Random knowledge

Nessun Dorma (None Shall Sleep) is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, and is one of the best known tenor arias in all opera. It is sung by Calaf, Il principe ignoto (The unknown prince), who falls in love at first sight with the beautiful but cold Princess Turandot. However, any man who wishes to wed Turandot must first answer her three riddles. If he fails, he will be beheaded.

I just heard this song watching Mar Adentro, a 2004 film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar. This superb movie is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a Spanish ship mechanic left quadriplegic after a diving accident who fought a 28-year campaign in support of euthanasia and his right to end his own life. In the movie the song is performed by José Manuel Zapata. Here is another version by Luciano Pavarotti. This particular song was also played at his funeral last year during the flypast by the Italian Air Force :

Lyrics

The Prince

Nessun dorma, Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d’amore e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà, no, no!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
che ti fa mia!

Chorus

Il nome suo nessun saprà!
e noi dovrem, ahimè, morir!

The Prince

Dilegua, o notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
All’alba vincerò!

With Kosovo unilaterally declaring independence and a host of wannabe states looking to follow its lead, you might be thinking it’s about time to set up your own country. You’ve picked out a flag, written a national anthem, even printed up money with your face on it. But what’s the next step? Creating a new country isn’t as easy as you think.

Joshua Keating explains how to proceed.

“Summertime” is the name of an aria composed by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, and has become a popular jazz standard.

Here is a version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (there are literally thousands of covers!):

Lyrics

Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high
Oh your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’
So hush little baby, don’t you cry
One of these mornings
You’re goin’ to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take the sky
But till that morning
There’s a nothin’ can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin’ by

Cosmology, from the Greek: κοσμολογία (cosmologia, κόσμος (cosmos) order + λογος (logos) word, reason, plan) is the quantitative (usually mathematical) study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity’s place in it. Though the word cosmology is recent (first used in 1730 in Christian Wolff’s Cosmologia Generalis), study of the Universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion.

A decade ago astronomers made the revolutionary discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. They are still working out is implications. The quickening expansion will eventually pull galaxies apart faster than light, causing them to drop out of view. This process eliminates reference points for measuring expansion and dilutes the distinctive products of the big bang to nothingness. In short, it erases all the signs that a big bang ever occurred. To our distant descendants, the universe will look like a small puddle of stars in an endless, changeless void.What knowledge has the universe already erased? (via sciam)

Further reading

Physical cosmology : Cosmic Journey: A History of Scientific Cosmology from the American Institute of Physics

Esoteric cosmology : wikipedia

Religious cosmology: wikipedia

Just heard Bart Simpson use this expression… It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings is a proverb, essentially meaning that one shouldn’t assume the outcome of some activity (frequently a sports game) until it has actually finished.

This phrase in turn refers to the impression by many that at the end of every opera, an aria is sung by a heavy-set woman dressed like a valkyrie. A famous example of this is Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (aka the Ring cycle). This is a set of 4 separate operas (lasting about 15 hours), in which the final scene includes Brünnhilde (a very large Valkyrie) singing, and then riding onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre. The set collapses and the entire cycle ends up in the Rhine river, where it started. The “fat lady” is often illustrated with a horned helmet, a spear, possibly a shield, and possibly blond braids (to suggest Scandinavian ancestry).

Source - wikipedia

Fermat’s Last Theorem is the name of the statement in number theory that: if an integer is greater than , then the equation has no solutions in non-zero integers , , and .

The fact that the problem’s statement is understandable by schoolchildren makes it all the more frustrating, and it has probably generated more incorrect proofs than any other problem in the history of mathematics. No correct proof was found for 357 years, when a proof was finally published by Andrew Wiles in 1995.

Well, why not give this a try for a change ? Le Matin des Magiciens was a book written by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in 1960 or in October 1959. It was first published in English in 1963 with the title The Morning of the Magicians. The book was a general overview of the occult and the works of Charles Fort. It is the best known example of Fantastic Realism (Réalisme fantastique), a literary movement in the 1960s.

Vorticism was a short lived British art movement of the early 20th century. It is considered to be the only significant British movement of the early 20th century but lasted less than three years. Vorticism is the name of an art movement founded by Percy Wyndham Lewis. The group was formed in June 1914. The name Vorticism was however given to the movement by Ezra Pound in 1913.

Vorticism grew as a British reaction to rival continental art movements. In France, Cubism had held sway for some years. The Italians had answered this with their mult-medial project, Futurism. There is little doubt that Vorticism borrowed heavily from the Futurists in the way they printed manifestos, prints and definitions.

The British Vorticist art movement can be contrasted with these foreign movements, and the differences reveal the areas which make the Vorticist quite distinct. The Futurist was concerned with movement and new machinery - the romance of new technology. The Vorticist was concerned with stasis, and disregarded technology, old and new. The Cubist was concerned with apples, guitars and life in the cafe. The Vorticist was not afraid of looking outside the cafe and observing the architecture which surrounded the cafe.

Also, there was a hint of aggression, or conflict in most Vorticist works that is entirely missing in French work. Vorticist works are characterised by the unease created by a disrupted perspective. it is as though there is such thing as life seen through a ‘vorticist lens’. This lens distorts the neat lines, and sends them in different directions, none in parallel. Latent power, sinister, potentially explosive forces seem to reverberate through Vorticist works. Meanwhile the Futurists were excited by the actual explosion. (source)

As this sounds a bit mysterious (…), some images produced by this art movement (images from vorticism.co.uk whre you’ll find more examples and explanations) :

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 in Edo (now Tokyo) – October 12, 185 was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, and one of the last great artists in that tradition. Ukiyo-e (浮世絵, Ukiyo-e?), “pictures of the floating world”, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre and pleasure quarters. It is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan.

