The ruddy turnstone

New lightweight tracking devices allow scientists to follow a tiny bird's round-the-world migration:

Tracker devices can be fitted on birds either by fixing them to a leg or by sticking them to the back. All the ruddy turnstone had them attached to legs because tests showed that after spending the Australasian summer fattening up to their maximum weight of about 190g they were "as round as tennis balls" and the backpack style wouldn't stay on.

Liberace and Lord Leighton

Last night I reread Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai (I want to write a few sentences about it for the little book on style, which now exists in draft but with the hard parts not written yet!). What a book!

1:12

Tiny modern miniatures.

They do it with mirrors

From Arnaud Maillet, The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art:

This lack of knowledge [of the Claude mirror] is sometimes compounded by prohibitions that prevent these objects from being exhibited. For example, the Musee National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris possesses a mirror of about 28 centimeters in diameter, with a slight outward curvature and a black backing, designed to be suspended from hooks. Its last owner, a Parisian sculptor, had hung it in his dining room. A complicated series of events came about: The artist got rid of this magic mirror by donating it to the museum in the early 1980s. A magnetizer who had come to examine it inserted some bits of paper inscribed with signs (for example, Solomon's seal) between the backing and the glass and recommended that it be kept in charcoal, which is reputed to absorb evil forces. This mirror is therefore not exhibited, since someone who knows how to cast spells would be able to use it, even through a glass case. In accordance with these magical recommendations, it is stored in a large case designed for black magic. The guards are afraid of it, and anyone who looks inside feels a great unease. Despite its ethnographic value, and for the reasons just mentioned, this mirror cannot be lent out, since it has no inventory number: thus it "doesn't exist"!

Strangers in the night

Lots of genuinely thought-provoking stuff in Edward Said's On Late Style (I must listen to more music!), but I am instead unfairly singling out this funny curiosity of a passage, which I could not resist and in which Said recalls an evening spent with Jean Genet in Beirut (the essay on Genet opens with Said's account of watching Genet speak - and be wildly mistranslated - at a 1970 rally in support of the Black Panthers on the Columbia University steps):

He smoked constantly, and he also drank, but he never seemed to change much either with drink, emotion, or thought. I recall that during the evening he once said something very positive and surprisingly warm about Jacques Derrida -- un copain, remarked Genet -- whom I had thought of as a quietist Heideggerian type at the time; Glas had not yet appeared, and it was only six months later, when Mariam, our little son, and I spent a few weeks in Paris, that I learned from Derrida himself that his friendship with Genet had originally been sealed as the two of them watched soccer matches together, which I thought was a nice touch. There is a brief allusion in Glas to our little encounter at Reid Hall in April 1973, although I've always been slightly miffed that Derrida should refer to me anonymously only as "un ami" who brought him news of Genet.

(I am also reminded that one of the things I did the last time I was on sabbatical was read Glas!)

Light reading miscellany

I have got behind on my day-to-day book posting! Not much to say, I guess...

Saw three plays.

The one I liked most was Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, an adaptation of Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren (still definitely a work in progress, and distinctly unsettling as a result of its subject matter, but some lovely moments - it is a strange and unsettling vision of the past and the future).

I didn't enjoy Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson as much as Ben Brantley did, though the acting was very good (Colleen Werthmann is hilarious!) and there are at least four or five extremely clever songs.

A Behanding in Spokane was a great disappointment. Some very funny bits of dialogue here and there; I wasn't sorry to see Christopher Walken live, and I certainly didn't hate it as much as Hilton Als did. But it is only scraps that are really funny, there is absolutely nothing to the play as a whole, and I was also extremely irked by the obsequious laughter that seems to greet even the most modestly amusing lines, whether uttered by Walken or anybody else - I felt more and more stony-hearted and irritable as the play proceeded! I loved The Lieutenant of Inishmore, that's the thing, and I was surprised by how inconsequential this play seemed in comparison (I do not think McDonaugh can yet write American dialogue as well as he writes Irish).

I read four more Jacqueline Carey novels (books 4-6 of the Kushiel series, and then Naamah's Kiss - have rejected three other books of hers as not so much to my taste, but alas, this means I am now caught up to where she actual is in the series, I cannot get Naamah's Curse until it is actually published in June!

Then I read three novels by Arnaldur Indridason that I am too lazy to link to separately. These are very good, really thoughtful and beautifully composed - I like the use of flashbacks - though I think his character development is relatively thin. Especially compared to Deon Meyer, whose characters burst off the page in their complex vitality (not the female villains so much, but the male detectives): I really liked Dead Before Dying very much indeed, but I think Devil's Peak is even better.

There is no doubt, however, that crime fiction does not repay binge reading the same way that epic fantasy or historical fiction does - you do no violence to Dorothy Dunnett by reading 13 books of hers all in a row, but if I read three Erlendur mysteries in a row the author's tricks start to seem a little bit threadbare, even if they are good tricks!

Memorials

Just on the off chance there's anyone reading here who'd like to come and hasn't heard about it elsewhere, the memorial service for my colleague Karl Kroeber will be held tomorrow, Thursday, April 8 from 3:30 to 5:30 in St. Paul's Chapel on campus.

Sex in space

Susan Raizer reviews Laura Woodmansee's Sex in Space:

As many astronauts have found, acclimating oneself to weightlessness very often brings on a sickness akin to motion sickness that might last for several days. Once conditioned, the tourists will then be able to pursue more sophisticated activities, including sex. The conditioning will take a lot of practice as was found by a participant on a hyperbolic flight who tried to embrace a fellow traveler only to rebound! Through the use of small crash dummies, the author demonstrated different positions that might be experimented with. The major difficulty in a weightless environment is the need to anchor the partners or they will float in opposite directions. Once the mechanics are learned, experimentation will provide a unique experience. While the use of the crash dummies was successful in the visualization of these activities, they are not appropriate for viewing by minors.

