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Light Speaking by V. Penelope Pelizzon - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrym...

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"Did he enjoy photographing cats? Was it aesthetically appealing? As appealing as snapping pictures of pussies? Or did freelance work really just add up to more money at the end of the week? I’ll never  know. He died when I was ten; my memories of him are sweet and self-absorbed. Some days he’d bring me with him to his darkroom in the city. At Government Center we’d get take-away donuts and milky coffee. All I can recall about his workspace are surfaces cluttered with electrical cords and the air’s sinus-chilling chemical smell. He’d have to clear a spot so we could spread napkins below our breakfast. But that rich milk of odors — lactose plus fructose plus fixer — seeped into my brain and obsessed me with photographs." - maitani - -

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"I discovered this sideline a few years ago when I inherited hundreds of negatives that had been in storage since his death in 1977. My dad had spent his life trying to succeed as a photographer. He’d had some early achievements as a filmmaker in Trieste after the war; his short documentary about that city won an award at the Venice Biennale. But after immigrating to the States in 1958, his artistic career stalled. Family needs — combined with quirky English — landed him in a  series of low-wage jobs. He was a gardener, a fry cook in a hotel, then an audio-visual specialist in a state mental hospital, where his tasks included making educational films about psychiatric treatments. His freelance work allowed him some creativity behind the lens, though many of his negatives show predictably “marketable” scenes: winsome animals, lobster boats at anchor, New England woods in the snow. I vaguely remember one commercial triumph when he sold a photo to a pet food company and thereafter our kittens appeared on the twenty-five-pound bags of kibble." - maitani - -

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International Dunhuang Project: The Calligraphy of Wang Xizhi - http://idpuk.blogspot.de/2013...

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"The fourth-century calligrapher Wang Xizhi (王羲之, 303–361) became known in China as the 'Sage of Calligraphy' for his mastery of all calligraphic forms, in particular semi-cursive script (行书). His work was prized by calligraphers, collectors and emperors, both for its artistry and its rarity. As none of his original work is known to have survived, it was through rubbings, tracings and copies that his legacy was secured as generations of calligraphers tried to emulate his distinctive style." - maitani - -

"Even in Dunhuang, on the opposite side of China from his native province of Shandong, we know of at least two manuscripts that have been identified as copies of Wang Xizhi’s work. One of these is now in the Stein Collection at the British Library and the other, first identified by Pelliot, is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Dating back to the Tang period (618–907), these manuscripts show three parts of the Shiqitie (十七帖), a model work in cursive script consisting of letters and other miscellaneous texts and named after the first two characters of the original piece." - maitani - -

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The great Bert Jansch « Why Evolution Is True - http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013...

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"The “Bert” is, of course, Bert Jansch, one of my own musical heroes. If you haven’t heard him or know about him, I have no time to fill you in. He was a Glaswegian and died too young—in 2011 at 67, from cancer. And his music was sui generis. His voice was nasal but somehow melded perfectly with his guitar, and his style of playing was haunting. Sometimes he’d put his fingers underneath the strings." - maitani - -

"Every month or so, an old friend in England sends me a pile of clippings from British newspapers: things he thinks I’d like to read. They’re eclectic but mostly about wine and music. Two nights ago, making my way through the latest batch, I found a piece from the March 6 Times by Billy Connelly, “My hero, a quiet guitarist called Bert.”" - maitani - -

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The Amazing Monasteries of Bhutan ~ Kuriositas - http://www.kuriositas.com/2013...

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"The Kingdom of Bhutan is sometimes overlooked, locked between Tibet and India, but the Land of the Dragon as the Bhutanese call it is home to some of the most exquisite Buddhist monasteries in the world. Here, we take a fleeting visit to some of the over forty monasteries in Bhutan – quite a number considering the population of the entire country is only around 700,000." - maitani - -

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Eurozine - The beautiful German language - Enda O'Doherty - http://www.eurozine.com/article...

