Modern Library Built over (Nearly) Millennarian Covent Ruins

Well, as you can see in the sidebar, I do more FBing of my interesting weblinks than blogging nowadays, but I thought these photos were worth firing up Blogger for! ☺

First thing to know is that these originate from Instagram, a free iPhone app that's also fast becoming a photosharing sensation, not to mention a global social-network community for enjoying others' photography! (Those who don't use the iPhone or iPad can vicariously appreciate Istagram-ography by observing a live-stream of photos as they are being uploaded from all over the world at Hashtagram or by using the Webstagram service. FYI: I'm on there as @misciel!)

Now, the photo here is from Instagram user @mariannehope, a Norwegian who usually lives in Holland and typically shoots lovely desaturated, minimalist images of still-lifes and panoramas. That's why these images caught my eye... not like her usual style at all. Turns out that's because she wanted to give a strong sense of this fascinating building!

It is the Tønsberg Library, which she just visited. According to Wikipedia, Tønsberg is generally regarded as the oldest town in Norway, and they've got the ruins to prove it! As Marianne writes,

What's special about this building is that it's built on and around ancient ruins from the year 1180, the ruins of a convent. They also found 6 graves from the Vikings on the grounds. The building was built in 1992 and is a fantastic piece of modern architecture mixed in with the historic stones.

For more images of this interesting building, you can check out #tønsberglibrary on Webstagram - Instagram Web Viewer! (Turns out that Marianne will even be posting more tomorrow...) Enjoy!!

Venice in Vintage Science Mags

It's always a hoot to look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, and with Google Books you can now do just that! But what do you get if you mix an eternally medieval city with eternally hopeful futurists? You get these mags' interesting take on Venice! Through their pages, you see the 20th century slowly but surely arrive to the canal city (or not, as sometimes the case may be...)

As you can see from the pictures, the articles ranged from the ridiculous (at left) to the strangely poignant from World War I below.

For more on Vintage Venice, see my post over at Metafilter...

"I Drew the Coffin": The "Oblique Strategies" of Marshall McLuhan

I just posted a long item on Metafilter about my discovery online of an important set of playing cards created by Marshall McLuhan (who presciently coined the phrases "the medium is the message" and "global village").

Enjoy!

At right, one of my favorites of the cards.
(I love the fact he's wearing academic regalia!)

Predictably Irrational!

I'm spending these couple of days easing into my new (Italian) milieu and catching up on some reading, which - it must be said - I'm doing on the iPhone through a mix of available apps, including eReader, Amazon's Kindle and Stanza. Sure, it lacks the satisfaction of the physical experience of reading a REAL book, but, let me tell you from past experience, it weighs a heck of a lot less than if I'd lugged every book I might possibly want to read over the summer to Italy with me!

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine was quite entertaining, about the real-life events and intrique that unfold following the $156,000 record-breaking auction in 1985 of a bottle of Château Lafite supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson (not least of which was whether this bottle, and several siblings which also surfaced thereafter, was in fact a fake). My only wish for this fun read would have been for its conclusion to be, well, more conclusive. I understand the legal actions are not all finished, but I can't help but think that the author could have nevertheless given a greater sense of closure at the end for the readers who had followed him and the whole story all that way...

Why spend $156,000 for an object which cannot realize the destiny for which it was made without being destroyed? Not to mention for an object which is practically impossible to guarantee complete authenticity? The next book I read might give us a few clues... Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions is the popularization of the groundbreaking research in behavioral economics by MIT prof Dan Ariely. I first encountered his work through a fascinating podcast for the series "All in the Mind." I've since seen him speak live (via stream) at TED2009 about the economics of honesty and on the PBS Newshour about the current economic crisis, and I remain a great fan of his keen and creative intellect.

For further info, Ariely's going to be in the spotlight a lot again soon! TED just posted this afternoon his talk from the EG ("Entertainment Gathering") 2008 conference, and an expanded and updated edition of his bestseller is out TODAY, with additional information regarding his scholarship and experiments, not to mention addressing the astoundingly predictably irrational current stock market crisis!

Hope they pique your interest as much as they did mine! Enjoy!!

A Light Scratch on the Mind: Breathtaking Poetry of John Updike

John Updike passed away this week. Oddly enough, I have realized that I'm only two degrees of separation away from this great American author, since I know someone who knew him well (and apparently even inspired one of his early stories). How strange are tangled social webs we inadvertently weave.

What struck me even more though was a poem which was read on the PBS News Hour that he'd published in a collection back in 2001. A poem so amazingly lovely that I cannot help but share it here. May the ink make a light scratch upon your mind as well... Enjoy!

A Rescue

Today I wrote some words that will see print.
Maybe they will last "forever" in that
someone will read them, their ink making
a light scratch on his mind, or hers.
I think back with greater satisfaction
upon a yellow bird—a goldfinch?—
that had flown into the garden shed
and could not get out,
battering its wings on the deceptive light
of the dusty, warped-shut window.

Without much reflection for once, I stepped
to where its panicked heart
was making commotion, the flared wings drumming,
and with clumsy soft hands
pinned it against a pane, held loosely cupped
this agitated essence of the air,
and through the open door released it,
like a self-flung ball,
to all that lovely, perishing outdoors.

(via languagehat)

P.S. You can also hear the author read it himself here.

The Best of Bad Fiction: The 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest!

The 26th annual winner of the most awful opening line of a novel (otherwise known as the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest) has been announced!

The winning entry:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”

AIIIIEEEEEE!

For more on this venerable, so-horrible-it's-humorous contest, check out the ever-wonderful Neatorama!

My prediction about Potter...

Actually, I'm not going to make any plot predictions. Instead...

Well, it's now yesterday's news (literally!) that Last Harry Potter leaks online.

All I can suggest is that it would be beyond utter and thorough brillance for the publishers themselves to have deliberately leaked false versions of the book. Decoys, as it were... (Get it?)

Can you just imagine? It might dissuade some folks from continuing to try to get an illicit preview copy if they think that one (or more) is already out there. Plus, you'd have thousands of rabid Potter fans reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of alternative versions in the days before the release... only to announce - at, say, 11 pm on the 20th - that they were all hoaxes. Why, it would be a public-relations (not to mention, security) coup!

It may not turn out to be true... but I hope that it is! It would be such an artful blending of art and reality, fact and fiction... revealing the continuities (even simulacrum?) between the power (and illusion) of both Harry's magic in the world of the books and that of the Information Revolution in the Internet of our own... "Confundus," anyone?

UPDATE: Apparently, some folks on Metafilter have much the same suspicions that I do (although maybe less charitably...)

Still, in the ensuing discussion, there were some priceless "spoilers" mentioned, like...

• "Voldemort is Keyser Soze."
• "Rosebud was the name of his broom."
• "A naked Harry wakes up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and Bob Newhart!!!"
• "Harry actually dreamed the whole rescue, and is really still in the torture chamber. Oh, and Hermoine is a man."

The Art of Deja Vu

"Minnesota photographer Thomas Allen cuts illustrations from the covers and interior pages of pulp novels and kids' books, turns them into 3D scenes and photographs them." More at Thomas
Allen's "Pulp Fiction"!

This clever online exhibit is not to be missed... but what caught my eye was that I remember the image to the right from my childhood!

It was from that obligatory copy of the children's illustrated Bible that was always in doctors' office waiting rooms at least as late as the 1970s!

(via Boing Boing: Pulp covers turned into 3D sculptures)