maitani

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

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

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

3 other comments...

"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 - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
On Cavafy’s Side by Joseph Brodsky | The New York Review of Books - http://www.nybooks.com/article...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"In 1882, when Cavafy was nineteen, an anti-European outbreak took place in Alexandria which caused a great deal of bloodshed (at least according to that century’s standards), and the British retaliated with a naval bombardment of the city. Since Cavafy and his mother had left for Constantinople not long before, he missed his chance to witness perhaps the only historic event to take place in Alexandria during his lifetime. He spent three subsequent years in Constantinople—important years for his development. It was in Constantinople that the historical diary, which he had been keeping for several years, stopped—at the entry marked “Alexander.” Here also he allegedly had his first homosexual experience. At twenty-eight Cavafy got his first job, as a temporary clerk at the Department of Irrigation in the Ministry of Public Works. This provisional position turned out to be fairly permanent: he held it for the next thirty years, occasionally making some extra money as a broker on the Alexandrian Stock Exchange." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

"Cavafy knew ancient and modern Greek, Latin, Arabic, French; he read Dante in Italian and he wrote his first poems in English. But if there were any literary influences—and in the book under review Edmund Keeley sees some in the English Romantics—they ought to be confined to that stage of Cavafy’s poetic development which the poet himself dismissed from the “canon” of his work, as Keeley defines it. As for the later period, Cavafy’s treatment of what were known during Hellenic times as mime-jambs (or simply “mime”) and his use of the epitaph are so much his own that Keeley is correct in sparing us the haze of the Palatine Anthology." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Anglesey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Visited there a couple of years ago - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/pho... ; title="http://www.flickr.com/pho... ; - and my main memory of the place was that it was very windy. - maitani - -

3 other comments...

from <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ff.im/1f6yhj"... ; - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Karaites: Who Are They, and Where Do They Live? | GeoCurrents - http://geocurrents.info/cultura...?

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The roots of the Karaite Judaism go back to the so-called Heterodox Zone. Some scholars posited a connection between the Karaites as a remnant of the Sadducees, the 1st-century Jewish sect that followed the Hebrew Bible literally and rejected the Pharisees’ notion of an Oral Torah even before it was written. But most historians believe that Karaites emerged in the 8th century in Baghdad (then in the territory of the Abbasid caliphate) as a sect of followers of Anan ben David, who called themselves “Ananites”. Ben David prescribed following the Bible to the exclusion of rabbinic tradition and laws. In Hebrew, the term karaim, meaning “Readers (of the Hebrew Scriptures)”, emerged in the 9th-century works of Benjamin ben Moshe Nagavendi, who used it to describe various anti-Talmudic movements, including that of the Ananites. As a result of their denial of the Oral Torah, the Karaites differ from the followers of Rabbinical Judaism in their laws of kashrut and ritual purity, the rite of circumcision, marriage laws, rules of ritual slaughtering, their religious calendars, and the arrangement of synagogues." - maitani - -

"An earlier GeoCurrents post on why Russian Jews are not Russian generated a discussion of Karaite Judaism, and GeoCurrents promised a post on this topic. So two years later we are taking a closer look at this fascinating group. Like the Samaritans, discussed in the previous GeoCurrents post, the Karaites accept only the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) and the Book of Joshua, and their identity as Jews has been questioned on a number of occasions. Unlike the Samaritans, the Karaites celebrate Passover on the standard date, though their observance of the holiday is quite distinctive. Because the Karaites believe in a strictly literal interpretation of the Torah, without any adherence to the Oral Law embodied in rabbinic-talmudic tradition, the Karaite Haggadah (i.e. the text that sets forth the order of the ceremonial Passover meal) contains only verses from the Torah describing the Exodus from Egypt and the ten plagues, but none of the Talmudic discussions. Curiously, the Karaites do not refer to the holiday as “Passover” because in the Torah uses that word only to describe the sacrifice on the night before, never to refer to the seven-day festival of unleavened bread. Their strict observance means that not only leavened bread but any food or drink that has fermentation potential—wine, cheese, yogurt—is forbidden to Karaites during Passover. However, they also traditionally use pickled lemons instead of horseradish to make “bitter herbs” (maror) for the Passover plate." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be published | Books | guardian.co.uk - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

I loved to show and read Richard Scarry books to my son. :-) - maitani - -

1 other comments...

