The History of Visual Communication. Plenty of good stuff here. I like the care taken in the further readings & references at the bottom of each section.

The old man will be home as soon as he can, and we will take a walk. That's poor folk's luxury.

That's a quote from Carleton Watkins, an early American landscape photographer who hauled thousands of pounds of equipment around the American West. His photos of the Yosemite area appeared in The Yosemite Book that helped make it a protected area, and had a big influence in creating national parks. He was great with the lens, but not so good with money. Sad story of failing health, failing eyesight, then insanity. He lost his life's work when the San Francisco earthquake struck and his studio burned.

Play creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection.

That's Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens.

An interesting aside from photographer Michael David Murphy's Against Ease: or How the Inifinitely Reproduceable Pushes Us Further From the Source:

In some ways, the pricing of digital fine art prints seems to be a shift-away from paying for an actual print to paying for all the expense that went into creating the work that led to this actual print, because making the actual print is relatively cheap. And there’s something a lot less seductive in that, to me, as someone who might like to buy a print. I want to pay for the worth of the thing itself, not the artist’s overhead.

Austin's post about the new house has some of the more poignant, sweet, mind-blowing ideas that I've read lately:

I wonder about this proximity of bodies. I wonder how we will grow in a bigger space, with an upstairs and downstairs. How our changing spatial relationships might alter our story…

Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall by Henry Bursill.

I recommend Wieland Samolak's 1993 album, Steady State Music:

When I was a teenager I used to sit on an empty field listening for hours to the sounds of distant cars, railroads, helicopters, and other motorized objects. These sounds, which are very rough and noisy when they are near, attracted me from the distance because they had merged and diffused into a continuum when they reached my ears. By this experience it came to my mind that it is more satisfying for me to listen to continuous changes within one sound than to the combinations of discreet sonic events usually found in music.

RjDj uses your iPhone and the environment you're in to make soundscapes, etc. It's some sort of sampler with echo and reverb or other scenes that makes life more like you're on something. There's a couple good videos of RjDj on geobloggers. [via funkaoshi]

Forty Four Presidents, a minicomic. My favorite page is the one with John Tyler and James K. Polk. [via things that make my dookie twinkle]

Tonight I went to listen to E.O. Wilson talk about ”Darwin and the Future of Biology”. Biology is most definitely not a strong interest of mine, but it was cool. It also reminded me that I've been meaning to read his book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

He opened with what seemed like an elementary review of Darwin, his books, his journeys, and his influence; then on to biology as it is today and the two major approaches to biology: functional versus evolutionary, the how versus the why, the lab versus the field, the problem solvers versus the naturalists. (He wasn't trying to paint them as warring factions, just equally valid methods that serve scientists with different interests and temperaments.) He also talked a bit about intelligent design and made the most basic, pragmatic, friendly critique I've heard yet: we just don't need it. It's a solution in search of a problem. He also did a good job of saying there's no point in antagonizing or mounting a heavy offense against ID advocates.

Lastly, the dreaded Q&A afterwards. This one wasn't too painful, but I recommend this as general advice: if you're going to quote the speaker, at least *listen* and quote the speaker accurately. There is such a thing as a stupid question. I suppose when you get to be as old and wise as Wilson, you learn to be as generous and polite as he was tonight.

Nigel Holmes and Good magazine partnered to make It's the Economy, Stupid!, an infodesigny look at the American economy of the past 90-ish years.

"As the parent of a four-year-old and a four-year-old who just inherited an additional $540 billion in bailout this week (on top of the $840 billion that everyone already knew about), I felt the need to write a primer that speaks to them." A primer on the subprime mortgage crisis, written for the young ones. [via hoovers biz]

How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken collects some of the criticism of Daniel Mendelsohn. Books, movies, theatre. Mendelsohn is a Classics scholar so his work is constantly making connections with the old Greek and Roman tragedies and epics.

I didn't read all the essays because sometimes I just wasn't familiar with what he was criticizing. But among the ones I liked were:

• his wonderful critique of Brokeback Mountain, or rather, a critique of how the critical reception washed out what makes it special (An Affair to Remember);
• his pondering why Tarantino movies, Kill Bill in particular, can be so boring and lifeless (It's Only a Movie);
• his thinking about "the way in which what happens becomes the story of what happens... the way in which history becomes drama" in a review of the movies United 93 and World Trade Center (September 11 at the Movies)
• his studies of productions of Tennesee Williams' plays (Victims of Broadway I and Victims of Broadway II)
• his takedown of Alice Sebold's sappy The Lovely Bones (Novel of the Year)

Daniel Mendelsohn had a good interview on NPR last month.

