This week has been crazy and down and up and mostly down so there’s not much to say – here are ten articles. I feel proud of the fact that I’m getting it out in its usual form.
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1. Plastic Bags have a special history in Chinatown. It’s changing.
Asian stores have a number of quirks unique to them. One of these is the plastic bag. Among Korean and Chinese stores, the bags would usually have “thank you” written on them. This is an interesting piece about some aspects of the why, when and what of these bags.
2. Touch
An essay from Granta about the total normalization of physical contact between strangers in China. In India, things are similar, but perhaps not to the extent described in this piece. When I live in the US, I find that physical contact is a very special and mostly weird thing among strangers. Honestly I don’t know how I feel about it. As an individual, I value my privacy, but in some societies, the physical act of touching is built in to every single activity.
It could be compared to the invigoration you get from standing in front of a painting that you love. But this touch is more powerful: it can happen at any time, often when least expected, and it’s personal – the medium is another living being. It gives you something of Freud’s ‘oceanic feeling’ – when the baby doesn’t know the contours of its own body, before the ego, when it’s one with everything else.
3. How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution
This was a fun and interesting read from the New York Times. The usual explanation given for masculine shows of excess (like in peacocks and birds of paradise) is that if a male has enough to not only survive, but maintain his beauty, he is a holder of good genes. However, this is not an argument that survives careful examination. When beauty is beholden by evolutionary biologists, what can or do they conclude?
Here’s a beautiful image of the plumage of a plum-throated cotinga (which I’d only heard of now, of course).
4. How Savannah and LeBron James Are Changing Lives in Their Hometown and [Inside The Boardroom :
How Kevin Durant made himself into a mogul](http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/25951825/golden-state-warriors-star-kevin-durant-focused-building-future-basketball)
Two fascinating articles about contemporary basketball players at the peak of their respective powers. I find it interesting that athletes these days are turning to business and philanthropic ventures even when playing; it is not something to be saved for post-retirement days. Especially with Kevin Durant – he plays for the Golden State Warriors, and thus has close ties with the who’s-who of Silicon Valley.
5. Peak Bobanity : Inside the life of the NBA’s most delightful man
I loved this piece about Boban Marjanovic, who I’d not heard of earlier. He’s tall, charming, unstoppable when at his best, and is having a great time. Timing, however, is off, and it’s unlikely that the current basketball game will let him become the legend that some people think he has the potential to become.
6. The Art of Book Covers (1820–1914)
7. George Boole and the Calculus of Thought
A fantastic biography of George Boole, the guy who came up with Boolean algebra, which is powering the computer on which you are reading this and which is powering the computer that will serve you the article when you click on the link. He was a visionary. Sadly he died of pneumonia and his wife trusted traditional cures (“cures”) instead of keeping him warm and taking him to a doctor.
8. Twitter thread on the Challenger Disaster
9. Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction
10. Can Reading Make You Happier?
I have a feeling I’ve shared this piece a year or more ago. Anyway, it is a good read and a good companion to the previous article.
“Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”
Bye. -Kat.