Hemingway, Lost Feet, Antarctic, Criminal Justice, Memory
Booze, Bullfights, And Brawls
Lesley Blume | Vanity Fair | 12th May 2016
Lively account of the trip to Pamplona in 1925 which gave Ernest Hemingway the characters and relationships for The Sun Also Rises. His model for the “glamorous but anguished Lady Brett Ashley” was the similarly glamorous Lady Duff Twysden, who behaved in Pamplona like “a jezebel in Arcadia, manipulating her suitors like marionettes … Despite the English title, there was said to be something feral about Lady Duff; some maintained that she didn’t bother to bathe regularly” (5,600 words)
Feet Lost and Found
Christopher Solomon | Outside | 30th September 2009
Seven feet clad in socks and sneakers wash ashore in the space of 15 months between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The ingredients for a horror story are here in abundance: The Pacific Northwest has the most serial killers in the United States; British Columbia has the most missing persons in Canada. “Four of the feet match: one pair of women’s feet, one pair of men’s. That’s seven feet, bow-tied in seaweed, that were once attached to a total of five bodies bodies that don’t turn up” (5,555 words)
Shuffleboard At McMurdo
Maciej Cegłowski | Idle Words | 14th May 2016
Diary of a sea voyage in Antarctica. “There are never going to be cruises here in any numbers. The same rounded bottom that keeps the Shokalskiy from snagging on sea ice makes it roll like crazy in open water. On a regular cruise ship, thirty degrees of roll sends grand pianos smashing into the walls. The Shokalskiy rolls to thirty degrees every four seconds. Twice during the voyage we roll past fifty degrees. At that point it makes more sense to try to stand on the walls than the floor.” (6,700 words)
Questions About Criminal Justice That Have No Answers
Tom Meagher | Marshall Project | 15th May 2016
Critical features of the American criminal justice system for which comprehensive national statistics are lacking: How many people have a criminal record, how many people have served time in prison or jail, how often people reoffend after being released from prison, how many shootings take place, how many police are investigated or prosecuted for misconduct, how many people own guns, how often police stop pedestrians or motorists. Not all local authorities share, or even compile, the information (1,200 words)
Mental Time Travel
Kourken Michaelian | The Brains Blog | 16th May 2016
What is the difference between remembering an event and imagining it? In mental terms, it’s complicated. “Contemporary research suggests that genuine remembering can occur even when none of the content of a memory originates in experience of the remembered event. If this is right, we have to give up on the idea that remembering requires memory traces, and thus on the idea that remembering can be distinguished from imagining by the fact that it involves a causal connection” (858 words)
Video of the day: How Does A Film Editor Think?
What to expect:
Tony Zhou discusses and demonstrates how film editors decide just where to cut (9’24”)
Thought for the day
Two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary
Aldous Huxley