via 3 Quarks Daily
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via Interesting Literature
The origins of a classic nursery rhyme
‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’ is a well-known nursery rhyme. But this intriguing little quatrain has attracted some surprising speculation and its origins are often erroneously attributed. What does this short rhyme mean? And where did it come from? What is this ring o’ roses and what is it being used for? And why does everyone fall down? The questions multiply.
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A literary cult figure who died decades ago is more relevant than ever.
via Arts & Letters Daily: Adrienne Raphel in Poetry Foundation
“My name is Veronica Forrest-Thomson,” writes Veronica Forrest-Thomson in one of her final poems, “Cordelia: or ‘A Poem Should not Mean but Be.’” But who is Veronica Forrest-Thomson?
For the uninitiated: she’s a literary cult figure, a rising star of British post-World War II poetry and criticism whose career came to an abrupt halt when she died suddenly in 1975, at age 27. Though she wrote only one volume of criticism, she established a legacy essential to post-modern poetry. For decades, Forrest-Thomson was almost entirely unread, except among small cadres of avant-garde writers. But over the past few years, with university symposia dedicated to her work, special journal issues featuring Forrest-Thomson, and the republication of her heretofore nearly impossible to find books, this has changed. Finally, Forrest-Thomson is having her moment.
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via Big Think by Robby Berman
As we perhaps draw thrillingly/terrifyingly closer to discovering life elsewhere in the universe, the chorus of people warning us to be careful what we wish for is growing louder. Most famously, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has argued for hitting the brakes, reiterating as recently as 2016 his concern about seeking alien contact in his comments about possibly life on Gliese 832c: “One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this. But we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well.” For example, European germs were deadly for the natives and some fear that could happen to us.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Alex Tizon in The Atlantic
Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine – my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived. Her days began before everyone else woke and ended after we went to bed. She prepared three meals a day, cleaned the house, waited on my parents, and took care of my four siblings and me. My parents never paid her, and they scolded her constantly. She wasn’t kept in leg irons, but she might as well have been. So many nights, on my way to the bathroom, I’d spot her sleeping in a corner, slumped against a mound of laundry, her fingers clutching a garment she was in the middle of folding.
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via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza
In movies and television, Hitler's speaking voice is usually depicted as a dialed-back version of his public speaking performances: even in private he's either shrieking or muttering. The reality, captured only once in a secret recording made in Finland, is unnerving. It's deep and commanding, yet with the same maniacal rhythms. You almost forget that he's admitting, in 1942, that he underestimated Soviet productive capability and would have ignored anyone who told him.
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via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Delaware Art Museum
The Delaware Art Museum recently launched its new web-based platform with the Delaware Heritage Collection, allowing selections from the Museum’s 2,000 linear feet of archival material to be seen from anywhere in the world. Original letters from Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti to his mistress, photographs of artist and illustrator John Sloan in his studio, and scrapbooks chronicling the Museum’s history are some of the materials now available online through the new Digital Collections portal.
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via Big Think by Stephen Johnson
Chicken is one of the most consumed meats in the world. The U.S. alone consumes 8 billion chickens per year – about 25 birds per every meat-eater in the country. But just 1,000 years ago, chicken was a relatively rare dish.
New research suggests that a religious edict might have changed that, putting chicken on the menu for millions of people and shaping its evolutionary fate forever.
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via Interesting Literature
The poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) is that rare thing: both of interest from a historical perspective (he lived through one of the most interesting periods of English history) and genuinely innovative and stylistically accomplished. Here are ten of Thomas Wyatt’s best poems, with some information about each of them.
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via 3 Quarks Daily: Ethan Siegel in Forbes
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite senses temperature using infrared wavelengths. This image shows temperature of the Earth’s surface or clouds covering it for the month of April 2003. The scale ranges from -81 degrees Celsius (-114° Fahrenheit) in black/blue to 47° C (116° F) in red.
If you didn't know anything about climate science, about the Earth's temperature, about carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases, but you wanted to, how would you go about doing it? You'd begin by constructing a plan for how you'd accurately scientifically investigate the problem. You'd think about the data you'd need to collect and how you'd gather it. You'd think about the measurements you'd want to make and how to make them. You'd think about the sources of error and how to account for them: how to properly calibrate your data from all over the world and from many different time periods. And then you'd bring it together, under one enormous framework, to try and draw a scientifically robust conclusion.
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