Scott Akerman

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I guess we don't know if Valerian was a virgin or not, but if he was, I doubt the choice would precede his name if people prayed to him.

If you grew up Catholic like me you had a lot of those picture books full of saints. They were great because they were crazy and gory and exciting, and they could be inspiring too. And if you were a girl, you were probably given a lot of cards and books and whatnot about all the virgin martyrs. Saint Cecilia didn't get it as bad (virgin onslaught-wise) as .. oh, anyone from Saint Agnes, Lucy, Agatha, Maria Goretti (yikes)- but like all the virgin martyrs, this aspect of her life is presented with a certain... fervour. Gather round girls, let me tell you what a woman should be! And so when you start questioning what's going on in the Church's attitude towards ladies, these virgin martyrs are among the first to go.

I was reading a bit of feminist interpretations of these women's lives, and it was super interesting, to try and think of their stories in their own terms (as much as you can anyway), rather than a tool to tell me what I was and was not supposed to be. I'm no theologian, I just liked coming back to something that did have an impact on me, years ago. And so here's Saint Cecilia, because the image of her still touches my heart, I admit.

I like a good rant now and then, don't you?

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Those Founding Fathers! They are still at it!

I'm going to Germany myself, for a book festival all next week. Details here! Will I see you there? Would the Founding Fathers approve? Yes I think so. Thank you to my new German publishers Zwerchfell!

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I read this quote, from an interview with Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, and the interviewer asked about why she was a pilot and all that, and she just said "I wanted to fly, so I did." And I thought MAN! I can't even figure out what to eat for breakfast, never mind sailing through a load of barriers just because I think I want to give something a shot. "Flying? Whatever, I'll just Do It."

Another quote? "What's the point of flying a plane if you can't have fun doing it?" I love her!

Look at her! We all want to be her.

I love early aviatrices - Bessie Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham, etc - they were like "oh is there a brand new job on the face of the earth? Think I'll invite myself to do it before anyone says I can't."

Not too much time goes by before Top Gun washes up once again on these shores.

I hadn’t realized that the previous two strips had alliterative titles till someone pointed it out. Now I’m gonna see if I can keep it going through the week.

 

I’ve definitely made a couple meals which resulted in having to force myself to finish the dish. The only thing worse than a bad-tasting meal is wasting food. Even if the food is like way way way too salty why did I put so much salt on that, jeez.

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Bathroom Fun
May 07, 2015

> I'm tired of my dumb human body! I'm so ready to become a being of pure light energy!

More comics that include the words "hole"!

By Nancy Marie Brown (Guest Contributor)

Sylvester II, pope from 999 to 1003, was a wizard. He had sold his soul to the devil.

So, at any rate, said the official Lives of the Popes written in the late 1200s by Martin the Pole, a Dominican friar, and referenced for hundreds of years.

Friar Martin wasn’t making this up. He had good sources.

Pope Sylvester was “the best necromancer in France, whom the demons of the air readily obeyed in all that he required of them by day and night,” wrote Michael the Scot earlier that century.

In the 1120s, William of Malmesbury claimed Pope Sylvester spent his time in Rome practicing “the black arts.” He owned a “forbidden” book stolen from a Saracen philosopher. After “close inspection of the heavenly bodies,” he made himself a talking statue that would answer any yes-or-no question.

Then in 1602, the papal librarian Cardinal Baronius came across a collection of Pope Sylvester’s letters and concluded he “was nothing but a learned man who was ahead of his time. Those who want to efface his name from the catalogue of popes are ignorant fools.”

What did the cardinal read in those letters? About Pope Sylvester II’s abacus, or counting board.

Pope Sylvester II was the first Christian known to teach math using the nine Arabic numerals and zero, as a 10th-century manuscript found in 2001 reveals. His abacus introduced the place-value system of arithmetic and mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first counting device in Europe to function digitally – even the first computer. In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert’s abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 B.C. and the invention of the slide rule in 1622.

Pope Sylvester II wasn’t a wizard. He was a geek.

Nancy Marie Brown writes about science, history, and sagas. She is the author, most recently, of The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages (2010). Her previous books include The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman and Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist Looks at Genetically Modified Food, which was named one of the Best Sci-Tech Books for General Readers for 2004 by Library Journal. 

