A Biostatistician Uses Crochet to Visualize the Frightening Infection Rates of the Coronavirus

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health | December 9th, 2020

Chances are you’ve looked at more graphs this past year than you did over the pre­vi­ous decade — not just while work­ing at home, but while scrolling through cas­cades of often-trou­bling quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion dur­ing your “off” hours as well. This phe­nom­e­non has hard­ly been lim­it­ed to the Amer­i­cans who obsessed over the pre­dic­tions of and returns from their pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last month, an event turned prac­ti­cal­ly into a sideshow by the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Around the world, we’ve all want­ed to know: Where did the coro­n­avirus come from? What is it? Where is it going?

Apolo­gies to Paul Gau­guin, who did­n’t even live to see the Span­ish flu of 1918, a time when nobody could have imag­ined instan­ta­neous­ly and wide­ly shar­ing visu­al ren­der­ings of data about that dis­ease. The world of a cen­tu­ry ago may not have had dynam­ic ani­mat­ed maps and charts, updat­ed in real time, but it did have cro­chet. Whether or not it had then occurred to any­one as a viable medi­um for visu­al­iz­ing the spread of dis­ease, it can be con­vinc­ing today. This is demon­strat­ed by Nor­we­gian bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Kathrine Frey Frøs­lie, who in the video above shows us her cro­cheted rep­re­sen­ta­tions of var­i­ous “R num­bers.”

This now much-heard term, Frøs­lie’s explains, “denotes repro­duc­tion. If the R num­ber is one, this means that each infect­ed per­son will on aver­age infect one new per­son dur­ing the course of the dis­ease. If R equals two, each infect­ed per­son will infect two per­sons,” and so on. Her cro­cheted ver­sion of R=1, with a pop­u­la­tion of ten, is small and nar­row — it looks, in oth­er words, entire­ly man­age­able. Such a dis­ease “will always be always present, but the num­ber of infect­ed per­sons will be con­stant.” Her R=0.9, which steadi­ly nar­rows in a way that resem­bles an unfin­ished Christ­mas stock­ing, looks even less threat­en­ing.

Alas, “for the coro­n­avirus, the R is most­ly larg­er than one.” In cro­cheted form, even R=1.1 is pret­ty for­mi­da­ble; when she brings out her R=1.5, “it is evi­dent that we have a prob­lem. Even the cro­chet patch kind of crum­bles.” Then out comes R=2, which must have been quite a project: its ten orig­i­nal infec­tions bloom into 2,560 new cas­es, all rep­re­sent­ed in almost organ­i­cal­ly dense folds of yarn. As for R=2.5, when Frøs­lie even­tu­al­ly gets it hoist­ed onto her lap, you’ll have to see it to believe it. Through­out 2020, of course, many of our at-home hob­bies have grown to mon­strous pro­por­tions — even those tak­en up by med­ical sci­en­tists.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Sim­u­lat­ing an Epi­dem­ic: Using Data to Show How Dis­eases Like COVID-19 Spread

Every­thing You Need To Know About Virus­es: A Quick Visu­al Expla­na­tion of Virus­es in 9 Images

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Map of Doom: A Data-Driven Visualization of the Biggest Threats to Humanity, Ranked from Likely to Unlikely

in Data, Life, Science | December 9th, 2020

Sure­ly you’ve learned, as I have, to fil­ter out the con­stant threats of doom. It’s impos­si­ble to func­tion on high alert all of the time. But one must stay at least min­i­mal­ly informed. To check the news even once a day is to encounter head­line after head­line announc­ing DOOM IS COMING! Say that we’re all desen­si­tized, and rather than react, we eval­u­ate: In what way will doom arrive? How bad will the doom be? There are many com­pet­ing the­o­ries of doom. Which one is most like­ly, and how can we under­stand them in rela­tion to each oth­er?

