via OUP Blog by Jane Griffiths
After a recent performance, a member of the audience came up to tell me that he’d enjoyed my playing. “I always think,” he said, as if he were being original, “that the violin is the instrument that most closely resembles the human voice.” Outwardly I nodded assent and smiled; inwardly I groaned. If you happen to be a violinist, then you’ll be only too familiar with this particular cliché. But, as the old adage goes, clichés are clichés for a reason. A colleague has a notion that this one came about because playing the violin causes the same areas of the body – head, arms, and chest – to vibrate and resonate as when singing. Whether this theory holds or not, it is undoubtedly true that the violin, or fiddle, is one of the most versatile and expressive instruments we play.
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A book of the beautiful street signs in Paris
via Boing Boing by Sarina Frauenfelder
I don’t know if anyone knows the magnificent signs of Paris as extensively as Louise Fili. For over 40 years the American-born graphic designer roamed the “City of Lights”, documenting and photographing the signs that bring life and expression to the streets of Paris. The signs that grace Parisian cafes, boutiques, hotels, patisseries, the Métro, etc. are spectacular works of art, from Nouveau and deco to modern and pop. Thankfully Fili has preserved the images of these graphic masterpieces, as already some of the signs in this book no longer exist. As an art student myself, Graphique de la Rue is a brilliant book of eye candy that inspires me every time I open it.
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Brobdingnagian Numbers
via 3 Quarks Daily by Jonathan Kujawa
To say math is about numbers is like saying writing is about words. You can use words well or badly, but in the end it is the things and ideas they represent which are important. Just so with numbers.
I have a clear memory of learning in middle school that the plots of Shakespeare's plays were nothing but retreads of older tales. With the certainty of youth I wrote off Shakespeare as nothing but an over-glorified plagiarist. It took a few years to come around to the realisation you don't read Shakespeare after all these years for the plots, but for his deep study of human nature and unmatched skill with words. Will could put the right words in the right order and really zing: “How well he's read, to reason against reading!” or “Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing”.
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Coleridge's way with words
via OUP Blog by H.J. Jackson
Why should we commemorate Samuel Taylor Coleridge? The obvious reason is his high status as a poet, but a better one might be his exuberance as a wordsmith. As a poet, after all, he is widely known for only two relatively short works: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan.’ While the academy would no doubt add four or five others prized by specialists, the total number is still small. On the other hand, Coleridge’s creative output as a word worker – inventing, importing, adapting, and generally messing about with language – is enormous, his impact incalculable. His collected works now fill 50 volumes in the standard scholarly editions, and his mastery of the arts of language is evident in every one of them.
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10 fun tricks to do with liquid
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Start a fire with a water bottle. Use glycerine to make a bottle disappear. Create weird dancing blobs with cornstarch and water. Marvel at water droplets sizzling in a hot pan. Poke pencils through a water-filled ziplock bag without the water leaking. This video has a total of ten cool things you can try at home. It's also one of the rare YouTube videos that doesn't require skipping ahead 20% to get to the interesting part.
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Why Did Europe Conquer the World?
via 3 Quarks Daily: Martin Vander Weyer in The Telegraph
The course of history can be interpreted in many ways: as a search for food, water and treasure; as an ideological clash between light and dark; as a class struggle; or as a random intersection of topography, technology, disease, weather and occasional outbursts of charismatic leadership.
Abba’s Waterloo reminds us: “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.”
But why? And is it really possible to nail history into a simple framework that explains everything? That, essentially, is what Philip T Hoffman, professor of business economics and history at the California Institute of Technology, attempts in Why Did Europe Conquer the World? – an elegantly concise contribution to the Princeton Economic History of the Western World series. Its starting point is the assertion that Europe really did conquer the world, or at least 84 per cent of it, between 1492 and 1914 – but that you probably would not have bet on that outcome had you landed on Earth in the year 900, when our continent was deeply backward in comparison with the cultural and commercial sophistication of the Muslim Middle East, southern China and Japan.
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10 Film Recommendations for Book Lovers
via Abe Books by Beth Carswell
Look, even the most devout and voracious reader has to come up for air sometimes to prevent our eyes from crossing. And when we do, surely we must dip a toe into the waters of other hobbies. What’s nice, though, is how many of those hobbies can still sneakily support our bibliohabits. Film-watching, of course, is a no-brainer. With many of our most beloved stories adapted for the silver screen, it’s another avenue to spend time with our favourite literary characters.
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Trillions of viruses in our bodies
via 3 Quarks DailyEnrique and Gullans in delanceyplace
"The human virome includes trillions of viruses that live in and on our cells, plus even more that inhabit the bacteria in our microbiome. The virome is poorly understood and could be considered the 'dark matter of nature' and humanity; we know it is there but have a very hard time describing it or knowing what it is doing. The human virome is essentially our fourth genome; it interacts directly and indirectly with our other three genomes. Moreover, like your genome, epigenome, and microbiome, your virome is absolutely unique. Viruses live in our intestines, mouths, lungs, skin, and even in our blood, the latter being only discovered recently. But fret not; given that people are generally healthy day-to-day, the virome overall must be benign, and given the millennia of mutual coexistence, our viromes must provide benefits that we don't yet appreciate.”
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Save the universe (and your relationship) by shooting aliens
via Boing Boing by Laura Hudson
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a game about love, about cooperation, and possibly about what it means to save a relationship that’s falling apart.
It opens with what sounds like the first half of a parable: The scientists of the future have found a way to harness the greatest power in the universe – yup, love – uniting all living beings in the universe in a joyous union of little tiny pink hearts. But thanks to an “error in the XOXO matrix”, the forces of anti-love are seeping back into the world and tearing holes in the fabric of space-time. The honeymoon of the love universe is over, and everything is going to hell.
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Invitation to a Beheading
via Arts & Letters Daily: James Camp in Book Forum
Humans are easy to decapitate: Our large heads rest on little necks. Most mammals have thick muscles joining the shoulders with the base of the skull; ours are so slender that our spines show through the skin. It is the price tag of standing upright, of casting off the hominid hunch. “Heads”, writes Frances Larson in Severed, are “tempting to remove”. Above the shoulders, our anatomy resembles a teed-up golf ball.
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