By way of a book review that seeks to make the superficially blithe, a link taken for granted really, connection between our emotions and our physical well-being and resilience—these all being popular concepts that are well rooted in modern thinking—the brilliant Maria Popova of Brain Pickings delivers a surprising historical context and development that demonstrates that the relationship is not a straightforward one and not without coups and reversals of fortune.
Sunday 26 July 2015
cognitive dissonance
catagories: ⚕️, ๐, ๐, ๐ง , philosophy
maelstrom or ta-ta for now
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, environment, foreign policy, labour
Saturday 25 July 2015
5x5
margrave: picturesque gallery of the borderless borders of Europe
goldielocks: latest achievements from the Kepler Mission’s search for Earth-like exo-planets
stand-alone orchard: an artistic horticulturist is making a tree of forty fruits through grafting
kismet or tempest in a teapot: curated collection of mind-boggling nuclear testing certificates of participation
my beautiful laundrette: nineteenth century washer branded with the enigmatic name Vowel A
Friday 24 July 2015
die stadt oder can't you smell that smell
From a Liverpudlian of renown (the smell would turn you too), I learnt of the lyrical farewell that Samuel Taylor Coleridge bid Kรถln, titled On My Joyful Departure from the Same City:
And now at least a merry one,
Mr. Mum’s Rudesheimer And the church of St. Geryon
Are the two things alone
That deserve to be known In the body-and-soul-stinking town of Cologne.
I am far from sharing that sentiment and rather look forward to visiting again, but thought it a nice collection of lines nonetheless. Aside from the endorsement of the Basilica of Saint Gereon, one of the twelve ancient Romanesque churches of Kรถln, it’s interesting to think about how urban decampments might be remembered, bottled with a certain fragrance—which only one takes away with leaving them.
5x5
arbeit-leben-gleichgewicht: having homesteaded myself in Germany for over a decade I can relate to the feeling of being spoiled
tomatillo: miniscule ancestral tomato may save its supersized progeny—all our familiar grains, fruits and vegetables had equally humble beginnings
artisanal landlord price-hike sale: creative campaign to save a beloved Brooklyn corner-shop
cameo, intaglio: curiously shaped record albums
catagories: ๐จ๐ญ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ฑ, ๐ถ, environment, food and drink, labour, lifestyle
cytherean
And despite their very alien appearance, the plant’s name does not have anything to do with the planet Venus, rather it is the chomping jaws that suggest the clam from which the goddess was birthed. Although adjectival just Venus would, as before science saw the need for terms like Venusian, Martian or Earthling, things pertaining to Venus were unfortunately described as venereal, as Mars was martial. An old-fashioned adjective that’s rarely seen since we have Venusian—to avoid other connotations—comes from the island Cythera in the Ionian archipelago, near where the sea-shell emerged from the sea, buoying up the goddess. Curiously, the plant’s taxonomical name Dionaea muscipula, a daughter of Dione (namely the Greek counterpart Aphrodite) and “mousetrap.”
Thursday 23 July 2015
mensch und รผbermensch
I’d guess I’d need to categorise this as one of those things the more one thinks about it, the more manifest it becomes, and I had not given much thought to the thesis beforehand that comics as more than caricature or a stock-epithet is an act of cultural reclamation.
wie ein wรผstensohn
Happily after the absolutely brilliant regular podcast Futility Closet introduced a few weeks back to a large portion of its listening audience the German and Eastern European phenomenon bound up in the works and personality of the imaginative adventure writer Karl May—and re-introduced to others with the glad occasion to reflect and wonder a little bit how this author was no longer remembered in some of the exotic lands where his stories took place, the topic has become for the team and commentators a sustained and very productive one.
Branching off to a series of tales set in the Middle East, rendered all the more amazing since like his stories that took place in the American Old West came across as convincing and more culturally sympathetic than those who’d actually experienced those places first hand, another iconic character, akin to Old Shatterhand and Winnetou, comes on scene, in the faithful guide Hadschi Halef Omar Ben Hadschi Abul Abbas Ibn Hadschi Dawud al Gossarah. Notwithstanding that fictional character was the only naming-convention in the Muslim tradition studied and committed to memory by committed fans from a European background, the stories were a lens on the casbah and the souq, which all things considered was not a bad introduction for the 1890s. The German disco band Dschinghis (Genghis) Khan, EuroVision Song Contest contender probably most famous for their party hit Moscow, Moscow—celebrated this literary figure with a particularly catchy number in 1980 (or try here, depending on your location). I hope all the characters in this particular universe eventually get their own treatment and profiles.