 This post was originally featured on Wonders & Marvels in 2012.

Gotta get that spacing right when street parking.

–WOWIE–

I’m back from ECCC 2015 and questionably alive! I need so much rest but man, it was a blast. It was absolutely fantastic to say hi to everyone and even make some new pals!

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New Comic: Attempted Recidivism

by Adrienne Mayor (regular contributor)

A great many exotic birds flocked to London in the seventeenth century, imported by the East India Company, retired sea captains, and sailors. The first mynah bird to reach England was a gift from the Company to the Duke of York in 1664. The Bengal mynah knew phrases in English and could neigh like a horse. Fashionable Londoners loved to stroll along Birdcage Walk in St James Park to admire the aviaries of hundreds of beautiful birds donated by the Company during the reign of Charles II.

Charles II, however, preferred to keep a tame British starling with an impressive vocabulary in his bedchamber. Samuel Pepys, the great diarist of the British aristocracy in the 1660s, later acquired the royal starling. Pepys exclaimed in his journal that “the king’s starling doth talk and whistle finely, which I am mighty proud of.”

Pepys also enjoyed his bevy of canaries, given to him by a sea captain, while his wife loved her garrulous parrot. “For talking and singing,” marveled Pepys, “I never heard the like!” Pepys was amazed when his neighbor’s parrot immediately recognized a new servant named Mingo, whom he’d known from a previous household. Pepys also described a bad-tempered parrot that almost pecked out the eye of a different friend.

Yet another parrot of Pepys’ acquaintance belonged to Lord Batten who “hath brought it from the sea.” Batten’s parrot often entertained guests at dinner parties. When Pepys visited the parrot was well behaved: “It speaks very well and cries Poll so pleasantly,” wrote Pepys. But Lady Batten and her mother detested Poll. It seems that Poll’s seafaring days had influenced its vocabulary in a vulgar manner–a typical problem with talking birds in general.

A similar case was described by Reverend Samuel Wesley of Epworth Rectory. This parrot lived in Billingsgate, the crowded, noisy street of fish markets frequented by sailors and fishermen notorious for their foul language. The parrot naturally developed a vast vocabulary of filthy phrases, cheerfully squawking out offensive insults and dirty slang to passersby. The owners, hoping to reform the bird, sent the him away to live in a genteel tea room across town. In less than a year the parrot’s bawdy expressions were replaced with inoffensive tea room chatter, along the lines of “What’s new?” and “Please bring another cup of coffee.”

Thus converted, the parrot was allowed to return home to Billingsgate. “But within a week,” the minister reported, “it had got all its wicked cursings and swearings down as pat as ever.”

Another cursing parrot appeared in a poem by George Crabbe (1809). In this tragic tale, a parrot lost his mistress’s favor and his life when he “was heard to speak / such frightful words as tinged his lady’s cheek.” The parrot, now stuffed, was replaced by a “clipped French puppy.”

At Andrew Jackson’s funeral in 1845, his pet parrot was hustled out for cussing. Then in New York City in 1938 a seafaring parrot named Popeye caused an uproar during a radio contest for talking birds. Some 1,200 contestants were judged on vocabulary, diction, and originality of expression. Entrants included an Italian fruit vendor’s African grey parrot who called out fruits in English; a 90-year-old Boston parrot who recited the Lord’s Prayer; and an Omaha parrot named Theodore Metcalf who barked, mewed, groaned, and gurgled. Popeye, who was sponsored by the NY Seaman’s Church Institute, was immediately disqualified for his salty vocabulary–despite his excellent diction and originality.

About the author: A research scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University, Adrienne Mayor is the author of The Poison King: Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award, and The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (2014).

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Tom Longboat, Onondaga champion and a cool guy, by all accounts. Here's a short read that will give you a sense of him. Here is a case for Tom Longboat Day in the Ontario Legislature. Since you find his name often put next to phrases like "deserves more recognition," Tom Longboat Day was officially passed for June 4th, mark your calendars.

