Maitani

It's even more wintery than around here, and I'm being told that March was much colder than normal (I can never remember what's normal for the different months) :) - Eivind

No, Eivind, I don't think that will happen anytime soon. :-) I spent few holidays in a small hotel in the Harz mountains, with a very nice landlady and staff. - Maitani

"Fifty years after her death, Sylvia Plath continues to captivate writers and readers. But her role as a ‘casus belli’ in the battle of the sexes has also obscured the genius of this much-mythologised poet" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

“I have done it again,” declares Sylvia Plath in the opening line of one of her most famous poems – the tour de force that is “Lady Lazarus”. “One year in every ten I manage it.” What the speaker manages every decade is, like Lazarus, to return from the dead. Now, 50 years after this poem was composed, Lady Lazarus has done it once more, arising for a fresh generation of readers, as Plath has done regularly since her suicide helped transform her from poet to cultural phenomenon." - Maitani

"The last time Plath was big news was 15 years ago, when her husband Ted Hughes published Birthday Letters, the collection of poems he wrote to her ghost. When Birthday Letters came out, Plath had already been dead for 35 years – five years longer than she had lived. At the time of her death, in February 1963, Plath had published some poems in The New Yorker; her first collection, The... more... - Maitani

"Harsh measures imposed on Cypriot political and financial authorities to address bank failures reveal, once again, that the entire architecture of the EU is in tatters. The geopolitics surrounding the Greek Cypriot crisis is pulling the EU further apart and into the unknown." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

there was NO invasion!!! - Halil

"Humans favor speech as the primary means of linguistic communication. Spoken languages are so common many think language and speech are one and the same. But the prevalence of sign languages suggests otherwise. Not only can Deaf communities generate language using manual gestures, but their languages share some of their design and neural mechanisms with spoken languages." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"New research by Northeastern University's Prof. Iris Berent further underscores the flexibility of human language and its robustness across both spoken and signed channels of communication. In a paper published in PLOS ONE, Prof. Berent and her team show that English speakers can learn to rapidly recognize key structures of American Sign Language (ASL), despite no previous familiarity with this language." - Maitani

"Like spoken languages, signed languages construct words from meaningless syllables (akin to can-dy in English) and distinguish them from morphemes (meaningful units, similar to the English can-s). The research group examined whether non-signers might be able to discover this structure." - Maitani

"An arroyo (/əˈrɔɪoʊ/; Spanish: [aˈroʝo]), a Spanish word translated as brook, and also called a wash is usually a dry creek or stream bed—gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain.[1] Wadi is a similar term in Africa. In Spain, a rambla has a similar meaning to arroyo. In Hispanic America any small river might be called arroyo, even if it flows continually all year and is never dry." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

I'm very familiar with these- they were all over the place in New Mexico. - Kelli H.

"It feels harsh to give up on books — the accomplishment of completing an entire book is so vastly impressive that I almost feel guilt for implying anyone might have screwed the gargantuan task up. It suggests a failure on a rather large scale. Each time I relegate another half-skimmed paperback to the shelf, I also feel I must be some sort of ‘bad reader’ for not giving this creation the due respect of finishing it. The only solace I have found in response to this problem was in Linda Holmes NPR piece, The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything, which exactly articulates the need for all of us to Let. Go." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

confession: I never finished a book I didn't like. - Maitani

"The Greek-Egyptian town of Naukratis in the Nile Delta was a major centre of cross-cultural contact in the ancient world. This catalogue presents the wealth of archaeological finds made in late 19th and early 20th century excavations at the site that are today dispersed in museums worldwide. Comprising Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Cypriot objects dating from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD, it will eventually contain over 16,000 objects." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"The calendar for April opens with a typical scene for spring; an aristocratic couple are shown courting in a walled and flowering garden. The richly-dressed lady's dog is nearby, lapping water from the garden's fountain. Behind the couple, a nobleman is preparing to go hawking, another commonly-depicted pursuit for this time of year. The theme of fertility and new life is echoed at the top of the miniature, where a pair of storks can be seen building their nest on the top of a chimney. Below, six men are playing a game with a bat and ball. On the following folio is a roundel with a painting of a bull, for the zodiac sign Taurus. At the bottom of this page a sherpherd and his bagpipe-playing companion are looking over their flock of sheep, complete with new lambs and a single goat." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Researchers at the British Library have found sensational evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. Hidden within the pages of a 12th-century manuscript is not only a description but also a drawing of the beast known to millions as Nessie." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Walter of Bingham (d. c. 1197) was a minor cleric from Nottinghamshire who, unable to fulfill his vow to go on the Third Crusade, made a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Scotland. William's own manuscript of Itinerarium Scotiae (The Journey Through Scotland) has been long neglected , but shows the author's fascination with Scottish history, customs and wildlife. One commentator has... more... - Maitani

