This blog by the self-titled Soup Lady looks to be a treasure trove of interesting recipes for soup fans.
I found it when googling for a recipe for radish soup. I’m at my parents house in Mallorca — we bought vegetables from the local market, and spotted some gigantic radishes that looked like enormous pink carrots.
I also bought a load of tea — they have varieties here I could never expect to find in Ireland, and for like 50c a box… Teatopia.
I don’t know about that but this website is very innovative and playful.
INTERVIEWER
Could you say something of this process? When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?HEMINGWAY
When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.The Paris Review, Issue 18, 1958
The above is just one entry of the excellent blog Daily Routines that sheds some light on how some of the most famous authors, politicians and other personalities approach their lives and occupations.
A similar collection of such accounts can be found at rodcorp: how we work. via kottke
From onelife.com:
The OneLife site is dedicated to the argument that human culture should be based on factual knowledge. All modern cultures are, instead, based on dogma, archaic and erroneous tribal hand-me-downs.
It has become obvious to us, during the course of our research for these essays, that our education system is perverted and destructive, that our government has become a separate elite tribe whose sole interest is in maintaining control of and fleecing the public, that the fields of psychology and psychiatry are shams and the practitioners no more than modern witch doctors, that our justice system is a travesty, and that our big business has become well paid tax collectors for the government. We feel that all of this is due to ignorance, rather than ill-will and is the result of a culture based on a dogma with archaic and erroneous premises, one that teaches that very ignorance.
We hope to show in these texts that community behavior (culture) may be based on provable fact rather than dogma and that such action is advisable. We are freely critical of the current world cultural crises and the forces and tribal groups that we feel are responsible.
I haven’t read every page on this site yet but I have found what i’ve read so far fascinating. I don’t have the necessary knowledge of genetics to know if the theory stacks up, but from my armchair position it is gripping popular science reading. I gather the author himself, John Stevenson, is no trained geneticist, although he does seem like a smart guy and he is quite accomplished in other areas.
The introduction to his theory is this butterfly-inducing tale of how the first cell may have come into being:
In primeval times the earth was a primitive place. It was sterile, as devoid of life as the moon. Many thousands of cubic miles of various mixtures of chemicals were in the oceans. Above the earth millions of cubic miles of atmosphere became enriched with carbon-dioxide and other chemicals spewing from volcanos and from windstorms over the lifeless continents. Rains washed the pollutants out of the air and into the oceans. Rains also eroded the continents and formed rivers to wash the silt into the oceans. The oceans became enriched with chemicals. Billions of chemical reactions were taking place simultaneously all over the globe in this huge pot of soup. Even with that gargantuan exposure, it took billions of years before the right set of chemicals and the right physical conditions came together and allowed the creation and survival of the first tiny string of pre-cellular desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Life was precarious for this new living creature for many millions of years. It was tiny and tender, alone in the oceans, only capable of reproducing itself, depending on chance to supply it with its needs. In its struggle to live in this dangerous environment, it gradually evolved until it finally developed into a single cell. Now it had a protective container to provide shelter for itself and the nutrients it required for survival. During this long period of evolution, the coded string of genetic material that developed into the description of this primitive original cell had increased in length greatly. It started with only the description that would reproduce its basic self. That small coded strip, perhaps only a few thousand code elements long, is the essence of life. The essential coding for life was compressed into it. That same essential coding exists somewhere in all DNA today. By the time the first cell was developed, much additional coding had been added. This additional coding provided for the formation of the cell wall and the production of its own nutrients and tools from raw materials. It added features that enhanced the survival of the life described in that first initial reproducing string.
Also interesting and nicely written is his explanation of evolution, and the discussions/conclusions he lists afterwards.
I also very much enjoy his concordant philosophy that discipline is the measure of our humanity (part of the human evolution page of the site):
The intellect, the magnitude of which separates the human from all other animals, developed slowly over the entire four million years or more of the human development. The intellect is not unique to the human, it is quite well developed in a number of the other higher animals. The intellect developed as a control over instincts to provide adaptable behavior. The human is designed by nature (evolution) to modify any behavior that would normally be instinctive to one that would provide optimum benefit (survivability). This process is called self-control or self-discipline, and is the major difference between the human and the lower order animals, those that apply only instinct to their behavioral decisions. Self-discipline, therefore, is the measuring stick of the human. The more disciplined behavior (behavior determined by intellect) displayed by the individual, the more human he becomes. The less disciplined behavior (behavior in response to instinct) displayed by an individual, the more he becomes like the lower order animals that are lacking in intellect and are driven by their instincts.
DISCOVER has a nice gallery comparing images of our solar system taken recently with those taken in years past. L00k!
I’ve long been a fan of the idea of turning to nature for design advice. Now I know there’s a name for it: Biomimicry!
via inhabitat:
The Biomimicry Institute recently teamed up with Autodesk to launch AskNature.org, an incredible source of information for the growing community of professionals researching and applying the principles of biomimicry. The solutions that animals and nature have come up with have been tried and tested for millions of years (certainly longer than humans have been designing), so why reinvent the wheel? Why not learn from nature to make our designs more efficient, elegant, and sustainable?
In this exciting TED Talks video, Janine Beyrus talks about nature’s designs:
This page lists famous vegetarian and vegan people. Abe Lincoln was a vegetarian? Clint Eastwood is a vegan??
