Mar
5
Channelwood Age from Myst, for serious.
(Source: intrinsic-habitat, via boldbrazenbrave)
"...therefore, be bold."
The tumblelog of an ["independent scholar" and "student of the world" (i.e. a confessed lifelong lit. nerd taking time off from school)] undergraduate currently attending university and residing in the Pacific Northwest, USA.
Interests include: Classics (i.e. ancient Greek and Latin), Shakespeare, American History, Continental Philosophy, Modernist poetry, Historical Linguistics (of the Proto-Indo-European variety), Literary Criticism and Theory, mysticism, Fine Art, Anglicanism and Catholicism, Technology, Baroque music, drinking coffee/tea/wine/scotch, wasting time online, and making stupid jokes. Pipes and tobacco are delightful too. Apparently I have a thing for gals reading but hey, that's cool.
You'll here mostly find links to news articles. Occasionally a pretty picture. Sometimes an inebriated anecdote. Read, enjoy. Feel free to leave comments (via disqus).
I also do the Tweet thing: www.twitter.com/wordsasthoughts
Feb
21
(via TO BE SHELVED: Julieta Felix for The Fox is Black)
The most recent addition to The Fox is Black’s Desktop Wallpaper Project (click for more info) is clearly my favorite in the entire series so far. Now close your laptops and go read a book!
Feb
19
“Literature was the first truly verifiable, repeatable and effective form of magic. Picture how it must have impressed ancient people to look at marks – on papyrus or clay – and know they conveyed the words of scribes and kings long dead. Knowledge, wisdom and art could finally accumulate. Death was robbed some of its sting. Writing still is magical. To create strings of black squiggles that millions of others skillfully de-code with just their eyes – into emotions and thoughts, or the struggles of believable characters – or spectacle beyond Hollywood’s wildest dreams.”
David Brin (via azspot)
Yes.
(via soporificism)
Feb
14
For education that’s entertains
Information to feed your brain
Science is good for your heart
Subscribe and enjoy It’s Okay to Be Smart!
(via comaniddy)
Feb
13
In the next few weeks, the cardinals of the Catholic Church will prepare for a conclave that will transform one of them into a pope. Early talk encompasses a wide range of candidates, from Milan and Ghana to New York and Argentina, challenging the traditional picture of the pope. But how much of that image is a retrospective one, shaped by the one we already have of the pope in his ceremonial guise? Are we so sure we know what any future pope looks like? Click-through to see the last half-dozen, photographed before they ascended—as a child, a young soldier, a priest shaving outdoors… http://nyr.kr/XxjFXd
That third one, John Paul II: Popes are the Original Hipsters?
Feb
1
“Ladies want a Boethius in the kitchen and a Prometheus in the bedroom.”
We can get on board with this. (via wwnorton)
(via laphamsquarterly)
Jan
28
“When I taught fiction, as I did for a few years, I told my students, ‘When you read Pride and Prejudice, if you’re a woman, don’t identify with Elizabeth Bennet, and if you’re a man, don’t identify with Fitzwilliam Darcy. In both cases, identify with Jane Austen. Identify with the author, not the character, think ‘what’s the author trying to do?’”
For the 200th birthday of Pride and Prejudice today, some wise words from Martin Amis. Complement with Nabokov on how to be a good reader. (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
Jan
26
It’s Rome
I remember this view. :)
Theater of Marcellus and Temple of Apollo Sosianus, Rome.
(via myancientworld)
Another pic of emperor Commodus as Hercules. As mentioned earlier I saw last summer a similar type of statue there Trajan was wearing a lion fur and club. So this Hercules stuff wasn’t exactly a novelty then Commodus became an emperor. Of course he took the role, shall we say, a bit more seriously :)
The club and lion skin were attributed with Hercules, so emperors wore these as easily recognisable attributes of the hero.
Commodus was a crazy bastard, but I love this sculpture.
Jan
16
npr:
‘I often envy religious people who have that devout faith. They know that they’re going to see their … loved ones again when they die. But I don’t believe that. Sometimes, I wish I did.’ — Carol Fiore, an atheist, whose husband died after the plane he was test-piloting crashed.
via After Tragedy, Nonbelievers Find Other Ways To Cope
Photo: Barbara Bradley Hagerty/NPR
…or if your religious faith isn’t about seeking a personal afterlife in any humanly conceivable form or a grossly simplified framework of good and evil.
Just sayin’. I guess my faith is just medieval or something.
Jan
14
#pdftribute
Academics are posting their papers online for free in tribute to Aaron Swartz using hashtag #pdftribute
Many things medieval-related.
Also, please contribute if you can.
Jan
13
The Ancient Greek Hero
Free online course through Harvard Extension from the renown [sic] Prof. Gregory Nagy.
The Ancient Greek Hero will use the latest technology to help students engage with poetry, songs, and stories first composed more than two millennia ago; this literature includes the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, a selection of lyric poetry (including the songs of Sappho), excerpts of prose history, seven tragedies, two Platonic dialogues, and the intriguing but rarely studied dialogue, On Heroes by Philostratus. Through English translations that have been carefully prepared and arranged for this course, as well as through supplementary comparative material drawn from cultures other than the Greek, and featuring a wide variety of media such as vase painting, European opera, and cinema—from Ingmar Bergman’s version of Mozart’s Magic Fluteto Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic, Blade Runner—the course provides students who have no previous background in classical Greek civilization with a fully engaging and immediately accessible introduction to the most beautiful moments in this ancient literature, its myths, and ritual practices.
This is a very cool opportunity!
Jan
10
Here’s today’s Daily GIF!
Thursdays require donuts. (Or perhaps we should begin the day with a headstand.)
Damn good fine, technically.
Jan
7
The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut via Kami Garcia
I spent my last months at Know Your Meme dumping viewcount and pageview data into Gephi, convinced that there were repeatable shapes to “meme” spread (there were and there are, I just ran out of time before I could get a bunch of brains together to figure out what any of it meant.)
And recently, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Matt Locke’s Audience Shapes — the idea that there are distinguishable ‘shapes’ to tv viewing behavior.
So it’s reaffirming to see that someone like Vonnegut was thinking the same way, sensing patterns where they couldn’t be seen. I am not alone in my madness.
(via thepoetoaster)
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