"Walter’s encounter with Nessie came one summer evening, as he approached the banks of the River Ness. Students of the Loch Ness Monster will be aware that in the earliest account, found in Adomnán’s Life of St Columba (written around AD 700), Nessie was seen not in the loch but in the neighbouring river; and this is corroborated by Walter’s story. Seeking safe passage across the river,... more... - Maitani

"Eggs occupy a special status during Easter observances. They’re symbols of rebirth and renewal—life bursts forth from this otherwise plain, inanimate object that gives no hint as to what it contains. In this regard it is a handy symbol for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but it is is a symbol that has held this meaning long before Christianity adopted it." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

The summary by Yonatan Zunger is excellent. Thank you for the link, Faruk Ahmet. - Maitani

"An interesting recent talk by Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

http://www.dainst.org/en... - Maitani

"“My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer and I have my mind…and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge. That’s why I read so much Jon Snow.”" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"How many Asiatic cheetahs still prowl on the planet earth? Compared to their African cousins, the Asiatic cheetah is more imperiled and known to be a critically endangered subspecies. Yet, no reliable estimates of its population are available despite such statistics being required as essential input for conservation and management plans. Despite this, several organizations did not tarry to find answers and to initiate conservation attempts." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

When I was a kid I read a book named "Zita der Gepard" or so, a story about a gepard that was raised in the palace of a Parthian King in Persia. The cheetah escorted the king for many years until his downfall. - Maitani

"The Parthian Empire is a fascinating period of Persian history closely connected to Greece and Rome. Ruling from 247 B.C. to A.D. 228 in ancient Persia (Iran), the Parthians defeated Alexander the Great's successors, the Seleucids, conquered most of the Middle East and southwest Asia, controlled the Silk Road and built Parthia into an Eastern superpower. The Parthian empire revived the greatness of the Achaemenid empire and counterbalanced Rome's hegemony in the West. Parthia at one time occupied areas now in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaidzhan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Because limited written historical sources have survived, much of what we know about the Parthians and their sub-kingdoms of Characene, Elymais and Persis must be deduced from coins. For that reason, the primary focus is on numismatics. But this site is not just a virtual coin collection; here you can also gain insight into Parthian... more... - Maitani from Bookmarklet

History: Prelude: "There was a district named Partukka or Partakka which was known to the Assyrians as early as the seventh century B.C., and it may have formed a part of Media. Media was conquered by Cyrus (Kurush) the Great, founder of the Achaemenid empire. The Achaemenids ruled Iran from 550 B.C. to 330 B.C. and their authority extended from the Danube river to the Indus river at... more... - Maitani

"Jason (Ancient Greek: Ἰάσων, Iásōn) was an ancient Greek mythological hero who was famous for his role as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea. Jason appeared in various literature in the classical world of Greece and Rome, including the epic poem Argonautica and the tragedy Medea. In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name. Jason has connections outside of the classical world, as he is seen as being the mythical founder of the city of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

from http://ff.im/1eYeyq - Maitani

"An earlier GeoCurrents post examined birch bark documents from Veliky Novgorod, Russia. With letters scratched into the inside surface, these scraps of birch bark, well-preserved in water-logged soils near Lake Ilmen, contain a wealth of information for historians and linguists alike. One of the most fascinating puzzles of Slavic historical linguistics was posed by birch bark document #247. It is the oldest birch bark document discovered to date, dating from 1025-1050 CE, which makes it older than Ostromir Gospels, the second oldest extant Russian book (it was considered the oldest before the Novgorod Codex was discovered in 2000). This document was unearthed early on, in 1956, but for a long time its interpretation was subject to fierce debates. Particularly mystifying was the second line, given in English transliteration below:" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"As mentioned in a previous post, the writing system used for birth bark letters did not employ spaces between words or punctuation, so figuring out where one word ends and another one begins is one of the first tasks of those who try to decipher these documents. In the early years after the discovery of this document, the widely accepted analysis of this line was to break it down as follows (punctuation likewise added for clarity):" - Maitani