There are small human heads in these heads of broccoli. [via waxy]

To celebrate its 120th anniversary, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is giving away a symphony every day. Yes, please. Here's the selection:

Franz Schubert - Symphony no. 8 'Unfinished' Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony no. 2 Felix Mendelssohn - Symphony no. 4 'Italian' C?©sar Franck - Symphony in D minor Gustav Mahler - Symphony no. 1 Anton??n Dvo?ô?°k - Symphony no. 8 Camille Saint-Sa?´ns - Symphony no. 3 'Organ' Jean Sibelius - Symphony no. 2 Anton Bruckner - Symphony no. 8 Johannes Brahms - Symphony no. 2

What a nice surprise. Since you asked my opinion, I'd download the Schubert, the Dvo?ô?°k, and definitely grab the Sibelius---one of my favorites, period. Mahler, Bruckner, and Saint-Sa?´ns would be next if I had to choose. And if you get 6, you might as well get the rest... [via classical convert]

Strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even... Critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.

---Daniel Mendolsohn

There are a couple real standouts here, though this collection wasn't as sharp as some of the others in the Best American series that I've read (Science 2007, Science & Nature 2007, Comics 2006). As is tradition, here are my picks:

The Loved Ones is the must-read of the bunch. Tom Junod's awesome reporting starts with Sal and Mabel Mangano. The two New Orleans nursing home operators were accused of negligent homicide when many in their care died in post-Katrina flooding (the couple was later acquitted). Along the way he hits on broader themes of journalist ethics, family, love, blame, and responsibility. One of the best pieces I've come across this year.

The School is another great one. C.J. Chivers narrates the horrifying Beslan school hostage crisis, when Chechen rebels took 1000+ kids and adults hostage, using them as leverage against the Russian government. It's dramatic, troubling stuff.

My Roommate, the Diamond Thief is pretty much what it sounds like.

The Inside Job is Neil Swidey's reporting how an employee of John Ferreira embezzled about $7 million dollars over a couple years, without his knowledge.

NPR's 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century, with excerpts from each.

I joined rogueApron this past weekend for the soup line. Good stuff all around: welcomed with pumpkiny spirits, fed with a trio of soups and East Atlanta Brewery concoctions, topped off with cupcakes and whiffle ball. More pictures in the rogueApron photo pool.

This year, Emory University's Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature are delivered by Umberto Eco. I didn't know much about him before, but he kind of blew my mind. This afternoon I stopped by to hear him talk about "How I Write". I was *really* impressed with how much he plans out his worlds beforehand, even making maps, blueprints, and sketches of his characters. I would love to see some of his doodles. These are mine:

Here are some notes deciphered from my handwriting:

• He describes himself at age 76 as "a young and promising novelist"---he's only been doing novels for 30 years or so.
• When he was a kid, he would start with an image. He drew his stories from end to end, only later going back to put the text in juvenile block letters.
• "At 16 I started to write poems like everybody else."
• Most of his fictional works start with an image: "I wanted to poison a monk in his study," a pendulum, a trumpet, Constantinople in flames.
• When he first does research he starts with collecting documents, travel, drawing maps, and even sketching the faces of his characters. When doing the travel research, he walks around with a recorder to describe everything he sees, hears, smells, street names, etc.
• "The structure of the world is fundamental to the writing." Though the writer may choose to withhold information about the fictional world and bamboozle the reader, "You have to take account of the reaction and collaboration of the reader."
• One *very* cool anecdote: a movie director loved the dialogue Eco wrote in The Name of the Rose, saying that it was the perfect length. Eco knew it was the perfect length because he had mapped out the monastery so completely that he knew the length of time it would take his characters to walk from one place to another. (!!!)
• Connected with this idea of world-building is the ancient practice of ecphrasis. Ecphrasis is the genre of "complete description"---retelling another work so vividly that the audience can know it without directly experiencing it. Eco says it's a good tool for writers because it "gives us more ideas than actually witnessing the thing itself."
• Some "postmodern" characteristics of his writing: intertextual irony (e.g. quoting real-life works in works of fiction), metanarrative (commentary on the tale in progress) and double-coding (speaking to multiple audiences, like a Pixar movie). It "establishes a smart complicity with some readers, and also provokes other readers to read twice."
• These postmodern intricacies "are not an aristocratic tic, but a way of respecting the brightness and curiosity of the audience."

And some aphorisms:

• "Constraints are fundamental to any artistic endeavor."
• "For novels, stick to the subject, and the words will follow. For poetry, stick to the words, and the subject will follow."
• He has an interesting take on making engaging academic work: "Literary research must be narrated. Scientific papers should be written like a whodunit." (Scott McCloud made a parallel comment when I heard him a couple weeks ago. His statement was about the shared challenge of teaching and writing non-fiction: "After you explain it, is it still interesting?")

The event was followed by a reception with wine and cookies (and some other things, but I had my priorities).