three is a magic number

The fantastically thoughtful aggregate of boot-strapping and interesting things, Brain-Pickings, shares a new collection of self-improvement reflections and exercises from Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology in the States—though popular in Europe for years, that seem to certainly fulfill their promises of more joy and less angst.

Though the notion of amending ones gratitude is certainly important and could be nothing but therapeutic—mutually, I am not sure how I personally feel about thanking someone long after the fact, since one ought to be, if anything, gracious, and I know—according to the prescription, at least, some people might not take too well to a confrontation with gratitude. Nonetheless, it is something to think on, even if one does not carry out the rehearsal fully. Seligelman suggests writing a truly heart-felt speech to deliver in person, but I suppose the greatest impetus comes too late, like only socializing with a co-worker for his retirement or farewell celebration. Another ritual, however, appealed very much to me: I have morning routines but not so much a nightly one but I will certainly try to incorporate Seligman's thrice-blessed days along with the news and a pair of posts. One ought to try to recall at the end of the day (and document) three things that went right during the course of the day and acknowledge why, despite or because. No one ought to have to grasp for citations, but it could be as simple as “I heard a snatch of Me and Julio down by the School Yard,” and it was because the Universe knew I needed that tune to carry in my head.

the commons

Revolutions have shifted from seasons and colours it seems towards something more in situ and the world is receiving a lesson, no less, in foreign terms for square or plaza where the protests are taking place and public politics are fomenting.
In recent memory, before the press was allowed to name and tidily adjudge such things, there was Tiananmen Square (天安門廣場, named for the Gate of Heavenly Peace which separates the area from the Forbidden City) in Beijing in 1989. Not as if everything was quiet, peaceable or simmering in the meantime, there was Tarhir Square in Cairo (Mīdān at-Taḥrīr, Liberation Place) in 2011. In 2013 and on-going is Taksim (meaning division or distribution from an Ottoman era reservoir originally on this site where the plumbing of the city was managed) Meydanı in Istanbul whose Gezi Park has become a symbol for government oppression and autocracy. Presently, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Майдан Незалежності, Independence) in Kiev has seen its square component of its name become shorthand for public uprising itself—the Euromaidan (Євромайдан) demonstrations seeking to realign Ukraine with Western Europe. Of course, there were countless rallies, marches, movements and occupations before they could be widely reported to the outside and degrees in coordination and spontaneity, and myriad in between. Overthrows and positive reform do not end with these pivotal moments, and possibly a public more educated and connected can appreciate the difficulty in managing the aftermath and transition.

verso-recto

The unique and enigmatic Voynich Manuscript, a six century old pharmacopoeia, which supposedly only returned into the world's stacks after its purchase by a Polish antiquarian in 1912 when the papal college in Rome was forced to auction off some of its collection, may have at least been demonstrated as something other than a hoax, according to one British researcher.

The text still defies deciphering and the abugidas are beyond our compre- hension—even with the aid of bizarre illustrations, but the linguist may have puzzled out ten proper names for plants—apparently as recipes for herbal-cures. Theories abound about what the book could be about, from an encrypted treatise of medicine with secret cures transmitted from antiquity, an undiscovered language to a phonetic rendering of by a European scholar of some Asian text—like the transliteration of Mandarin into pinyin and the Latin alphabet or the addition of invented lower-case letters and punctuation for Ancient Greek texts, which originally had neither, by scholars and copyists—with shorthand and ligatures, that certainly would have appeared inscrutable to readers on either extreme of these aids for reading.  One can browse or download the scanned manuscript from the holdings at Yale, where the book resides.

cosine or god bless you, mister vonnegut

Never discounting the classic novels Kurt Vonnegut Jr. gave the world with Galapagos, Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night and a dozen more, one of the story-teller's simple gifts, long overlooked, may have been in the form of an anthropology thesis—rejected at the time for appearing too unsophisticated, which theorized every arch-of-story, all archetypes, can be represented in eight shapes. Luckily, Mr. Vonnegut later revisited his “man-in-the-hole” and other hypotheses and his lectures and conjectures have caught the interest of others, like the brilliant graphic artist Maya Eilam, who presents these ideas as a beautiful infographic.