"The string KѢLEA/KѢLѢA was interpreted as meaning ‘of the room’, making the whole line translatable as ‘and the lock of the room, the doors of the room, the master…’. However, analyzed this way, the sentence is very odd indeed. First, two phrases have subjects but no predicates: the lock of the room what? the doors of the room what? The rest of the document reads as a description of a... more... - Maitani

"Researchers are digging deeper into whether infants' ability to learn new words is shaped by the particular language being acquired." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"A new Northwestern University study cites a promising new research agenda aimed at bringing researchers closer to discovering the impact of different languages on early language and cognitive development. For decades, researchers have asked why infants learn new nouns more rapidly and more easily than new verbs. Many researchers have asserted that the early advantage for learning nouns... more... - Maitani

"Logeion (literally, a place for words; in particular, a speaker's platform, or an archive) was developed after the example of dvlf.uchicago.edu, to provide simultaneous lookup of entries in the many reference works that make up the Perseus Classical collection. To improve the chronological range for which the dictionaries are useful, we have added DuCange (see below), and to enhance this site as both a research and a pedagogical tool, we add information based on corpus data in the right side bar, as well as references to chapters in standard textbooks. More such 'widgets' will be added over time, along with, we hope, still more dictionaries. The Logeion interface only allows for consulting dictionaries the way dictionaries were originally conceived: Type in the headword (or lemma) for the entry (transliterated Greek is an option) and the word wheel will spin to what we hope will be the right destination. Enter a minimum of three characters, and the system will attempt to suggest... more... - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Update January 2012: We have now added a Latin-Dutch dictionary to the collection: The Woordenboek Latijn/Nederlands. One notable feature of this dictionary, for those who do not speak Dutch, is that a lot of attention has been paid to ensure accuracy of vowel length for the lexical entries. For further information see below." - Maitani

"“Brandis, so he told me, had traversed the woods of Pegu riding an elephant on such trails as there were, with four sticks in his left hand and a pocketknife in his right. Whenever he saw in the bamboo thickets a teak tree within two hundred feet of his trail, he cut a notch in stick number 1, 2, 3, or 4, denoting the diameter of the tree. It was impossible for European hands, dripping with moisture, to carry a notebook. At the end of the day, after traveling some twenty miles, Brandis had collected forest stand data for a sample plot four hundred feet wide and twenty miles long, containing some nineteen hundred acres. He continued his cruise for a number of months, sick with malaria in a hellish climate. Moreover, he underwent a trepanning operation, and for the rest of his life he carried a small hole filled with white cotton in the front of his skull. But he emerged from the cruise with the knowledge needed for his great enterprise.”1" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Such is the tale of the birth of tropical forestry. Over the course of a heroic survey mission of a lone forester, new findings informed new conclusions; these, in turn, enshrined new principles for those engaged with forest growth and management. However, something else also emerged in the process: the figure of the international forest expert, acting as a liaison for governments and authorities while at the same time operating under the disinterested mantle of scientific research.
" - Maitani

"Farvahar is one of the best-known symbols of Zoroastrianism, the state religion of ancient Iran. This religious-cultural symbol was adapted by the Pahlavi dynasty to represent the Iranian nation. The symbol is currently thought to represent a Fravashi (guardian angel). Because the symbol first appears on royal inscriptions, it is also thought to represent the ‘Divine Royal Glory’ or the Fravashi of the King. The winged disc with a man's upper body that is commonly used as a symbol of the Zoroastrian faith has a long and splendid history in the art and culture of the Middle East. Its symbolism and philosophical meaning is an ancient heritage that extends through three millennia to modern times. In ancient Iranian culture, the concept of Farvahar was considered as the invaluable component of human existence because it is an attribute of Ahura Mazda’s infinite entity. It is incorporated in human at birth to guide and lead toward perfection, and after death it unites with its origin or Ahura Mazda as pure and perfect as it was." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"It is made up of the following six parts: 1. Head - The figure inside is that of an old man representing wisdom of old age that reminds us the Farvahar of the elderly can be a better guide, and that we should consult experienced and wise people. 2. Hands – The right hand points upwards, telling us that we should always be in only one direction (of Ahura Mazda). The other hand holds a... more... - Maitani

