Sailing against the tide
Most people are happy to own a cat or a dog, or perhaps a goldfish, but some prefer other more unusual creatures. Here there’s an article I just published elsewhere that talks about a few writers and artists who had a taste for exotic or unusual pets, most of which I did not mention in…
Our first Contrarium book, “Our Pets and Us: The Evolution of a Relationship”, is now available for purchase at Amazon or in our own online shop (cheaper price, but only Paypal accepted). It is a short illustrated book (170 pages) about the history of the relationship of humans with pets (mostly cats and dogs, but…
I watched the other day the latest version of “Little Women”, by Greta Gerwig (2019). A fine directorial effort, very nice photography, but I just could not concentrate very much on the plot, had some difficulty getting which girl was which, and the wine I was drinking at the time didn’t help. I guess that,…
Pandemic, protests, economic crisis. Rougher times ahead, it all seems to indicate. What books to read? Some choose to read classic books somewhat related to pandemics. Such as Camus’ “The Plague“, or even better, Bocaccio’s “Decameron“. Good choices, but, perhaps what you want is something more relaxing that actually makes you forget the virus, the…
A statue of Miguel de Cervantes in San Francisco has been vandalized by Antifa and BLM militants. It is not clear what did they have against the greatest Spanish writer. Maybe they confused him with someone else? Maybe they are just destroying all white people statues at this point? The fact that Cervantes was taken…
What are “malacomorphs”? Well, “malakos” in Greek means literally “soft”, but it’s also by analogy how we scientifically call mollusks, including snails: malacology, for example, is the study of mollusks. So “malacomorphs” are snail-creatures. For some reason that even most specialists don’t know, many manuscripts have in their corners little illustrations of snails and other…
We spend several hours each day looking at screens. Most of what we read, for work or for leisure – reports, student essays, blogs, newspapers – now we read on a screen. But reading on a screen is less conducive to concentration than reading on paper. At least, that’s what a recent study from 2019…
Some people love ice cream. Some people love video games. Some people love alcohol and drugs. We love books. Well, I know I do. I grew up surrounded by a large collection of books and by my dad’s full set of twenty volumes of the original Encyclopedia Britannica. It was my Google. There was no…