For this lev­el of analy­sis, we might turn to Dominic Wal­li­man, physi­cist and pro­pri­etor of Domain of Sci­ence, the YouTube chan­nel and web­site that has brought us enter­tain­ing and com­pre­hen­sive maps of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic fields, such as biol­o­gy, chem­istry, math­e­mat­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, and quan­tum physics. Is rank­ing apoc­a­lypses a sci­en­tif­ic field of study, you might won­der? Yes, when it is a data-dri­ven threat assess­ment. Wal­li­man sur­veyed and ana­lyzed, as he says in his intro­duc­tion, “all of the dif­fer­ent threats to human­i­ty that exist.”

When the pan­dem­ic hit last win­ter, “we as a soci­ety were com­plete­ly unpre­pared for it,” despite the fact that experts had been warn­ing us for decades that exact­ly such a threat was high on the scale of like­li­hood. Are we focus­ing on the wrong kinds of doom, to the exclu­sion of more press­ing threats? Instead of pan­ick­ing when the coro­n­avirus hit, Wal­li­man cooly won­dered what else might be lurk­ing around the cor­ner. “Crikey,” says the New Zealan­der upon the first reveal of his Map of Doom, “there’s quite a lot aren’t there?”

Not con­tent to just col­lect dis­as­ters (and draw them as if they were all hap­pen­ing at the same time), Wal­li­man also want­ed to find out which ones pose the biggest threat, “using some real data.” After the Map of Doom comes the Chart of Doom, an XY grid plot­ting the like­li­hood and sever­i­ty of var­i­ous crises. These include ancient stal­warts like super vol­ca­noes; far more recent threats like nuclear war and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change; cos­mic threats like aster­oids and col­laps­ing stars; ter­res­tri­al threats like wide­spread soci­etal col­lapse and extra-ter­res­tri­al threats like hos­tile aliens….

At the top of the graph, at the lim­it of “high like­li­hood,” there lies the “already hap­pen­ing zone,” includ­ing, of course, COVID-19, cli­mate change, and volatile extreme weath­er events like hur­ri­canes and tsunamis. At the bot­tom, in the “impos­si­ble to cal­cu­late” zone, we find sci-fi events like rogue AI, rogue black holes, rogue nano-bots, hos­tile aliens, and the col­lapse of the vac­u­um of space. All the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, but in Wal­li­man’s analy­sis most­ly unlike­ly to occur. As in all of his maps, he cites his sources on the video’s YouTube page.

If you’re not feel­ing quite up to a data pre­sen­ta­tion on mass casu­al­ty events just now, you can down­load the Map and Chart of Doom here and peruse them at your leisure. Pick up a Map of Doom for the wall at Wal­li­man’s site, and while you’re there, why not buy an “I sur­vived 2020” stick­er. Maybe it’s pre­ma­ture, and maybe in poor taste. And maybe in times of doom we need some­one to face the facts of doom square­ly, turn them into car­toon info­graph­ics of doom, and claim vic­to­ries like liv­ing through anoth­er cal­en­dar year.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Info­graph­ics Show How the Dif­fer­ent Fields of Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics, Physics & Com­put­er Sci­ence Fit Togeth­er

M.I.T. Com­put­er Pro­gram Alarm­ing­ly Pre­dicts in 1973 That Civ­i­liza­tion Will End by 2040

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Hertella Coffee Machine Mounted on a Volkswagen Dashboard (1959): The Most European Car Accessory Ever Made

in Food & Drink, History, Technology | December 8th, 2020

Cur­rent auto-indus­try wis­dom holds that no car with­out cup hold­ers will sell in Amer­i­ca. Though this also seems to have become increas­ing­ly true across the rest of the world, I like to imag­ine there still exists a coun­try or two whose dri­ving pub­lic holds fast against that par­tic­u­lar design vul­gar­ism. Such places would, of course, lie deep in unre­con­struct­ed Europe, where nobody can go long with­out cof­fee. The solu­tion? The Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine, the first and only known dash­board-mount­ed cof­fee mak­er.

