A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
paragnosis (par-uh-GNO-sis) noun
Knowledge that cannot be obtained by normal means.
From Greek para- (beyond)
+ gnosis (knowledge). Earliest
documented use: 1933.
Oedipus at
Colonus was the third
play of the Oedipus
trilogy written by the great Greek tragedian Sophocles (c. 496-c.
406 BCE). Although written in the years
prior to his death, it would finally be presented by his son Iophon at a
dramatic competition in 401 BCE. The
play’s sequel Antigone
was actually written years earlier in 441 BCE. Along with Aeschylus and Euripides, Sophocles
represents the greatest of the Greek playwrights. In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, Greek
tragedians performed their plays in outdoor theaters at various festivals and
rituals in a series competitions. The
purpose of these tragedies was to not only entertain but also to educate the
Greek citizen, to explore a problem.
Along with a chorus of singers to explain the action, there were actors
often three (later four or more and always male) who wore masks and
costumes. Although he was often
considered a passionless observer of life, classicist Edith Hamilton in her
book The Greek Way believed Sophocles was the embodiment of what we
believe to be Greek. “He is direct,
lucid, simple, reasonable. Excess--the word is not to be mentioned in his
presence. Restraint is his as no other
writer’s”. Donald L. Wasson https://www.ancient.eu/Oedipus_at_Colonus/
Archilochus (c. 680–c. 645 BC) was
a Greek lyric poet and a professional soldier from the Aegean island
of Paros. His father is credited with founding a town on
Thasos, “an island crowned with forests and lying in the sea like the backbone
of an ass,” as Archilochos describes it in a poem.
Brief Poems
by Archilochus
The fox knows
many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Fox knows many, Hedgehog
one Solid trick
Alternative version:
Fox knows Eleventythree Tricks
and still Gets caught; Hedgehog knows One but it Always works
translated by Guy Davenport
Read other brief poems by
Archilochus at https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/tag/archilochus/
The hedgehog is of a single substance, a monist; the fox is composed of heterogeneous
elements, a pluralist. The hedgehog's great strength is focus, and main
weaknesses are fixation, rigidity, and self-absorption. The fox's primary strengths are flexibility
and openness to experience, and fundamental weakness is a tendency toward the
scattershot approach to life and thought.
Bob Frost Read much more and see
pictures at http://www.historyaccess.com/isaiahberlin'she.html
People use the internet to get more of what they do not get enough of in
everyday life. So while people have been
socialized to resist being impulsive in the real world, on the internet they
cave to their temptations to lash out.
This is nothing new, of course.
Before the internet, people took their frustrations to TV and radio talk
shows. The internet was simply a more
accessible, less moderated space. Tech
companies have long employed various methods to detect fake comments from bots
and spammers. So-called Captcha tests,
for Completely Automated Procedures for Telling Computers and Humans Apart, ask
you to type a word or select photos of a specific item to verify you are human
and not a bot. Other methods, like
detecting a device type or location of a commenter, can be used to pin down
bots. Yet security researchers have
shown there are workarounds to all these methods. Don’t take web
comments at face value. Look at a commenter’s
history of past posts, or fact-check any dubious claims or endorsements
elsewhere on the web. Brian X. Chen Read more at
The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library and Metroparks
Toledo proudly present Florence Williams
and The Nature Fix: Why nature makes us
happier, healthier, and more creative
Thursday, August 30, 2018 7:00pm
- 9:00pm Toledo Lucas County Public Library Main Library
325 Michigan, McMaster Center Is there anything better than reading
outside in one of our glorious Metroparks?
The Library and Metroparks Toledo have partnered to
welcome journalist, bestselling author and podcaster Florence
Williams to explore that very question. Florence is a contributing editor
at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York
Times, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, Slate,
Mother Jones and numerous other publications. Her book The
Nature Fix uncovers the science behind nature's restorative benefits
and its positive effects on the brain. Copies
of her book will be available for purchase and to have signed by the
author. This event is free and open to all. Grab a copy of The
Nature Fix from the Library or listen to the audiobook while
you take in the scenery at our beautiful Metroparks, then come see the author
in-person! http://events.toledolibrary.org/event/695776
Tsundoku: The
practice of buying more books than you can read by Melissa Breyer
"Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired
produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is
nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity." – A. Edward Newton,
author, publisher, and collector of 10,000 books. Are you one of us? A master of tsundoku? Mine takes the shape of the aspirational
stack by my bedside table--because I am going to read every night before bed,
of course, and upon waking on the weekends.
Hahaha. My tsundoku also takes
shape in cookbooks--even though I rarely cook from recipes. And I think I most fervently practice
tsundoku when I buy three or four novels to pile in my suitcase for a five-day
vacation. Sometimes not even one sees
its spine cracked. Thank heavens the
Japanese have a word to describe people like us: tsundoku. Doku comes from
a verb that can be used for "reading," while tsun "to
pile up." The ol' piling up of
reading things. "The phrase
'tsundoku sensei' appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori
Senzo," Professor Andrew Gerstle, a teacher of pre-modern Japanese texts
at the University of London, explains to BBC. "Which is likely to be satirical, about
a teacher who has lots of books but doesn't read them." Even so, says Gerstle, the term is not
currently used in a mocking way. Tom
Gerken points out at BBC that English may in fact seem to have a similar word
in "bibliomania," but there are actually differences. "While the two words may have similar
meanings, there is one key difference," he writes. "Bibliomania describes the intention to
create a book collection, tsundoku describes the intention to read books and
their eventual, accidental collection."
https://www.treehugger.com/cleaning-organizing/tsundoku-practice-buying-more-books-you-can-read.html
August 10, 2018 Six crows trained to pick up cigarette ends and
rubbish will be put to work next week
at a French historical theme park. Rooks,
a member of the crow family of birds that also includes the carrion crow,
jackdaw and raven, are considered to be “particularly intelligent” and in the
right circumstances “like to communicate with humans and establish a
relationship through play”, Nicolas de Villiers, president of the Puy du Fou
park, said. The birds will be encouraged
to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a nugget of
bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of
rubbish. The crow family is not the only
one that might have decent litter-picking skills--Australian magpies have been
found to understand what other birds are saying to each other. Research published in May in the journal
Animal Behaviour says the wily magpie has learned
the meanings of different calls by the noisy miner and essentially
eavesdrops to find out which predators are near. Noisy miners--small, native honeyeaters--have
different warning calls for ground-based and aerial predators. By playing both kinds of recording to a series
of wild magpies, researchers observed the magpies raising their beaks to the
sky, or dropping their heads to the ground.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/11/rook-at-this-mess-french-park-trains-crows-to-pick-up-litter
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1933
August 13, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment