Sunday, October 20, 2019

Hundreds of thousands of people read Colourful Shades of Cold Rivers on Instagram. They may be the future ....


Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.— P. G. Wodehouse, born on this date in 1881


Modern Humans Inherited Even More DNA From Neanderthals And Denisovans Than We Thought Gizmodo


What’s an Influencer Worth to Books
Ask a speaker of English, Tahitian, or Swahili how many colors there are, and you’re likely to get the same answer: 11. How Come?  



How should we think about what it is to read, what forms that reading takes, and why we turn to books in the first place? Leah Price has answers  Cold River Has the Questions  


'Turn Out Your Pockets on the Tablecloth'



We are born each morning, shelled upon
A sheet of light that paves
The palaces of sight, and brings again
The river shining through the field of graves.”

Auden, you say?  No, Larkin, though Auden haunts the poem. Larkin had mostly shrugged off Yeats but Auden’s influence persisted. “Many Famous Feet Have Trod” was completed on this date, Oct. 15, in 1946, and (wisely) not published during Larkin’s lifetime. Read out of context, the passage above from the second of the poem’s thirteen eight-line stanzas sounds almost ecstatic – psychedelic? visionary? -- by Larkin’s customary standards. In Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2014), James Booth likens the poem to the rhetoric in Fitzgerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.



Can You Draw a Perfect Circle?



This maddening little web toy on vole.wtf challenges visitors to draw a perfect circle and judges them on how well they do. After dozens of tries with a mouse, I could only manage 92.9% perfection (which looks more like 80% tbh).



Autumn Light: Pico Iyer on Finding Beauty in Impermanence and Luminosity in Loss


“What do we have to hold on to? Only the certainty that nothing will go according to design; our hopes are newly built wooden houses, sturdy until someone drops a cigarette or match.”










Hundreds of thousands of people read books on Instagram. They may be the future


FastCompany – “Last year, the New York Public Library released an experiment to put the full text of novels in its Instagram Stories. Today, an estimated 300,000 people are reading books this way.”
“In August 2018, Instagram followers of the New York Public Library were tapping through their Insta Stories when something unexpected showed up: the full text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, designed for a small screen, with small animations that brought the story to life as you flipped. The project, known as Insta Novels, is part of the NYPL’s goal to reach beyond its walls and convince more people to read books. In pursuit of this mission, the institution has turned to one of the largest social media platforms in the world, bringing classic literature to Instagram’s 400 million daily active users…Designed by the design agency Mother New York, Insta Novels is the winner of Fast Company‘s 2019 Innovation by Design Awards in the Apps & Games category. Since launching in August 2018, more than 300,000 people have read the NYPL’s Insta Novels, and the NYPL’s Instagram account has gained 130,000 followers. While gaining more followers was definitely part of the project’s aim, the NYPL is more excited—and surprised—that people actually read the books that it published on Instagram.”

 




Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sweet and Wholesome


I once asked a guy what he wanted in a woman. He replied, "A whore 
in bed, Simone de Beauvoir in the parlor, and the Virgin Mary on a pedestal."  An impossible combo. Some just want the girl next door. 
Bobby Darin, Dream Lover. With pix of Sandra Dee.
Audrey Hepburn, Moon River
Doris Day, Que Sera, Sera, 1956.  What did she mean? The tautological, Necessarily, what will be, will be? Or the non-tautologically fatalistic, What will be, necessarily will be? Either way, she died in May.
Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind, 1956. I'll take Lady Gogi over Lady Gaga any day.


Saturday Night at the Oldies: Render unto Caesar . . .


Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's . . .
Have you stateside readers settled accounts with the Infernal Revenue Service?  If yes, order up one scotch, one bourbon, and one beer and enjoy this live version of Taxman  featuring Harrison and Clapton.  Stevie Ray Vaughan's blistering version
. . . and render unto God the things that are God's.
Herewith, five definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.
Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.
Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he has something to say.
George Harrison, My Sweet Lord
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Harrison was the Beatle with depth.  Lennon was the radical, McCartney the romantic, and Ringo the regular guy.
Good YouTuber comment: "Immortal song, even if all things must pass . . . "