Man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cal­ly for the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle, this high­ly civ­i­lized auto­mo­bile acces­so­ry has, 60 years after its intro­duc­tion, near­ly van­ished from exis­tence. Judg­ing by the few known exam­ples, it nev­er had the time to evolve past its tech­ni­cal short­com­ings. For one, it lacks a pow­er switch: “As soon as you plug it into the cig­a­rette lighter, it just gets hot,” writes The Dri­ve’s Peter Holderith. “And as far as the type of cof­fee machine that it is, well, you would have to be pret­ty des­per­ate for caf­feine to make cof­fee in this thing.”

“I always thought they were a per­co­la­tor, or espres­so machine like a Moka… but nope,” says Dave Hord of Clas­sic Car Adven­tures, who pur­chased his own Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine from an own­er in Ser­bia. It seems “you fill the ves­sel with water, put your cof­fee in the (dou­ble lay­er) screen, and heat up the unit. I pre­sume you heat the unit up with the cof­fee in it, which means this basi­cal­ly brews cof­fee as though it’s tea.” Per­haps only a transcon­ti­nen­tal road-trip­per in 1959 would grow des­per­ate enough to drink it.

Still, as Holderith notes, “the machine does have a few clever fea­tures. The porce­lain cups that came with it appar­ent­ly had a met­al disc on the bot­tom of them that allowed them to stick to the machine mag­net­i­cal­ly” and the unit itself “mounts to the dash with a sim­ple brack­et, allow­ing for the pot to quick­ly be removed and cleaned when nec­es­sary.” Per­haps today’s car design­ers, a group once again look­ing to the past for inspi­ra­tion, will resume the pur­suit of dash­board brew­ing begun by the Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine. If not, Wes Ander­son can sure­ly find a use for the thing.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Marina Abramović’s Method for Overcoming Trauma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Complaints for 15 Minutes

in Art, Life, Nature, Psychology | December 8th, 2020

One of the most renowned of Chi­nese poets, Du Fu, sur­vived the dev­as­tat­ing An Lushan rebel­lion that near­ly brought down the Tang Dynasty and result­ed in an incred­i­ble loss of life around the coun­try. His poems are full of grief, as trans­la­tor David Hin­ton notes. The open­ing of “Spring Land­scape” con­tains “pos­si­bly the most famous line in Chi­nese poet­ry,” and a painful com­ment on human­i­ty’s place in the nat­ur­al world.

The coun­try in ruins, rivers and moun­tains
con­tin­ue. The city grows lush with spring.

Blos­soms scat­ter tears for us, and all these
sep­a­ra­tions in a bird’s cry star­tle the heart.

The poem presents a trag­ic irony. Nature invites us in, seems to promise com­fort and refuge. “Du Fu tells us that birds seem to cry for us, and blos­soms weep,” writes Madeleine Thien at The New York Review of Books. But “of course, this is a fairy-tale view, and ‘in the knowl­edge of its fal­si­ty, heart­break­ing.’”

Is nature indif­fer­ent to human suf­fer­ing? It would seem so to the bro­ken-heart­ed Con­fu­cian poet. But nature is not devoid of fel­low feel­ing. Trees talk to each oth­er, cre­ate social worlds and fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­cate with the oth­er plants and ani­mals around them. Japan­ese researchers have shown that the oils trees secrete can mea­sur­ably low­er stress lev­els, reduce hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion, and boost immu­ni­ty. Trees may not weep, but they care.

Trees are also, says per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramović in the short video above, “per­fect­ly silent listeners”—a rare and valu­able qual­i­ty in times of stress. “They have intel­li­gence. They have feel­ings.” And for this rea­son, a tree is the ide­al com­pan­ion when we need an ear.

You can com­plain to them. And I start­ed this a long time ago when I was in the Ama­zon with the native Indi­ans. You know, they will go to the Sequoia tree, which is one of the old­est on the plan­et. And they will make a dance for the tree. These dances for the tree are so incred­i­bly mov­ing an emo­tion­al. So I thought, Wow! Why don’t I cre­ate an exer­cise that real­ly works for me?

