity of her tongue and pen, could provoke critics, family, and friends, not to mention her enemies. Critical estimates of Mansfield’s work—fewer than one hundred stories, an oeuvre curtailed by her premature death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four—have risen and fallen over the decades. Her stories fall into two categories: those set in the New Zealand of her childhood that contrast a corrupt adult world with the purity of the child’s experience; and those set elsewhere, frequently peopled by lonely and fearful young women whose attempts to confront their demons seem doomed to failure. Taken as a whole, the stories present a restless sensibility longing for the idyll of childhood and vainly seeking solace and security in adult love relationships.
Continue reading
================================================
TED Talks and DNA
via OUP Blog by Dawn Field
One of the most fun and exciting sources of information available for free on the internet are the videos found on the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) website. TED is a hub of stories about innovation, achievement and change, each artfully packaged into a short, highly accessible talk by an outstanding speaker.
Continue reading
10 Mind-Blowing Illusion Paintings That Make You Look Twice
via Lifehack by Deji Akingade
In life and in art, perception is reality. Things aren’t always what they seem to be… or are they? Over the years, artists have tried to used the power of illusions with mind-blowing paintings to challenge the human mind. Their works often leave us in awe, as we are left to ponder on the details of creating such strong and enlightening images.
Continue reading
================================================
The 50 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time
via Flavorwire by Jason Bailey et al
Last month, Empire magazine released the results of their online poll of the greatest movie characters of all time, and it was, well, depressingly predictable — pretty much the same crop of characters you see every time one of these lists is made or polls are taken, a slight reordering of the same homogenous assortment of blockbuster protagonists. And to be sure, some of them have earned their iconic status, but there are also plenty of remarkable cinematic creations who don’t get their due. So in an attempt to compile a more up-to-the-moment ranking, Flavorwire’s movie buffs – Jason Bailey, Alison Nastasi, and Judy Berman – put our heads together, and reached out to a couple of our favorite film scribes – Nathan Rabin and Sheila O’Malley – to come up with this definitive (read: totally subjective) ranking of cinema’s most memorable characters.
Have a look and see whether you agree
================================================
What 4,000 years of hallucinations have taught us about our brain
via OUP Blog by Gary L. Wenk
Over the past 40 years, many of my students have shared their personal experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. They are typically more fascinated, than frightened, by the experience. About 60 years ago the scientist C.H.W. Horne commented that “It is remarkable that one characteristic which seems to separate man from the allegedly lower animals is a recurring desire to escape from reality.” He was referring to the widespread use of hallucinogens by young people during the middle of the last century. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is how long humans have been documenting their use of hallucinogens. Cultures and religious rituals have been developing around the use of hallucinogens probably for as long as humans have been consuming the plants, fungi, and animals that evolved around them.
Continue reading
================================================
Crate & Barrel: 1864
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
“City Point, Virginia. Federal headquarters during the Siege of Petersburg, 1864-65. Unloading vessels at landing.’
Wet plate glass negative
View original post
================================================
Changing languages
via OUP Blog by Aidan Doyle
In the literature on language death and language renewal, two cases come up again and again: Irish and Hebrew. Mention of the former language is usually attended by a whiff of disapproval. It was abandoned relatively recently by a majority of the Irish people in favour of English, and hence is quoted as an example of a people rejecting their heritage. Hebrew, on the other hand, is presented as a model of linguistic good behaviour: not only was it not rejected by its own people, it was even revived after being dead for more than two thousand years, and is now thriving.
Continue reading
================================================
The Sisyphus Machine creates beautiful patterns in sand
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
Bruce Shapiro makes mesmerizing and impermanent sculptures with commercial motion-control gear, as used in robotics to less artistic ends. He's been doing it for 25 years, he writes, creating kinetic sculptures that embody his love of technology.
Continue reading
================================================
When You Put Shelter Animals in Pet Stores, Something Amazing Happens
via Big Think by Teodora Zareva
Pets are adorable. But our love for pets produces some very unadorable facts. For example, in the U.S. alone there are 70 million stray dogs and cats, and of them only 6 to 8 million enter shelters. Of those that are in shelters, around 30 percent are purebred, and 90 percent are healthy and adoptable. Yet, only 18 percent of owned dogs and 16 percent of owned cats have been adopted from shelters. For most people, the go-to place for getting a pet remains the pet store. This encourages two types of cruelty – one that occurs in puppy mills that breed purebred dogs, and another that occurs in the overcrowded shelters where some of these same dogs go, after being abandoned by their owners.
Continue reading
================================================
The Evolutionary Roots of Altruism
Do altruistic groups always beat selfish groups? A new book claims they do.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Melvin Konner in The American Prospect
With a little teamwork, these ants turn themselves into a bridge for their friends to walk over in Kerala, India
David Sloan Wilson opens his new book, Does Altruism Exist?, with an old conundrum that has animated many late-night dormitory debates: If helping someone gives you pleasure, gains you points for an afterlife, and enhances your reputation, is it really altruism? Wilson wisely decides to put acts before motives: “When Ted benefits Martha at a cost to himself, that’s altruistic, regardless of how he thinks or feels about it.” Great. But what does “cost” mean in that sentence? Does it mean “cost” after considering all those benefits, or not?
Continue reading
================================================
The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield
via 3 Quarks Daily: Pierce Butler at Commonweal
Katherine Mansfield – writer of short stories, friend and literary compatriot of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence – had a gift for arousing strong opinions. The reckless abandon with which Mansfield threw herself into sexual relationships with both men and women, and the acerbity of her tongue and pen, could provoke critics, family, and friends, not to mention her enemies. Critical estimates of Mansfield’s work—fewer than one hundred stories, an oeuvre curtailed by her premature death from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four—have risen and fallen over the decades. Her stories fall into two categories: those set in the New Zealand of her childhood that contrast a corrupt adult world with the purity of the child’s experience; and those set elsewhere, frequently peopled by lonely and fearful young women whose attempts to confront their demons seem doomed to failure. Taken as a whole, the stories present a restless sensibility longing for the idyll of childhood and vainly seeking solace and security in adult love relationships.
Continue reading
================================================
TED Talks and DNA
via OUP Blog by Dawn Field
One of the most fun and exciting sources of information available for free on the internet are the videos found on the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) website. TED is a hub of stories about innovation, achievement and change, each artfully packaged into a short, highly accessible talk by an outstanding speaker.
Continue reading
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