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German Bunker in my Garden:

“Our house is in an old quarry, and when we bought it five or so years ago, the previous owner told us that there was a tunnel built by the germans during WW2. He said it was big enough to drive into, and that his father had buried the entrance during redevelopments, but not before filling it with stuff that lying around the property (?). He showed me the rough location, and I’ve marked it on this little map with a red dot….

(…)

And that’s where the quest began…..”

(via)

Mevrouw M. had jeuk en krabde tot het hersenvocht naar buiten kwam, misschien een kwestie van perceptie. Hoogst fascinerend.

The New Yorker, Annals of Medicine, The Itch. Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies:

“The theory—and a theory is all it is right now—has begun to make sense of some bewildering phenomena. Among them is an experiment that Ramachandran performed with volunteers who had phantom pain in an amputated arm. They put their surviving arm through a hole in the side of a box with a mirror inside, so that, peering through the open top, they would see their arm and its mirror image, as if they had two arms. Ramachandran then asked them to move both their intact arm and, in their mind, their phantom arm—to pretend that they were conducting an orchestra, say. The patients had the sense that they had two arms again. Even though they knew it was an illusion, it provided immediate relief. People who for years had been unable to unclench their phantom fist suddenly felt their hand open; phantom arms in painfully contorted positions could relax. With daily use of the mirror box over weeks, patients sensed their phantom limbs actually shrink into their stumps and, in several instances, completely vanish. Researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently published the results of a randomized trial of mirror therapy for soldiers with phantom-limb pain, showing dramatic success.”

A lot about this phenomenon remains murky, but here’s what the new theory suggests is going on: when your arm is amputated, nerve transmissions are shut off, and the brain’s best guess often seems to be that the arm is still there, but paralyzed, or clenched, or beginning to cramp up. Things can stay like this for years. The mirror box, however, provides the brain with new visual input—however illusory—suggesting motion in the absent arm. The brain has to incorporate the new information into its sensory map of what’s happening. Therefore, it guesses again, and the pain goes away.

The new theory may also explain what was going on with M.’s itch. The shingles destroyed most of the nerves in her scalp. And, for whatever reason, her brain surmised from what little input it had that something horribly itchy was going on—that perhaps a whole army of ants were crawling back and forth over just that patch of skin. There wasn’t any such thing, of course. But M.’s brain has received no contrary signals that would shift its assumptions. So she itches.

Interview (audio) met de schrijver, Atul Gawande, van het artikel.

Deputy Dog, How to safely board a train that won’t stop. (via)

ABC News, Haruki Murakami hard at work on ‘horror’ novel:

“Internationally acclaimed novelist Haruki Murakami is working on an extremely lengthy novel, but is cherishing every moment.

“Every day, I am sitting at my desk for five to six hours. I have been writing the novel for about one year and two months now,” he said in a rare interview as he describes his new work.”

(…)

Is the very long novel he is writing now also being written in the third person? He did not directly reply to that question, but gave one important hint about his new novel.

“It is about ‘horror.’ I have a hunch to produce a good novel. I think it will be an important work of mine.”

Now 59, Murakami said: “Like [Feodor Mikhailovich] Dostoevsky who wrote The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov and became productive as he got older, I’d like to do the same thing.”"

Evolving Thoughs, The evolution of morality:

“Morality is an “acquired dialect”, which is a very useful metaphor. Like a dialect, it is conventional, and varies by geography. It is not inborn (although the capacity to acquire it, like that of language, is), and it doesn’t correlate with biology (a Sicilian raised in Japan would speak Japanese, not Sicilian). This is what Sayre-McCord refers to as social conventions. And these things evolve at the social level, not (in general) at the biological. So to explain why, for example, it is regarded as moral to marry a first cousin in Louisiana, but not in London, while marrying within “seven degrees of kinship” in Orthodox society, or marrying anyone with the same family name in Korea (but a first cousin of a different name is acceptable) are considered taboo; these things are best explained in terms of the historical process at the level of social institutions, conventions, economic and cultural factors, rather than biology.

But explaining why it is that humans are disposed to learn and accommodate themselves to these cultural rules is another matter. Moreover, it may be that some moral rules are in fact biologically based, or biased, or at least agreeable. (…)”

‘Qamile Stema, 88, a so-called sworn virgin, scolds relatives for not visiting her often enough.’

IHT, Sworn to virginity and living as men in Albania:

“Pashe Keqi recalls the day nearly sixty years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting rifle and vowed to forsake marriage, children and sex.

Had she been born in Albania today, says the 78-year-old sworn virgin, who made an oath of celibacy in return for the right to live and rule her family as a man, she would choose womanhood.

“Back then, it was better to be a man because, before, a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” says Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of Raki and smoking cigarettes. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men and are even more powerful, and I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”

Sworn virgins became the patriarchs of their families, with all the trappings of male authority, by swearing to remain virgins for the rest of their lives.”

Peter Sloterdijk, Spielen mit dem, was mit uns spielt

“Ich werde gleich in medias res gehen, was bei einer philosophischen Herleitung eines solchen Themas wie «Fussball – Brot und Spiele» nichts anderes bedeuten kann, als zu zeigen, von wo man das Thema weit herholen möchte – Philosophie ist ja die Kunst des «Weit-Herholens der Dinge». Den Sport weit herholen heisst für Europäer nichts anderes, als in unsere eigene Antike zurückzublicken, und zwar in ihrer Doppelgesichtigkeit als einer griechischen und einer römischen. Um meine These im Voraus zusammenzufassen: Wir haben im Sportgeschehen des 20. Jahrhunderts eine doppelte Renaissance erlebt – auf der einen Seite eine griechische Renaissance, die im Zeichen des Stadions steht, auf der anderen Seite eine Renaissance römischen Typs, im Zeichen der Arena. Der Generaltrend in der Sportkultur des 20. Jahrhunderts verrät den zunehmenden Sieg des Arena-Prinzips über das Stadion-Prinzip – was zugleich etwas aussagt über die Grundtendenz der Massenkultur im 20. Jahrhundert.”