Both links carry this story, which I also liked:

It's a story that was told somewhere in France during the Great War. A British general being led to the front by a dispatch runner grew irritated with the pace set by the man and ordered him to slow down. "For God's sake," he complained, "who do you think I am, Tom Longboat?" The dispatch runner, a tall man in his late twenties, slowed and answered, "No, sir; that's me."

That's like if someone told you "oh yeah I can give you directions, follow me" but it was Usain Bolt.

And here is an interesting looking book about the 1908 Olympics that is a world I don't know much about!

There is something so visually pleasing about sports uniforms and clothes and hair and all that in the early 1900s, don't you agree? Google image a name like Tom Longboat or rival Alfie Schrubb or look up "Olympic uniforms 1908," it's all gold stuff.

By Helen King (Regular Contributor)

So there I was watching a superb drag burlesque act, The Down and Dirty Show, featuring The Gentleman King and Foxy Tann, the scheduled entertainment at the 2011 Berkshire Conference for Women Historians. And the sky opened. Sometimes moments of insight come when you least expect them.

How many times have you assumed that the person walking down the street in front of you was a man, and then when the person turned round you realized it was a woman? We read various cues, but then we have to change our minds. In this show, men became women who became men again in front of our eyes; which raised the question, were they men to begin with? Gender was most emphatically shown as something to be performed, meanings shifting with clothing and context, so that binaries dissolved and the world became a very different place.

And suddenly the imaginary ancient Greek midwife on whom I was writing a book, Agnodice, started to mean something very different. My main research question had never been the traditional one, namely ‘Was Agnodice a real person, a pioneering midwife who fought for the right of women to attend those giving birth?’ That question, the one asked by existing articles and books aimed at midwives, is I think a dead end. Of course this young girl, who is supposed to have disguised herself as a man to learn medicine and then practiced her profession until accused by jealous rivals, never existed. The story, culminating in her displaying her body to the court to prove she is really a woman and can’t have been seducing female patients, has many of the features of an ancient novel.

Having a ‘founding father’ for a profession is traditional, so claiming Agnodice as ‘first midwife’ just plays the same game as medicine and its specialisms: from Hippocrates as ‘father of medicine’ to Robert Koch as ‘father of microbiology’. Such games involve consolidating an identity for a newly emerging specialism, or making nationalist claims to precedence in a contested field. I was always more interested in how people over the last 500 years or so had refashioned Agnodice: was she, they wondered, a midwife or a female doctor? How that question has been answered can help us think today about debates over what midwifery is, how gender is relevant, and where the professional boundaries between midwives and doctors should be drawn.

One of the aspects of Agnodice in modern discourse that most fascinates me is her use in the name of the excellent Agnodice Foundation, a Swiss group working for the integration of those who are transsexual, intersex or transgender. I asked their founder, Dr Erika Volkmar, why Agnodice had been chosen. She was well aware that the story is a myth but replied that ‘We can assume that if Agnodice was successful in practicing OBG as a man, she must have been at least very androgyne and gender variant … Agnodice is perfect as she was both gender variant AND an outstanding professional. Equally, our foundation council is composed of a majority of great professionals with atypical gender identity. She is a model because as a gender variant person she obtained a major victory against the prejudice and sexism of our society, i.e. making medical studies accessible to women.’

The Agnodice Foundation is not the first to take Agnodice as gender variant. Here is James Sprague in 1912 imagining Agnodice speaking:

And so I reasoned, ’twas a blunder made, for which the gods were not responsible. Dame Nature ’twas who in erratic mood had linked a man’s mind to a woman’s form. And none suspected, none in all these years, the secret of my sex. Oh, strange indeed, the ways of gods are not like those of men — that by mere change of garb a woman is transformed into the semblance of a man, and that great inner difference concealed !

Her sex is female, in bodily terms, but here her mind is not. Would she have wanted to change her body to match her mind, had such an option been available to her? And it’s not just Agnodice’s mind that is male: for Sprague the court hears a voice whose full, rich, swelling tones were like unto an organ’s.

What The Down and Dirty Show showed me is that assuming that Agnodice was easily able to pass for a man because she was gender variant may make us miss an even larger point; namely, that gender is always potentially ambiguous. How do we read the signs? We assume we know who the boys are and who the girls are, but it only takes a change of dress or hairstyle or gesture and our carefully constructed binaries fall apart. Seeing Agnodice as gender variant glosses over the inadequacies of gender binaries, in history and today.