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"Germans have featured prominently among those who have sometimes had difficulty in believing that their native tongue is quite up to the mark, or, as we say in our barbarous contemporary jargon, fit for purpose. The German invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century was certainly to give a boost to the prestige of vernacular languages (at the expense of the universal language, Latin). It was also to be important in spreading the new religion, Protestantism. Martin Luther enthused: Printing is God's most recent gift and his greatest. Through it, in effect, God wishes to make known the true religion to the whole world, right to the extremities of the Earth." - maitani - -

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"There are nations which are endlessly, perhaps inordinately, proud of their language (the English and the French in particular) and those who are a little less confident or who will attribute to their native tongue only one pre-eminent virtue, as the Italians, not it would seem unreasonably, have attributed musicality to the Tuscan dialect that, rather late in the historical scheme of things, became their national language (their first king couldn't speak it; not that this is wholly unusual for royals – there were times in our neighbour's history when the king's English wasn't so hot)." - maitani - -

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polis: Mapping the Aftermath of Historic Storms - http://www.thepolisblog.org/2013...

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"On Easter Sunday of 1913, an F4 tornado a quarter-mile wide ripped through Omaha at around 6 p.m. In its wake, some 115 people were dead and over 400 injured. More than 2,000 homes were completely leveled. Meanwhile, over 10 inches of rain hit the already saturated Great Miami River watershed in Ohio. The resulting runoff flowed into the Great Miami River, setting the stage for severe flooding that would devastate parts of Indiana and Pennsylvania and leave the streets of downtown Dayton full of water up to 20 feet deep." - maitani - -

"This year marks the centennial of one of the most devestating weather-related disasters ever experienced in the United States. During the week of Mar. 21-26, 1913, a series of late winter storms formed over the Midwest, spawning tornadoes in Iowa and Nebraska. They were followed by 8-11 inches of rain, which led to massive flooding in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania. By the end of the week, hundreds of people had died and billions of dollars worth of property and infrastructure lay in ruins." - maitani - -

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BibliOdyssey: Edo Views - http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.de/2013...

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""This view looking northwest from Fukagawa Susaki, a spit of land along Edo Bay, toward Jūmantsubo, a tract of land named after its approximate area of one hundred thousand tsubo (about eighty acres), is one of the most dramatic designs of the series. Its appeal lies in the contrast between the powerful form of the eagle as it prepares to dive for prey and the desolate wintry marshes below. As in other views devoid of people, there is still a pervasive human presence—in the roofs huddled to the left, in the poles of the lumber-yards beyond, and, above all, in the lone wooden bucket floating at the edge of the bay, surrounded by water birds on which the eagle seems to have its eye."" - maitani - -

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A Calendar Page for May 2013 - Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts - http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitis...

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<a href="#yakebikeç</a>" target="_blank">http://friendfeed.com/sea... ; - maitani - -

"The full-page miniature for May continues the theme of aristocratic courting, which may well be among the most pleasant of the 'labours' depicted in medieval calendars. In this scene, two boatmen are rowing a nobleman and two well-dressed ladies along a river; the three are playing musical instruments and are surrounded by flowering branches. On the bridge above them another aristocratic couple are riding on horseback, carrying branches and followed by their retainers. In the bas-de-page scene a group of men are practicing archery by shooting at a raised target (a popinjay?). On the following folio two couples are riding on horseback through a lush landscape, below the saints' days for May and a roundel with a nude man and woman for the zodiac sign Gemini." - maitani - -

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Before the Neo-Nazi demonstration

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These people explicitly call themselves national socialists, partly using socialist vocabulary and paroles to turn against "international" corporations, immigrants, democracy, using the increasing poverty and lack of perspective of young people to lure them towards their highly militant group. There were about 400 of them from all over Germany, but the anti-demo had about 10,000 participants. It was the aim of the countless policemen (we were told there were more than 1,000 in the city) to prevent clashes between the Nazis and the protesters. To that purpose the streets where the Nazis would march were completely emptied of parking cars, people were sent away. It felt a bit like staying in a ghost town. - maitani - -

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What were they protesting? - maitani - -

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BBC News - Falcon chicks defy cold spring to hatch on Nottingham roof - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

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The cathedral near where I work is home to a pair of adult peregrine falcons so this might mean they've got some chicks due too. - maitani - -

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In most places it must be difficult or impossible to watch them when there is no webcam. - maitani - -

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Wide Urban World: Cities outside of history? - http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.de/2013...

