Sentences like this renew one's faith in humanity:
Because of parallax, the likelihood of a solar eclipse depends not only on a syzygy's nodal elongation, but also on whether it occurs north or south of the ecliptic, as was recognized in antiquity.(See Freeth et al. in Nature, via xefer, where there's also a link to a 44 page (!) Supplement)
Tripping along in my leisurely reading of Guy Davenport's Geography of the Imagination (which, by the way, is mostly about poets and other artsy rapscallions), I came upon this marvelous bit of invective:
True, it was a year in which the country had to turn out a pack of scoundrels, porch climbers, thieves, bullies, liars, and bores from the Executive Branch of the government, a year in which the sludge of usury which forms the basis of our economy began to slither and lurch, a year indistinguishable from any other in the national contempt for the arts. (pg 273)(Davenport refers to 1974, but...)
All too seldom does one see mastodons in duet (2:55 to 5:50). Here's the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band:
(via Keep Swinging)
I've been giving a lot of thought lately to shop stuff, as I scheme the renovation of the barn and plot the reconstitution of my woodworking environment. Bought an upgrade for the table saw fence a week ago, and a serious planer a couple of days ago, and so kicked off a flurry of thoughts about tools and sharpening and still more necessary additions to the array (real dust collection... better lighting... more attention to precision... and so on). My instrument-building fantasies are alive and well again. Two videos exemplify resources that weren't available a few years ago, when I was last thinking about luthierie:
Oud construction:
Oud as object of beauty:
I can't recall at whose behest I ordered The Geography of the Imagination, but I did and it came and I've been nibbling at it for a week or so now. Quite a few memorable bits of erudition and copious novel linkages of things I only sort-of know about, but tonight I was brought up short by one sentence:
One suspects that Thoreau would have married a woodchuck or a raccoon, if the biology of the union could have been arranged... (pg 71)
via The Klezmer Shack:
and Hillborg's Clarinet Concerto "Peacock Tales", with Martin Frost, clarinet: