Under thought-process

erikkwakkel: Baseball in the Middle Ages Rivalry in sports is...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:21:34 -0400

Baseball in the Middle Ages

Rivalry in sports is not just something of our time. Nor is baseball. Both date back to at least the fourteenth century, when this image was made. What is less likely encountered in a baseball game today are the teams: monks vs nuns. The scene is from the margin of a medieval page, the location used to make fun of people. The manuscript contains a romance, popular among the medieval nobility. Somewhere, someone in a castle had a good laugh about these religious men and women playing ball.

Pic: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 (14th c). Browse the entire manuscript here. More enjoyable marginal drawings like this are found in this Tumblr post.

Pneumatic System of the New York Public Library

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:39:43 -0400

Pneumatic System of the New York Public Library:

atlasobscura:

When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his girl in Brooklyn, the love letter gets blown to her through a pneumatic tube—pfft—just like that. — E.B. White, “Here Is New York”

Put into operation in New York in 1897 by the American Pneumatic Service Company the 27 mile system connected 22 post offices in Manhattan, and the the General Post office in Brooklyn. The pipes ran between 4 to 12 feet underground, and in some places the tubes ran along the subway tunnels of the 4, 5 and 6 lines. At the height of its operation it carried around 95,000 letters a day, or 1/3 of all the mail being routed through out New York city.

On at least one occasion, the tubes carried not just mail, but a live cat.

But wait, it gets better: the tubes are still in use!

fer1972: Victorian Spy Camera via Watchismo

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:25:30 -0500

fer1972:

Victorian Spy Camera via Watchismo

discardingimages: marginal kitteh licking itself(on the left:...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:58:34 -0500

discardingimages:

marginal kitteh licking itself

(on the left: John 6:54 ‘Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.’)

Hours of Charlotte of Savoy, Paris ca. 1420-1425.

NY, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.1004, fol. 172r

John 6:54 not making any sense; proceed with grooming, kitteh

Sonder

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:00:26 -0500

pbh3:

Paperman Disney animation with some cheesy Disney mannerisms but...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:33:34 -0500

Paperman

Disney animation with some cheesy Disney mannerisms but also a great Film Noir look; beautiful lighting and cityscape.

Engraved Zippo’s from Vietnam.

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:22:05 -0500

Engraved Zippo’s from Vietnam.

Subtext feature

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:29:24 -0500

Subtext feature

The New Fuhrer - first day on the job

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:19:00 -0500

The New Fuhrer - first day on the job

Google Maps would never steer us wrong…

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:02:42 -0500

Google Maps would never steer us wrong…

Days

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:22:00 -0500

BY PHILIP LARKIN

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin, “Days” from Collected Poems. Used by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Philip Larkin.

Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:47:03 -0500

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

bzedan: That Mitchell and Webb Look - Smell Off Linden Trees...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 22:21:47 -0500

bzedan:

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Smell Off Linden Trees (by myLastTears) Goddammit I am dying here.

Enigmas by Pablo Neruda Translated by Robert Bly Video is John...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:53:00 -0500

Enigmas

by Pablo Neruda

Translated by Robert Bly

Video is John Heard reciting the poem from Bernt Amadeus Capra’s 1990 film ‘Mindwalk’.

You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher’s feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you’ve found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you’ll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

And I thought my dog was enthusiastic…

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 14:09:31 -0500

And I thought my dog was enthusiastic…

Hamlet By Boris Pasternak Translated from Russian by A. Z....

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:07:09 -0500

Hamlet

By Boris Pasternak

Translated from Russian by A. Z. Foreman

Tumults die. I enter from the wings.
Leaning in the opened door onstage,
I attempt to grasp through distant echoes
What shall come to pass in my own age.

Focused through binoculars, a thousand
Shades of nightfall turn on me. I see.
If it be but in Thy power, Abba
Father, take away this cup from me.*

Yea, I love Thy high and stubborn concept,
And consent to play this part as tasked.
But right now another drama’s showing.
So, this once, release me from the cast.

But the plot and acts are all decided,
Journey’s end irrevocably marked.
I’m alone. All’s fallen Pharisaic.
Mortal life is no walk in a park.

via

Image above is the poet painted by his father Leonid Pasternak on the Baltic Sea, 1910

How to avoid the apocalypse. (by flux3312)

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:56:00 -0500

How to avoid the apocalypse.

(by flux3312)

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Posh Dancing (by fanvideos4u)

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:42:00 -0500

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Posh Dancing (by fanvideos4u)

"I rarely answer my telephone, often forget to check voicemail, and can take a shockingly long time..."

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 08:20:58 -0500

“

I rarely answer my telephone, often forget to check voicemail, and can take a shockingly long time to return phone calls.

So sue me.

The telephone is intrusive, especially for introverts, whose brains don’t switch gears all that quickly. When we’re deep in thought, a ringing telephone is like a shrieking alarm clock in the morning.

And we often give bad phone—awkward, with pauses. We struggle without visual cues, and our tendency to ponder before we talk doesn’t play well on the telephone. Being stuck on a too-long call makes me want to chew off my own leg to escape.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling devil-may-care, I’ll pick up calls from far-flung friends who want to catch-up, But I more often let them go to voicemail and then make a date (via email) for us to talk. My friends understand.

Dislike of the phone is often presented as a moral failing. But honestly, it’s not the people on the phone we dislike, it’s the instrument of delivery.

”

- Sophia Dembling: Nine Signs That You Might Be an Introvert

YES. Finally someone has read my mind.

(via brute-reason)

Yes. Yes. Yes!

(via ljspillowbook)

iraffiruse: Frozach Submitted

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 13:07:50 -0500

iraffiruse:

Frozach Submitted