S. Dali. Dali As A Child With His Father, 1971
link: all things amazing
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
Cybele Under Strange Sky
Ceremonial plaque depicting Cybele on a chariot, Aï Khanum, ca. 300 B.C. (Gilded silver)
link: all things amazing
Ground Zero of Country Music Recording: Bristol, Tennessee
Ralph Peer (of Okeh Records fame), an entrepreneur/musical spelunker, came to Bristol in July 1927 looking for local music played by its hidden talent. There was a large interest in original American music—gospel and blues--from the far reaches of the country at this time, and Peer sought those genres in addition to secular music that fit neither category--that would be “country music”.
He was alerted to the area by his friend, the musician Ernest Stoneman (of an equally musically-rich area in Galax, Virginia), guided by the assertion that the Bristol/Johnson City/Kingsport area was a magnet for the musical talent of the region. He set up a temporary recording studio, renting the top two floors of the Taylor-Christian Hat Company (seen in the postcard image below, just beyond the Tip Top Hotel) at 412 State Street. Statestreetcirca1900 The initial react to his advertisement was underwhelming, but when an article appeared in the local newspaper in the second week of his two-week stay touting the $3600 that Stoneman received in royalties in 1926 for his recorded music, the floodgates opened, and suddenly Peer was completely booked.
The recordings that Peer made at 412 State Street were spectacular. Among those who showed up was the young Jimmie Rodgers. And Uncle Eck Dunford and Ernest & Hannah Stoneman. And A.P., Sara and (Mother) Maybelle Carter, who recorded their oh-dear-god-beautiful “Single Girl, Married Girl” (and "Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow”, “Little Log Cabin By the Sea”, “The Storms are on the Ocean”, “The Wandering Boy”) there on the second floor.
link: Ptak Science Books: Lost-topia: Looking for the Birthplace of Recorded Country Music
There's a Future in Picking Up Heavy Objects: Orlando Green
"Picking up heavy objects" is indeed the primary activity of strongman competitions, with feats that include deadlifts, log presses, the farmer's carry (in Louisville, [Orlando] Green and his opponents were timed going 80 yards and carrying 320 pounds in each hand), the 700-pound tire flop, yoke walks and truck pulls.
"I'm pretty good at medleys, which is three events in one," Green said. "It's usually something like a farmer's carry for 50 feet, a frame carry for 50 feet and a tire drag for 50 feet."
Green rapidly moved up the ladder in the NASA's lightweight division after a good showing last fall in Louisville, Ky. At his third competition, he recorded a 900-pound deadlift in West Virginia, a mark he plans to improve upon soon.
"I didn't know it at the time, but I found out that the record was 1,003 pounds," he said. "My plan now is to go to a competition in September in Columbia (S.C.) and get that record. I'm going to try for 1,010 pounds."
link: Green bringing exposure to strongman competition in Athens | Sports | OnlineAthens.com
hat tip: Lance Wilder
Designs from India, via BibliOdyssey
BibliOdyssey writes:
The images above come from small clipart book I've got called 'Native Designs from India' © Maarten Hesselt van Dinter, 2007. [More in the set] It appears to be one of a series of indigenous art symbol books by van Dinter for HvD Publishing.
link: BibliOdyssey
Battle over Mogadishu: AU Drawn In
Government officials say they have wrested control of central Mogadishu from anti-government fighters after a day of intense battles in the Somali capital.
At least 11 people were killed in the fighting on Sunday as fighters advanced into northern Mogadishu, close to the presidential palace.
But Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, the Somali defence minister, said government forces had since regained control.
"We are on the northern outskirts of Mogadishu," he said.
"We have defeated the enemy and we have pushed them back from all the areas they had captured."
Witnesses and officials from the interim government said opposition groups advanced so close to the presidential palace that African Union (AU) peacekeepers guarding it were drawn into the fight for the first time.
link: Al Jazeera English - Africa - Somali government 'retakes capital'
There's Gold in Them Thar Fjords: The Great Swedish Cloudberry Rush Pans Out
Sweden — It was a lousy blueberry season in 2007, said Siv Wiik, 70, one of a pair of Swedish grandmothers now credited with discovering what experts say may be one of the richest gold deposits in Europe. “That year it was too cold in the spring, so there were few berries,” she said.
