op cit

illustrirte

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:14:00 -0400

“Because of an early spelling mistake, the masthead of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung was printed with a spelling error all through the fifty years of its existence.”

István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle, 1968, p.40

op. cit., p. 153

Trinity Church, Lower Broadway, 1973. Photo from the U.S....

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:55:00 -0500

Trinity Church, Lower Broadway, 1973. Photo from the U.S. National Archives.

op. cit., pp. 49, 51

language formed of gestures

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:28:00 -0500

“The first conception of a great man, is usually a fruitful germ. Well acquainted with the French grammar, he knew that every language was a collection of signs, as a series of drawings is a collection of figures, the representation of a multitude of objects, and that the Deaf and Dumb can describe every thing by gestures, as you paint every thing with colours, or express every thing by words; he knew that every object had a form, that every form was capable of being imitated, that actions struck your sight, and that you were able to describe them by imitative gestures; he knew that words were conventional signs, and that gestures might be the same, and that there could therefore be a language formed of gestures, as there was a language of words. We can state as a probable fact, that there was a time in which man had only gestures to express the emotions and affections of his soul. He loved, wished, hoped, imagined, and reflected, and the words to express those operations still failed him. He could express the actions relative to his organs; but the dictionary of acts, purely spiritual, was not begun as yet.”

Laurent Clerc, An Address Written by Mr. Clerc and Read by His Request at a Public Examination of the Pupils in the Connecticut Asylum, 1818, p. 4

op. cit., p. 37

with strings

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:48:25 -0500

with strings:

Sarah Vaughan’s “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” from her 1962 album Snowbound.

op. cit., p. 240

Martin Munkácsi, Liberia, 1931 op. cit., p. 152

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:07:58 -0500

Martin Munkácsi, Liberia, 1931

op. cit., p. 152

upright, and clearheaded

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:41:00 -0500

“In Oct. 1842, meetings were held in this hall, at one of which a public manifesto was issued, here quoted entire as a specimen of the public appeals of Chinese politicians and demagogues. […] ‘In 1838, our great emperor having fully learned all the crimes of the English, and the poisonous effects of opium, quickly wished to restore the good condition of the country and compassionate the people. In consequence of the memorial of Hwang Tsionhsz’, and in accordance to his request, he specially deputed the public minded, upright, and clearheaded minister Lin Tsehsū, to act as his imperial commissioner with plenipotentiary powers, and go to Canton to examine and regulate. He came and took all the stored up opium and stopped the trade, in order to cleanse the stream and cut off the fountain; kindness was mixed with his severity, and virtue was evident in his laws, yet still the English repented not of their errors, and as the climax of their contumacy called troops to their aid.’”

Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom: A Survery of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &c., of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants, Vol. 1, 1848, p. 389-390

op. cit., p. 189

ninth

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:06:05 -0500

ninth:

Simon Rattle discussing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, with excerpts of his performance of the piece with the Berlin Philharmonic.

op. cit., p. 249-254

John Purroy Mitchel on November 5, 1913. Mitchel, one term mayor...

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 11:42:00 -0500

John Purroy Mitchel on November 5, 1913. Mitchel, one term mayor of New York City, failed in his bid for reelection four years later, and fell to his death in 1918 while flying with the Army Aviation Corps in Louisiana. Photo from the George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

op. cit., p. 233

kokoro

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 11:10:00 -0500

kokoro:

A brief feature on Kokoro, the blind wandering minstrel of Lagos.

op. cit., p. 37-38

collapse

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:54:00 -0500

“The winter of 2006/2007 witnessed large-scale losses of managed honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies in the United States. Those losses continued into the winter of 2007/2008. In the U.S., a portion of the dead and dying colonies were characterized post hoc by a common set of specific symptoms: (1) the rapid loss of adult worker bees from affected colonies as evidenced by weak or dead colonies with excess brood populations relative to adult bee populations; (2) a noticeable lack of dead worker bees both within and surrounding the affected hives; and (3) the delayed invasion of hive pests (e.g., small hive beetles and wax moths) and kleptoparasitism from neighboring honey bee colonies. Subsequently, this syndrome has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.”

—Dennis van Englesdorp et al., Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study, PLoS ONE 4(8): e6481, 2009.

op. cit., p. 199

Victor Erice, El espiritu de la colmena,1973 op. cit., p....

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:40:00 -0400

Victor Erice, El espiritu de la colmena,1973

op. cit., p. 199-200

—The Eye, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, c. 965–1038), from Opticae...

