The Staff of Life. And Caviar.

Posted on February 2, 2019 by JMN

[Photo by JMN — Reus, Catalonia]

You need to start with good white toast; Pepperidge Farm “Very Thin” is our preferred. It isn’t sweet like so many shelf-stabilized loaves, and it has excellent structure to stand up to the ingredients — delicate with a very satisfying dry crispness once toasted.

From a piece a while back in the NYTimes on how to make good caviar sandwiches. I’ve lost the reference, but I saved the above quote because I want to try this Pepperidge Farm bread, though in general I favor whole wheat bread. I’ve tried baking my own bread, but it’s too much trouble. So I’m on the lookout for commercial brands that aren’t lurkingly sweet. I’ve just returned from a lengthy stay in Spain, and can never figure out why excellent, fresh-baked bread is so available there and not here. I doubt, by the way, that I’ll ever make a caviar sandwich. I’d rather eat it straight out of the jar.

(c) 2019 JMN.

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I Can Just Hear Those Hands

Posted on February 2, 2019 by JMN

“[***’s] just out making noise, ringing his hands and pouting in a corner,” Aguilar said Friday.

(Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle, “Congress tunes out ***’s border wall threats,” Politico, 2-1-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.

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An Interesting Painting

Posted on February 1, 2019 by JMN
Frida Kahlo

“Self-Portrait With Cropped Hair,” 1940, oil on canvas. Credit Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

This painting by Frida Kahlo appears in the article by Rebecca Kleinman, “Frida Kahlo Was a Painter, a Brand Builder, a Survivor. And So Much More,” NYTimes, 1-31-19. It’s interesting on many levels, not least for its depiction of the locks of shorn hair strewn about. What particularly got my attention was how it incorporates writing and a staff of music in D Major. (I may learn more about the music when I play it on guitar.) The writing, in Spanish, says the following:

Look, if I loved you it was because of the hair; now that you’re hairless I don’t love you any more.

Cruel words.

(c) 2019 JMN.

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Remarkable Insights from Working with Translators

Posted on February 1, 2019 by JMN

nyti.ms/2UzwdPr

A connection between languages

On this day in 1786, a Briton living in India delivered a discourse on a little-known proposition: that Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, Greek and other languages might have a common source.

The commentary set off the field of comparative linguistics. Its fruits are known today as the concept of Proto-Indo-European, a mother language for dozens of tongues. The idea revolutionized not only the study of language, but also the sense of human history.

(NYTimes, 2-1-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.

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Planck’s Comment (from Reddit)

Posted on January 30, 2019 by JMN

TIL Max Planck was told by his professor not to go into physics because “almost everything is already discovered.” Planck said he didn’t want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals. (r/todayilearned)

Me. Ditto. Music. That guitar.

(c) 2019 JMN.

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What’s Done

Posted on January 30, 2019 by JMN

What’s done is dung and cannot be undung.

(Karl Ove Knausgaard. Quoted by Dwight Garner in his review of Chris Christie’s “Let Me Finish,” NYTimes, 1-28-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.

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Opinion | Warning! Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ – The New York Times

Posted on January 30, 2019 by JMN

Deep learning, deep insights, deep artificial minds — the list goes on and on. But with unprecedented promise comes some unprecedented peril.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/opinion/artificial-intelligence-surveillance.html

… Deep trust and deep loyalty cannot be forged overnight. They take time. That’s one reason this old newspaper I work for — the Gray Lady [i.e. The New York Times] — is doing so well today. Not all, but many people, are looking for trusted navigators.

(Thomas L. Friedman, “Warning! Everything Is Going Deep: ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’,” NYTimes, 1-29-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.

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Fixing To

Posted on January 30, 2019 by JMN

[Drawing by Tom Jones]

I’m fixing to get back into the swing of things blogwise. Since November I’ve been immersed in a Mediterranean voyage of discovery and recovery in the family nature of things.

“Fixing to” (the “g” is silent) is a Texas colloquialism meaning “in the throes of preparation for doing” or “gripped by anticipation of pending effort to accomplish” or “about to undertake” something. You hear it in expressions such as “I’m fixin’ to cook supper.” It’s like saying, “I haven’t started yet, but heading for the kitchen is on my mind.”

Kind visitors to Ethical Dative whom I’ve neglected: Kindly abide my lapse. I’m fixin’ to catch up with some of what I’ve missed of your work.

(c) 2019 JMN.

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The Prado Turns 200

Posted on January 28, 2019 by JMN

nyti.ms/2S6Mi1u

The exhibition, called “A Place of Memory” and running through March 10, shows how, right from the beginning, the Prado navigated the often choppy waters of Spanish politics, as the country went from being an imperial power to a nation divided by civil war, and then through dictatorship to the democracy it is today.

(c) 2019 JMN.

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Study suggests wood type has little effect on guitars’ sound

Posted on January 27, 2019 by JMN

According to many musicians, in order to have the best sound possible, an acoustic guitar has to be made from the “right” type of wood. Unfortunately, such wood often comes from endangered, unsustainably-harvested trees. A new study, however, suggests that wood type makes essentially no difference.
— Read on newatlas.com/guitar-wood-types/58139/

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