Berry picking is a serious business to Mrs. Wiik (pronounced VEEK), who was born in this village of 171, and her friend, Harriet Svensson, 69. For 40 years the two, widows with children and grandchildren, have explored every patch of field and forest clearing in the region, hunting for mushrooms and wild berries — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cloudberries.
But the women are also amateur geologists. They never leave home for a stroll in forests or fields without their geologists’ hammers, with their 30-inch handles, and their magnifying eyepieces, dangling from ribbons around their necks.
So in that terrible August when the blueberry crop failed, they decided to poke around for minerals. They went to a place called Sorkullen, far down an unpaved logging road, where trees had recently been felled, upending the earth and exposing rock to the air. Using their hammers, they cleared soil from around the stones, digging for about six hours, deeper and deeper, until they found a rock with a dull glimmer.
Sweden has gold, but it is not in the major league of gold mining countries, as the women were well aware. Still, they were hopeful. “We often found bits of copper and gold there,” Mrs. Wiik said. “So we thought, somewhere there must be a mother mountain. Now, we hope we found it.”
The women phoned Arne Sundberg, of the Geological Survey of Sweden in Uppsala, who came the following day. “When he looked, he thought something was wrong with his eyepiece,” said Mrs. Svensson, laughing. Analysis showed that the stone contained more than 23 grams of gold per ton; most active mines in Sweden yield less than 5 grams.
link: Overturingen Journal - In Sweden, Search for Berries Yields a Field of Gold - NYTimes.com
Arab Audiences to Israeli Phone Company: We Are Not Amused
A television advert for an Israeli cellphone firm showing soldiers playing soccer over the West Bank barrier has sparked cries of bad taste and prompted Arab lawmakers on Sunday to demand it be taken off air.
The jaunty commercial for Israel's biggest mobile phone company Cellcom makes light of Palestinian suffering and shows how far Israelis fail to understand their neighbors, critics said. The company stood by the ad, however.
It shows a ball falling on an Israeli army jeep from the far side of a towering wall. A game ensues, back and forth with the unseen Palestinians after a soldier dials up "reinforcements," including two smiling women in uniform, to come and play.
The advertisement made by McCann Erickson, part of U.S. Interpublic Group, ends with the upbeat voiceover: "After all, what are we all after? Just a little fun."
link: Israel phone firm's West Bank wall gag fails to amuse | Technology | Reuters
Sarkozy's Crusade Against Sunday Runs Into A Merde-Storm of Opposition
Street markets, long family lunches, strolls in the park . . . For the French, Sunday is a great tradition, a time to enjoy the finer things in life while other silly countries such as Britain keep working. So President Sarkozy’s plan to “abolish Sunday” and let the shops open is running into a hail of criticism.
Parliament is due to pass a Bill tomorrow to ease France’s strict trading laws, but hostility to it is so widespread that some MPs in Mr Sarkozy’s own centre-right camp predict that it could unravel before becoming law.
The President’s plan to abolir le dimanche is being resisted by an unlikely coalition of interests, including the centre and left-wing Opposition, the Roman Catholic Church, the trade unions and small shopkeepers who fear losing their existing Sunday business to supermarkets. Up to 60 per cent of the public, according to polls, are also against a scheme that will reverse the century-old right to a day of rest.
The President has made Sunday shopping a personal crusade since he promised it in his 2007 election campaign under his slogan of “work more to earn more”. He pillories France as a backward exception to the rest of Europe and has said that he was ashamed when Michelle Obama wanted to take her daughters shopping in Paris on a Sunday last month — he had to arrange a special opening for her at a Left Bank boutique.
link: President Sarkozy’s move to ‘abolish Sunday’ sparks hostility - Times Online
Red Cross Hostage Released in the Philippines
An Italian Red Cross worker has been freed after six months captivity in the Philippines jungle by al-Qaeda linked militants.
Gaunt and haggard, Eugenio Vagni, 62, told reporters that although he had been treated well by the Abu Sayyaf rebels who captured him, he constantly feared being beheaded.