"News that an unfinished manuscript by children's illustrator Richard Scarry is to be coloured up by his son and published this autumn may not immediately thrill the children of today, but it will provoke waves of nostalgia in those of us who grew up with his busy anthropomorphised beasts." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
The Japan Beneath the Snow by Ian Buruma | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books - http://www.nybooks.com/blogs...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The Japanese photographer Hiroshi Hamaya took many kinds of pictures, from Tokyo bargirls to smoking volcanoes. I knew him a bit in the 1970s when he was in his early sixties, an elegant kimonoed figure with hawkish features and shoulder-length grey hair, living with his wife in a beautiful wooden house south of Tokyo. He was a kind of hippy traditionalist, bohemian and deeply attached to the Japanese past. He had designed his house himself, entirely in accordance with traditional Japanese craftsmanship." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Jewish or Not, the Samaritans Celebrate Passover—But a Month Later | GeoCurrents - http://geocurrents.info/cultura...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter on March 31 this year, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar; Orthodox Christians will celebrate this holiday on May 5, in accordance with the Julian calendar; and Jews celebrated Passover on March 26. But one group, the Samaritans, will observe Passover on April 23, even though they are not considered Jews by Israeli rabbinical authorities. The calendar discrepancy is attributed to the fact that Jews start calculating from the first year of creation, whereas the Samaritan calendar starts from the first year Joshua Bin-Nun entered Israel. As a result, the leap years are not parallel and Samaritan festivals sometimes take place a month later. Although only some 750 Samaritans remain, the group is still highly are visible in Israel. Their annual Passover celebration, which takes place on Mount Gerizim overlooking Nablus in the West Bank, or Samaria, is a major spectacle attracting thousands of visitors to the scenic hilltop. But who are the Samaritans?" - maitani - -

3 other comments...

"Samaritans, one of the many ethno-religious groups in the so-called Heterodox Zone, claim descent from the Israelites who remained in the Land of Israel at the time of the Babylonian Exile (597-582 BCE). According to their narrative, Samaritanism is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, preserved by a small group who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which is an altered and amended religion brought back by those returning from exile. In fact, the name Samaritan (in Hebrew‎ shomronim) derives from the Semitic root that means ‘to keep, to preserve’. Unlike Jews, Samaritans accept only the Five Books of Moses and the Book of Joshua, considering the history of Israel after Joshua to be that of a renegade sectarian community. Thus, just as Jewish rabbinical authorities do not recognize the Samaritans as Jewish, the Samaritans do not recognize Jews as truly “Jewish”. Those tensions between the two ancient ethno-religious groups go back to antiquity. According to Ezra 4, when the Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile in 582 BCE, the local inhabitants offered to assist with the building of the new temple during the time of Zerubbabel, but their offer was rejected. The text is not clear on this matter, but one possibility is that these “people of the land” were the Samaritans. We do know, however, that Samaritan and Jewish alienation increased, and that the Samaritans eventually built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which they believe to be where the binding of Isaac took place and which they consider the spiritual center of Israel in place of Jerusalem. The legitimacy of the Samaritan temple was attacked by Jewish scholars including Andronicus ben Meshullam. The hostility between Jews and Samaritans forms the background to the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Christian gospels, which tells Jews a story of a Samaritan who helped a wounded Jew even though the two peoples tended to despise each other." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Top Ten Medieval Articles of 2012 - http://www.medievalists.net/2012...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"We have posted over 1200 articles to Medievalists.net in 2012, which cover a wide range of areas and topics. Which were the most popular articles we posted? Here is the top ten list of articles, according to the number of views by our readers. In first place is an article about a very unusual dance craze from the 16th century. As usual, articles about to world of sex in the Middle Ages can be found among top ten list, as does papers about Tolkien, the Vikings, and Richard the Lionheart." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
CDLI - Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative - http://cdli.ucla.edu/

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The images presented online by the research project Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative are for the personal, non-profit use of students, scholars, and the public. All digitized images of photographs and original text artifacts are subject to copyright laws and, except where noted otherwise, are the property of the institutions that own the artifacts. Digital images of hand or CAD drawings of texts are the property of named primary publication or publication history authors. Commercial use or publication of these images is strictly prohibited without prior written permission from the project and/or the institutions/authors named in conjunction with particular texts. Text in the pages of CDLI may be freely copied, aggregated and re-used according to common academic practice; we request in the case of re-use of considerable textual data that mention be made of the source of such material, with reference to CDLI and its URL <<a rel="nofollow" href="http://cdli.ucla.edu"... ; - maitani - -

1 other comments...

