Greetings from Istanbul! It's a wonderful, if draining place; very easy to get around, though. But it's a horrible place to try and practice Turkish, as every time you try, you get a sympathetic chuckle followed by pretty fluent English. We're catching our flight to Erzurum today. Aya Sofya and all that sort of thing are wonderful, but we're already glad to be getting off the tourist track, hoping perhaps to interact with some Turks who aren't selling something.

A roundtable discussion of Xenophon's Anabasis. As long as we're shouting, "Thalassa!" (ht)

Can't really blog now: leaving for Istanbul in the morning. Mrs. Peculiar and I are bound ultimately for northeastern Turkey, Erzurum and historic Georgia. One major destination is likely to be Gümüşhane: as Odious will appreciate, this is near where, after a grueling march across Anatolia to the crest of the Black Sea Range, Xenophon's exhausted troops exclaimed, "Thalassa! Thalassa!"

If anyone wondered what (besides sloth) was consuming my blogging output lately, here's your answer: researching Turkey, making the agonizing decision as to just where to go: the place is just crawling with worthy destinations. It's as big as Texas, but oh! so much more fascinating. And I've been studying Turkish,a very laudable tongue, barbaric and yet refined in its intricacy. I really enjoy non-Indo_European languages. The lack of grammatical gender alone makes them greatly superior, and what bliss is Turkish or Finnish regularity, where rules apply consistently enough to be worth remembering.

With any luck, I'll be much more interesting in a couple weeks. Here's a shot from the Selway this summer to tide you over:

A newly-unearthed hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold: discoveries don't get better than this.

Via Cronaca, who has lots of good stuff right now.

"Unfortunately, along with all its good effects, the web brings together people who should be isolated, and gives a voice to those who really should remain voiceless."

S.M. Stirling, interviewed by Glenn Reynolds. Looking forward to his forthcoming depiction of contemporary Santa Fe.

The Lovecraft Collection. Scents inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. Iä! Iä!

My favourite (I leave identification of this scent's name as an exercise for the reader):

A small, furry, sharp-toothed scent that will nuzzle you curiously in the black hours before dawn: dusty white sandalwood and orris root, dry coconut husk, creeping musk, and the residue of ceremonial incense.

Courtesy of Derb, who I hadn't realized was a Lovecraftian.

Music composed by birds. Sort of. I once heard a lecturer* on modern classical music describe an analogous experiment in which a stripper cast her garments onto wires and musicians interpreted the results. I imagine the birds have done better.

*A really oddly stilted fellow, the lecturer: he would cast octogenarian-style aspersions on the "Grateful Stones" then go right on to describe a piano concerto performed with the composer inside the piano, scraping a piece of chalk on anything that would make a noise.

Also an opera.

MACCUS

[Singing to the accompaniment of a harp]

. . . Wild as the white waves
Rushing and roaring, Heaving the wrack
High up the headland; Hoarse as the howling
Winds of the winter, When the lean wolves
Harry the hindmost, Horseman and horse
Toppled and tumbled; So at the town gate,
Stroke upon stroke, Sledging and slaying,
Swashes the sword, Shivers the shield
Of foeman and kinsman: Such was the fight!
But lustless and lank By the bower of the Lady,
Quenchèd forever, Quellèd and cold,
Cynewulf the King!

There... there don't seem to be any recordings of it.

Just discovered that when Edna St. V. M. was a young thing in New York, it was fashionable to write poems using her name as the final line, e.g.

Laurel is green for a season and love is sweet for a day
But love grows bitter with treason and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Lizards Use Third Eye to Steer by the Sun

Dear Master--
Dreamt last night--this little one was in Philadelphia--brotherly love indeed--I have leant my Beard to the hyssop this season and doubt to see it again--and kneeling opon the road saw the tread tread tread of your black boots your Little One knows so well--sha'nt we have a grand time when you have given back the Seal of the King and bound our Circuit? Too much happiness for this Rescinded Budd I can tell you. You hav'nt a Bayonet's Worth of Contrition, have you? for I hav'nt and sha'nt even in the Kingdom if they let my in their Kitchen door like Maggie bundling up her Calicoes.

Bliss,

Emily

If only I could find a way to make a living* writing fake correspondence for Emily Dickinson. My life would be greatly simplified.

*I thought of that, but her handwriting's too neat for me.

Fenestrella's bars close
At eight puncitilio.
We're lucky, in a way;
It's a dry county.

A quick clench of Teneriffe then
Down with dog and elk,
Carrying transubsantial Kool-Aid.
We're lucky, in a way;
It's a dry county.

Dacia trouser-roles him in herself,
Rewriting Ariadne, buckles
Down the straw bales with the old
one/two.
We're lucky, in a way;
It's a dry county.

--Wallace Shawe

Sony is contemplating a possible movie about Mallory and Irvine. Fine by me; but when do we get to see Nordwand in this hemisphere?

