via OUP blog by Steven Filippi
Romance of the Three Kingdoms mural at the Long Corridor by Shizhao.
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
China and its long history goes hand in hand with its rich literary tradition. The Zhou dynasty (1030-221 BC) saw some of the earliest forms of literature, and it was during this time that the writings of Confucius and Lao Tzu were penned, from which the philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism arose. Prose poetry flourished under the Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), and the Tang dynasty of the seventh- through tenth-centuries marked the golden age of Chinese literature. The novel arose during the Song dynasty (960-1279), and the following centuries saw the publication of the “four great classical novels.” The twentieth century brought about the rapid modernization of China and its literature, though censorship during the Cultural Revolution and under communist rule has threatened to halt this transformation.Continue reading
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via Big Think by Robby Berman
A nearly complete human skull was found in Dali County of Shaanxi Province, China in 1978. A recent reappraisal of the skull has led some scientists to a hypothesis which, if proven true, turns the accepted history of early Homo sapiens upside-down.
Anthropologists largely agree that Homo sapiens first emerged about 200,000 years ago in Africa. It was originally believed that this occurred near Omo Kibish in East Africa, until remains recently uncovered in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco made the exact location of our exact African birthplace less certain. Nonetheless, there’s been agreement that Homo sapiens came from somewhere in Africa and then moved outward to, among other places, East Asia. A handful of anthropologists, though, believe East Asia played a more important role. A new study says that our attributes emerged over time as the result of intermingling between African and Asian hominins. This would mean that Africa would no longer deserve the right to be thought of as the area from which we emerged, but rather that Africa and East Asia would share that honor.
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via the Guardian by Candace Allen
Monk at Minton’s Playhouse in New York City, c.1947. Photograph: William P. Gottlieb/Alamy Stock Photo
Consider this: both Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk were born in 1917. The creative DNA and brilliance of each musician were integral to the birth of modern jazz. For countless hours, weeks and months during the early 1940s they played, studied, argued and innovated together, along with Charlie Parker, drummer Kenny Clarke, bassist Oscar Pettiford, guitarist Charlie Christian and a steady progression of black men dedicated to exploring the possibilities of the music of their time, and to changing its shape. (And yes, aside from the pianist Mary Lou Williams and a number of female vocalists, this chapter in musical development is about the men.)
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Martin Molin traveled to Speelklok Museum in Utrecht for a demonstration of the Gavioli Dance Organ, part of his wonderful series on old-timey mechanical instruments.
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via the OUP blog by Alyssa Russell
Originally published anonymously, Jonathan Swift sent the manuscript for the satirical masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels to his publisher under a pseudonym and handled any correspondence and corrections through friends. As such, even though close friends such as Alexander Pope knew about the publication, Swift still kept up the ruse of feigning ignorance about the book in his correspondence with them. The first edition of Gulliver’s Travels appeared on 28 October 1726. In the months afterwards, as detailed in excerpts from his letters below, the fun with his friends began.
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via the Big Think blog by Robby Berman
The legend of the yeti, or “abominable snowman”, has been one of our more durable cryptozoological mysteries. The image of an primeval, solitary humanoid glimpsed through the swirling snows of the Himalayas has made its way into many a tale, and even into a Saul Bass movie or two.
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via the New Statesman by Greg Noone
It has been suggested some escaped from Shepperton Studios during the filming of The African Queen in 1951.
There are rumours, says Hazel Jackson, that the ring-necked parakeets near the railway station have been gassed. In any case, she says, we’ll have more luck glimpsing them in the park: the woods here are a perfect habitat for the birds, which nest almost exclusively in tree holes. That doesn’t make them any easier to spot, even at midday. With light-green feathers, red beaks and round eyes, the parrots disappear when they fly into the oaken canopy above.
“That’s them!” whispers Jackson, as we look up in the direction of a squawk. An evolutionary biologist at the University of Kent, Hazel Jackson is a member of ParrotNet, a European forum for researchers investigating the spread and behaviour of ring-necked parakeets. For many years, she has been visiting King George VI Park in Ramsgate to observe the birds in the wild.
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via Boing Boing by Andrea James
Walks in Rome is an interactive map project that updates and modernizes a famous 1870 guidebook of Rome by August Hare.
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via Interesting Literature
What are the sexiest poems in English literature?
‘Love’ and ‘poetry’ go together naturally, but what about sex and poetry? In this post, we’ve tasked ourselves with compiling ten of the most erotic seduction poems in all of English(-language) literature. We hope you enjoy these sexy poems…
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via the Guardian by Nigel Kendall
The cat kept coming back.’ Photograph: Nigel Kendall
It’s three months since the ginger cat first walked into our lives, sauntering down the rural railway line that adjoins the house. We watched as it approached, then disappeared into the bracken. We shrugged and carried on with our lives.
The cat kept coming back. We’d see it squeeze through the gate into the garden as it went on its morning walk. If we attempted to get within 40 metres, it would simply turn on its heels and run away. Still, we got close enough to see that it was on the small side, and a bit skinny. And its behaviour suggested it was wild, or a stray at least. It clearly needed a good meal.
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