Abramović’s tree ther­a­py is one part of her “Abramović Method,” notes Paper, “a set of tech­niques that enables artists to get to high­er states of con­scious­ness.” She rec­om­mends it for any­one who’s reel­ing from the trau­mas of this year. In our own age of dev­as­ta­tion and iso­la­tion, it cer­tain­ly couldn’t hurt, and per­haps we know more than Du Fu did about how nature sup­ports our emo­tion­al lives.

So “please, go to the park near you,” the artist implores. “Pick the tree you like. Hold the tree tight. Real­ly tight. And just pour your heart into it. Com­plain to the tree for a min­i­mum of 15 min­utes. It’s the best heal­ing that you can do.” Includ­ed in the video is a tes­ti­mo­ni­al from an ex-rug­by play­er, who found the Com­plain­ing to Trees method trans­for­ma­tive. “There is some­thing in it,” he says. “It’s almost like you become part of the tree as well.” Trees are not peo­ple. They don’t dis­pense advice. They lis­ten and con­sole in their own mys­te­ri­ous­ly ancient, silent way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Sistine Chapel of the Ancients: Archaeologists Discover 8 Miles of Art Painted on Rock Walls in the Amazon

in Art, History | December 8th, 2020

All images by José Iri­arte

Over twelve thou­sand years ago, some of the first humans in the Ama­zon hunt­ed, paint­ed, and danced with the mas­sive extinct mam­mals of the ice age: giant sloths and armadil­los, ice-age hors­es, and mastodons…. How do we know? We have pic­tures, or rock paint­ings, rather–many thou­sands of them made around 12,500 years ago and only recent­ly “found on an eight-mile rock sur­face along the Guayabero Riv­er the Colom­bian Ama­zon,” Hakim Bishara reports at Hyper­al­ler­gic. The pre­his­toric won­der has been dubbed the “Sis­tine Chapel of the ancients.”

The dis­cov­ery, made last year, was kept secret until the release of a new doc­u­men­tary air­ing this month called Jun­gle Mys­tery: Lost King­doms of the Ama­zon. Palaeo-anthro­pol­o­gist Ella Al-Shamahi, pre­sen­ter of the Chan­nel 4 series and a mem­ber of the team that found the site, explains why it may be hard to imag­ine such great pre­his­toric beasts lum­ber­ing through the rain­for­est.

Their exis­tence in this rock art offers a clue to major cli­ma­to­log­i­cal shifts that have occurred in the region over mil­len­nia. As Al-Shamahi tells The Observ­er:

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things was see­ing ice age megafau­na because that’s a mark­er of time. I don’t think peo­ple realise that the Ama­zon has shift­ed in the way it looks. It hasn’t always been this rain­for­est. When you look at a horse or mastodon in these paint­ings, of course they weren’t going to live in a for­est. They’re too big. Not only are they giv­ing clues about when they were paint­ed by some of the ear­li­est peo­ple – that in itself is just mind-bog­gling – but they are also giv­ing clues about what this very spot might have looked like: more savan­nah-like.

“We’re talk­ing about sev­er­al tens of thou­sands of paint­ings,” says the team’s leader, José Iri­arte, pro­fes­sor of archae­ol­o­gy at Exeter Uni­ver­si­ty. “It’s going to take gen­er­a­tions to record them.” The rock wall art illus­trates many extinct species, includ­ing pre­his­toric lama and three-toed hoofed mam­mals with trunks, as well as real­is­tic depic­tions of mon­keys, bats, snakes, tur­tles, tapirs, birds, lizards, fish, and deer. Remains found near the site offer clues to the ancient peo­ples’ diets, which includ­ed piran­ha, alli­ga­tors, snakes, frogs, and “rodents such as paca, capy­bara, and armadil­los,” Bishara notes.

Many of the images are paint­ed to the scale of hand­prints left in many places along the wall, and some are much larg­er. Researchers were par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­prised by the method of com­po­si­tion. Some of the art is so high up it can only be seen by drone. “I’m 5ft 10in,” says Shamahi, “and I would be break­ing my neck look­ing up. How were they scal­ing those walls?” It appears the artists used some form of rap­pelling. There are “depic­tions of wood­en tow­ers among the paint­ings,” reports The Guardian, “includ­ing fig­ures appear­ing to bungee jump from them.”

