10 for today starts with a review of a book I want and didn't know existed until today! Then there are nine other items which I hope will interest you

How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds
via Arts & Letters Daily: Sarah Laskow in Atlas Obscura
A new book collects fantastic literary geographies.

Map by Roland Chambers for The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. ROLAND CHAMBERS
One of life’s great treats, for a lover of books (especially fantasy books), is to open a cover to find a map secreted inside and filled with the details of a land about to be discovered. A writer’s map hints at a fully imagined world, and at the beginning of a book, it’s a promise. In the middle of a book, it’s a touchstone and a guide. And at the end, it’s a reminder of all the places the story has taken you.
A new book, The Writer’s Map, contains dozens of the magical maps writers have drawn or that have been made by others to illustrate the places they’ve created. “All maps are products of human imagination,” writes Huw Lewis-Jones, the book’s editor. “For some writers making a map is absolutely central to the craft of shaping and telling their tale.”
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And now I have a map of Fillory. The problem of reading on an e-book is that the map is stuck at the front and is usually a very poor bitmap which even magnified is unreadable!

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Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912)
via About History

Causes
Italy as a newly-formed power was looking for markets and tried to expand its colonial possessions. The Italians began to conduct diplomatic preparations for the invasion of Libya in the late XIX century, and the military – from the beginning of the XX century. Italian public opinion saw Libya as a country with a large number of minerals and good natural conditions, besides protected by only 4 thousand Turkish soldiers. The Italian press of that time tried to convince the Italians that the population of Libya was hostile towards the Turks and friendly towards the Italians, allegedly seeing them as liberators from the Turkish oppression. They also presented the invasion of Libya as a “military walk”.
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Ants are picky when using tools for foraging
via the OUP blog by GÁBOR LŐRINCZI

An Aphaenogaster subterranea worker near a drop of honey-water covered with soil grains. Photo by Imola Bóni. Used with permission.
Tool use, once considered unique to our species, is now known to be widespread in the animal kingdom. It has been reported in most of the major taxonomic groups, with notable exceptions being myriapods, amphibians and reptiles. In insects, one of the best documented examples of tool use is seen in members of the ant genus Aphaenogaster. When these ants encounter liquid food sources, they drop bits of leaf, soil, etc. into the food, and then carry the food-soaked tools back to the nest. By using tools, individual workers are able to transport much larger volumes of liquid food than they would if they carried it internally in their relatively small and non-distensible crop.
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An astronomer's beautiful pastel drawings of the cosmos from the 19th century
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

In the late 19th century, artist/astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895) painted thousands of stunning works illustrating the beauty and science of the known planets, comets, and celestial phenomena. The Huntington Library near Los Angeles holds 15 of Trouvelot's chromolithographs that were published in 1882 in two portfolios, the Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings:
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A Short Analysis of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Geist’s Grave’
via Interesting Literature
And as well as penning ‘Thyrsis’, his celebrated elegy for the death of his old friend Arthur Hugh Clough, and ‘Dover Beach’, his lament for Victorian faith, the poet and educator Matthew Arnold (1822-88) also wrote elegies for his pet dog Geist and his canary Matthias. In ‘Geist’s Grave’, Arnold celebrates the four brief years he had his dog Geist, the dachshund who was his ‘little friend’, by his side.
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Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years review: writer’s final years recast
via Arts & Letters Daily: Eleanor Fitzsimons in The Irish Times

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in Oxford in 1893. Nicholas Frankel insists Douglas “knew and loved Wilde more intimately that any other individual in the period”. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Additions to the extensive Wilde canon have found new perspectives on a well-examined, but by no means exhausted, subject by paying particular attention to distinct periods in Wilde’s life; David Friedman’s Wilde in America and Antony Edmonds’s Oscar Wilde’s Scandalous Summer are recent examples. The most successful of these I have encountered is Nicholas Frankel’s Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, which examines in fascinating detail Wilde’s prison years and the short time that remained to him after he completed his sentence in May 1897.
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Found: edited draft of Galileo's argument for a heliocentric model
At least he wasn't burned at the stake, right?
via the Big Think blog by Brandon A. Weber

• The letter suggests Galileo censored himself a bit in order to fly more under the radar. It didn't work, though.
• The Royal Society Journal will publish the variants of the letters shortly, and scholars will begin to analyze the results.
• The letter was in obscurity for hundreds of years in Royal Society Library in London.

The idea that the planets, including Earth, revolved around the Sun was first proposed by Copernicus in 1543. It was a radical departure from the religionist worldview of the time, and when Galileo confirmed this via his own observations, it caused quite a bit of consternation from the folks who led the Catholic Inquisition, as well as the Catholic Church itself. The church, you see, held strongly to the Earth-centered universe at the time, and to contradict their beliefs was straight-up heresy.
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Elderly elephant enjoys Debussy
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

I too flap my ears whenever Clair de Lune is performed for me.

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How the Kessler Syndrome can end all space exploration and destroy modern life
An increasingly likely catastrophe can cause major disruptions in space flight and our daily lives.
via the Big Think blog by Paul Ratner
Exploring space is one of humanity’s most hopeful activities. By going out into the great unknown of the Universe, we hope to extend our reach, find new resources and life forms, while solving many of our earthly problems. But going to space is not something to take for granted—it can actually become impossible. There is a scenario, called the Kessler Syndrome, that can cause the end of all space exploration and dramatically impact our daily lives.
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Five of the Best Baby Poems
via Interesting Literature
Are these the greatest poems about babies?
Bad poetry inspired by people’s babies gave us one useful legacy: the phrase ‘namby-pamby’. Used to describe something weak, ineffectual, and slightly pathetic, the term was originally coined in reference to the work of the poet Ambrose Philips (1674-1749), who was widely mocked by his contemporaries for his babyish verses written in celebration of the offspring of the great and good. But poets have occasionally got it right, and succeeded in writing memorable and moving poems about babies. Here are five of the very best baby poems.
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