Today I learned about…Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
-Epictetus
This list of terms of venery (the collective name for a group of animals) is often pleasantly alliterative and even quite poetic at times.
On this day in 1859, Joshua A. Norton of San Francisco proclaimed himself Norton I, Emporer of the United States. Where have all our visionary madmen gone? They’re still here, but, in our insecurity, we ignore them (or banish them), and elevate the facile instead.
On this day in 1914, the last known passenger pigeon, Martha, died in Cincinnati.
The revolutionary charge of utopia
In architecture, critical activity has always been connected with the concept of utopia; utopia is not an alternative model: it puts forward unresolved problems (not ‘problem solving’ but ‘problem finding’). We could say that the original motive of utopia is hope. Utopia is the true preparation for projecting, as play is preparation of life. The revolutionary charge of utopia, the hope which is at its foundation and the criticism which is its direct consequence, bring back its dignity as a rational, ordering activity.
- SUPERSTUDIO, The Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanization, 1969.
Let’s talk about utopias again. Rest in peace, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia
Wherever God erects a house of prayer / the Devil always builds a chapel there; / And ’t will be found, upon examination, / the latter has the largest congregation.
– Daniel Defoe, “The True-Born Englishman,” 1701
Everyone we meet along the way
Whoever we are, we’re always moving along our own routes, finding ourselves in foreign lands, reaching beyond the curtains of our own experience; everyone we meet along the way remains in our memory, their every word and every touch.
-Serhiy Zhadan, Voroshilovgrad
- The energy of the universe is constant.
- The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
Rudolf Clausius, Concerning Several Conveniently Applicable Forms for the Main Equations of the Mechanical Heat Theory, 1865.
Today I learned about the Hayflick Limit: the number of times a human cell can undergo mitosis before its genetic telomeres disappear, causing the cell population to cease reproducing. Critically, cancer cells are able to extend their telomeres , reproducing forever.
History is the vast store of human conciousness adrift in the gulf of time, the present living in the past and the past living in the present…what survives the wreck of time is the force of imagination and the power of expression.
Lewis Lapham, The Art of Editing No. 4, the Paris Review, Issue 229
Switch ‘the’ to ‘a’ and the world changes.
Today I learned about Poles of Inaccessibility.
Today I learned that on this day in 1570, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, considered the first true modern atlas, was published by Abraham Otelius.
You weren’t educated, you were trained.
Alejandro Zambra, Multiple Choice (it’s a beautiful, fascinating, heartbreaking little book BTW)
Not Another Way of Saying Things
Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both reasound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to learn about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s not another way of saying things: these are new things.
Yuri Herrera, Signs Preceding the End of the World
Don’t take any guff from these swine
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(Profanity redacted)
And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, and the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming, and the sign said: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sound of silence.”
Paul Simon
Today I learned about…The McGurk Effect, a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception.
Today I learned about…Allison Guyat. I should have been a geologist. Or an oceanographer. Or
The clearest and most creative thoughts
The clearest and most creative thoughts are those that occur during one of three states: the first is at the onset of sorrow, the second in bed just before falling asleep, and the third in the latrine. The last involves the breakdown of concentrated matters exhaled by the bowels and the intestines and this breakdown and exhalation taking place in the lower part has the effect of breaking down, at the same time and place, whatever may have coagulated in the higher folds of the brain. Some of this matter then departs in a downward direction while some of the images formed by the brain rise, like steam rising from the earth to thicken into a raincloud.
Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, Leg over Leg, Volume Three.
Today I learned about…the Bengali Hungry Generation poets (1961-1965), whose approach was to confront and disturb the prospective readers’ preconceived colonial canons.
What War of the Worlds Did
All unwittingly Mr Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time. They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can so convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create nationwide panic…They have cast a brilliant and cruel light upon the failure of popular education….They have shown up the incredible stupidity, lack of nerve and ignorance of thousands…If people can be frightened out of their wits by mythical men from Mars, they can be frightened into fanaticism by the fears of Reds, or convinced that America is in the hands of 60 families, or aroused to revenge against any minority, or terrorised into subservience to leadership because of any imaginable menace.
Dorothy Thompson, New York Herald Tribune, 1938, an excellent read, really.
via What War of the World Did, also an excellent read, and from which I have taken the title of this post.
Today I learned about…Jerrie Cobb, a female pilot and obvious badass who unofficially underwent the same physical testing as the Mercury astronauts at the time, placing in the top 2% of all astronaut candidates, but was never considered for flight.