De Nederlandse versie van de tekst Sloterdijks lezing verscheen in Trouw: Liggen of staan, dat is de kwestie.

NYT Magazine, Figuring Marlene Dumas:

““I never learned to ride a bicycle, and it is too late now,” she told me with a hint of pride, before going on to list her other negative achievements. “I never learned to drive. I never learned to swim.” At 54, Dumas is a jovial and garrulous presence, with a tangle of blond curls and fair skin. She speaks English with a heavy accent, in a wheezing, thinned-out voice.

“I was so pleased when I read that Rossellini loved to lie in bed,” she continued, referring to the Italian filmmaker, a confirmed hypochondriac who, she discovered, would take to his bed for two or three days at a time, reading thick novels. “Now people do exercise, and they have hobbies, and they take holidays,” she said. “I am not one of those. I don’t go to a psychiatrist. I don’t go to a gym. I run away from my accountant, I run away from my dentist. They are all supposed to help you, but I like to stay in bed, where I have a chance to reflect, like Rossellini.””

(via)

The Times (November 28, 1919), Einstein On His Theory:

“By Dr. Albert Einstein.
I respond with pleasure to your Correspondent’s request that I should write something for The Times on the Theory of Relativity.”

(via)

‘The telegraph room at the original Mundaneum in Brussels. (Mundaneum)’

IHT, The web that time forgot:

“On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”"

NPR’s Weekend Edition, Can ‘Blue Zones’ Help Turn Back the Biological Clock?

“Sardinian sheepherders, Japanese grandmothers and Seventh-Day Adventists in Los Angeles don’t seem to have that much in common. But within these groups there are some of the longest-lived people in the world.”

(…)

“Although the aging process isn’t fully understood, scientists do know that there’s a complex interplay of genetics and the environment that factors into health and longevity. And Buettner says he was able to identify shared patterns among people who live in Blue Zones.

“They didn’t take any supplements or pills or wine extracts,” he says. “They tended to live in houses and environments that nudged them into bursts of physical activity in kind of an effortless way.

“Okinawans sat on the floor; Sardinians lived in vertical houses; the Costa Ricans had gardens. So they were doing little things all day long that added up significantly over the years and the decades,” Buettner says.”

Excerpt: Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.

Zie ook: How To Live Forever. Is the secret to be found among the centenarians in an isolated region of Sardinia?

NRC Handelsblad, ‘Ik heb alles gezien’:

“Bent u als man met het zelfverklaarde pessimistische mensbeeld met het klimmen der jaren milder geworden?

„Ik ben milder over de mensen. Vroeger oordeelde ik scherper. Ik begrijp nu wel dat ze fouten maken of hoe ze zijn. Ik vraag me ook vaker af: wat zou ik gedaan hebben in een soortgelijk geval?”

Dat is niet goed voor een columnist, lijkt me?

„Neen, het is niet goed. Maar ja, het hangt ervan af hoe je de column ziet. Ik ben natuurlijk niet zo vreselijk polemisch. Zeker niet op de mens gericht. Behalve over Wilders, maar dat was schertsend.””

‘Behind a drawing of a plane that hangs in a hallway is a little niche containing a scale model of the kitchen, a clue that leads to a musical score written for the apartment, which is hidden in a drawer above the stove.’ (Slideshow)

New York Times, Mystery on Fifth Avenue:

“(…) But some of that furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets — messages, games and treasures — that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.

The apartment even comes with its own book, part of which is a fictional narrative that recalls “The Da Vinci Code” (without the funky religion or buckets of blood) and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” the children’s classic by E. L. Konigsburg about a brother and a sister who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discover — and solve — a mystery surrounding a Renaissance sculpture. It has its own soundtrack, too, with contributions by Kate Fenner, a young Canadian singer and songwriter with a lusty, alternative, Joni Mitchell-ish sound, with whom Mr. Clough fell in love during the project.”

The Founding Fathers: Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Larry Roberts

Vanity Fair, How the Web Was Won. An Oral History of the Internet:

“Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign. Each breakthrough—network protocols, hypertext, the World Wide Web, the browser—inspired another as narrow-tied engineers, long-haired hackers, and other visionaries built the foundations for a world-changing technology.”

Tom Ford Spring/Summer 2008

“Radish, where is thy sting? At flavor-tripping parties, guests find that miracle fruit makes everything sweet.”

NY Times, The Miracle Fruit. A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue:

“You pop it in your mouth and scrape the pulp off the seed, swirl it around and hold it in your mouth for about a minute,” he said. “Then you’re ready to go.” He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.

During the 1970s, a ruling by the Food and Drug Administration dashed hopes that an extract of miraculin could be sold as a sugar substitute. In the absence of any plausible commercial application, the miracle fruit has acquired a bit of a cult following.”

Zie ook: The Wall Street Journal, To Make Lemons Into Lemonade, Try ‘Miracle Fruit’ en TheMiracleFruit Man.

The Observer, A thriller in ten chapters:

“The Observer’s literary editor Robert McCrum stood down this month after more than 10 years in the job. And what a tumultuous 10 years. When he started it was a world of ‘cigarettes, coffee and strong drink’. But that has all changed - new writers, big money, the internet, lucrative prizes and literary festivals have all helped revolutionise the books world.”

‘Power of Wind’ won in 2007 in een Gouden Leeuw in Cannes.