That story is fascinating: A monk of Montserrat Abbey travelled to Mesopotamia in the 1920s (obviously as a pioneer of those excavation sites) and brought home a collection of cuneiform artefacts (among them important items, as far as I can see), and thus laid the foundation of the Museum of Montserrat. - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Eurozine - The facts, the myths and the framing of immigration - Kenan Malik The case of Britain - http://www.eurozine.com/article...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

(It may be that my definition of 'right wing' is a tad wider than the consensus because of my vantage point all the way over on the other side ;)) - maitani - -

5 other comments...

"Today, the same arguments once used against Jews, and then against South Asian and Caribbean immigrants, are now raised against Muslims and east Europeans. However, Kenan Malik finds some comfort in reviewing the facts of the matter. He then tackles the illusions." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
GOSLAR am Harz - Kaiserstadt und Weltkulturerbe - English - http://www.goslar.de/english

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The former Free Imperial Town of Goslar has an over-1000-year history. Probably the discovery of silver and copper ore deposits induced the Saxon and Salic emperors to establish their largest and most secure palatinate here in the 11th century. For centuries it was the favoured seat of government in northern Germany and at the same time a centre of Christianity. The spires of the 47 churches, chapels and monasteries delineated the town’s unique silhouette. It was referred to as the “Rome of the North”." - maitani - -

6 other comments...

looks beautiful! - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Kaiserpfalz Goslar, erbaut unter Kaiser Heinrich III, 11. Jhd.

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Braunlage, Harz

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Ausblick von den Hahnenkleeklippen, Harz, 4. April 2013

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Who is Sylvia Plath? - FT.com - http://www.ft.com/cms...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

“I have done it again,” declares Sylvia Plath in the opening line of one of her most famous poems – the tour de force that is “Lady Lazarus”. “One year in every ten I manage it.” What the speaker manages every decade is, like Lazarus, to return from the dead. Now, 50 years after this poem was composed, Lady Lazarus has done it once more, arising for a fresh generation of readers, as Plath has done regularly since her suicide helped transform her from poet to cultural phenomenon." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

"The last time Plath was big news was 15 years ago, when her husband Ted Hughes published Birthday Letters, the collection of poems he wrote to her ghost. When Birthday Letters came out, Plath had already been dead for 35 years – five years longer than she had lived. At the time of her death, in February 1963, Plath had published some poems in The New Yorker; her first collection, The Colossus, had been very well received three years earlier. Hughes was better known, in no small part thanks to Plath’s efforts as his agent, publicist and typist. It was Plath who submitted his collection Hawk in the Rain to the New York Poetry Center’s prize in 1957; winning it kick-started Hughes’s career." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Chimborazo!

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

To never know where it is taking me and what it will teach me. :-) - maitani - -

1 other comments...

<3 - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Eurozine - Cyprus crisis: Swan-song of the Eurozone - Constantine Dimoulas, Vassilis K. Fouskas - http://www.eurozine.com/article...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"For the average person, apart from being a popular holiday destination, Cyprus is known as a divided island. Since Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, the people of Cyprus, Greek and Turkish, have been living in separated worlds. The northern part of the island is effectively integrated with the Turkish economy today (currently, Turkey enjoys unprecedented levels of economic growth and prosperity). The Republic of Cyprus, de facto divided but de jure united, became a member of the EU in 2004 and adopted the Euro on 1 January 2008. Now, it is this Greek-Cypriot Cyprus that has the banking problems and will become known for its severe banking problem – not least because of its deep integration with EU structures and processes." - maitani - -

2 other comments...

there was NO invasion!!! - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Winterland (where I am now)

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

Supposedly, it is one of the most wintery regions of Germany, plus this last winter lasted extraordinarily long. Until these days, when I visited the Harz mountain range for the first time in my life, I didn't know it can be like that in April in any place outside the Alps in Germany. Some call it Deutsch Sibirien, my landlady told me. :-) - maitani - -

2 other comments...

No, Eivind, I don't think that will happen anytime soon. :-) I spent few holidays in a small hotel in the Harz mountains, with a very nice landlady and staff. - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Arroyo (creek) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The course of La Rambla was originally a sewage-filled stream-bed, usually dry but an important drain for the heavy rain-storms occurring in spring and autumn. It separated the walled city on its north-east bank from El Raval ("the suburb") on its south-west." <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w... ; - maitani - -

3 other comments...

