(Roughly) Daily

Since 2002, “Bernd,” a young German, has been working in China (for most of those years, in Shanghai), and has spent much of his free time pursuing his hobby– photography…  more specifically, taking pictures of his adopted countrymen (and women) asleep.  The result, SleepingChinese.com, has over 700 somnambulant snaps (so far)…

As Berndt suggests,

Before you click through my large collection of photos, you should not forget, what you hear and read daily in of your home countrys’s media about China’s boom.

They talk about “The Sleeping Giant”. About “The Birth of the New Super Power” or “The Awakening of the Red Dragon”. Often with a strange kind of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely looks more peaceful.

For years I’ve been fascinated by the country and the people. Whenever I linger through the boom town Shanghai, I carry my snap shot camera with me. Because at every corner you can discover people that either are napping in the strangest positions and situations, or are even snoring, while in a deep sleep. The missing mattresses and pillows are noteworthy!

The calmness, the flexibility and the adaptability of those, who are jointly responsible for the revival of China fascinate me.

See them all here.

As we stir our cocoa, we might send stately birthday greetings to Andrea Palladio, the Italian architect who led the Neo-Classical Revival (and who, as a result, is often cited as “most important person in the history of Western Architecture”); he was born on this date in 1509.

Palladio’s own constructions in Italy were relatively few.  But the publication of his drawings (in such works as Barbaro’s Commentary on Vitruvius), then more impactfully, in Palladio’s own I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), influenced much of Europe, and inspired Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, among many others.

Palladio’s plan for the Villa Rotonda (I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, 1570)

Palladio

Let Us Be Thankful

By Scott Horton (November 28, 2008)

Like millions of Americans, I took a break yesterday to give thanks. For most of the past eight years starting with Thanksgiving 2001, I’ve had trouble identifying things to be thankful for. It’s never been a case of material shortcoming, of course. Americans for the most part know a sort of material wealth and comfort that was unknown to the species in prior millennia and was unknown to the Pilgrim fathers who instituted the practice of Thanksgiving. My great concern was over the nation’s stewardship, which had been entrusted to incompetent and malicious hands of a sort the nation had rarely witnessed.

So now I am thankful that the Reign of Witches, as Thomas Jefferson called the only historical period that bears serious comparison, is coming to an end. In less than two months the nation will have new leadership. I am sure I will have differences with the new administration on many points, but I doubt I’ll ever have cause to question its commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law.

Thomas Jefferson called the heavy-handed, fear-mongering rule of the Federalists from 1798 through 1800 a “tyranny,” and when friends protested, he explained why this term was correct notwithstanding the fact that the Federalists had taken power through the ballot box. They were, he said, tyrannical in their dismissive attitudes towards the liberties of the people, in their use of crass fear to retain and strengthen their grip on power and in their contempt for the dignity of the ordinary human being, something that a genuine democrat recognizes even in the least and most frail members of our species. He was right to use the term “tyranny” with respect to what the Federalists did…

Read the full Harper’s piece here.

The folks at Hasbro are sure to be receiving a slew of mail from AARP– Scrabble turns 60 this year.

Readers might enjoy this anniversary commercial…  and this xkcd cartoon tribute:

As we consult the dictionary, we might recall that it was on this date in 1814 that the first edition of a newspaper– The Times of London– to be printed on a steam-powered press hit the streets… and, as the steam press allowed much cheaper production of many more copies-per-day, mass media was born.

With thanks to reader AW, Cats That Look Like Hitler.

As we’re working our whiskers, we might send birthday rhymes to William Blake, the British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books… and who was born on this date in 1757.  Of her husband, Mrs. Blake observed, “I have very little of Mr Blake’s company. He is always in Paradise.”

Poetry fetter’d Fetters the Human Race
Nations are Destroy’d or Flourish in proportion as
Their Poetry, Painting and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish:
The primeval state of Man was Wisdom, Art and Science.

-William Blake, Jerusalem

Thomas Phillips’ Portrait of William Blake

From our friends at Den of Geek, “75 comics being made into films“…  including the ever-enchanting Red Sonia:

As we despair of ever saving our allowances, we might recall that it was on this date in 1582 that a marriage license was issued to 18-year-old William Shakespeare and three-months pregnant Anne Hathaway. It’s likely that the banns were read on  St Andrew’s Day (the 30th), and that they were married almost immediately, as any later would have been during Advent– December 1 to Christmas- a period in which the Church at the time forbade marriages.

Happy Thanksgiving, U.S. readers…