Chain of Flowers, part 1

—Searching for Nephites in Mexico.

—Julia Galef's taxonomy of books.

—A counter-intuitive article finds that Tibetan Buddhist monks fear death more than other groups.

—Music from the Butt of Man in Hell In Bosch.

—Six Theses on Hamlet from Roy Tsao.

—Interesting Music conference at Columbia.

—Jim Hughes on Pernkopf's gorgeous Nazi anatomy.

—Maureen Mullarkey on the official Obama portraits.

—The latest Dahir Insaat idea — a flying train.

—Ronald Coffman wins the 2018 Schock Prize in Mathematics for his contributions to pure and applied harmonic analysis.

Notes from June 08, 2012

—It's possible to develop a strange relationship with a book, maybe a kind of obsession or a kind of love. 

But in love, we come to expect a response from our partner, and we expect to watch our partner change and grow. 

This presents a problem since books are static objects and can't respond to us or change. 

So we must be continually seeking to understand them in different terms than we are accustomed to.

This continual reinterpretation allows for the illusion of change in an otherwise static object. 

"Note On A Rainy Night To A Friend In The North"

Etienne Leopold Trouvelet, "Total Eclipse of the Sun," circa 1878

You ask me when I am coming. I do not know.
I dream of your mountains and autumn pools brimming all night with the rain.
Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again, together in your Western window?
When shall I be hearing your voice again, all night in the rain?

[Li Shangyin, translated by Witter Banner]

Two Comments on Curiosity

"...[O]ver and above that lust of the flesh...there can also be in the mind itself, through those same bodily senses, a certain vain desire and curiosity, not of taking delight in the body, but of making experiments with the body's aid, and cloaked under the name of learning and knowledge. Because this is in the appetite to know, and the yes are the chief of the senses we use for attaining knowledge, it is called in Scripture the lust of the eyes

...[I]t is easy to distinguish between the way in which the sense pleasure and the way in which they serve curiosity. Pleasure goes after objects that are beautiful to see, hear, smell, taste, touch; but curiosity for the sake of experiment can go after quite contrary things, not in order to experience their unpleasantness, but through a mere itch to experience and find out."

[Augustine, The Confessions, Book Ten, section 35, translated by Frank Sheed]

The simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has, in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it.

But as those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually, it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and less of any agreeable effect. 

In short, the occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall be considered in their place. But whatever these powers are, or upon what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our passions.

[Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Part One, section 1]

Note from May 21st, 2010

—Characteristic of small children: charming and superfluous explanation.

Pliny on the portents of the bees

"Bees provide signs of future events both private and public, when a cluster of them hangs down in houses and temples — portents that have often been presaged by momentous events. They settled on the mouth of Plato when he was a young child and foretold the charm of his very pleasing eloquence. They settled in Drusus' camp at the time of our great victory at Arbalo: indeed augurs, who always think the presence of bees is a bad omen, are not invariably correct."

[Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 11, section 55, translated by John F. Healy]

Harry Everett Smith's "No. 11: Mirror Animations"