Epigraphy
n., the study of ancient inscriptions
Notable inscriptions:
Why Are There No Unicorns?
Why are there no unicorns? Perhaps horses develop in a way that cannot be easily modified to produce a unicorn, so such creatures have never arisen. Or maybe unicorn-like animals have been born in the past but because there is no advantage for a horse to have a horn, such creatures did not thrive and were weeded out by natural selection. More here.
All about unicorns, Unicorns in Medieval Bestiary, The Cryptid Zoo: Unicorns in Cryptozoology, Elasmotherium - a giant rhinoceros which stood two meters high and six meters (20 feet) long, with a single two-meter-long (7 feet) horn in the forehead, entry at Occultopedia, and Sir Thomas Browne about unicorns horns in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and of course (?) wikipedia has an entry as well on the subject.
Septeto Nacional and Son Music
Septeto Nacional (National Septet), or the Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñeiro, is a group credited with expanding the Son (music) musical style. Son was mainly based on vocals percussion and strings, but Ignacio Piñeiro was not satisfied by the existing sound of the Son groups. Thus in 1927 he created his own group: The ‘Septeto Nacional’ adding, for the first time in the history of Son, a trumpet as lead instrument.
Son as described at CMBR:
Like much of Cuban culture, son is a product of the interaction of African-derived music and the music of the descendants of the Spanish colonists. Son was originally a rural musical form that developed as an accompaniment to dancing, but it has become a dominant popular music in the urban setting of twentieth-century Cuba. As it became popular with urban audiences in the early twentieth-century, son was adapted to modern instrumentation and larger bands. Typical son instrumentation could include the tres (a type of guitar with three sets of closely spaced strings), standard guitars and various hand drums and percussion instruments. American jazz instrumentation also influenced son, and many sons also include parts for brass instruments.
Pseudepigraphy
Pseudepigrapha, from Greek pseudes = “false” and “epigraphe” = “inscription”, are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed authorship is unfounded.
Moralia
The Moralia (loosely translatable as Matters relating to customs and mores) of the first-century pagan priest Plutarch of Delphi is an eclectic collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches. Many generations of Europeans have read or imitated them, including Montaigne and the Renaissance Humanists and Enlightenment philosophers.
Renowned as a biographer because of his “Parallel Lives,” Plutarch (born about 50 C.E.) was also a teacher of philosophy in Rome, a priest at Delphi, and an engaging essayist with a warm, urbane, and judicious style. Whether advising about marriage and education, discussing prophecy, divine providence, and life after death, setting forth rules for politicians, or commenting on personal virtues and vices, his Moral Essays reveal not just Plutarch’s thinking but also the world in which he lived.
Answer to puzzle 290507
Answer to puzzle 290507 : All you need is two vertical and one horizontal cuts
The Traveler’s Dilemma
When playing this simple game, people consistently reject the rational choice. In fact, by acting illogically, they end up reaping a larger reward–an outcome that demands a new kind of formal reasoning. Explanation by Kaushik Basu. I guess most people don’t understand Nash equilibria IRL.
Can you cut a cake into 8 pieces with three movements?
Solution tomorrow…
Klingon Language Institute
The Klingon Language Institute (KLI) is a Flourtown, Pennsylvania based organization devoted to studying and teaching the constructed language, Klingon from the Star Trek science fiction universe. It was founded in 1992, and publishes a quarterly journal called HolQeD (language science). Each year it holds a qep’a’ (meeting) that is open to all members. And even the Klingons seem to have a wiki…
majQa’ (well done in plain English)
Birthday
Today I’m celebrating ! Yep another year has gone by. Chocolate cake is on its way.
And the Winner is
The 60th Annual 2007 Cannes Film Festival was run from May 16 to 27, 2007. And winners are:
Palme d’Or
4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) by Cristian Mungiu
The film is set in Romania in the final years of the Ceauşescu era. It tells the tragic story of two students, room mates in the university dormitory, who try to arrange an illegal abortion for one of them, during the communist regime of the late 1980s. Official site. IMDB.