 

Sprague, James S., ‘Agnodice’, Dominion Monthly and Ontario Medical Journal, 38 (1912): 13–17.

Hello and welcome to 2015 of Loading Artist!

By Laura J. Snyder (Guest Contributor)

It was June 24, 1833, at the meeting of the recently-founded British Association for the Advancement of Science. William Whewell (pronounced “who-ell”), a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and former professor of Mineralogy, had just finished a speech opening the conference. When the applause died down, the members were shocked to see a frail, grizzled man rise slowly to his feet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the celebrated Romantic poet, had written a treatise on scientific method decades before. Coleridge had hardly left his home in Highgate for the past thirty years, yet he had felt obliged to make the journey to attend this meeting.

At that time, the practitioners of science were known primarily as “natural philosophers.” Coleridge remarked acidly that the members of the association should no longer refer to themselves this way. Men digging in fossil pits, or performing experiments with electrical apparatus, hardly fit the definition. They were not, he meant, “armchair philosophers,” pondering the mysteries of the universe, but practical men – with dirty hands, at that. As a “real metaphysician,” he forbade them the use of this honorific.

The hall erupted in a tumultuous din, as the assembled group took offense at the insult Coleridge clearly intended. Then Whewell rose again, quieting the crowd. He courteously agreed with the “distinguished gentleman” that a satisfactory term with which to describe the members of the association was wanting. If “philosophers” is taken to be “too wide and lofty a term,” then, Whewell suggested, “by analogy with artist, we may form scientist.”

It was fitting that the term was invented by Whewell who, along with three of his friends, transformed the natural philosopher into the modern scientist.

Laura J. Snyder is associate professor of philosophy at St. John’s University, and the author of Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society (University of Chicago, 2006) and The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World (Broadway, February 22, 2011). 

 

This post was first published on Wonders & Marvels in January 2011.

If there’s a big, fat lie in waffledom, it’s that good waffles can be made from pancake batter. Sure, pancakes and waffles both contain eggs, flour and leavening, and they’re both served for breakfast. But differences abound.

Pancakes may be brown on the outside, but they’re floppy, soft and spongy, with an interior that looks a lot like cake.

Waffles, on the other hand, are crisp on the outside and light on the inside, like beignets, funnel cakes, hush puppies or doughnuts. In short, waffles are fried, only instead of being immersed in hot oil, they are encased in hot-oil-covered metal.

A few more key differences: Waffle batter contains a higher percentage of sugar (for caramelization) and a bit more fat (for a crisp exterior) than pancake batter. In short, no, the batters are not interchangeable.

Even with all of this knowledge concentrate, I don’t think one breakfast item is better than the other, so make both:

• Waffles … Really Good Waffles
• Sweet Potato Waffles
• My “Instant” Pancake Mix

The post The Difference Between Waffles and Pancakes appeared first on Alton Brown.

As has been widely reported over the past few days, we’ve released data for 2013-2014 showing camera ownership trends among Flickr members. With this blog post, we give you more detail about the data and let you parse the minutia.

This analysis goes from the period of January 2013 to mid-December 2014. We estimate camera ownership per-week by only counting a camera once per-account, per-week, to compensate for community members uploading different quantities of photos.

This analysis offers an estimate of camera ownership by brand and cameras all together, and then looks in detail at mobile cameras, mirrorless and DSLR cameras.

Brands

Overall, Nikon and Canon steadily held on to their share of cameras on Flickr. What changed was that the big two smartphone camera manufacturers, Apple and Samsung, which moved up the chart.

Mid-2014 is where most of the significant changes happened. Kodak dropped from 1.5 percent to off the chart entirely, but the biggest change was in the cameras using the Android operating system. In the last 6 months of 2014, Samsung saw growth from 6 percent weekly use, to nearly 15 percent, and both LG and Motorola came on to the scene at nearly 2 percent each, close to their older peer, HTC, which held steady at around 2.5 percent.

Cameras Overall

When comparing all the cameras on Flickr, the iPhone 5S, 5, 4S and 4 have consistently been the most popular on Flickr over the past two years. While Nikon and Canon remain very popular, they offer a huge range of individual cameras and the overall popularity of individual models likely is lost in the diversity.

