The Ragbag
I was writing a short post to direct interested readers to The Ragbag, an excellent, excellent tumblelog which has recently discussed:
- apophenia, the perception of “patterns or connections in random or meaningless data” (which is a good way of discussing some elements of schizophrenia, paranoia, and manic artistry);
- the Shaw Phonetic Alphabet, a set of characters created from a commission, possibly willed in jest, by George Bernard Shaw;
- a fascinating true-or-false proposition: “Evolution is a brute force hack,” an interesting phrasing which connects to a theme explored in the book What is Life?, by Erwin Schrödinger, which I discussed previously and to which I will return.
However, he just posted what is one of the most-apropos Tumblr posts of all time, one which combines sexuality and literature in a way that seems destined to be reblogged into infinity:
Even more than his cooler-than-usual musings on typography, this synthesis of the main interests of the Internet literati concludes with the following vignette about James Joyce:
One day, when a fan of his writing said to him, “let me shake the hand that wrote Ulysses,” he replied, “No—it’s done lots of other things, too!”
He’d previously mentioned a letter which Joyce wrote to his wife which his literary executors ought to be ashamed for making public, but which is extraordinary in its lustfulness. I felt prurient just scanning it, and remorseful for having invaded Joyce’s posthumous privacy, but it was interesting.
Anyway: check the Ragbag out.