60th Anniversary Award
PARANOID PARK by Gus Van Sant
Grand Prix
MOGARI NO MORI by Naomi Kawase
Best Actress Award
JEON DO YEON for Secret sunshine
Best Actor Award
LAVRONENKO for Izgnanie
Best Director Award
JULIAN SCHNABEL for Le scaphandre et le papillon
Best Screenplay Award
FAITH AKIN for Auf der anderen seite
Jury Prize ex-aequo
PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi / Vincent Paronnaud
STELLET LICHT by Carlos Reygadas
Prize "Vulcain de l’Artiste-Technicien", awarded by the C.S.T.
JANUSZ KAMINSKI for Le scaphandre et le papillon
CAMERA D’OR
Caméra d’Or
MEDUZOT by Etgar Keret / Shira Geffen
Mention spéciale
CONTROL by Anton Corbijn
SHORT FILMS
Palme d’Or
VER LLOVER by Elisa Miller
Mention spéciale
AH MA by Anthony Chen
RUN by Mark Albiston
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Un Certain Regard Prize - Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’(Nesfarsit) by Cristian Nemescu
Special Jury Prize
ACTRICES by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
Jury Coup de Cœur
BIKUR HATIZMORET by Eran Kolirin
CINEFONDATION
1st Prize
AHORA TODOS PARECEN CONTENTOS by Gonzalo Tobal
3rd Prize ex-aequo
A REUNION by Hong Sung-Hoon
Source the Cannes Film Festival site
Pointy-Haired Boss
The Pointy-Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB) is Dilbert’s boss in the Dilbert comic strip. He is notable for his gross incompetence and unawareness of his surroundings, yet somehow retains power in the workplace. In the Dilbert TV series, in which he was voiced by comedian Larry Miller, the character was notably smarter (although still quite stupid) and more actively evil.
The phrase “pointy-haired boss” has acquired a generic usage to refer to incompetent managers. It is also possible to speak of someone being pointy-haired or having pointy hair metaphorically, meaning that they possess PHB-like traits. A company which has too many PHBs getting promoted to higher-levels is often called a PHC, or pointy-haired company. The academic version, a Pointy-Haired Dean (PHD), is similar.
In certain discussions, particularly on the Internet, the term Horn Hair is used to refer to a PHB.
Other fictional managers are David Brent, Joanna Clore, Solomon O’Sullivan, and Michael Gary Scott.
Source Wikipedia
Cannes Festival - links
Official site of the Cannes Film Festival
and
extensive coverage of the festival at the NYT
Paper Planes - How to build the world’s best
Flit! A paper plane went shooting across the classroom. Flit! Another dived from the other side of the room. Then conflicting squadrons of these folded darts met in messy combat. Flit! And then one flew with precision into the back of humourless teacher’s head.
Will working from home save the planet - or just employers’ costs?
Work from home and save the planet. It seems reasonable: if you don’t have to travel to work there are fewer cars pumping out greenhouse gases. Homeworking can indeed be good for the environment, according to a report from a team at Oxford University - but only if it is done in “a planned and managed way”.
More here. The study does show that solutions need to be looked at intelligently and innovatively.
Update : did you know that the UK has a National Work From Home Day ? I guess I’m lucky since I work about 60% from home and 40% at my office in Spain or Italy.
New category
Administrative note : I added Ars Poetica to my tags/categories. Ars Poetica is a term meaning “The Art of Poetry” or “On the Nature of Poetry”. It originated with a work by Horace and has since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. It seems like a fitting name for posts about poets and poems. (text in Latin - text in English)
Waterfall
Waterfall, a 1961 lithograph by M. C. Escher (have a closer look at this image - there is more to it than you would think)
Behive
- the other way also).The Bandwidth of Books
According to the Mexican critic Gabriel Zaid, writing in So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, the human race publishes a book every 30 seconds. If current trends continue, by 2052 the number of people writing and publishing a book in a given year will exceed the number of people who will read one. Zaid sympathizes with the overwhelmed reader and points the finger at the inconsiderate author for whom, in extreme cases of verbosity, he recommends a “chastity glove.”
Britain becomes separated from the European mainland
This happened 6000 BC according to this interactive timeline of British history
Via JK