In his darkest moments during his months in the jungle, he imagined seeing "my head in a big basket," the aid worker told Philippines television station ABS-CBN. Mr
Vagni, who suffers from hypertension and a hernia, was kidnapped along with two Red Cross colleagues as they inspected a water project on Jolo island in the Philippines' restive south, and held for 179 days in harsh, rugged terrain.
link: Red Cross worker freed by militants after six months in Philippines jungle - Times Online
Robots Not Making Robots Make Robots: Recession in Japan
Hiroko Tabuchi writes:
They may be the most efficient workers in the world. But in the global downturn, they are having a tough time finding jobs.
Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.
At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.
They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.
link: In Recession, Japanese Lay Off Robots - NYTimes.com
Report from Korea: Kim Jong-Il Has Cancer
Choe Sang-Huh writes:
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke last August, was also found to have “life-threatening” pancreatic cancer at about the same time, a South Korean cable television network reported on Monday.
The network, YTN, a cable news channel, quoted unidentified Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources for the report, which was made by YTN’s Beijing-based correspondent.
YTN did not explain how the sources obtained such medical information about Mr. Kim from North Korea, an isolated nuclear-armed state that historically has kept details of Mr. Kim’s health a closely guarded secret.
But if the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is true, he may not have much longer to live. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to detect early, it spreads rapidly and the fatality rate is high. The World Health Organization says fewer than 5 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer live longer than five years.
link: North Korean Leader Dying of Cancer, Broadcaster Says - NYTimes.com
O Arizona: Budget Meltdown Affects the Weather--115 Degrees Today!
A strong high pressure system centered over west Texas will bring the hottest readings of the year. The high in Phoenix on Sunday was 115 degrees set at around 3:30 p.m., forecasters said.link: Sunday's High In Phoenix Hit 115 - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix
Black Ships and Samuari
On July 8, 1853, residents of feudal Japan beheld an astonishing sight—foreign warships entering their harbor under a cloud of black smoke. Commodore Matthew Perry had arrived to force the long-secluded country to open its doors.
link: MIT Visualizing Cultures
Beyond the Other of the Other: Fractal Ontology
In conversation three of Ethics and Infinity, Levinas recounts the philosophical and existential implications of the il y a, the ‘there is’ or what he calls the “phenomenon of impersonal being” (48). The “there is” is many things at the same time: it is a belief, a feeling, an experience and even an affect (the source of the Judaic affect proper to one of philosophy’s “turns” in the 20th century) on one side and an ontological claim, an objective state of affairs, and even the (proto-)origin of Being and Nothingness on the other.
If the “there is” is not a simple mixture of Being and Nothingness, it is at least the source of their mixing and unmixing. Beyond the fact that there are objective and subjective aspects to the full impact of this attempt to conceptualize the “there is,” what should be noted is the way in which the “there is” animates the theological and ethical orientation of Levinas’ discourse of the social relation with the Other. What follows endeavors to construct the beginnings of an ‘analytic’ of the “there is” in order to better understood how it plays a fundamental role for Levinas in his conception of ethics as first philosophy.
Cerebrum/Cerebellum Reducere: Frank Gillette
Neuroculture writes:
Frank Gillette's digital suite entitled Cerebrum/Cerebellum Reducere (2006) equates the brain with the embryological unfolding of form. Reminiscnet of flora and fauna, Gillette's images evoke to a future world in which brain structure itself can be morphed and reconfigured.
link: Neuroculture - Home Page
Does Anyone Really Need This @#$#@#@!#% Advice? The Therapeutics of Swearing
Frederik Joelving writes:
Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.
The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer.
Although cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate, researchers are now beginning to question the idea that the phenomenon is all bad. "Swearing is such a common response to pain that there has to be an underlying reason why we do it," says psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in England, who led the study. And indeed, the findings point to one possible benefit: "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear," he adds.
link: Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief: Scientific American
Caveat Texter: Down the Rabbit Hole (And I Don't Think They Mean Ice Cream Cones)
Staten Island, NY (AHN) - A teen in New York City fell down a manhole while she was sending a text message on her cell phone.
