Want proof that the Internet is ruining our minds? Pick up Maria Popova’s book, Figuring: “The shortcomings of Brain Pickings are also the shortcomings of Figuring, a mélange of biographical snippets, elevating extracts, and woozy, century-hopping rhapsodies about how everything and everyone is connected. Did you know that the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler asserted that lunar gravity was responsible for the tides and that ‘a quarter millennium later,’ Emily Dickinson would write a poem in which the central metaphor is the moon’s control of the tides, thereby drawing ‘on Kepler’s legacy’? Just think about that for a moment—especially if you are high or a character in the Richard Linklater movie Slacker…What Figuring lacks is meaningful links, the connective tissue—narrative, argument, character—to make these elements feel like a significant whole instead of a grab bag of mildly cool factoids. In its place is a lot of vaporous palaver about art, truth, beauty, and genius.”

Hilma af Klint’s otherworldly paintings: “She became interested in spirituality as a teenager, and read widely on Christian mysticism, Eastern religions, Judaism, and science, particularly those discoveries that, like electromagnetism, revealed invisible energies within inert matter. The loss of a beloved sister when she was eighteen may have exacerbated her need to reach beyond the material world, but she was already inclined toward grand theories of everything that encompassed both the ‘how’ of physics and the ‘why’ of religion. In her mid-thirties af Klint began holding regular séances with four other women (they called themselves de Fem, or ‘the Five’). Educated Christian spiritualists, they began their sittings with Bible readings and kept careful records of their protocols and results—who acted as medium, which spirits were contacted, and what messages were received. Like other such groups, the Five produced “automatic” drawings that recorded the movement of a pencil held by the medium but directed by spirits, who seem to have been fond of amoeba-like blobs, skittering lines, spirals, and rhythmically repeated geometries.”

Medieval cats: “Perhaps the most famous tribute to a scholar’s cat is the 9th-century poem known as Pangur Bán, named after the cat that inspired it (the cat’s name indicates his soft, white coat). Written in Old Irish, by an Irish monk in exile in Continental Europe, it playfully and fondly compares the monk’s arduous tasks to those of his cat.”

The truth about wasabi: “Have you ever eaten wasabi? If you answered ‘yes’ to that question, you are likely mistaken. Most sushi eaters—even in Japan—are actually being served a mixture of ground horseradish and green food coloring, splashed with a hint of Chinese mustard. Worldwide, experts believe that this imposter combination masquerades as wasabi about 99 percent of the time.”

Scathing reviews of modern “classics” from the pages of The New York Times: On James Joyce’s Ulysses, a reviewer wrote: “The average intelligent reader will glean little or nothing from it … save bewilderment and a sense of disgust.”

Save yourself some time: Don’t read Bernard-Henri Lévy’s The Empire and the Five Kings. “Public intellectuals are often subject to derision from academic philosophers, who tend to view public engagement as a sign of lack of rigor, and so I wasn’t necessarily expecting traditional philosophy from Lévy’s book. But I didn’t expect to find such thoughtlessly pretentious writing.”

Essay of the Day:

In Popular Mechanics, Alexander Huls writes about a 2017 Star Wars memorabilia heist:

“‘I have a biggie,’ the text read. ‘Are you sitting down?’

“It was February 3, 2017, and Tann, a Los Angeles talent and literary manager, was about to enter an exclusive club. Years earlier, an episode of Toy Hunter pulled him into the Star Wars–collecting world, where he became immediately interested in buying, selling, and collecting Lucasian memorabilia.

“Over the next four years, Tann hit the typical collector touchstones—first, amassing his own enviable collection, and then establishing himself as a trustworthy dealer. More than that, he built out a network of other Star Wars toy collectors, finding the fraternal comfort of knowing someone else shares your obscure obsession.

“The text came from one such collecting comrade, Carl Cunningham. A Georgia native and longtime collector, Cunningham had been selling off a portion of his reserve to Tann over the last eight months. Tann followed instructions. He sat, and he tried to believe what his eyes were reading.

“It was a galaxy far, far away’s equivalent to a Mickey Mantle rookie card. It was a purchase that would cement Tann’s membership in an exclusive enclave within Star Wars collecting—a club within a club. It was one of the rarest Star Wars collectibles, a failed 1979 prototype action figure that would fetch at least $20,000 on the open market.

“It was a Rocket Fett.”

Read the rest.

Photo: Bình Đông Port  

Poem: Stephen Knight, “Rail Replacement Bus Service”

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