Fur­ther study in the com­ing decades, and cen­turies, will reveal much more about how the paint­ings were made. The why, how­ev­er, will prove more elu­sive. Iri­arte spec­u­lates they served a sacred pur­pose. “It’s inter­est­ing to see that many of these large ani­mals appear sur­round­ed by small men with their arms raised, almost wor­ship­ping these ani­mals.” The pres­ence of hal­lu­cino­genic plants among the paint­ings leads him to com­pare the paint­ings with con­tem­po­rary Ama­zon­ian peo­ple, for whom “non-humans like ani­mals and plants have souls, and they com­mu­ni­cate and engage with peo­ple in coop­er­a­tive or hos­tile ways through the rit­u­als and shaman­ic prac­tices that we see depict­ed in the rock art.”

What­ev­er their pur­pose, the over 100,000 paint­ings on the eight-mile wall con­tain an immea­sur­able store of infor­ma­tion about ancient Ama­zo­ni­ans’ cre­ativ­i­ty and inge­nu­ity. They also add, per­haps, to the moun­tain of rock art evi­dence sug­gest­ing, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich argued recent­ly, that before orga­nized war became the dom­i­nant prac­tice of civ­i­liza­tions, “humans once had bet­ter ways to spend their time.” The pub­li­ca­tion of the research team’s find­ings is avail­able here. See more images of the site at Hyper­al­ler­gic and Design­boom and watch the first two episodes of Jun­gle Mys­tery: Lost King­doms of the Ama­zon here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered 44,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing Tells the Old­est Known Sto­ry

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er the World’s First “Art Stu­dio” Cre­at­ed in an Ethiopi­an Cave 43,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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Why Butt Trumpets & Other Bizarre Images Appeared in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

in Art, Books, History | December 8th, 2020

In illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, Medieval Europe can seem more like Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail than the grim tales of grey-faced, mildewed kings, monks, knights, and peas­ants turned out by the Hol­ly­wood dozen. Yes, life could be bru­tal, bloody, dis­ease-rid­den, but it could also be absur­dist and unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous, qual­i­ties that reach their apex in the weird­ness of Hierony­mus Bosch’s “painful, hor­ri­ble” musi­cal instru­ments in his Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

While Bosch paint­ed his night­mar­ish cacoph­o­nies, Medieval scribes’ cats peed and left inky foot­prints on 15th cen­tu­ry man­u­scripts, with­in whose illus­trat­ed pages, rab­bits play church organs, valiant knights do bat­tle with giant snails, and a naked man blows a trum­pet with his rear end (a pre­cur­sor to the man in Bosch’s paint­ing with a flute stuck in his rear.) “These bizarre images,” TED Ed notes, “paint­ed with squir­rel-hair brush­es on vel­lum or parch­ment by monks, nuns, and urban crafts­peo­ple, pop­u­late the mar­gins of the most prized books from the Mid­dle Ages.”

The ani­mat­ed video les­son at the top by Michelle Brown “explores the rich his­to­ry and tra­di­tion of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts” in their eccen­tric­i­ty and seem­ing silli­ness. The ani­mal motifs in mar­gin­al illus­tra­tions were nei­ther aim­less doo­dles nor inside jokes. They were alle­gor­i­cal fig­ures descend­ed from the menageries of Medieval bes­tiaries, repeat­ed the­mat­i­cal­ly to rep­re­sent human vices and virtues. Rab­bits, for exam­ple, rep­re­sent­ed lust, and their music-mak­ing was a vir­tu­ous sub­li­ma­tion of the same.

These asso­ci­a­tions weren’t always so clear, espe­cial­ly when they were explic­it­ly reli­gious. The por­cu­pine pick­ing fruit from its spine could rep­re­sent either dev­il or sav­ior, depend­ing on con­text. The uni­corn, which can only be killed with its head in the lap of a vir­gin, might stand for sex­u­al temp­ta­tion or the sac­ri­fice of Christ. But the few read­ers in this man­u­script cul­ture would have rec­og­nized the ref­er­ences and allu­sions, although, like all signs, the illus­tra­tions com­mu­ni­cate sev­er­al dif­fer­ent, even con­tra­dic­to­ry, mean­ings at once.