Difficult prawns

Amanda Mitchison lunches with Philip Pullman for the FT.

Eggs, eggs, eggs

The egg countdown begins...

(I am not so full of links this year as I was last year!)

At the Telegraph, lemur with Easter egg.

Spring treats from Bouchon Bakery (via Wendy, who was also kind enough to get me a Laura Secord egg - this year's was chocolate fudge covered with pecans and caramel...)

Unemployment gave Dominique Browning an obsession with eggs!

Chocolate eggs from Napoleon's kitchen.

The Independent's ten best Easter treats.

In other news, I have thus far entirely failed to obtain a hot cross bun - they seem nowhere to be found! I glimpsed an array of them through the window of a Pain Quotidien, but it was not the moment for pastry, and I have not laid eyes on another one since, not even the slightly disgusting ones that usually come in boxes of six at the supermarket. I have only a short window in which to get one, or it is all over until next year!

Miniature, giant

Two old pieces I'm still pleased with: my review of Toni Schlesinger's Five Flights Up (assigned to me by Ed Park, who also suggested the format as an homage to Toni's long-running Shelter column); and the longer spin-off essay in the Believer.

Thinking about this because I'm doing another interview soon, the first for a long time, of a writer I particularly admire: details to follow at a more appropriate juncture...

(Toni was another one of Tino's "interpreters" at the Guggenheim show, though I mostly only caught a glimpse of her as we crossed paths in the stairwell. And a nice bit in the Times this week on another person I know through Tino's gigs: Hugh Raffles, whose book Insectopedia sounds very much the kind of thing I delight in!)

The mouse helpline

The recent House of Lords debate on pest control:

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff: I thank the noble Lord for his reply. How many calls have there been to the mouse helpline? Has the accuracy of that information been checked, given that the staff report seeing mice on a daily basis at the moment in the eating areas? Has consideration been given to having hypoallergenic cats on the estate, given the history? Miss Wilson, when she was a resident superintendent in this Palace, had a cat that apparently caught up to 60 mice a night. The corpses were then swept up in the morning. Finally, does the noble Lord recognise the fire hazard that mice pose, because they eat through insulating cables? It would be a tragedy for this beautiful Palace to burn down for lack of a cat.

The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, there are a number of questions there. I cannot give an answer to the number of calls made to the mouse helpline-if that is its title. I suspect that it would not be a good use of resources to count them up. But I am well aware of the problem of mice, as I said in my Answer. It is something that we take seriously.

As for getting a cat, I answered a Question from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, last week on this matter. I was not aware that such a thing as a hypoallergenic cat existed-I do not know whether our cat at home is one of those. There are a number of reasons why it is not a good idea to have cats. First, they would ingest mouse poison when eating poisoned mice, which would not be very nice for them, and there would be nothing to keep them where they are needed or stop them walking around the House on desks in offices or on tables in restaurants and bars-and maybe even in the Chamber itself. Therefore, we have ruled out at this stage the possibility of acquiring a cat, or cats.

Via this blog and Robert Hudson's tip-off.

NB Robbie is the author of a truly lovely novel that I somehow omitted to blog about when I read it this fall: it is called The Kilburn Social Club, and I found it one of the funniest and most delightful things I've read for a long time. Not least because by some curious and inexplicable alchemy Robbie likes almost all the same things I like, and I can rest in peace now that I have found the one other person in the world (a good example of the Hudson style can be found in this old Light Reading post) who has Jorge Luis Borges and Jilly Cooper enshrined on two plinths of equal prestige and prominence in the temple of his heart!

Theodolite-wielding geodesists

At the Independent, Jonathan Brown on the history of the Ordnance Survey as its maps go online:

According to Dr Richard Oliver's A Short History of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, the first modern maps took shape between 1747 and 1755. Their instigator was an ambitious military officer named Colonel David Watson, who served with the Army and also the Engineers of the Board of Ordnance. The painstaking work was carried out by the Lanarkshire-born surveyor William Roy, who went on to become the father of modern cartography, and the pioneering water colourist Paul Sandby, who helped turn the first maps into beautifully realised artworks. It was a primitive process by modern satellite-driven standards. The contour line was yet to be invented, and all distances were measured by 66ft lengths of chain.

Beef bouillion and langoustines

Jonathan Taylor on food trademarks in early twentieth-century Trieste. A much fuller photo-set here, including this triumph of eggishness:

Character analysis

On my list of undisputably great novels of the last decade (the last century!): Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Really it must be read to be believed, but here is an early passage I like quite a bit:

Leo was certainly quite an egotist — Catherine’s graphological analysis had been spot on. But he didn’t expound his inner feelings. He did something Nick couldn’t imagine doing himself, which was to make statements about the sort of person he was. “I’m the sort of guy who needs a lot of sex,” he said, and, “I’m like that, I always say what I think.” Nick wondered for a moment if he’d inadvertently contradicted him. “I don’t bear grudges,” Leo said sternly: “I’m not that kind of person.” “I’m sure you’re not,” Nick said, with a quick discountenancing shudder. And perhaps this was a useful skill, or tactic, in the blind-date world, even if Nick’s modesty and natural fastidiousness kept him from replying in the same style (“I’m the sort of guy who likes Pope more than Wordsworth,” “I’m crazy about sex but I haven’t had it yet”).