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"Did cities exist in the New World prior to the European conquest? Of course they did! If you have any doubt, take a look at some of my books or my articles as posted on my website (and much other work on Mesoamerica and the Andes). But according to a new reference work, the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Peter Clark, editor, 2013, Oxford University Press), either there were no cities in the ancient New World, or else those cities were not part of "World History." Hmmmmmm. I don't much like either choice." - maitani - -

"The first section of that work, called "Early Cities," has five survey sections: Mesopotamia Calixtlahuaca, an Aztec-period city Cities of the Ancient Mediterranean Africa South Asia China Where are the cities of the Aztec, Maya, or Inka? What about the Zapotec or the Moche, the Toltec or Tiwanaku, the Mixtec or Chimu? Would it have been that hard to solicit some chapters on these urban traditions? It would be hard to argue that there were cities in ancient Africa and South Asia, but not the ancient New World. Was this a deliberate exclusion of the New World as unwelcome in a volume on "world history," or was this just laziness and ignorance?" - maitani - -

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BBC - Future - Science & Environment - Is race perception automatic? - http://www.bbc.com/future...

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"For years, psychologists thought we instantly label each other by ethnicity. But one intriguing study proposes this is far from inevitable, with obvious implications for tackling racism. When we meet someone we tend to label them in certain ways. "Tall guy" you might think, or "Ugly kid". Lots of work in social psychology suggests that there are some categorisations that spring faster to mind. So fast, in fact, that they can be automatic. Sex is an example: we tend to notice if someone is a man or a woman, and remember that fact, without any deliberate effort. Age is another example. You can see this in the way people talk about others. If you said you went to a party and met someone, most people wouldn't let you continue with your story until you said if it was a man or a woman, and there's a good chance they'd also want to know how old they were too. Unfortunately, a swathe of evidence from the 1980s and 1990s also seemed to suggest that race is an automatic categorisation, in that people effortlessly and rapidly identified and remembered which ethnic group an individual appeared to belong to. “Unfortunate”, because if perceiving race is automatic then it lays a foundation for racism, and appears to put a limit on efforts to educate people to be “colourblind (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... )”" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... )”">http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ;, or put aside prejudices in other ways. Over a decade of research failed to uncover experimental conditions that could prevent people instinctively categorising by race, until a trio of evolutionary psychologists came along with a very different take on the subject. Now, it seems only fair to say that evolutionary psychologists have a mixed reputation among psychologists. As a flavour of psychology it has been associated with political opinions that tend towards the conservative. Often, scientific racists claim to base their views on some jumbled version of evolutionary psychology (scientific racism is racism dressed up as science, not racisms based on science, in case you wondered). So it was a delightful surprise when researchers from one of the world centres for evolutionary psychology intervened in the debate on social categorisation, by conducting an experiment they claimed showed that labelling people by race was far less automatic and inevitable than all previous research seemed to show. Powerful force Tom StaffordThe research used something called a “memory confusion protocol”. This works by asking experiment participants to remember a series of pictures of individuals, who vary along various dimensions – for example, some have black hair and some blond, some are men, some women, etc. When participants’ memories are tested, the errors they make reveal something about how they judged the pictures of individuals – what sticks in their mind most and least. If a participant more often confuses a black-haired man with a blond-haired man, it suggests that the category of hair colour is less important than the category of gender (and similarly, if people rarely confuse a man for a woman, that also shows that gender is the stronger category). Using this protocol, the researchers tested the strength of categorisation by race, something all previous efforts had shown was automatic. The twist they added was to throw in another powerful psychological force – group membership. People had to remember individuals who wore either yellow or grey basketball shirts, and whose pictures were presented alongside statements indicating which team they were in. Without the shirts, the pattern of errors were clear: participants automatically categorised the individuals by their race (in this case: African American or Euro American). But with the coloured shirts, this automatic categorisation didn't happen: people's errors revealed that team membership had become the dominant category, not the race of the players. It's important to understand that the memory test was both a surprise – participants didn't know it was coming up – and an unobtrusive measure of racial categorising. Participants couldn’t guess that the researchers were going to make inferences about how they categorised people in the pictures – so if they didn't want to appear to perceive people on the basis of race, it wouldn't be clear how they should change their behaviour to do this. Because of this we can assume we have a fairly direct measure of their real categorisation, unbiased by any desire to monitor how they appear. So despite what dozens of experiments had appeared to show, this experiment created a situation where categorisation by race faded into the background. The explanation, according to the researchers, is that race is only important when it might indicate coalitional information – that is, whose team you are on. In situations where race isn't correlated with coalition, it ceases to be important. This, they claim, makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. For most of ancestors age and gender would be important predictors of another person's behaviour, but race wouldn't – since most people lived in areas with no differences as large as the ones we associate with “race (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sciencedirect.... )”" title="http://www.sciencedirect.... )”">http://www.sciencedirect.... ; today (a concept, incidentally, which has little currency among human biologists). Since the experiment was published, the response from social psychologists has been muted. But supporting evidence (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://psp.sagepub.com/co... ; title="http://psp.sagepub.com/co... ;) is beginning to be reported, suggesting that the finding will hold. It's an unfortunate fact of human psychology that we are quick to lump people into groups (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bbc.com/future... ; title="http://www.bbc.com/future... ;), even on the slimmest evidence. And once we've identified a group, it's also seems automatic to jump to conclusions (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bbc.com/future... ; title="http://www.bbc.com/future... ;) about what they are like. But this experiment suggests that although perceiving groups on the basis of race might be easy, it is far from inevitable." - maitani - -