And what of the butt trum­pet? It is “like­ly short­hand to express dis­ap­proval with, or add an iron­ic spin to, the action in the text.” The butt trum­pet, ladies and gen­tle­men, is as adver­tised: that most ven­er­a­ble of expres­sions, the fart joke, to which there is no wit­ty reply and which—as scat­o­log­i­cal humor can do—might be sly­ly sub­ver­sive polit­i­cal cri­tique. Lit­er­ate or not, Medieval Euro­peans spoke a lan­guage of sym­bols that stood in for whole folk tra­di­tions and the­olo­gies. The butt trum­pet, how­ev­er, is just objec­tive­ly, crude­ly fun­ny, prob­a­bly as much to the artists who drew them as to those of us, hun­dreds of years lat­er, encoun­ter­ing them for the first time. See sev­er­al more exam­ples here and learn more about Medieval and Renais­sance man­u­scripts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

The Flute of Shame: Dis­cov­er the Instrument/Device Used to Pub­licly Humil­i­ate Bad Musi­cians Dur­ing the Medieval Peri­od

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why Japan Has the Oldest Businesses in the World?: Hōshi, a 1300-Year-Old Hotel, Offers Clues

in History, Travel | December 7th, 2020

Per­haps, when the state of the world once again per­mits rea­son­ably con­ve­nient trav­el, you plan to vis­it Japan. If so, you’d do well to con­sid­er stay­ing at one of the coun­try’s ryokan, the tra­di­tion­al inns often locat­ed at hot springs. No accom­mo­da­tions could appeal more deeply to those in search of “old Japan,” and many ryokan deliv­er on that adjec­tive in the most lit­er­al sense. Take the Nisiya­ma Onsen Keiunkan, whose 1300 years of oper­a­tion at its hot spring in Yamanashi Pre­fec­ture make it the old­est hotel in the world. But it has yet to get the doc­u­men­tary treat­ment by Fritz Schu­mann, a Ger­man film­mak­er with an eye for Japan pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his video on the “moun­tain monks” of Yam­a­ga­ta.

Schu­mann has, how­ev­er, made a sub­ject of the sec­ond-old­est hotel in the world, Komat­su’s Hōshi ryokan, found­ed in the year 718.  That Japan boasts both the word’s old­est and sec­ond-old­est hotels should sur­prise nobody who knows the nature of its busi­ness­es. “The coun­try is home to more than 33,000 with at least 100 years of his­to­ry — over 40 per­cent of the world’s total, accord­ing to a study by the Tokyo-based Research Insti­tute of Cen­ten­ni­al Man­age­ment,” write The New York Times’ Ben Doo­ley and Hisako Ueno.

“Over 3,100 have been run­ning for at least two cen­turies. Around 140 have exist­ed for more than 500 years. And at least 19 claim to have been con­tin­u­ous­ly oper­at­ing since the first mil­len­ni­um.” These shinise, or “old shops,” include brands like Nin­ten­do, found­ed as a play­ing-card com­pa­ny, and soy-sauce mak­er Kikko­man.

Doo­ley and Uneo high­light Ichi­wa, a shop that has sold mochi — those slight­ly sweet rice-based con­fec­tions often mold­ed into aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing shapes — for over a mil­len­ni­um. “Like many busi­ness­es in Japan,” Ichi­wa “takes the long view — albeit longer than most. By putting tra­di­tion and sta­bil­i­ty over prof­it and growth, Ichi­wa has weath­ered wars, plagues, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and the rise and fall of empires. Through it all, its rice flour cakes have remained the same.” At BBC’s Work­life, Bryan Lufkin exam­ines Tsuen Tea, a fix­ture of sub­ur­ban Kyoto since the year 1160, back when Kyoto was still Japan’s cap­i­tal, a his­to­ry that grants the city pride of place among tra­di­tion­al­ists. There, writes Lufkin, “many long-stand­ing busi­ness­es also tout a ded­i­ca­tion to good cus­tomer ser­vice as an ele­ment that keeps them thriv­ing.”