Outside of smartphones, the next most popular cameras are all classic DSLR’s. The full-frame Canon 5D MkII is the next most popular camera outside of smartphones in 2013, but took second place to the Canon 600D (T3i in some locales). Entry to mid-level DSLRS round out the rest of the top 10 (all APS-C) with the exception of the Canon 5D MkIII which makes an appearance at the bottom of the top 10 for 2014.

Mobile Cameras

For all of 2013 and well into 2014, Apple made up 60% of the mobile cameras owned on Flickr, with, as mentioned earlier, the iPhone 5 taking the biggest share. However, mid-2014 saw a dramatic change, with Android camera phones gaining a 10-15% share of camera usage. Samsung in particular grew strongly, the Galaxy S3 and S4 contributing significantly to the brand’s popularity.

Nokia started out at 8% weekly of the cameraphone share but has been steadily declining, at a bit below 3% weekly at the end of 2014.

Mirrorless Cameras

For both 2013 and 2014, the most popular mirrorless camera by far was the Micro 4/3 Olympus E-M5, and by 2014 it was one of two Micro 4/3 format mirrorless cameras in the top 10. The high-end, full-frame Sony A7 took the second spot, followed closely by APS-C contenders Sony NEX-6 and Fujifilm X-E1.

At the start of 2013, there were four big players contributing to mirrorless cameras on Flickr: Sony, at over 35 percent weekly of mirrorless cameras, Olympus at nearly 30 percent weekly, Panasonic at 25 percent weekly, and Fujifilm under 10 percent weekly. Both Panasonic and Olympus started out with a huge variety of cameras and ended 2014 with a smaller share (20 percent weekly for Panasonic and 25 percent weekly for Olympus) and a much smaller variety of cameras. Sony closed out 2014 with a much bigger variety of cameras and a 40 percent weekly share of mirrorless cameras used, while Fujifilm saw a similar growth with models and nearly a 20 percent weekly share of the cameras owned.

DSLRs

Within DSLR’s Canon, Nikon and Sony were the top 3 contenders, holding steady at 55% weekly, 40% weekly and a bit less than 5% weekly (respectively) of the DLSR cameras owned on Flickr. The Canon 7D topped was first in 2013 and bumped to second by the Canon 600D in 2014. In 2014 the Nikon D7000 and Canon 60D jockeyed for the next two spots, with the Canon 5D Mark III being the most popular full-frame camera. Not just for professionals, there is a healthy selection of entry-level DSLR’s in the top 10 for both years, Nikon being more popular in this category.

Clarifications

This article has been updated to correct an error where certain camera types were under-counted.

By Pamela Toler (Regular Contributor)

For hundreds of years papyrus was the principal material on which books (or at least hand-copied scrolls) were written. Since it could only be made from the pith of freshly harvested papyrus reeds, native to the Nile valley, ancient Egypt had a monopoly on the product–and a potential monopoly on the written word.

In the second century BCE, the kingdoms of Egypt and Pergamum* got into an academic arms race.

The library at Alexandria in Egypt had been an intellectual power house since it was founded by King Ptolemy I Soter in 295 BCE. Ptolemy set out to collect copies of all the books in the inhabited world. He sent agents to search for manuscripts in the great cities of the known world. Foreign ships that sailed into Alexandria were searched for scrolls, which were confiscated and copied. (According to Greek physician, philosopher and author Galen, the seized books were cataloged under a special heading:”books of the ships”.)

Thirty years later, King Eumenes of Pergamum founded a rival library in his capital. Both kingdoms were wealthy and the two libraries competed for sensational finds.

In 197 BCE, King Ptolemy V Epiphanies took the rivalry to a new level by putting an embargo on papyrus shipments to Pergamum. The idea was that without papyrus, scholars in Pergamum could not make scrolls and therefore could not copy manuscripts.

You can’t stop a librarian that easily. Pergamum turned to a more expensive, but more durable, material made from the skin of sheep and goats. We know it as parchment, from the medieval Latin phrase for “from Pergamum”.

 

 

* Not a small place, as you can see: