You should read this for 9/16/2017:
Art
Janet Takahashi has videos teaching Step-by-Step Uncial Calligraphy Half uncial is the hand used in the Book of Kells.
The Internet Fireplace Sometimes a looped video of a crackling fire is just the thing.
Books and Writing
From Glenn Fleishman via Medium: Hot Metal Transforms the Speed of Information “From 1450 to the mid-1880s, nearly every printed word was set one tedious letter at a time. Then the machine age grabbed hold.”
Lani Sarem’ was accused of falsifying sales when her debut YA reached No.1 in the New York Times Young Adult Best Seller list. “I had purchased the books directly from my distributor, Itasca Books, they would not count as sales for purposes of the New York Times list. If they were purchased from booksellers — brick and mortar or online — they would count. While I didn’t limit my purchases to only those booksellers involved in the Times list, I did purchase books in bulk from booksellers to resell them later at events.” Let me translated that for you: She deliberately, knowingly, tried to game the system and got caught. I’ll never read or review anything of hers.
Via The Chicago Tribune: Scratch-off reading list: A novel poster idea
Food and Drink
One of the traditional New England meals is the New England boiled dinner, made with corned beef. Red flannel hash is what you do with the left-overs, and that crop of fall beets. Don’t skimp on the butter.
History and Archaeology
Newly unearthed 3,500 year-old tomb with mummies unveiled in Egypt The tomb of a goldsmith Amenemhat and his wife Amenhotep was discovered near near Luxor, at the Draa Abul Nagaa necropolis, in southern Egypt on Saturday. The tomb contains “mummies, sarcophagi, statuettes, pots and other artifacts,” according to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.
Via the BBC: Carbon dating shows an ancient Indian manuscript has the earliest recorded origin of the zero symbol. Zero began as a dot, then evolved to the hollow circle we use today.
Yale University offers free online course on the Early Middle Ages The course, taught by Yale Religion professor Paul Freedman, is taught via a series of 22 YouTube 45 minute lectures. It covers the usual major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe and includes “the conversion of Europe to Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam and the Arabs, the ‘Dark Ages,’ Charlemagne and the Carolingian renaissance, and the Viking and Hungarian invasions.” Haven’t seen it; don’t know if it’s inappropriately Western-centric or not yet; but it looks interesting. That said, I’m getting really tired of medieval history classes that cover the East in 10 minutes, the Vikings in 8, and completely ignore Africa.
Pay It Forward
“Being generous requires us to dedicate profound thought to what the person receiving our generosity actually needs,” McNamara says. “So often, the church makes generosity synonymous with the free giving of stuff, but it’s not. I’ve seen Westerners come in and drop off a whole bunch of stuff — toys, free food, tons of clothes. Typically it’s not useful, they’re paying way too much for overseas shipping and suddenly the local food or clothing vendors don’t make their living for the week, and those are important jobs for struggling communities.”
Science and Technology
High-Speed Hummingbird Photos Reveal Their Wacky Body Parts This photo essay about how hummingbirds fly, and feed while flying, is inspired by the July 2017 issue of National Geographic “Unlocking the Secrets Behind the Hummingbird’s Frenzy.” And if that’s not enough, see this Hummingbird Whisperer at UCLA. There’s video hereWhen I first started at UCLA I recognized the sound of a hummingbird in flight, and was delighted to see both Anna’s Hummingbird’s and the tiny Calliope hummingbirds on campus. I quickly obtained my very own hummingbird feeder.
Via The New York Times In a Fragile Partnership, Dolphins Help Catch Fish in Myanmar
On Friday September 15, 2017, Casino will plunge to a fire death on Saturn. The Cassini–Huygens unmanned mission to collect and transmit data from and about Saturn and its environs has been sending us images and other data from its orbit around Saturn since 2004. Thinks to your tax dollars helping NASA learn more about our solar system, you can down load a free ebook for Kindle, iBooks (epub) or .pdf about Cassini-Huygens and its mission: The Saturn System Through the Eyes of Cassini.