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"For years, psychologists thought we instantly label each other by ethnicity. But one intriguing study proposes this is far from inevitable, with obvious implications for tackling racism." - maitani - -

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Grand concert exceptionnel - Musique judéo-andalouse -Benjamin Bouzaglo http://www.akadem.org/sommair...

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Didn't find this in my feed any more, so I posted it again. - maitani - -

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Russian cuisine: a Melting Pot of Native Sensibilities and Foreign Influences | GeoCurrents - http://geocurrents.info/cultura...

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"Russian cuisine, as can be expected, is a multifaceted phenomenon, varying with time, space, and social class. Like much of Russia’s material and intellectual culture, Russian cuisine finds itself at the crossroads of West and East, having soaked up influences of neighboring peoples—Ukrainians, Tatars, peoples of the Caucasus and of Siberia—as well as of Western cuisines, chiefly that of France. Traditional Russian cookery, which is the focus of this post, goes back to the customs of the medieval period. Already in the early 19th century, the author of one of the first Russian cookbooks, landowner V. A. Levshin, stated that “information about Russian dishes has almost entirely disappeared … it is impossible to compile a detailed description of Russian cooking and one must be satisfied only by that which can still be collected from memories, as the history of Russian cooking was never written down” (translation mine). A much-needed documentation of Russian culinary sensibilities and how they changed over time was done only in the 1970s by William Vasilyevich Pokhlyobkin, a geographer, journalist, and expert in the history of diplomacy and international relations. Because an earlier book of his on the history of tea became popular in dissident circles, he was himself labeled a dissident, barred from completing his Ph.D., and forced to concentrate on his culinary hobby. Pokhlyobkin’s exclusion from official circles resulted in over 50 cookbooks, which for decades remained unpublished though widely circulated privately. His 1978 book National cuisines of our peoples includes an extensive chapter on Russian cuisine, on which this post draws heavily." - maitani - -