Alexa Longueira was about to send a text t a friend when she fell down the open manhole on Staten Island, she told local reporters.
The girls suffered only mild cuts and bruises.
The girl's family said they are planning to file a lawsuit against the city.
Her mother said workers told her they left the manhole uncovered and unattended for only seconds while they went to get cones from their truck.
link: Texting Teen Falls Down NYC Manhole; Will Sue City? | AHN
How To Pay for Health Care
Nate Silver writes:
The big news on the health care front this weekend is that House Democrats are prepared to call for a tax increase on the highest-earning Americans in order to pay for expanded health insurance. Although accounts of the exact details differ slightly, it appears that the tax hike would take the form of a "surcharge" of 1 percent on incomes from $280,000 to $400,000, 1.5 percent on incomes of $400,000 to $800,000 and 3 percent on incomes of $800,000 and above. This means that someone making $500,000 would pay about an extra $2,700 in taxes each year, and someone making $1,000,000 would pay an extra $13,200. The burden, in other words, would fall disproportionately on those who earn not just in the six figures, but rather in the seven figures, for whom much more of their income would become subject to the 3 percent rate.
I applaud the House for recognizing that the world doesn't end at $250,000 or $357,700 (the beginning of the top marginal income tax bracket as of last year). Throughout most of American history before Reagan, the top tax bracket kicked in at figures much higher than $357,700 in today's income: the equivalent of about $75 million in today's dollars, for example, during portions of FDR's presidency.
Republicans "Set Back Thirty Years" by Vote
The Young Republicans faced a stark choice at their convention in Indianapolis yesterday as they chose their next leader: a center-right twentysomething interested in greater outreach, or a self-described “true conservative” who is almost 40 and spent last week dealing with Daily Beast reports about her beliefs, which are, at best, often hateful, and at worst, downright racist. The delegates, in a vote of 470-415, chose the latter.
Perhaps less remarkable than the outcome–new Young Republicans Chairman Audra Shay bragged on her Facebook page that she had pledges from the majority of delegate going in–was how the vote played out. Yesterday’s election was closed to members of the press, but The Daily Beast has pulled together an account of the vote, and the runup to it, and the details are shocking. Some highlights:
* Shay’s opponent, Rachel Hoff, was the subject of an ugly sexual innuendo whisper campaign that questioned her reasons for supporting civil unions.
* Shay’s electoral slate, dubbed Team Renewal, battled desperately–some likened it to intimidation–and, ultimately, successfully to block a motion that would have allowed delegates to cast their votes by secret ballot, for fear they’d lose.
* Near-fistfights on the floor, and finally something of a boycott, as some of Hoff’s slate of candidates lower on the ticket chose to remove their names from the ballot after her defeat.
“They just took a vote that may have set the party back 30 years,” said the co-founder of HipHopRepublican.com, Lenny McAllister, speaking from the floor of the Hyatt convention hall. “They just voted for a candidate who has a demonstrated tolerance for racial intolerance. She has joked about lynching and then claimed to be a victim. As a black man, I still don’t see what’s funny about that.”
link: Bullying Behind GOP "Racist" Win - Page 1 - The Daily Beast
Pecking Order: New Techniques for Writing Workshops?
Everyone's a critic: Pigeons can be trained to identify bad art. That's the conclusion of a lone Japanese researcher, who used a panel of adults to judge paintings made by children, then used some of them to train pigeons to peck at good art. The birds were then set loose on a set of unfamiliar paintings, and they still managed to separate the good from the bad. Changing the images to greyscale partly eliminated the effect, leading the author to conclude that both color choice and visual patterns contributed to the pigeons' visual discrimination.
link: Weird science discovers that beer could power our future - Ars Technica
Green Pee: Our Energy Future
The hydrogen economy goes down the toilet: Energy experts have mixed opinions on whether hydrogen might make sense as a portable fuel of the future. It can be made using electricity from renewable sources, which is good, but the process is inefficient and requires fresh water, which is already in short supply in many areas of the globe. All of which makes a recent paper on an alternate method of producing hydrogen rather intriguing. The method dispenses with splitting water entirely and instead generates hydrogen from one of the things that frequently ends up fouling water: urine or, more specifically, the urea it contains. Getting urea to break down and liberate hydrogen requires much less energy input, but still faces a substantial challenge: namely, getting to it before bacteria have the chance to metabolize it.