In Kyoto, or any­where else in Japan, this is “espe­cial­ly the case with ryokan,” which “treat guests like fam­i­ly.” Like many things Japan­ese, this aspect of the ryokan expe­ri­ence will both sur­prise first-time vis­i­tors and be just what they expect­ed. Whether in their look and feel, their set­tings, their stan­dard of ser­vice — or rather, in a com­bi­na­tion of all those qual­i­ties and oth­ers besides — ryokan offer some­thing avail­able nowhere else in the world. So do Japan’s oth­er shinise, which also set them­selves apart by hav­ing amassed the resources (finan­cial, famil­ial, and oth­er­wise) to keep going through hard times. This past year has been anoth­er such hard time, and with the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic still caus­ing a great deal of human and eco­nom­ic dam­age around the world, we might look to Hōshi and its long-lived kind for lessons on how do to busi­ness in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

Moun­tain Monks: A Vivid Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Monks Who Prac­tice an Ancient, Once-For­bid­den Reli­gion in Japan

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

The Japan­ese Tra­di­tions of Sashiko & Boro: The Cen­turies-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sus­tain­able, Artis­tic Way

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Behold the Steampunk Home Exercise Machines from the Victorian Age

in Design, Health, Physics | December 7th, 2020

The pan­dem­ic has result­ed in a lot of peo­ple rein­vent­ing their fit­ness reg­i­mens, invest­ing in pricey items like Mir­ror and Pelo­ton bikes to turn homes into home gyms.

Per­son­al­ly, we’re sav­ing our pen­nies until some Etsy sell­er repli­cates the mechan­i­cal ther­a­py sys­tems of Dr. Gus­tav Zan­der (1835–1920).

From the mid-19th cen­tu­ry through WWI, these machines were at the fore­front of gym cul­ture. Their func­tion is extreme­ly sim­i­lar to mod­ern strength train­ing equip­ment, but their design exudes a dash­ing steam­punk flair.

If the thing that’s going to help us work off all this sour­dough weight is going to wind up col­o­niz­ing half our apart­ment, we want some­thing that will go with our max­i­mal­ist thrift store aes­thet­ic.

We might even start work­ing out in floor length skirts and three piece suits in homage to Zander’s orig­i­nal devo­tees.

His 27 machines addressed abs, arms, adductors—all the great­est hits—using weights and levers to strength­en mus­cles through pro­gres­sive exer­tion and resis­tance. Spe­cial­ly trained assis­tants were on hand to adjust the weights, a lux­u­ry that our mod­ern world has seen fit to phase out.

Just as 21st-cen­tu­ry fit­ness cen­ters posi­tion them­selves as life­savers of those who spend the bulk of the day hunched in front of a com­put­er, Zander’s inven­tions tar­get­ed seden­tary office work­ers.

The indus­tri­al soci­ety that cre­at­ed this new breed of labor­er also ensured that the Swedish doc­tor’s con­trap­tions would gar­ner acco­lades and atten­tion. They were already a hit in their land of ori­gin when they took a gold medal at Philadelphia’s 1876 Cen­ten­ni­al Exhi­bi­tion.

The flag­ship Ther­a­peu­tic Zan­der Insti­tute in Stock­holm expand­ed, with branch­es in Lon­don and New York City.

The New York Times described the lat­ter as giv­ing the “unini­ti­at­ed observ­er an impres­sion of a care­ful­ly devised tor­ture cham­ber more than of a doc­tor’s office or a gym­na­si­um, both of which func­tions the insti­tute, to a cer­tain degree, fills.”

Sure­ly no more tor­tu­ous than the blood let­ting, blis­ter­ing, and purg­ing that were also thought health­ful at the time…

See more of Dr. Gus­tav Zander’s exer­cise machines here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out!: Dis­cov­er the 15-Minute Exer­cise Rou­tine That Swept the World in 1904

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. This month, she appearsas a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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