DAILY PHOTO: Houston
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“A Decade” by Amy Lowell [w/ Audio]
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
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PROMPT: Cities
I suspect cities are on the way to becoming passé. They worked great for an economy built around humans exchanging time and effort for a salary, but in an economy in which machines do virtually all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans, the benefits seem less clear.
Plus, there’s a lot of discussion of an epidemic of loneliness, and so it seems — as a basic organizational structure — cities (admittedly ironically) don’t serve humanity well. People are adapted for families and tribes — more close-knit communities.
Furthermore, Asia is already beginning to see the problem of downward scalability of cities, as many cities shrink less elegantly than they grew. Birth rates are declining everywhere as humanity reaches its upper limit for this planet.
Maybe the future is artist colonies.
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Mud [Haiku]
Spring rain for days:
grass is green & thick;
the mud, soft & thin.
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DAILY PHOTO: Sprawling Danube
BOOK: “The Mind Electric” by Pria Anand
The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria AnandMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Simon & Schuster
There are A LOT of pop neuroscience books out there that reflect upon what we know about the brain from what goes wrong with it. I thought I was done reading such books because, while the first few are fascinating, they tend to retell the same stories.
That said, I’m glad I read this one, and what made it worth reading was that the science was explored in a very personal way, and I don’t just mean that the author recited her own personal experiences or those of her patients (though she does both,) but rather that the whole book is imbued with her worldview. She relates maladies of the mind to works of literature, of Greek and Hindu mythology, and to other aspects of culture in a relatable manner.
Another factor that sets this book apart is that its author shows a passion for language. In that sense, it reminded me of the works of Oliver Sacks (who she references a number of times,) rather than your average — articulate but linguistically conservative — neuroscientist.
I’d recommend this book for any readers interested in neuroscience, particularly anyone looking for a book that sets itself apart from the crowd. (I don’t recall it even mentioning Phineas Gage, which I thought was a requirement of all such books.)
View all my reviews
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“To a Taoist Hermit on Mt. Quanjiao” [寄全椒山中道士] by Wei Yingwu [韦应物]
Today, my office is chilly.
At once, I miss my mountain chum,
Who bound firewood in the valley,
Bringing it back to boil white stones.
I wish I could ladle some wine
To comfort on this stormy night.
But fallen leaves fill mountain hollows,
How could I find a track to follow?
This is poem #29 from the 300 Tang Poems [唐诗三百首], entitled 寄全椒山中道士. The original poem in Simplified Chinese is:
今朝郡斋冷， 忽念山中客；
涧底束荆薪， 归来煮白石。
欲持一瓢酒， 远慰风雨夕。
落叶满空山， 何处寻行迹？
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PROMPT: Name
I wasn’t consulted on the matter. Like most, I labor under the impression that it came from my parents, but for all I know it was just a random person off the streets who scribbled it on the clipboard hanging off the hospital bassinet. If there even was a hospital…
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Hangers On [Haiku]
trunk ringed by fallen blooms,
only the pate contains hangers-on.
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Bright Fringed [Haiku]
bright-fringed clouds
with blackened bellies drift:
summer day sundown.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 