"Russian culinary sensibilities have roots in the period from the 9th to 16th century. The centerpiece of the Russian table—as well as the symbol of hospitality—is dark, heavy sour rye bread. Important guests are welcomed with a traditional karavaj (‘a loaf of black bread’) and salt. A xlebosol’nyj (‘bread-and-salt-y’) person is one who is hospitable and generous, the best compliment for a Russian hostess. Many other types of breads and pies are traditionally made from yeast dough as well, including various kinds of white breads, bagel-like bublik, pyshka doughnuts, pancakes, buttercakes, and pirogi (covered savory or sweet pies)." - maitani - -

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Smokin’! : ImaGeo - "A smoke plume streams from Indonesia’s Paluweh Volcano on April 19, 2013. The image was captured by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite. (Image: NASA Earth Observatory)" - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo...

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"The image above of Indonesia’s erupting Paluweh Volcano comes from NASA’s ever-awesome Earth Observatory. The editors at EO chose to run a closeup, but I love this long shot, showing the green, crenulated ~ 8-kilometer-wide island surrounded by an ocean of dark ocean of blue — the Flores Sea, to be exact." - maitani - -

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"The volcano, which rises 3,000 meters above the sea floor, but only 875 meters above the sea, has been rumbling and erupting for months. A dome of lava began inflating inside Paluweh’s crater last November, and the volcano began spewing ash. Then, on February 3 of this year, a massive eruption threw ash into the atmosphere to an altitude of 45,000 feet." - maitani - -

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China’s Sufis: The Shrines Behind the Dunes by Ian Johnson | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs...

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"Instead of representing these political conflicts, however, Ross’s photographs are unassuming and quiet; people are never present and the objects she captures—stone on sand, cloth on stone, the skeleton of a dried animal—have an incandescent glow, as if lit by another sun. In fact, these images reveal a little-known religious tradition in Xinjiang—its desert shrines to Sufi saints. Taken in the Xinjiang’s Taklamakan Desert, they are collected in Ross’s addictive new book Living Shrines of Uyghur China." - maitani - -

"Lisa Ross’s luminous photographs are not our usual images of Xinjiang. One of China’s most turbulent areas, the huge autonomous region in the country’s northwest was brought under permanent Chinese control only in the mid-twentieth century. Officially, it is populated mostly by non-ethnic Chinese—Turkic peoples like Uighurs (also spelled Uyghurs), Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, as well as Mongolians and even Russians—and its population has long had difficult relations with Beijing. In 2008, 2009, and 2012, Xinjiang was the site of bloody protests." - maitani - -

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Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire - http://www.mjcb.eu/

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"The aim of the project is to map the Jewish presence in the Byzantine empire using GIS (Geographical Information Systems). All information (published and unpublished) about the Jewish communities will be gathered and collated. The data will be incorporated in a GIS which will be made freely available to the general public on the world-wide-web. Researchers and members of the public will be able to create maps according to their own specifications. Chronologically, the project will begin in 650. This is soon after the Arab conquest of Egypt, Palestine and Syria when these regions, with their substantial Jewish populations, were permanently separated from the Byzantine empire. The end-date is fixed by the arrival in the region of large numbers of Jewish immigrants from Spain in 1492. Geographically, the core areas of Asia Minor, the southern Balkans and the adjacent islands including Crete and Cyprus will be included for the entirety of the period, Byzantine Italy however, will only be covered down to the Norman conquest. Some smaller territories that were only briefly under Byzantine rule may be excluded." - maitani - -

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Alexander B Fry – On dark matter - http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-...

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"Dark matter is the commonest, most elusive stuff in the universe. Can we grasp this great unsolved problem in physics?" - maitani - -

"Alexander B Fry is a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle and owner of The Astronomist blog. His research interests focus on cosmology and extragalactic astronomy." - maitani - -

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Tobacco plant

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Original tobacco plants have fragrance but no colour (flowers are pale green) so the cultivated ones have colour, but you lose the fragrance. It's interesting how you can't have both in this species, yet... - maitani - -

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How long util you can light up a home grown one? :) - maitani - -

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The season has begun

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Mining and logging companies 'leaving all of Chile without water' | Global development | guardian.co.uk - http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-...