Apparently Albert Einstein also turned vegetarian and said: “Nothing will benefit health or increase chances of survival on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
Herman de Coninck (21 February 1944–22 May 1997) was heralded as the most important flemish poet of the “new realism” movement. I’ve started reading some of his poems since a friend recommended him earlier today. He aimed to make his poetry very accessible. I like this one a lot:
Nog een geluk dat
Zoals met de gek uit het grapje
die zich voortdurend met een hamer
op het hoofd sloeg, en naar de reden gevraagd, zei:
“Omdat het zo prettig is, als ik ermee ophou”-
zo is het een beetje met mij. Ik ben ermee opgehouden
je te verliezen. Ik ben je kwijt.Misschien is dat geluk: een geluk bij een ongeluk.
Misschien is geluk: Nog een geluk dat.
Dat ik aan jou kan terugdenken, bv.,
in plaats van aan een ander.
More info, poems, interviews, audio and video on the official fansite: http://www.hermandeconinck.be
So I’m telling this boy, one of the boys that lots of these love letters are to, about this project. “I’m writing three hundred love letters and sending them to strangers. The letters are going to be glued to the outside of the envelopes, so that the mailman, and presumably whoever the recipient lives with, will be able to see and read them. The letters aren’t to the strangers, they’re to people I know.” The boy looks at me. We’re walking around, after work, deserted streets. He says, “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”, and I answer vaguely, talking about crossing space and the kind of intimacy that I believe is lacking from our society. And I’m left thinking: Is this project complicated or simple, idiotic or interesting?
[...]
So: what is this project really about? Of course, it’s about love, and relationships, which anyone who knows me can tell you are about the only things that I’m interested in. Well, not the only things, but two of the main ones. At the start I had one very simple goal: by the end of this project I wanted to be able to write a love letter to anyone, a stranger on the street, or someone that I have nothing but scorn for. I wanted to be able to pull out and vocalize the small thread connecting me to them, them to me, the something in them that I found beautiful or real and the something between us that existed beneath everything, acknowledged or unacknowledged, forgotten gestures and moments, strange and rare affinities. In the same way that part of art school training is training your eye to take in and process the world around you, to stop and notice things, to learn how to really see , I wanted to train my heart to really feel. Some romantics are wincing now: how can you train your heart? It’s a lot like training your eye: there was always that crack in the sidewalk, you just never noticed before the way that the lines trace like lightning bolts, the starkness of the light grey concrete, and the blackness of the crevices, the perfect intricacies of it all. There are always connections between people, things to admire in people, trust that goes unnoticed, small kindnesses, shared silences. There is always so much to see, and there is always so much to feel.
BoingBoing has a post on this “cardboard” design duvet set, some of the proceeds of which go towards the homeless.
Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems are on Bartleby in their entirity. Excellent!
I had only read a handful of them before. Here is a nice one I just happened upon:
IF you were coming in the fall,
I ’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.If I could see you in a year,
I ’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.If only centuries delayed,
I ’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.
Oh and
I ENVY seas whereon he rides,
I envy spokes of wheels
Of chariots that him convey,
I envy speechless hillsThat gaze upon his journey;
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As heaven, unto me!I envy nests of sparrows
That dot his distant eaves,
The wealthy fly upon his pane,
The happy, happy leavesThat just abroad his window
Have summer’s leave to be,
The earrings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me.I envy light that wakes him,
And bells that boldly ring
To tell him it is noon abroad,—
Myself his noon could bring,Yet interdict my blossom
And abrogate my bee,
Lest noon in everlasting night
Drop Gabriel and me.
oh and
HEART, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
I may remember him!
I like this advertising campaign designed by Rebecca Low for an exhibition celebrating the 200th Birthday of Charles Darwin that was to be shown at the Natural History Museum.
See the posters and ambient advertisements of the campaign here, and check out her other design work while you’re there.
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—
And Death must dig the level where these agree.
I’ve just been reading this series of sonnets by Elizabeth Barret Browning, and I really like them. Found the site via a link to this most well known poem, via Growabrain.
I get the urge to post all of them as soon as I read them. They make me motivated to try much harder with my own attempts at poetry.
Photographer Steve Schofield has made a series of photographs on the topic of freedom and identity, in which sci-fi fans are shown in costume in their own homes. The effect is quite eerie.
via kottke
Browsing the ever fascinating archives of Growabrain I found this complete mp3 series of Mark Twain’s famous essay “The Awful German Language”, on LibriVox, being read by a German (who probably gained some sadistic pleasure in reading how much of a battle his language is for us).
Neatorama dug up two great articles today:
The compass has been around since at least the 12th century, but scientists still don’t know exactly how the Earth generates the magnetic field that keeps a compass needle pointing north.
But geophysicist Dan Lathrop is trying to find out — by building his own planet.
A series of Maya hieroglyphs may look like just so many pretty pictures or symbols to you. But they actually say something, of course, as Mayanists have known for some time (see Time Line of Decipherment).
In this feature, you can actually “read” a passage of glyphs carved into an ancient Maya stela, or dedicatory stone monument. You can both read the ancient Maya (transcribed using the Roman alphabet) and hear it spoken (by Mayanist Barbara MacLeod) as well as read the English translation.
In this day and age a policeman is not merely a faceless goon, but a complex human being with feelings and personality disorders.
The above image is taken from this website, home to “The Ladybird Book of The Policeman” that has been modified for fun. via boingboing.net