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29 voters
“Non-Greeks have used Greek letters to be scientifically precise and specific, yet the reason why Greek was chosen – and is still being chosen – is cultural. In Roman times, Greek was the language of teachers, and in art the Romans looked to the Greeks as their progenitors. In the medieval period, the two foundation languages were seen to be Latin and Greek, with Greek being the older. Early scientists were assumed to have a level of education which would include knowing the Greek letters. For the writers of fiction and the namers of new substances or new products, the key issue is connotation – that cloud of associations that runs through and around every word we say and write. Using a Greek letter lends the object, being or character a scientific identity. Because so much modern science is beyond the uninitiated, the association is not only with science but also with mystery, something that only true boffin-heads really know and understand.”
― Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
― Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
“Mr. Ibis spoke in explanations: a gentle, earnest lecturing that put Shadow in mind of a college professor who used to work out at the Muscle Farm and who could not talk, could only discourse, expound, explain. Shadow had figured out within the first few minutes of meeting Mr. Ibis that his expected part in any conversation with the funeral director was to say as little as possible.”
― American Gods
― American Gods
“The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it. It did not matter, Shadow decided, if you had done what you had been convicted of or not. In his experience everyone he met in prison was aggrieved about something: there was always something the authorities had got wrong, something they said you did when you didn’t—or you didn’t do quite like they said you did. What was important was that they had gotten you.”
― American Gods
― American Gods
“I is the hardest word to define.”
― Turtles All the Way Down
― Turtles All the Way Down
“One of the earliest treatises was written at the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth by a shadowy figure called Walter of Henley, who may have been a bailiff. He seems in some ways to anticipate the changes that were to occur with the breakdown of the feudal system. Walter of Henley describes an essentially feudal estate operating both two-year and three-year rotations and employs the didactic style so popular with Roman writers.8 He advises on how to select labourers, rather in the Roman style. He has a small section on manure, so clearly its value was recognised even then: “Do not sell your stubble… or… you will lose much. Good son, cause manure to be gathered in heaps and mixed with earth… And before the drought of March comes let your manure, which has been scattered within the court and without, be gathered together… Put your manure which has been mixed with earth on sandy ground… Manure your lands and do not plough them too deeply.” Walter seems to ascribe the benefit of manuring to its ability to retain moisture in dry weather, especially if it is mixed with marl or soil.”
― The World's Greatest Fix: A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture
― The World's Greatest Fix: A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture
Meg’s 2025 Year in Books
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