Welcome to this week’s installment of the Zone, my happy place where I share interesting (and often whimsical) things I found out there on the world wide web. Here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this week.
- The Quote Investigator is a website where Garson O’Toole investigates quotations. Did s/he really say that? Citations and references are included to show how the quotation was verified. How could I live without this? If you’re interested, the Resources page offers further reading. I bookmarked the page on the spot.
- As a long time lover of Japanese woodblock prints, I was mesmerized by this video showing the step-by-step process of making one of the woodblock prints. The video is narrated by the Tokyo-based woodblock printmaker David Bull. Bull has also created a three-hour video showing him creating an entire woodblock print, from beginning to the end, with no cuts. Bonus: you can download +2,500 Japanese woodblock prints and drawings at the Library of Congress’ online collection here.
- Magpies are smart, something I had plenty of opportunities to observe in my backyard. I wasn’t surprised when I came over this My Modern Met article about how the artificial intelligence researcher Hans Forsberg trained magpie birds to trade bottle caps for peanuts.
- A documentary I’m looking forward to watching: Song Exploder, in which the musician Hrishikesh Hirway deconstructs how songs are made. The documentary series is based on his acclaimed podcast, and the first episodes include Alicia Keys, REM, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
- A podcast I’ve discovered: Writing Excuses, now on its’ 15th season. It’s an educational podcast by writers for writers, with short episodes, between 15 to 25 minutes. The length guarantees I’ll listen. I usually appreciate longer podcasts diving deep into a theme (Tim Ferriss’ is a favorite, for instance), but I don’t always have the time or the peace of mind to listen to such long episodes. I can always accommodate a short one.
- Speaking of Tim Ferriss: he has created the ultimate To Read – Book List, books recommended by world-class performers in their field, and guests on his podcast.
- As an aspiring artist, I’ve always been fascinated by artists’ studios. I’m in the process of creating my own studio in our former garage and was therefore glad to stumble over Hyperallergic’s A View from the Easel series, in which artists send in a photo and a description of their workspace. Bonus: see more studios in my Artist Studio board on Pinterest.
- Tetragonula Carbonaria is the only bees species to build their hives upward, in a spiral.
- Birthdays to Celebrate: Georgia O’Keeffe was born on November 15th, 1887. She transformed flower painting, and New Mexico (where she moved later in life) transformed her. A short introduction to Georgia O’Keeffe’s art here. And a bonus.
A Quote I’m Pondering
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Herbert A. Simon (1916 – 2001)
From My Photo Archives
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