Bill Cheng's Blog, page 135
January 28, 2013
90outloud:
Scott Cheshire reading Marilynne Robinson’s...
Scott Cheshire reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
Gilead is available at http://www.amazon.com/Gilead-A-Novel-Marilynne-Robinson/dp/031242440X/ref=sr_… and other major bookstores.
90outloud:
Bill Cheng reading E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime
E.L....
Bill Cheng reading E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime available at http://www.amazon.com/Ragtime-Novel-L-Doctorow/dp/0812978188 and other major bookstores.
January 27, 2013
90Outloud
(Der Rabe, Carl Spitzweg, circa 1845)
So. I started this on Friday.
It’s called 90Outloud, and all it is is different people from around the world posting ninety seconds of their favorite passages.
That’s it.
Just 90 seconds. A paragraph. Sometimes not even that. Just a minute and a half for a snippet of book to come suddenly and thrillingly to life.
Why?, you may be wondering.
Because books are awesome! They are a confetti burst of sounds, and images, and ideas. A long gorgeous chain of words, dancing the tongue from roof to teeth to lips. Because books, in some way or another, have added to my life and have added to the lives of those I’ve cared about. Because I still believe that the book is the basic neuron of civilization, carrying impulses— our fears and hopes, the worst and best of ourselves— from the streets up into the seats of power, and out again; it tells us who we are and what we want to be and remains our best astrolabe for an unknown future.
And I think all it takes is 90 seconds of your time. Just 90 seconds.
January 26, 2013
Dream Song 14 by John Berryman
I taught this to my Creative...
Dream Song 14 by John Berryman
I taught this to my Creative Writing class once. What a mind! What a brain! What a beard!
nypl:
The dog exists only for man, man exists only for cats.-...
nypl:
The dog exists only for man, man exists only for cats.- Robert E. Howard
This Caturday we’ll walk on the dark side with Robert E. Howard, pulp fiction legend, creator of Conan the Barbarian, and member of the Lovecraft Circle, who was born 107 years ago last week [Born Jan. 22, 1906]. Howard unflinchingly explored the dark side of cats in his essay The Beast From the Abyss. Even the most devoted cat fanciers, unabashed kitty-coddlers, and devotees of the feline mystique must nod in agreement with some his reflections. Legendary comic artist Peter Kuper later immortalized Howard’s essay with vivid etchings in his graphic novel The Last Cat Book.
January 25, 2013
Skip James
He was dying when they found him, eaten through with...
Skip James
He was dying when they found him, eaten through with testicular cancer. It took his balls and his already bell-high voice stretched into a shimmer. He was a ghost; the D-bass drone of his three-finger picking, the banshee wail of his voice. His playing was corvid feathers— ruffled and sharpened and blading in the wind; a flutter-flap of flesh on steel-string that carried him in a clean melodic line.
January 24, 2013
The Antikythera Mechanism
Found this on the January 20th, 2013 APOD.
At the beginning of the 20th century, divers off the island of Antikythera came across this clocklike mechanism, which is thought to be at least 2,000 years old, in the wreckage of a cargo ship. The device was very thin and made of bronze. It was mounted in a wooden frame and had more than 2,000 characters inscribed all over it. Though nearly 95 percent of these have been deciphered by experts, there as not been a publication of the full text of the inscription.
Today it is believed that [the Antikythera mechanism] was a kind of mechanical analog computer used to calculate the movements of stars and planets in astronomy. It has been estimated that the antikythera mechanism was built around 87 B.C and was lost in 76 B.C. No one has any idea about why or how it came to be on that ill-fated cargo ship. The ship was Roman though the antikythera mechanism was developed in Greece. One theory suggests that the reason it came to be on the Roman ship could be because the instrument was among the spoils of war garnered by then Roman emperor Julius Caesar. [From Antikythera Mechanism.com]
There’s something compelling about this image— this large wheel armored in centuries of fouling. I imagine bygone sailors, cranking the heavens across its display face, while they charge their prow through the watered pitch. In the back are two dials— one of them tracking a 76-year cycle. A whole life, demarked by a hand moving through a groove.
Here is a replica at work:
