ardes
The average person reads about 6 books annually, a depressing fact when there’s just so much amazing stuff out there to learn about.
From the magnificent Terrible Tragedies Series (now a book—get it!), yet another Tumblr of greatness:
Truth.
An Italian man named Massimo was inspired to create a map showing the Pangea landmass with today’s political borders. This is a fascinating exercise in understanding the connections between shapes & terrains on the Earth, on both how they do, and do not, interconnect.
Connecticut near Morocco
When I was a child, I’d pore over maps & was fascinated by how the east coast of South America seemed to neatly mirror the west coast of Africa. I knew about tectonic plates, but this was before I’d heard of the ultimate origin of today’s landmasses.
The San Francisco International Airport ran an exhbition recently called “When Art Rocked”, a collection of psychedelic rock posters of the 1960s.
Personally, Polish movie posters are more to my taste, but this has a personal connection. My father-in-law, Frank Saul, is prominently displayed, having been photographed in one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. A physical anthropoligist by training, he was helping design space suits (or what were called “extreme high-altitude suits” back then), and the light source helped map people for the close-fitting garments they have to wear.
It’s Frank!
We’ve got that 13th-Floor Elevators poster up in our house, in fact. How strange seeing it in its full context!
(That break was refreshing.)
Over at Thought Catalog, Mark Dery interviews Kim Carsons about 19th-century medical illustrations. It’s a fascinating subject, and particularly interesting when you see how different artists attempted to convey vital information over time. (The pre-19th-century Japanese example depicting smallpox is particularly interesting). I found the image of a woman who had contracted cholera fascinating. Supposedly within an hour, the disease ravaged her. I took the trouble of taking the ‘before-and-after’ imagery & combined them in an animated GIF.
The effects of cholera within one hour
I love book covers. But there are a lot of unfortunate examples out there, particularly from academic presses. Here are some pages that collects them!
Not enough philosophy covers, in my opinion