Random knowledge

Twin Sisters is the English-language title of De Tweeling, a 2002 Dutch film, directed by Ben Sombogaart. The film was a 76th Academy Awards nominee for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2003. Tonight on TV. One comment : good movie, but not good enough to be listed in my movie list.

Added to my daily reading list: BiblioOdyssey about (and I cite) books, Illustrations, Science, History, Visual Materia Obscura, Eclectic Bookart. Via (tx).

And another recent discovery of mine is : Curious Expeditions, (and I cite) devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre and the obscure from around the globe.

The carte de visite was a type of photograph made popular from the mid-1850s in Europe and from 1860 and on in America. The first carte-de-visite was patented in Paris in 1854 by André-Adolphe-Eugene Disderi. As its name suggests, it was very similar in size to the common visiting card of that period. It consisted of a photograph that was generally printed on albumen paper and then mounted on cards measuring 2.5 x 4 inches.

Usually an albumen print was used. The albumen print was invented in 1850 by Louis-Desire Blanquart-Evrard (1802-1872), but was rarely used in the United States until 1860. Up until 1890 it was the most prevalent type of print. Albumen was the term used for eggs in the 19th century. Egg white (albumen), sugar from grape juice, salt (sodium chloride) and silver nitrate were applied to paper to produce the albumen print. The albumen prints were mounted on various-sized cards to prevent the thin fragile paper from curling or tearing. For the first time in photographic history there was a means of inexpensively producing multiple images from a single negative. The Carte de visite became so popular that people started to collect them.

Portraits of Scientists: Increase Lapham’s Cartes-de-visite Collection. Collected by pioneering Wisconsin antiquarian Increase Lapham between 1862-75, this album of carte-de-visite photographic portraits depicts many notable 19th-century scientists from America and Europe (source of images above).
And here cartes-de-visite studio portraits of entertainers, actors, singers, comedians and theater managers who were involved with or performed on the American stage in the mid- to late 1800s.
A brief history of the Carte de Visite from The American Museum of Photography.

August 30, 2006, Naguib Mahfouz died, aged 94. He was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a term for a song stuck in one’s head. An earworm is also the larva of the moth Helicoverpa zea.

Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius. It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature (which, being created from God, was divine), and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without Divine aid.

The international symbol for recycling is a Möbius loop.

Following my post yesterday about the Hagia Sophia, I compiled a list of 10 buildings I would like to see IRL. Probably you know them all, but as me from books (eh.. or the internet). Limiting this list to 10 buildings is also making me exclude dozens of other buildings that one should see, but I have other things I want to do as well besides visiting this list.

1. The Hagia Sophia of course.
2. Angkor Wat, a temple at Angkor, Cambodia
3. The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia
4. Chichen Itza, a pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, present-day Mexico.
5. Petra, an archaeological site in Jordan
6. Machu Picchu, a pre-Columbian Inca city located at 2,430 m altitude on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru
7. The Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and located in the middle of Beijing, China
8. The 12 monolithic churches at Lalibela, a town in northern Ethiopia
9. The Alhambra, located in Granada, Spain, considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Muslim architecture. It was designed as a palace and fortress for the Moorish monarchs of Granada.
10. The Taj Mahal, a mausoleum located in Agra, India.

This I need to see: the Hagia Sophia. But before I go I need to do some study work again : Byzantine history, culture and architecture, the Ottoman Empire, Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, and, and. An amazing crossroad of history and culture. And why not move over there ?

Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek or Slavic brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century, who became missionaries of Christianity in Khazaria and Great Moravia. They are credited with devising and spreading the Glagolitic alphabet, which was used for Slavonic manuscripts before the development of the Cyrillic, the alphabet derived from Glagolitic, that, with small modifications, is still used in a number of Slavic languages. After their death their pupils became missionaries among other Slavic peoples. Both brothers were glorified in Eastern Orthodoxy as “equal-to-apostles” and were canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. They became the patron saints of Europe in 1980 (among others).

(came across this in a book I’m reading -discovered this in my library a bit by coincidence…-, The Historian, which makes me want to visit Bulgaria, Romania and of course Istanbul)

An agonized figure is depicted against a blood red Oslofjord skyline in Edvard Munch’s Scream (1893), National Gallery, Oslo.

