Think of this post as a note to myself to remember a few random facts, and also a "OMG-I-read-some-books-lately---and-why-were-they-only-so-so"I just read David Quammen's "The Boilerplate Rhino: nature in the eey of the beholder" and it is filled with short stories/essay on fun facts in nature. Things to remember: 1) the island of Run is known for nutmeg (nutmeg found on one island? Dutch owned/treasure, part of spice islands),
2) chimpanzee's DNA is 1.6% different to homo sapiens - we are not 99% similar to chimps, but 98.4%. Where did T-shirt designers learn to round or are we so in love with the metric system we would rather incorrectly round up to 1% different to chimps than down to 2% different to chimps. 0.6% is moot.
3) Are the 3,000 or 5,000 chimps in biomedical research less valuable than the 6 billion units of human? The market teaches me that more means less valuable.
4) May 20, 1515 a rhino arives in Lisbon Portugal as a gift to the king, and Durer (umlatt on "u") draws a woodcut based on what he read/hear about the rhino--he never saw the animal, and the guttenburg press spread this image throughout europe. (Seems europe was starved for exotic animal images even into the 1800s, my opinion, and the British Museum has the imaged - the BM also has one of the best illustration displays I've seen, but only displace a scant 100 or so images at a time out of there huge thousands of images... a read shame). Back to the Rhino, this "fasst, cunning, and daring" beast image looked like a large "freckled toad... covered by a hard, thick shell" and is drawn with German armour and a large horn. Actually it was a
Rhinoceros unicornis having one horn from West India and the imagery wasn't that bad. (note to self to compare images)
5)
Tyrannosaurus rex is unique to western North America N. and S. Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana) !! I know, we all hear about this amazing dinosaur, but it has very limited region or fossil survival; did it have a limited environment due to the rockies or are the geat Cretaceous record of western N. Amer. that good? So
T.rex uncovered in 1902 by Barnum Brown, and as I type this I wonder why the
T. rex doesn't have an unlatin name for
un-italicizing purposes.
... well, there are many little facts in each story, and it has taken my about a year to slowly read each or the 26 story/essay. I always read books because I like the cover or title, in truth, I like this book because the cover says, "Author of
The Song of the Dodo and
Monster of God" -- I want to read the Dodo book but they didn't have it at the time and so i settled.
Also just read half of the book,
"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks, an Australian. Book about a book, the restoration and story of Sarajevo Haggadah, a jewish text from 1480 that is illustrated with fabulous colors and figurines of humans and animals, uncommon in that day for such a text. The novel flipped between modern day restoration and the main characters story to about 5 past sequences that involved the Haggadah. When I say I only read half to 3/4th of the book, I mean I skipped all but the first historical sequence, because when I read a book I want plot and not some side story, even if it is good history. Well, the conclusion or
note to self after reading this book is that I like old books and that I want to learn more about Bosnia and Sarajavo 1996 civil war.
Perhaps I just like old book because 2 days before I read Brook's book I read
"The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield, a 2006 gothic suspense novel that incorporates such stories as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Woman in White and other 1860s period pieces to make a somewhat predictable end twist, but perhaps that is what they call foreshadowing a twist... Yet, I enjoyed the book because it was about twins, well written, the author showed a knowledge and love for books, and the book never told me the year or setting. The mystery of this book was that I believe it must have been set in 1950s, give or take a decade or two; the date was never made clear and it was not modern day. My
note to self here is to read the novel "Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins, the same author who wrote the "Moonstone" that I really enjoyed and an early precursor style to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Homes detective mystery fiction and style.
p.s. Why can I make text bold and italic, but not underlined? google fail...p.p.s. Why does spell checker want me to capitalize gothic--is Gothic a proper noun named after a person?
p.p.p.s. Did I write too much?