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"More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organisations protested in the Chilean capital, Santiago, this week to demand that the state regain control of the management of water, which was privatised by the then dictatorship in 1981. More than 6,000 people took part in the peaceful "great carnival march for the recovery and defence of water" on Monday, according to the organisers, one of whom was former student leader Camila Vallejo, who plans to run for parliament as a Communist party candidate. The demonstrators delivered a letter to President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were due not only to persistent drought but to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources." - maitani - -

"Chile's government told to stop allowing firms to exhaust water sources with little regard for local people" - maitani - -

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Cassiterides - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

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[edit] from <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ff.im/1fbdeX"... ; !!! (first I linked back to my own post mistakenly) - maitani - -

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"The Cassiterides, meaning Tin Islands (from the Greek word for tin: Κασσίτερος/Kassiteros), are an ancient geographical name of islands that were regarded as situated somewhere near the west coasts of Europe.[1] The traditional assumption, ignoring Strabo, is that Cassiterides refer to Great Britain, based on the significant tin deposits in Cornwall.[2]" - maitani - -

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Hairy Bindings and Golden Bookworms: My Research in Bruges | medievalfragments - http://medievalfragments.wordpress.com/2013...

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"Traveling through the Flemish countryside on my way back from Bruges provides a great backdrop to consider my research trip and the manuscripts I’d explored over the past few days (with the gracious cooperation of the Biekorf Library’s leadership and staff). While, of course, I run through my usual checklist of paleographical features which can be done on-screen – pp biting? Ampersand or tironian note? Minim direction?… – there are a number of features that I can only properly identify in the flesh. My research on Ter Duinen’s twelfth-century collection requires that where possible I determine which manuscripts were homemade and which acquired from elsewhere. Many of the minute features that often photograph very poorly are important clues to the patterns and habits of a scriptorium." - maitani - -

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This is a reminder that someday soon I should visit lovely Bruges. :-) - maitani - -

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Supervolcanoes in the Ancient World | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-b...

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"Volcanologists categorize eruptions by the amount of volcanic ash ejected upon eruption using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). The VEI consists of 8 levels, with VEI-8 eruptions considered “supervolcanic eruptions” ejecting 1000 cubic kilometers of ash or more." - maitani - -

"Supervolcanoes are volcanic eruptions thousands of times more powerful than normal volcanic eruptions. These types of eruptions cause significant local ecological disturbances and have profound effects on global climate. On the scale of geological time they occur quite frequently." - maitani - -

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Training the brain to improve on new tasks - http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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"Apr. 15, 2013 — A brain-training task that increases the number of items an individual can remember over a short period of time may boost performance in other problem-solving tasks by enhancing communication between different brain areas. The new study being presented this week in San Francisco is one of a growing number of experiments on how working-memory training can measurably improve a range of skills -- from multiplying in your head to reading a complex paragraph." - maitani - -

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"The cornerstone brain-training exercise in this field has been the "n-back" task, a challenging working memory task that requires an individual to mentally juggle several items simultaneously. Participants must remember both the recent stimuli and an increasing number of stimuli before it (e.g., the stimulus "1-back," "2-back," etc). These tasks can be adapted to also include an audio component or to remember more than one trait about the stimuli over time -- for example, both the color and location of a shape." - maitani - -

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Musicians who learn a new melody demonstrate enhanced skill after a night's sleep - http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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But … but … but … sleep is unproductive and a waste of time! - maitani - -

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"Surprisingly, in a third result the study found that when two similar musical pieces were practiced one after the other, followed by practice of the first melody again, a night's sleep enhanced pianists' skills on the first melody, she said." - maitani - -

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Warning!