Middle Savagery (lite)

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01/14/12--07:10: From the Hannah Arendt Papers housed at the Library of Congress. (chan 1068790)





From the Hannah Arendt Papers housed at the Library of Congress.




01/17/12--07:59: postpunk: “Here is a scan of a school notebook from Pitchfork... (chan 1068790)





postpunk:

“Here is a scan of a school notebook from Pitchfork contributor Philip Sherburne, defaced when he was a teenager in the late 1980s.” (via Resonant Frequency: Taking Pictures of Taking Pictures | Features | Pitchfork)




01/24/12--07:20: "For a while now psychologists have debated just what that picture looks like. Some believe we need..." (chan 1068790)

“

For a while now psychologists have debated just what that picture looks like. Some believe we need to orient ourselves by local reference points. Under this theory, we’re lost until we see that certain street or certain landmark, at which point the rest of the grid emerges in our minds. Others argue that experience is our mental cartographer. This idea suggests that if you cruise around the city enough, you develop a spatial memory that helps you find your way no matter which direction you face; at the same time, if this is true, it should become harder to reach a destination that’s farther from your familiar starting point.

A third alternative suggests that our internal GPS system is informed by frequently looking at maps. In other words, the more time we spend finding directions on Google Maps, the more our minds may grow familiar with the officially documented outline of our city, rather than the one created through our own experiences. This idea receives support in a recent study published online late last month, ahead of print, in the journal Psychological Science. A team of psychologists led by Julia Frankenstein of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, found evidence that we’re best oriented when facing north — just like a reliance on maps would suggest.

”

- from “How Our Brains Navigate the City” By Eric Jaffe, The Atlantic (via tinkerkid)


01/24/12--08:07: fuckyeaharchaeologymajordog: I’m British- I’m not sure if this... (chan 1068790)





fuckyeaharchaeologymajordog:

I’m British- I’m not sure if this is a universal thing or…

There is no such thing as orange in archaeology. No, that soil is not orange. NO SUCH THING.

And Munsell chart y u so expensive?

This is someone who has never seen burned mudbrick. <3




01/24/12--19:37: Sugar Skull plush by Deadly Sweet. (chan 1068790)





Sugar Skull plush by Deadly Sweet.




01/25/12--07:11: skinnyfists: Taken with instagram (chan 1068790)





skinnyfists:

Taken with instagram




01/26/12--23:17: homoarchaeologicus: Faience statuette of a hippopotamus, Middle... (chan 1068790)





homoarchaeologicus:

Faience statuette of a hippopotamus, Middle Kingdom - 12th Dynasty, 1981–1885 BC, Egypt.

This well-formed statuette of a hippopotamus demonstrates the Egyptian artist’s appreciation for the natural world. It was molded in faience, a ceramic material made of ground quartz. Beneath the blue-green glaze, the body was painted with the outlines of river plants, symbolizing the marshes in which the animal lived. - metmuseum.org




01/28/12--00:50: Roboti - Kaos (1982) (chan 1068790)





Roboti - Kaos (1982)




01/28/12--00:53: Photo (chan 1068790)






01/29/12--04:40: somethingturkish: via ileftmyheartinistanbul: (via Instagram) (chan 1068790)





somethingturkish:

via ileftmyheartinistanbul: (via Instagram)




01/31/12--06:06: "In a profession which specialises in hypocrisy, Mr Gingrich’s performance stands out." (chan 1068790)

“In a profession which specialises in hypocrisy, Mr Gingrich’s performance stands out.”

- Newt Gingrich harried Bill Clinton for having sex with an intern 27 years his junior when he was having sex with a staffer 23 years younger than himself. His arrogance, meanwhile, verges on monomania. He once wrote of himself as the “definer of the forces of civilisation”. (via theeconomist)


02/03/12--07:34: gardant: Bones with Inscriptions4th-7th centuryKharga Oasis... (chan 1068790)







gardant:

Bones with Inscriptions
4th-7th century
Kharga Oasis (Byzantine Egypt)
Metropolitan Museum of Art






02/03/12--20:21: gardant: Tooth Armbandslate 19th-early 20th... (chan 1068790)









gardant:

Tooth Armbands
late 19th-early 20th century
Philippines
Metropolitan Museum of Art




02/04/12--19:30: ileftmyheartinistanbul: Window Service (via Instagram) (chan 1068790)





ileftmyheartinistanbul:

Window Service (via Instagram)




02/13/12--07:32: Ancient Egyptians replaced teeth by using gold wire to attach... (chan 1068790)







Ancient Egyptians replaced teeth by using gold wire to attach the crown from a donor tooth to their own teeth.




02/13/12--07:33: wallacegardens: Woodland Hedgehog (Medieval Italian).  In... (chan 1068790)





wallacegardens:

Woodland Hedgehog (Medieval Italian). 

In ancient times, hedgehogs were sometimes referred to as “urchins,” due to their spines which resemble those of sea urchins. Hedgehogs are nocturnal omnivores, feasting on snails, toads, mushrooms, grassroots, earthworms, and berries. (Every garden should have one.)




02/15/12--19:34: ctcarter: İznik-Nicea (çeşme ve çocuk) by Muskulpesent on... (chan 1068790)





ctcarter:

İznik-Nicea (çeşme ve çocuk) by Muskulpesent on Flickr.




02/18/12--08:27: "It’s all very melancholy, all these little remnants.” “Why is it melancholy?” “The abandonment. The..." (chan 1068790)

““It’s all very melancholy, all these little remnants.”
“Why is it melancholy?”
“The abandonment. The abandonment is melancholy. In a way it’s worse than throwing away, much worse. I can understand one family being obliged to flee or run or abandon, but that nobody else cared. That it was so overwhelmingly abandoned by everybody. That nobody had cared to solve something, to resolve something, that was very offensive to me. That was, you know it was like leaving a corpse, you don’t leave corpses, that’s a little bit the feeling that I had. That here was a carcass, a carcass of a house, of a life, of a private, that nobody cared to pick it up and give it a proper burial.”
(…)
I thought that it was important that somebody should care, that somehow somebody was leaning over these words, reading them, unfolding these letters, that somebody had bothered to write and it really didn’t matter that it was an eleven –year-old boy who cared. Objects have lives, they are witness to things. And these objects were like that. So I was in a way glad that you were listening.””

- This American Life, The House on Loon Lake.


02/18/12--08:31: "Mornings I still reach for you before opening my eyes. An antique habit from last summer when we..." (chan 1068790)

“

Mornings I still
reach for you before
opening my eyes.

An antique habit from
last summer when we pulled
each other into the heat of groin
and belly, slept with an arm
around the other.

The Texas sun was like that.
Like a body asleep beside you.

But when I open my eyes
To the flannel and down,
mist at the window and blue
light from the bay, I remember
where I am

This weight
on the other side of the bed
is only books, not you. What
I said I loved more then you.
True.

Though these mornings
I wish books loved back.

”

- Bay Poem from Berkeley - Sandra Cisneros


02/22/12--19:24: "When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put..." (chan 1068790)

“

When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.

And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent

I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”

What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.

”

- Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web (X)