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:40:19 -0400

—The Eye, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, c. 965–1038), from Opticae thesaurus Alhazeni Arabis, 1572

op. cit., p. 238

blind spot

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:40:24 -0400

“It appears by a simple experiment, for the principle of which we are indebted to Mariotte, that the small portion of the retina corresponding to the entrance of the optic nerve, is incapable of exciting visual sensation though it receive the image of an object. Place the thumbs together at arm’s length, shut the left eye and fix the right eye steadily on the left thumb; then the right thumb if moved gradually outwards (so that its image on the retina of course traverses inwards), ceases to be visible in a particular spot, but is again seen beyond it. It will be remembered that the fibrous lamina of the gray nervous layer of the retina is here evolving itself from the nerve, and is not yet invested with the vesicular or other laminæ; a circumstance of great interest in regard to the modus operandi of the constituents of the retina in vision.”

—Robert Bentley Todd and William Bowman, The Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man, 1850, p. 435

op. cit., p. 238

Radio Row, Cortland Street, New York City, April 8, 1936,...

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:58:00 -0400

Radio Row, Cortland Street, New York City, April 8, 1936, Berenice Abbott

The shops of Radio Row and the surrounding streets were demolished in 1966 to make way for the construction of the World Trade Center.

op. cit., p. 59

crescent

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:43:00 -0400

crescent:

Crescent from the 1964 album of the same name by the John Coltrane Quartet (with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones).

op. cit., p. 182

noeme

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:20:00 -0400

“It is often said that it was the painters who invented Photography (by bequeathing it their framing, the Albertian perspective, and the optic of the camera obscura). I say: no, it was the chemists. For the noeme “That-has-been” was possible only on the day when a scientific circumstance (the discovery that silver halogens were sensitive to light) made it possible to recover and print directly the luminous rays emitted by a variously lighted object. The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.”

—Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 80–81

For noeme, see this.

op. cit., p. 5, p. 111

Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, Whale Stranded at...

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:57:00 -0400

Jacob Matham after Hendrick Goltzius, Whale Stranded at Berckhey, 1598. Hart Nautical Collections, M.I.T. Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

op. cit., p. 51

stranded

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:15:00 -0400

“Adrian Van der Donk, M. D. who had resided nine years in this state, when called New Netherland, and who published in the Dutch language, in 1655, a topographical and Natural History of New Netherland, &c. says, that the Hudson, the Mohawk, and all the waters of the country, abound with every kind of fish in their respective seasons, and that in March, 1647, at the time of a great freshet, two whales of considerable bulk, went up the Hudson one hundred and sixty miles; one of them, however, returned and grounded about forty-eight miles from the sea shore, where four others, that same year, had also stranded and perished; the other grounded about one hundred and seventy-two miles up. Notwithstanding the inhabitants obtained a great quantity of train oil from it, yet by reason of the swiftness of the current at that time, the whole river for two or three weeks acquired an oily taste, and exhibited an unctuous appearance, and the noxious effluvia were offensive eight miles off.”

—De Witt Clinton, An Introductory Discourse (Transactions of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York, Vol. 1, note BB, p. 150), 1815

op. cit., p. 50

signatures

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:01:00 -0400

“Red eyes show a bold, brave man. Glittering eyes, which do not move readily, point out a hero, a high-minded, brave, quick man, formidable to his foes.

Large ears indicate good hearing, retentive memory, attention, diligence, a healthy brain and head. Depressed ears are a bad sign. For the most part they point out a man who is malicious, fraudulent, and unjust. They indicate bad hearing, treacherous memory, and a man who readily exposes himself to danger.

A long nose curved downwards is a good sign. It denotes a strenuous, provident man, occult and cruel, but still just.”

—Paracelsus, Concerning the Signature of Natural Things: Concerning the Astral Signs in the Physiognomy of Man, (Book 9 of De Natura Rerum, 177-78), 1537

op. cit., p. 237

cimex

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:43:00 -0400

“Once it’s fed, Cimex lectularius, a little brown, oval crawler, seems to wriggle and its elongated body resembles a tiny lashing tail. Travellers in earlier times are said to have gone about with a pig and introduced it into the bed a few hours before retiring: if there were bed bugs they would slake their thirst on the pig. Carrying a rasher of bacon in your wallet will not do the trick.”

—Jeremy Harding, Return of the Bedbug (London Review of Books, September 29 2010)

op. cit., p. 174