Sometimes you get the b'ar, and sometimes, well.... Never ends well for the b'ar these days though. Hard to muster much sympathy for such pig-headed human stupidity.

Is it permissible for Muslims to eat mermaids?

Hat tip: Derb.

You've almost certainly heard about this week's newly-discovered works by Mozart. You can hear the works themselves on Performance Today. I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy the CD, but this sort of thing is always interesting.

This one's especially for Odious: Kant and Kierkegaard attack ads.

Sundries

Outdoors: A situation very reminescent of Into the Wild resolves unhappily in Colorado. So many people view these situations asking, "Was he an uncompromising idealist or was he mentally ill?" as if it were an either/or question. I have a fair store of sympathy for these folks, and mental illness does not mean that they're idiots, devoid of self-awareness or free will. But these stories are very sad however you look at them.

Food: Michael Pollan is still worth reading, and you can read a lot of him here, on the paradoxical popularity of cooking shows and unpopularity of actual cooking.

Opera: La Traviata was excellent, hardly a surprise. Natalie Dessay is every bit as good as one could hope, and I also quited liked her husband Laurent Naouri's performance as Germont, a roll which can easily drag. Staging and costuming were interesting and creative without being at all extravagent or distracting. We may see if we can find standing room tickets for another round.

But I'm really looking forward to The Letter this Friday. Librettist Terry Teachout's latest take:

...the pressure is off. It seems clear--gratifyingly, gloriously clear--that
Paul and I have succeeded in writing a modern opera that goes over with
audiences in a big way, which is what we set out to do. From here on, I'm going
to sit back and enjoy myself.

Me too. That one sentence feat in the preceeding paragraph is no small achievement, not by a long shot. Everything I've heard about the piece sounds wonderful, and I can't wait. Here is more on how it feels to create a good opera.

Photography: I've emoted to this effect before, but I do love living somewhere when 24 hours after watching Natalie Dessay as Violetta, I can spend the night here, in the Chama River headwaters (Mrs. Peculiar providing scale):

Larissa has a book out! Check it out online. Fashion isn't exactly my thing (to understate the case vastly, vastly), but seeing as many of Masha Archer's creations would not be the least out of place amongst Chinese minorities or inside an Egyptian tomb, I want a copy.

I'm back from Idaho and boating the Selway. The Selway river canyon is very pretty, though not sublime; but the water and banks of the river itself are stunning, second to none. More to come...

It occurs to me that perhaps not everyone has met Kate Beaton.

Oh Anne. If only someone had travelled back in time and given you and your sisters giant mecha.

And further semi-nosferatic news: the horseshoe bat's nose, explained.

Much like a flashlight with an adjuster that can create an intense but small beam of light, the bat's nose can create a small but intense sonar beam. Mueller and his team used computer animation to compare varying sizes of bat noses, from small noses on other bats to the large nose of the paradoxolophus bat. In what Mueller calls a perfect mark of evolution, he says his computer modeling shows the length of the paradoxolophus bat's nose stops at the exact point the sonar beam's focal point would become ineffective.

Man, math's great when it works.

Buffy stakes Edward. The End.

Small frogs employ giant spider bodyguards.

More pictures here.

Also, alligator vs. watermelon.

Water controversies on the Yampa make it to NPR. I just took the Mr. Tierney quoted in the story down the river last week. There's much that I could write on the subject given time, but it will have to wait at least until I'm done running the Selway. For better visual aids to Dinosaur's river than NPR provides, click here.

Having failed miserably to supply content in Peculiar's absence, I shall send at least one charming discover our readers' way: Anne Carson's An Oresteia. Aeschylus' Oresteia is the only complete trilogy of plays we have from the Greeks, and so it takes a certain amount of sand to translate only his Agamemnon, and follow it up with Sophocles' Elektra and Euripedes' Orestes. She really only hits her stride with Sophocles, but all three plays are solidly done, and all have moments of brilliance. Her Cassandra I found moving; and the end of it all, Euripedes' mad tragi-comic wrap of an impossible mess, was perfectly toned.

She does tend towards simplicity in language, even when the original is deliberately vague. But this is less a fault if we imagine her plays performed--and they are clearly written with that in mind. For sheer dramatic potential, I'll take her translation over any other I've encountered.

Brandon is right.

Any version of the conflict thesis that is seriously put forward will have to deal with this fact, that virtually every major historical advance in the field has shown itself problematic for the conflict thesis: this or that particular religious doctrine understood this or that particular way may conflict with this or that particular scientific conclusion at this or that particular stage of scientific inquiry, but the historical evidence that one proves to be a serious obstacle to the other has steadily grown weaker over time. The evidence suggests the rather weaker conclusion that people can force a conflict when they want to, and here and there can back themselves into corners they can't see a way out of, but that's the whole of the conflict. There is no monolith Religion opposed to a monolith Science, however much we may reify them.

