A university student attending lectures on general relativity in the morning and others on quantum mechanics in the afternoon might be forgiven for concluding that his professors are fools, or have neglected to communicate with each other for at least a century. In the morning the world is curved space where everything is continuous; in the afternoon it is a flat space where quanta of energy leap.
The paradox is that both theories work remarkably well. Nature is behaving with us like that elderly rabbi to whom two men went in order to settle a dispute. Having listened to the first, the rabbi says: “You are in the right.” The second insists on being heard, the rabbi listens to him and says: “You’re also right.” Having overheard from the next room the rabbi’s wife then calls out, “But they can’t both be in the right!” The rabbi reflects and nods before concluding: “And you’re right too.”
—Carlo Rovelli
—from Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre)
seraglio /se-RAHL-yoh/. noun. An enclosure used for confinement, most often for a harem or polygamous unit. For Muslim nobles, the rooms or apartments reserved for wives and concubines. Or the harem itself. Sometimes, more generally, a Muslim noble house or palace as a whole. Sometimes, more generally, a brothel. From Italian serraglio (an enclosure or animal cage), from Latin sera (door bar), related to Turkish seray (palace).
“During his residence at Marlow, the enemies of Mr. Shelley spread a report that he was keeping a seraglio, an opinion that was somewhat strengthened by some peculiar notions he was known to entertain with regard to marriage.” (derived from Leigh Hunt)
“We have been taught to tremble at the terrific visages of murdering janisaries; and to blush at the unveiled mysteries of a future seraglio.” (Alexander Hamilton)
“She was wearing a tasselled shawl affair and a voluminous velvet dress the colour of old blood, and both arms were busy almost to the elbows with fine gold bangles, like a set of springs, which suggested the circus ring more than the seraglio.”
“I live in an interesting house at McLean’s Hospital, one which no man had entered since 1860; suddenly it was made co-ed. It was like entering some ancient deceased sultan’s seraglio.” (Robert Lowell)
“Nancy had expected the cabin to be dominated by a bed, possibly in the shape of a swan, but the Marlin was a day boat. The cabin was anything but a seraglio. It was about as voluptuous as a lower-middle-class dining room in Akron, Ohio, around 1910.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
Fascinating examples in the article and the book just jumped near the top of my reading list. → Danielle Steel Loves the Weather and Elmore Leonard Hates Exclamation Points: Literature by the Numbers Thanks, Reader B.!
‘Purple Rain’ — As Retold In A Language Without A Word For Purple
Vote for your favorite of the 10 finalists for the 2017 “net based prize for net based art.” Some intriguing projects.
Oxford Dictionaries add ‘clicktivism’ and ‘haterade’ as new words for angry times
It’s interesting to see how supposedly bumbling comedian Tommy Cooper meticulously organized his jokes and planned his physical staging. If you’re wondering who Tommy Cooper is, you probably know some of his jokes.
A comic by Boulet → How to Beat Writer’s Block in Just 40 Easy Steps
This month, the USPS announces a new series of WPA Posters Stamps. :: Pair with the Library of Congress WPA Posters Collection
Today in 1863, the Confederate states’ most powerful Steamship Georgiana is bombarded and finally scuttled while attempting to force its way through a federal blockade to Charleston, South Carolina. Today in 1965, teenage diver and future pioneer in underwater archaeology E. Lee Spence, found the wreckage (see galleries of artifacts from the ship). The Georgiana was owned by George Alfred Trenholm, Secretary of the Treasury during the last year of the Civil War and, Spence has convincingly claimed, inspiration for Margaret Mitchell’s famous character Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.
Seven-year-old drummer Avery Molek nails Rush’s “Tom Sawyer.”
Image above from the 360° virtual Auto-Icon.
“The cabinet contains Bentham’s preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax head. […] Bentham had originally intended that his head should be part of the Auto-Icon, and for ten years before his death (so runs another story) carried around in his pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Unfortunately when the time came to preserve it for posterity, the process of desiccation, as practiced by New Zealand Maoris, went disastrously wrong…” → Auto-Icon
Reader B. on most disturbing books: "…keep in mind that I researched and taught Gothic literature, so trawled through quite a lot of darkness. ¶ Perhaps Blood Meridian, which is gorgeously written. It also flays the underside of American self-regard through an anti-western that’s probably the most violent thing I’ve read. Some books are depressing; BM crackles with energy, then blots it from the earth. ¶ Or the Bible. Easy target, I know, but I didn’t read the thing until my late 20s. I expected horror, and was floored by the epic amounts of bloodshed and terror. — Three other Clamorites said The Bible!
Reader D. adds: “You’ll probably appreciate my vote for most disturbing book ever, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men [by David Foster Wallace]. I still can’t get it out of my head. I still can’t figure out how Wallace wormed his way so deeply in there.”
Reader C. chimes in: “Nabokov’s Lolita without question. Not because it’s pornographic as it was once misunderstood to be, but because it is not. So beautifully written, the elevation of that beauty making it that much more disturbing.”
Reader V.: “…has to be Naked Lunch. ‘Yes, Yes!’ No, no, no!”
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