FirstGroup, organisers of the forthcoming First Monster Duathlon, revealed today it has taken out a £1m insurance policy with Royal and Sun Alliance to pay out in the event of an attack by or proven sighting of the Loch Ness Monster during the 120km team duathlon that will be staged around the shores of Loch Ness on Sunday 2nd September. More here.

The hero of the novel The Time Machine, which a young writer Herbert George Wells published in I895, travels on a mechanical device into an unfathomable future. There he finds that mankind has split into two species: the Eloi, who are frail and defenseless aristocrats living in idle gardens and feeding on the fruits of the trees; and the Morlocks, a race of underground proletarians who, after ages of laboring in darkness, have gone blind, but driven by the force of the past, go on working at their rusted intricate machinery that produces nothing. Shafts with winding staircases unite the two worlds. On moonless nights, the Morlocks climb up out of their caverns and feed on the Eloi. The nameless hero, pursued by Morlocks, escapes back into the present. He brings with him as a solitary token of his adventure an unknown flower that falls into dust and that will not blossom on earth until thousands and thousands of years.

Alex Ross, the well-known music critic of the NYT, has finished his book. Being a regular reader of his blog, I’m convinced this is a must-have (Amazon, Barnes & Noble)

Table of Contents

PART I: 1900-1933

1. THE GOLDEN AGE: Mahler, Strauss, and the Fin de Siècle

6. CITY OF NETS: Berlin in the Twenties

PART II: 1933-1945

7. THE ART OF FEAR: Music in Stalin’s Russia

9. DEATH FUGUE: Music in Hitler’s Germany

PART III: 1945-2000

10. ZERO HOUR: The U.S. Army and German Music, 1945-1949

15. SUNKEN CATHEDRALS: Music at Century’s End

Review from Publishers Weekly

Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker, leads a whirlwind tour from the Viennese premiere of Richard Strauss’s Salome in 1906 to minimalist Steve Reich’s downtown Manhattan apartment. The wide-ranging historical material is organized in thematic essays grounded in personalities and places, in a disarmingly comprehensive style reminiscent of historian Otto Friedrich. Thus, composers who led dramatic lives—such as Shostakovich’s struggles under the Soviet regime—make for gripping reading, but Ross treats each composer with equal gravitas. The real strength of this study, however, lies in his detailed musical analysis, teasing out—in precise but readily accessible language—the notes that link Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story to Arnold Schoenberg’s avant-garde compositions or hint at a connection between Sibelius and John Coltrane. Among the many notable passages, a close reading of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes stands out for its masterful blend of artistic and biographical insight. Readers new to classical music will quickly seek out the recordings Ross recommends, especially the works by less prominent composers, and even avid fans will find themselves hearing familiar favorites with new ears.

Did you know it’s illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon? Or that in Ohio you’re not allowed to get a fish drunk? Alex Wade celebrates the spirit of the silly season with a list of the world’s most ridiculous laws.

Draculin is a glycoprotein found in the saliva of vampire bats. It is composed of 411 amino acids. It functions as an anticoagulant, keeping the blood of the bitten victim from clotting while the bat is drinking.

Oculus (pl. oculi) is the Latin word for eye, and is used most commonly as the name of the round opening in the top of the dome of the Pantheon in Rome, Italy, and less often in reference to other round windows. The oculus which lets in a round shaft of light that at different times of year illuminates different niches and was meant to function originally in at least two distinct ways. First, it acted as a spotlight which over the course of the year gave fair and measured visibility to the various deities, foreign and native, whose statues inhabited the niches around the dome’s interior. Second, the oculus also served as a calendar marking time, uniting the Roman world under the aegis of the only absolutely equitable system of measurement they knew, the clock of heaven itself.

The Canon 1Ds Mark III is a 21.1 megapixel full-frame digital SLR camera with 5fps continuous shooting and 45 AF points. Other standout features of the 1Ds Mark III include Canon’s Live View shooting mode, 3 inch LCD screen and Integrated Cleaning System. PhotographyBLOG.

And what is Nikon going to do ?

Enos (chimpanzee), Gordo (monkey), Ham the Chimp, Laika (dog), more animals in space

The Gypsy and the Wind, poem by Federico Garcia Lorca

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.