link: Weird science discovers that beer could power our future - Ars Technica
Karaoke Compromises Your Bicycle Skills: Alexander Does the South
Rode just shy of 100 miles yesterday. It was especially brutal because the whole team went out to karaoke the night before. About six of us rode in the vans, or "sagged it." I wanted to, but I had sagged just five days before, and also feel a strange obligation to the bicycle, as if I'd be letting it down; leaving it in the stable whilst the other steeds gallop across the countryside. Plus, I wanted to take a bunch of pictures.
link: my messenger bag is bigger than your messenger bag
A message from Alexander Hongo, bicyclist extraordinaire.
O Arizona: Man Survives 1000 Bee Stings; Shadow Dies
A Green Valley man who was stung nearly 1,000 times by bees was back home on Saturday.
World War II veteran John Pool said he's again feeling "pretty good" now that he's back in his home in the community south of Tucson.
The 84-year-old is legally blind. He was using his walker to take his toy poodle Shadow for a stroll when he was attacked on Thursday morning.
Pool said he tossed aside the walker and moved as fast as he could to get home, where his wife Norma used a hose to wash off hundreds of bees and then called for help.
Firefighters used credit cards to scrape away hundreds of stingers. After sending Pool to the hospital, they tore down a block wall where the bees had made their hive.
Pool was released on Friday. Shadow was also stung. She died.
link: Man Stung 1,000 Times Recuperating - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix
Guinea's Govt. Fears Drug Gang Attacks
Guinea's military rulers have put their armed forces on maximum alert, saying drug traffickers and their allies in neighboring countries want to destabilize the world's biggest bauxite exporter, state television reported.
Much of the initial support the junta received when it seized power in December has given way to criticism from civilians and divisions within the armed forces, but this is the first time Guinea's neighbors have been linked to instability.
link: Guinea army on alert, says drug dealers plan attack | International | Reuters
Somalis Standoff: Over 40 Dead
Somali government troops backed by African Union peacekeepers battled insurgents on Sunday in clashes that killed at least 43 people in north Mogadishu, residents and officials said.
Somalia's government and a 4,300-strong AU force (AMISOM) have been unable to take control of rebel strongholds in Mogadishu and other parts of the Horn of Africa nation despite international support and training.
"We have killed 40 fighters from al Shabaab group and we continue to repulse them. We have now pushed them back from three northern districts of Mogadishu. AU peacekeepers were assisting us," said Salad Ali Jelle, a parliamentarian who was involved in Sunday's fighting.
Rebels were not immediately available for comment.
link: Fighting kills at least 43 in Somali capital | International | Reuters
Afghan Police Brutality Makes The People Welcome Taliban Control
As British troops moved into the village newly freed from Taliban control, they heard one message from the anxious locals: for God's sake do not bring back the Afghan police.
U.S. and British troops have launched a campaign to seize control of Helmand province, about half of which was in Taliban hands, and restore Afghan government institutions.
But as they advance, they are learning uncomfortable facts about their local allies: villagers say the government's police force was so brutal and corrupt that they welcomed the Taliban as liberators.
"The police would stop people driving on motorcycles, beat them and take their money," said Mohammad Gul, an elder in the village of Pankela, which British troops have been securing for the past three days after flying in by helicopter.
link: Afghans turn to Taliban in fear of own police | International | Reuters
I Choose To Fail/Until the Conversion of the Mail: No More Boxholders?
Ciara O'Rourke writes:
The Swiss national postal service has started redirecting some mail from the letter box to the inbox.
A program introduced by the Swiss Post in June allows subscribers to receive scans of their unopened envelopes by e-mail message and then to decide which they want opened and scanned in their entirety, to be read online.
Subscribers can also ask to have the contents archived, send unopened letters to another address or have them shredded and recycled.
The success of the program, called Swiss Post Box, will depend on how widely digital mail is accepted, said Mark Levitt, a former analyst at International Data Corp. in Washington.
