2016 — 25 August: Thursday
I get very quickly fed up of what I regard as over-hot weather.1 Now, of course, it's added humidity to the mix.
Time for my next supplies run ahead of a lunch date.
I recall Trier...
... chiefly for its hypermarket, and the fact that we'd stop there for a cup of coffee shortly after the border crossing on our long (day-long, in fact) drives to Germany. I was aware of some of Trier's Roman-era artefacts. Mary Beard, writing in the TLS, tells me Trier is now hosting three separate art shows all focusing on Imperial Bad Boy Nero — "Lust and Crime" being the title of one of them. Gotta pull in those punters. (Link.)
A pneumatic octopus (robot)
Welcome to the dawn of the Age of our new Cephalopod Robot Overlords. (Link.)
How does one web magazine...
... manage to attract so many interesting articles? This one is on the driving force(s) behind the art collector. There are, of course, a range of degrees of obsession involved. Not that I would know anything about that. Of course.
My current obsession is merely breakfast.
Gong
I have seven of their albums tucked away on a couple of minidiscs, but honestly can't remember the last time I played their music. Not for at least 20 years, certainly. (Link.)
Taxing times
Blimey. Bad apples?
"Deeply troubling?" Why's that, I (don't) wonder?
As I near...
... the end of "Sapiens" I note little oddments:
When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers' smell unbearable.
Compare and contrast:
Religion aside, the book is full of strange myths and nostrums that hint at what mattered to people in the fourteenth century: sex, money, power, perfume. Nuwayri retails directions for incense and fragrance that are so elaborate it is hard to believe anyone really followed them. (One begins, "Take one hundred mithqāls of rare Tibetan musk and pound it after cleaning2 it of organ matter and hair.") Then again, people and cities must have smelled awful, and olfactory relief made a difference.
It's all very well...
... painting new reserved-for-pedestrian walking lanes along the Waitrose car park, but that simply doesn't magic extra space out of thin air. It merely shows how many cars are ridiculously over-sized and poke out over said walking lanes. A bit silly, really. Why not exile all such overgrown anti-social vehicles to the far corner of the parking space and make their drivers do a walk of shame that bit further?