Before I ever published anything, I’d assumed that if I ever finished a book, there would be so much demand from family and friends alone that we’d have to go into a second printing before the release date.
↩︎ The Millions
Remembering the 155th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg – July 1 to 4, 1863 Jesse. Kevin W: “That first 17-minute film clip is not to be missed. A beautiful combination of animated maps, contemporary photos and battle recreations. Best combination that I have ever seen and the music makes it sound like an ancient Homeric battle.”
Heat wave kills 19 in Canada PhysOrg
The Encyclopedia of Women Philosophers: A New Web Site Presents the Contributions of Women Philosophers, from Ancient to Modern
Speaking of reading and family, My sestra Agnesa aka Aga had much in common with Agnes Repplier who also always takes into account human nature, which is “perfectly well known” and frequently unattractive. Watch the way she paces her thoughts, arranging her sentences like a masterful joke-teller or a good lawyer addressing the jury: “Civilization and culture are very old and very beautiful. [A conventional thought, stated matter-of-factly.] They imply refinement of humour, a disciplined taste, sensitiveness to noble impressions, and a wise acceptance of the laws of evidence. [Evidence delivered like muted pistols shots.] These things are not less valuable for being undervalued. [The punch line.]”
Chief among the virtues Repplier values are courage and cheerfulness, qualities linked in her mind. In another essay in Points of Friction, “The Cheerful Clan,” she finds them among the essayists who are her forebears:
“This is a call for courage, for the courage that lay as deep as pain in the souls of Stevenson, and Johnson, and Lamb. The combination of a sad heart and a gay temper, which is the most charming and the most lovable thing the world has got to show, gave to these men their hold upon the friends who knew them in life, and still wins for them the personal regard of readers. Lamb, the saddest and the gayest of the three, cultivated sedulously the little arts of happiness. He opened all the avenues of approach. He valued at their worth a good play, a good book, a good talk, and a good dinner. He lived in days when occasional drunkenness failed to stagger humanity, and when roast pig was within the income of an East India clerk. He had a gift, subtle rather than robust, for enjoyment, and a sincere accessibility to pain. His words were unsparing, his actions kind. He binds us to him by his petulance as well as by his patience, by his entirely human revolt from dull people and tiresome happenings.”
“How dare an old man enjoy a well-earned retirement before I’m done with him?” isn’t the sentiment of someone who can long be pleased by anything or anyone... Extract from an email ;-)
Casual research shows that some Amazon sellers are building fake-review empires.
↩︎ Reddit
*Cold River eBook: Jozef Imrich: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store
National Geographic is making digital copies of its century-plus archive of maps available to the public… with a twist. Immediate access to the full archive is subscriber-only. The rest of us get a new map a day, on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
So you might get this gorgeous 1961 panorama of London, with individual hand-painted buildings…
Between 2003 and 2012, civil engineers in Amsterdam excavated a brand-new North-South metro line along the banks of the river Amstel. A website (thankfully available in Dutch and English) documents what they found.
Rivers in cities are unlikely archaeological sites. It is not often that a riverbed, let alone one in the middle of a city, is pumped dry and can be systematically examined. The excavations in the Amstel yielded a deluge of finds, some 700,000 in all: a vast array of objects, some broken, some whole, all jumbled together. Damrak and Rokin proved to be extremely rich sites on account of the waste that had been dumped in the river for centuries and the objects accidentally lost in the water. The enormous quantity, great variety and everyday nature of these material remains make them rare sources of urban history. The richly assorted collection covers a vast stretch of time, from long before the emergence of the city right up to the present day. The objects paint a multi-facetted [sic] picture of daily life in the city of Amsterdam. Every find is a frozen moment in time, connecting the past and the present. The picture they paint of their era is extremely detailed and yet entirely random due to the chance of objects or remains sinking down into the riverbed and being retrieved from there. This is what makes this archaeological collection so fascinating, so poetically breathtaking and abstract at one and the same time.If you don’t love browsing through lost IDs, credit cards, and everyday coins, a section called “Object Stories” highlights the more noteworthy finds: batteries from the 19th century, stoneware jugs and tankards from the 16th century, pieces of samurai swords, and more.