“Even people who warmly embraced digital tools stopped short of giving up on paper,” he said. “In fact, the electronic age has generated even greater demand for printers, paper and ink because people have even more information that they feel the need to print out on paper to read.”
The program uses technology provided by Earth Class Mail, a company based in Seattle that has tens of thousands of individual subscribers worldwide, mostly in Britain, the United States, Canada and Mexico. Clients in those countries have mail sent to one of more than two dozen designated addresses for processing.
This is the first time that Earth Class Mail has licensed its technology with a postal service.
link: Delivering Letters to Your Inbox - NYTimes.com
No Cheap Lunch: The Cost of Low Cost
Stephanie Zacharek writes:
[I]n her lively and terrifying book "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," Ellen Ruppel Shell pulls back the shimmery, seductive curtain of low-priced goods to reveal their insidious hidden costs. Those all-you-can-eat Red Lobster shrimps may very well have come from massive shrimp-farming spreads in Thailand, where they've been plumped up with antibiotics and possibly tended by maltreated migrant workers from Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam. The made-in-China toy train you bought your kid a few Christmases ago may have been sprayed with lead paint -- and the spraying itself may have been done by a child laborer, without the benefit of a protective mask.
"Cheap" is hardly a finger-waggling book. This isn't a screed designed to make us feel guilty for unknowingly benefiting from the hardships of workers in other parts of the world. And Shell -- who writes regularly for the Atlantic -- isn't talking about the shallowness of consumerism here; she makes it clear that she, like most of us, enjoys the hunt for a good deal. "Cheap" really is about us, meaning not just Americans, but citizens of the world, and about what we stand to lose in a global economic environment that threatens the very nature of meaningful work, work we can take pride in and build a career on -- or even at which we can just make a living. . . .
Shell asserts that even outlet malls and seemingly benign, friendly, progressive stores like IKEA are part of the problem; along with more obvious bad guys like Wal-Mart, they perpetuate a cycle that, far from nurturing creativity and innovation in the marketplace, ultimately benefits a relative few at the very top of the economic chain.
link: IKEA is as bad as Wal-Mart | Salon Books
Church Wants Nuns To Wimple Up
Across 30 years, the modern version of the Sisters of St. Joseph has been revolutionizing the treatment of imprisoned women in New York. Thanks to the nuns’ efforts, mothers are now allowed to care for their infants on the inside and remain close to their children in creative visitors’ programs. Once they are paroled, these women and their children can find a year’s shelter in one of nine Providence House sanctuaries the nuns created in defunct city rectories and convents.
The order has never lacked courage: five members were guillotined in the French Revolution for giving shelter to the hunted. Now it is the bewildered community of American nuns that is the subject of two sweeping Vatican investigations. The question is whether the sisters are “living in fidelity” to the religious life — a question being put to nuns in no other nation.
Vatican investigations called “visitations” usually focus on serious flaws like the pedophilia scandal. So, what are nuns doing wrong? That is the question being asked by the sisters and legions of Catholic laypeople.
link: Editorial - The City Life - What the Sisters Are Up To - NYTimes.com
But Can a Goose Help Me Find my Car Keys: Review of Collin Ellard's "You are Here"
Jonah Lehrer writes:
Let’s begin with a quick geography quiz: Which city is farther west, Los Angeles or Reno? If you’re like most people, you carefully reasoned your way to the wrong answer. Because Los Angeles is on the coast, and Reno is in landlocked Nevada, you probably assumed that Los Angeles is farther west. It doesn’t matter that you’ve stared at countless maps or taken a road trip across California — the atlas that we keep in our head is reliably unreliable.
Colin Ellard, a behavorial neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, probes this and other shortcomings of human spatial intelligence in his delightfully lucid book “You Are Here.” (The Canadian version of the book is titled “Where Am I?” Apparently, Americans don’t like asking for directions.) While modern life is full of tools that keep us from straying off course, from Google maps to the iPhone, Ellard sees the need for such contrivances as a sign that we’ve already lost our way. We’ve become hopelessly disconnected from our setting, burdened with a brain that needs a GPS satellite just to get across town.