"A new paper in Science uses Bayesian phylogeographic methods to model the spatial expansion of Indo-European languages from their Anatolian homeland. An informative video shows how the authors estimate the process took place across space and time:" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

Excellent talk on the topic by Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin W. Lewis, explains why Bouckaert et al. get things wrong http://geocurrents.info/site-ne... - Maitani

"In evolutionary religious studies there are some scholars who claim that “religion” is an adaptation that is the product of natural selection. Though there are several different variants of this argument, all of them rely – in one way or another – on some form of “cultural evolution.” This is not cultural evolution in the old-fashioned, progressive, and normative anthropological sense (i.e., Lubbock, Tylor, and Frazer) — in its modern guises, cultural evolution relies on some variant of gene-culture co-evolution, niche construction, or memetics. While Dawkins and Dennett continue professing faith in memetics, they are pretty much alone. The most serious contender is the dual inheritance model first proposed by Boyd and Richerson (1985) in Culture and the Evolutionary Process." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

So, it's more like cultural breeding than natural selection? :) - Eivind

"As the epic fantasy returns to TV, historian Tom Holland explains how it plunders real events from the ancient world to the middle ages to produce a heady cocktail of drama" - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Although Hilary Mantel is apparently yet to begin the third volume of her trilogy of novels about Thomas Cromwell, we can be confident of several plot twists that it will not feature. Cromwell will not precipitate a civil war. He will not betray the husband of his foster-sister, with whom he is in love. He will not escape the executioner's block. His downfall is scripted. The history... more... - Maitani

Oh yeah, other places are doing spring now :) - Eivind

Spring? What's that? - Halil

tis snowing - Halil

"The first day of Spring... Persian New Year. It was New Year for many in the world until Caesar changed it to the middle of winter. End Roman calendar...begin Julian calendar. Cuz...oh, that makes sense. New Year...frozen tundra. New Year...spring renaissance. Uh huh. So, Roman, Julian, Gregorian...I'm goin' Persian." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

wow! this is one of the best Nowrouz Tables that I have seen and I am Iranian :) - ؛ patrick

"For most God-fearing medieval Christians the Devil was ‘legitimately scary’. He (and his band of demonic followers) presented a very real threat to one’s spiritual fortitude—always out to trick, torment, and tempt good Christians into a life of sin. It was very easy to be fooled by the Devil, and Christians were constantly reminded to be vigilant and wary of temptation." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.de/2013... - Maitani

"Roman Vishniac is not a household name, but it probably should be. As a new retrospective at the International Center of Photography, curated by Maya Benton, makes plainly evident, Vishniac was one of the more versatile photographers of the twentieth century, and the breath of his accomplishment and legacy is only now beginning to come clear. He is best known, today, for his photographs of impoverished shtetl and ghetto Jews, taken primarily in Germany, Poland, and Russia during the 1930s, and published in the postwar years in the landmark book, A Vanished World." - Maitani from Bookmarklet

"As Benton demonstrates, these images were commissioned by Jewish relief organizations, and the fact that they came to represent Jewish life in Eastern Europe as a whole during that period is somewhat deceptive. In fact, Vishniac himself captured a wide range of Jewish experience — his own family was quite well off — his images giving not just a window onto the lost world of the most impoverished cases, but the urban bourgeoisie." - Maitani

"Benton posits Vishniac as not only an underappreciated master but also a modernist of great range, his images at times exhibiting the expressionism of 1920s German cinema; the formal experimentations of Russian constructivism and the Bauhaus; and the "decisive moment" street style of Cartier Bresson — probably closest to his natural idiom. I left the show feeling he was more of a... more... - Maitani

"Yesterday, I posted some resources for learning about Mount Everest along with the news that Google Maps now contains Street View imagery of Mount Everest base camp. All of those resources give a very western perspective to Mount Everest. There's another side of Everest and that is the perspective of the Sherpa people who are native to the area and have climbed Everest more than any other group. Kraig Becker at The Adventure Blog shared a great BBC documentary about Sherpas who work with westerners on the mountain. You can watch the video below. Before showing the video to your students, you may want to remind them that Sherpa is an ethnic group, not a job title." - Maitani from Bookmarklet