"An arroyo (/əˈrɔɪoʊ/; Spanish: [aˈroʝo]), a Spanish word translated as brook, and also called a wash is usually a dry creek or stream bed—gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain.[1] Wadi is a similar term in Africa. In Spain, a rambla has a similar meaning to arroyo. In Hispanic America any small river might be called arroyo, even if it flows continually all year and is never dry." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
British Museum - Naukratis: Greeks in Egypt - http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The Greek-Egyptian town of Naukratis in the Nile Delta was a major centre of cross-cultural contact in the ancient world. This catalogue presents the wealth of archaeological finds made in late 19th and early 20th century excavations at the site that are today dispersed in museums worldwide. Comprising Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Cypriot objects dating from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD, it will eventually contain over 16,000 objects." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee"): Thoughts about reading books - http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.de/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

I'll continue to finish the books I start :-P - maitani - -

2 other comments...

"This idea was also mulling around as I read Tim Parks’ Why Finish Books? (a good essay if you have the time…), here’s a taster: “One can only encourage a reader like this to learn not to attach self esteem to the mere finishing of a book, if only because the more bad books you finish, the fewer good ones you’ll have time to start.” – Tim Parks" - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
A Calendar Page for April 2013 - Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts - http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitis...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"The calendar for April opens with a typical scene for spring; an aristocratic couple are shown courting in a walled and flowering garden. The richly-dressed lady's dog is nearby, lapping water from the garden's fountain. Behind the couple, a nobleman is preparing to go hawking, another commonly-depicted pursuit for this time of year. The theme of fertility and new life is echoed at the top of the miniature, where a pair of storks can be seen building their nest on the top of a chimney. Below, six men are playing a game with a bat and ball. On the following folio is a roundel with a painting of a bull, for the zodiac sign Taurus. At the bottom of this page a sherpherd and his bagpipe-playing companion are looking over their flock of sheep, complete with new lambs and a single goat." - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Loch Ness Monster Found at British Library - Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts - http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitis...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"Walter’s encounter with Nessie came one summer evening, as he approached the banks of the River Ness. Students of the Loch Ness Monster will be aware that in the earliest account, found in Adomnán’s Life of St Columba (written around AD 700), Nessie was seen not in the loch but in the neighbouring river; and this is corroborated by Walter’s story. Seeking safe passage across the river, Walter of Bingham asked a group of fishermen mending their nets, but they rejected his request with terror in their eyes. Next, walking downstream, Walter encountered a young boy dragging his coracle along the shore. Hesitating at first, the boy agreed to row Walter of Bingham across in return for a silver coin. They crossed without mishap, much to Walter’s displeasure, for he was self-confessedly thrifty; but as he watched the coracle heading back to the other shore, a great beast with fire sparking from its eyes suddenly erupted from below the waters, uttered an almighty roar, and then dragged the coracle and its unhappy occupant beneath the waves." - maitani - -

1 other comments...

"Researchers at the British Library have found sensational evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Hidden within the pages of a 12th-century manuscript is not only a description but also a drawing of the beast known to millions as Nessie." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
Beyond Ishtar: The Tradition of Eggs at Easter | Anthropology in Practice, Scientific American Blog Network - http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthrop...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

The summary by Yonatan Zunger is excellent. Thank you for the link, Faruk Ahmet. - maitani - -

3 other comments...

"There is a meme floating around Facebook that some people have rallied around and are sharing as a “truth” of Easter. It proclaims: Easter was originally the celebrates on of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex. Her symbols (like the egg and bunny) were and still are fertility and sex symbols (or did you actually think eggs and bunnies had anything to do with the resurrection?) After Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed to represent Jesus. But at its roots, Easter (which is how you pronounce Ishtar) is all about celebrating fertility and sex." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani imported maitani's feed
An Oxford Companion to Game of Thrones | OUPblog - http://blog.oup.com/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

"“My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer and I have my mind…and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge. That’s why I read so much Jon Snow.”" - maitani - -

maitani imported maitani's feed
Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: Greece and Asia Minor in the Late Bronze Age: The Historical Background of Homer's Iliad - http://dienekes.blogspot.de/2013...

1 decade ago from Friendfeed - Comment - Hide - - -

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dainst.org/en/... ; title="http://www.dainst.org/en/... ; - maitani - -

"An interesting recent talk by Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier." - maitani - -

Comment

maitani

Warning!