His One Hundred Famous Views of Edo are published and also available online.

What does Nietzsche mean to philosophers today? Excessively sensitive, anti-liberal, and irrelevant, or radical, prescient, and misunderstood? Six philosophers answer Kritika&Kontext’s questions on Nietzsche. Their responses make one thing clear: Nietzsche still divides opinion.

Charles Taylor may be the most important philosopher writing in English today. He is drawn to big issues like the evolution of the modern self, and his latest book defends religion from its critics.

Books review of two books on irrationalism and behavioral economics. The writer describes ordering a book on Amazon and adding money to her order in order to qualify for free shipping. She cost herself an extra $12.91. Why do people do things like this? Actual economic life is full of miscalculations. By Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker.

Some extracts:

Dan Ariely says in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions: “Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless—they are systematic.” Anchoring seems to be in play, or a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions. But there is also the Endowment effect, or people place a higher value on objects they own relative to objects they do not, and several other strange behaviour.

The second book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, agrees that faced with certain options, people will consistently make the wrong choice. Therefore, they argue, people should be offered options that work with, rather than against, their unreasoning tendencies. These foolish-proof choices they label “nudges.”

So what to do with this information ? We can try to become more aware of the patterns governing our blunders, as “Predictably Irrational” urges. Or we can try to prod people toward more rational choices, as “Nudge” suggests.

That’s why I love jazz…Oscar Peterson playing the piano…

…and here with Count Basie…

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.

(source text - official film web site)

Helvetica is the name of a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger. More info on this typeface here and here.

Kevin Kelly, one of the most intelligent Internet enthusiasts in the USA, gives a glimpse of his forthcoming book, which tackles the question of how the culture industry can survive when everything on the internet can be copied for free. “If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.” In Kevin Kelly’s blog Technium you can watch his “Book in Progress.”

Cannibals. Fakirs. Equilibrists. Crime and punishment. Rituals. Slaves, cults and customs. Warriors and weapons. Musicians and mendicants. Dance, dress, undress and body modification. Structures, conveyances, beasts, and more breasts than you can shake a stick at! This is The Secret Museum of Mankind.

Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by “Manhattan House” and sold by “Metro Publications”, both of New York, its “Five Volumes in One” was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.

Advertised as “World’s Greatest Collection of Strange & Secret Photographs” and marketed mainly to overheated adolescents (see the 1942 Keen ad, left), it consists of nothing but photos and captions with no further exposition. This was not a book published to educate (despite appearing on some public library’s shelves), but to titillate (literally)– it’s emphasis was on the female form (”Female Beauty Round the World”) and fashion, and it featured as many National-Geographic-style native breasts as possible. But anything lurid, weird, or just plain unusual is fair game. This was a book to gawk at by flashlight under the bedcovers.

(Text from the homepage)

When the Michigan Union published “Michiganetiquette” in 1943, World War Two was at full boil, transforming campus and students’ lives. But this little booklet of instructions for meeting and dating women offered common sense, gentility, and moral values to students in the midst of one of America’s greatest crises.

150 years ago, Charles Darwin unveiled his theory of natural selection. To mark this anniversary The Guardian brings you the definitive guide to the naturalist’s great book, with extracts from key chapters and essays from leading scientists and thinkers. There is of course the easy but well written introduction at Wikipedia on Charles Darwin as well.

Over the years the theory of natural selection has been refined to result into the current gene-centered view of evolution.

A video from the National Geographic Channel’s “Six Degrees Could Change the World” explores the potential impacts of global warming degree-by-degree—through six degrees over the next hundred years. Filmed on five continents, the program tracks the world’s top climate researchers and follows ranchers, photographers, and everyday people to uncover climate trends.

The New Yorker’s first cover (February 21, 1925), of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin, the magazine’s first art editor. The gentleman on the original cover is referred to as “Eustace Tilley,” a character created for The New Yorker by Corey Ford. Eustace Tilley was the hero of a series entitled “The Making of a Magazine,” which began on the inside front cover of the August 8 issue that first summer back in 1925. He was a younger man than the figure of the original cover. His top hat was of a newer style, without the curved brim. He wore a morning coat and striped trousers. Ford borrowed Eustace Tilley’s last name from an aunt—he had always found it vaguely humorous. “Eustace” was selected for euphony, although Ford may have borrowed the name from Eustace Taylor, his fraternity brother from Delta Kappa Epsilon at Columbia College of Columbia University.

Recently, The New Yorker held a contest asking readers to redefine Eustace Tilley. Here is the portfolio of the winners.

From particle physics to evolutionary theory, to the atomic bomb, to global warming, to the battle of the sexes, to the equality of human beings, to God and the paranormal, and to the dogmatism of scientists themselves, dozens of the big thinkers in the world explained online, at the start of 2008, what the most important things that they’ve change their minds about during their lives are.

The project takes place on the website www.edge.org, a kind of informal think tank, a forum for ideas and scientific debates (see adjoining article), which asks such questions annually online and later publishes the result in book form.

Here are 10 examples.

Quote from the Edge:

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.