I also want to point out one of the most pleasing mixed metaphors I've encountered: "...as if we had magically hit on the natural classification, and carved nature perfectly at the joints, our first time at bat". There's a sport for me--Butcherball.

Double-nosed Andean tiger hounds. Photo here.

Via the fascinating Percy Fawcett, via Chas.

Going boating for a while. Keep 'em coming, Odious! I'll see you gentle readers in time for opera season in late July.

Pet strollers. Saw one in downtown Santa Fe tonight, containing a very unhappy ginger cat.

Harden the **** up!

Save the mountain walrus!

No comment. What it's doing hidden in the rather useful Gunroom of H.M.S. Surprise, I do not know.

New ideas regarding the Tunguska event. A comet skipping of the atmosphere is quite a thought.

Aficionados of far-flung music won't want to miss this bravura lyre solo, interpreting the alleged oldest extant written melody, a Hurrian hymn to the moon goddess Nikkal from c. 1400 B.C. More information is here, though I find myself still very unclear how the Cuneiform is taken to be signifying melodic notation. It's good stuff, though, and if you browse around the performer's Youtube channel, you'll find all kinds of delights, from a quite nice rendition of the Song of Seikilos to lost Hungarian klezmer and "Jewgrass."

Hat tip to Never Yet Melted, via Steve.

Zebra finches and the language of God.

Biologists have discovered that zebra finches raised in isolation will, over several generations, produce a song similar to that sung by the species in the wild. The experiment provides new insights into how genetic background, learning abilities and environmental variation might influence how birds evolve "song culture" -- and provides some pointers to how human languages may evolve.

The study confirms that zebra finches raised in complete isolation do not sing the same song as they would if raised normally, i.e., among other members of their species. It breaks new ground in showing that progeny of these "odd birds," within several generations, will introduce improvisations that bring their song into conformity with those of "wild-type" zebra finches, i.e., those raised under normal cultural conditions.

The article blandly states, "[s]uch an experiment is not practical to conduct in humans". Hey, tell it to Frederick the Second.

I don't type this often, but, oh, hells yes: it's free Met Player weekend. (ht)

Streakery peekery
Emily Dickinson
Flounced through the vestibule
Nude as a lord.

Asked of her rationale
Epideictically
Shrugged and replied that, "My
Master was bored."

Cephalopod attack. Errr.... in a dual sense.

C'mon, we have to link that!

As you may have guessed from the Thucydides a little ways down, I'm revisiting my greek history. I had attempted to read some moderns in the hopes of learning a bit about the archeological side of things, but I quickly grew disgusted with the common attitude of disdain it seemed they hold for the ancients. Particularly in their dismissal of the virtue of physical courage, they strike me as--well, let another tell it:

Jurgen went with distaste among the broad-browed and great-limbed monarchs of Pseudopolis, for they reminded him of things that he had long ago put aside, and they made him feel unpleasantly ignoble and insignificant. That was his real reason for avoiding the city.

Now he passed between unlighted and silent palaces, walking in deserted streets where the moon made ominous shadows. Here was the house of Ajax Telamon who reigned in sea-girt Salamis, here that of god-like Philoctetes: much-counselling Odysseus dwelt just across the way, and the corner residence was fair-haired Agamemnon's: in the moonlight Jurgen easily made out these names engraved upon the bronze shield that hung beside each doorway. To every side of him slept the heroes of old song while Jurgen skulked under their windows.

He remembered how incuriously--not even scornfully--these people had overlooked him on that disastrous afternoon when he had ventured into Pseudopolis by daylight. And a spiteful little gust of rage possessed him, and Jurgen shook his fist at the big silent palaces.

"Yah!" he snarled: for he did not know at all what it was that he desired to say to those great stupid heroes who did not care what he said, but he knew that he hated them. Then Jurgen became aware of himself growling there like a kicked cur who is afraid to bite, and he began to laugh at this Jurgen.

"Your pardon, gentlemen of Greece," says he, with a wide ceremonious bow, "and I think the information I wished to convey was that I am a monstrous clever fellow."

Indeed you are, gentlemen historians, but, as Jurgen himself discovers, cleverness is not everything.

I was sitting at the breakfast table, contemplating the terrible absence of Tussie-Mussies in my life, when I realized that the reason no one sends them anymore is that the language of flowers is as obsolete as Volapük. We no longer need to express romantic love with a bouquet; that is why Facebook was invented. But, contrarian that I am, I felt uneasy relegating such a charming technology to the compost bin of history. What is needed, I thought, is an updated floriography, in which more modern sentiments might be conveyed. For example:

Tulip
old: hopeless love
new: I am sorry about your 401(k)

Sunflower
old: haughtiness or respect
new: let us eliminate trans-fats from our diet

Red Roses
old: true love
new: later I should like to remove your taffeta

And so forth.

Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honour was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but it was settled that present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was both honourable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped them or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but each felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them all and hung ever over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.

--Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War