Closing tabs

A tour of the Svalbard seed vault.

Does tenure encourage risk-taking?

A social history of Australia through its swimming pools.

Jonathon Green's dictionary of slang is going online. Also: what's a chuggypig?

A miniature replica of 1950s Boston.

"He smelled amazing, he really smelled good."

So far I have held off actually buying anything here, but I can't quite bring myself to close this tab on my browser. I was especially partial as a child (still am) to the candies made out of pure sugar - the Now and Laters, the Fun Dip, the candy bracelets and the candy buttons that came on a paper band, the Jolly Ranchers, the Runts and Nerds and SweetTarts and Tart 'n Tinys - I am only surprised they don't have Bottle Caps (the cafe at Butler Library used to sell these, and I would buy a box occasionally when I really needed to fuel maniacal paper-grading - it is just as well that I haven't seen them there for a couple years, I think, as those soft tart powdery crunchable disks are irresistible to me).

I don't agree with Janet Malcolm's position on the Constance Garnett translations. I've seen this argued again and again (and it's akin to the Aciman defense of Moncrieff's Proust); I suspect the difference of opinion may be generational, in that when I first encountered the translations of this vintage as a teenager in the 1980s I just found them irremediably flowery and over-elaborate. I much prefer the newer style.

Finally, Katherine Dunn died in May. I was utterly arrested and captivated by Geek Love when I first encountered it. My college classmate Thomas Lauderdale knew Katherine very well, and when he hosted me on the low-budget book tour for my first novel in 2003 or so he not only made me feel like a literary lion, he took me over to Katherine's house for tea. I was incredibly flattered, at the end of our conversation, when she exclaimed, "Dashing!" Then she told me that I had a dashing mind, an adjective that has stayed with me as a high compliment.