|k| clippings: 2014-07-20 — Salmagundi Sunday; Idleness

It’s Salmagundi Sunday, where I share the “best of the rest”—great links that didn’t make the cut for last week’s newsletter…and a few pithy quotes. Watch for next Sunday’s visual arts roundup.`

Links

• An alternative view of Monty Python.

• “Color can be subjective, but in the 19th-century, color dictionaries provided a common language for scientists to describe different hues found in nature” — fascinating discussion, beautiful books.

• “…And ourselves, those who were educated before the advent of the purportedly deracinating Internet—how does it go with us? Are we slowly losing the coherence of mind we once had? (We did have that, right?)”

• Deep Sea Explorers Stumble Upon A Creature They Can Hardly Believe Is Real.

• “Yet anyone who, like Philip Roth, observes how peripheral literature has become to the common culture might regard the victory for freedom of expression as pyrrhic. If everything goes, does anything matter?”

• Okwiri Oduor’s 2014 Caine Prize winning story “My Father’s Head” (PDF).

• “Literature tells us that our desires know no reason. […] But science is never satisfied with ineluctable mystery, even in the realm of desire. During the past four decades, researchers into human behaviour have begun to investigate sexual desire. More than anything, they want to know: why is it that we want who we want?”

• The secret history behind the science of stress. Plus: stress, social media and bingeing on bad news.

• SF Signal lists the top 50 speculative fiction podcasts of all time.

• It’s Tartt, but is it Art? A silly title for an interesting article.

• “The question I’m currently asking myself is how our scientific understanding of language can be put into practice to improve the way that we communicate anything, including science? […] In particular, can you use linguistics, cognitive science, and psycholinguistics to come up with a better style manual—a 21st century alternative to the classic guides like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style?” — Stephen Pinker on “Writing in the 21st Century”.

Commonplaces: Idleness

“The rain rinses the last thoughts from one’s head. Thoughts are impurities. That’s why they start up in winter. Paper has lost its power to stimulate me. I hang like a bat in a turret of idleness: mouth downwards.” (Bertolt Brecht)

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” (Robert Heinlein)

“Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves.” (Ovid)

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.” (Franz Kafka)

“Vegetation…the aerobics of comfort” (Bauvard)

“For the diligent a week has seven days, for the slothful seven tomorrows.” (Polish Proverb)

“The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.” (Henry David Thoreau)

“…so too with our minds. If we do not keep them busy with some particular subject which can serve as a bridle to reign them in, they charge ungovernably about, ranging to and fro over the wastelands of our thoughts […] Then, there is no madness, no raving lunacy, which such agitations do not bring forth.” (Michel de Montaigne)

“To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.” (Samuel Butler)

“I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?” (Ronald Reagan)