Little Golden Notebook

Powers Interview, Paris Review

A lot of people who have written about me have written about the architecture and the large-scale design of my work, which is important to me. But it’s really the individual sentence that I work at again and again until it becomes the thing it’s trying to describe. To me, that sense of complete commensurability between form and content at the level of the individual sentence is really what writing is all about. I love to see how much load a sentence can bear. I don’t want it to be a performance. I don’t want it to call attention to itself as a virtuosic set piece. But I do want somehow to do this double-voicing where a sentence can reflect the virtuosity of the human mind. Reflect the multiplicity and richness of a sensibility as it tries to synthesize all these inimical things in the experiential world. What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is ‘prisoners’.

—

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Leftism Revisited

(via revoltagainsttime)

(via my-ear-trumpet)

CrossFit Endurance: The Best Way to Hack Endurance or a Total Sham?

In Anatomy for Runners by Jay Dicharry, he outlines how you lift for power, strength, and endurance:

Power: 2-5 reps as fast as possible for 3-6 sets.

Strength: 5-8 reps for 2-4 sets. The speed of the movement isn’t as important.

Endurance: 12-28 reps done slowly for 1-3 sets.

The Mile Cut-Down

As with all workouts like this, you can adjust the key variables (number of sets, pace of repeats and length of recovery jogs) to make the workout fit what you need. Want more strength? Slow the repeat paces and shorten the recovery jogs (and maybe even do two sets). Need more speed? Run the repeats faster and take longer recovery jogs. Dialing in race pace for an upcoming 10K or half marathon? Practice a race pace with each repeat.

Disco hands. Because I could. 

Disco hands. Because I could. 

articulum: “This ‘atlas’ was the work of a family of Catalonian Jews who worked in Majorca at the end of the 14th century and was commissioned by Charles V of France at a time when the reputation of the Catalan chartmakers was at its peak.  King Charles requested this map from Peter of Aragon, patron of the best Majorcan mapmaker of the time: Abraham Cresques.  The ‘atlas’ that resulted has subsequently been called ‘the most complete picture of geographical knowledge as it stood in the later Middle Ages.’  The title of the Atlas shows clearly the spirit in which it was executed and its content:Mappamundi, that is to say, image of the world and of the regions which are on the earth and of the various kinds of peoples which inhabit it.  A major impetus to the advancement of exploration in western Europe during the later Middle Ages came through the evolution and use of the nautical chart or portolano.  Designed to assist mariners find their way at sea, it served a practical purpose akin to that of the future road map, but it answered this purpose by depicting not the route itself, but detailed coastlines and hazards to shipping.  The Catalan Atlas is actually a world map built up around aportolan chart, thus combining aspects of the nautical chart by employing loxodromes and coastal detail with the medieval mappaemundi exemplified by its legends and illustrations.  The result is that the Atlas represents a transitionary step towards the world maps developed later during the Renaissance, especially by its extensive application of contemporary geographical knowledge and ambitious scope. - Geographer at Large [click image for higher quality]

articulum:

“This ‘atlas’ was the work of a family of Catalonian Jews who worked in Majorca at the end of the 14th century and was commissioned by Charles V of France at a time when the reputation of the Catalan chartmakers was at its peak.  King Charles requested this map from Peter of Aragon, patron of the best Majorcan mapmaker of the time: Abraham Cresques.  The ‘atlas’ that resulted has subsequently been called ‘the most complete picture of geographical knowledge as it stood in the later Middle Ages.’ 
The title of the Atlas shows clearly the spirit in which it was executed and its content:Mappamundi, that is to say, image of the world and of the regions which are on the earth and of the various kinds of peoples which inhabit it.  A major impetus to the advancement of exploration in western Europe during the later Middle Ages came through the evolution and use of the nautical chart or portolano.  Designed to assist mariners find their way at sea, it served a practical purpose akin to that of the future road map, but it answered this purpose by depicting not the route itself, but detailed coastlines and hazards to shipping.  The Catalan Atlas is actually a world map built up around aportolan chart, thus combining aspects of the nautical chart by employing loxodromes and coastal detail with the medieval mappaemundi exemplified by its legends and illustrations.  The result is that the Atlas represents a transitionary step towards the world maps developed later during the Renaissance, especially by its extensive application of contemporary geographical knowledge and ambitious scope. - Geographer at Large
[click image for higher quality]

(via my-ear-trumpet)