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Edward Conway dreams of Fire and Ice
A sequel to Pegah and Lyonel’s mutually assured destruction.
Edward Conway, bless him, commented:
https://galleryofawesomery.quora…
This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “A Song of Ice and Fire”. I look forward to watching the battles play out between Lyonel Perabo’s frozen tourist zombies (powered by the northern lights and the awesomeness that is Norwegian scenery) and Pegah Esmaili’s fiery dragons (back by a rich history stretching back thousands of years and the fastest Google Image search on Quora) :).
To which I responded:
https://galleryofawesomery.quora…
I am not undertaking to serialise these…
Pegah and Lyonel’s mutually assured destruction
Lyonel Perabo and Pegah Esmaili had an odd exchange in their respective answers Pegah Esmaili’s answer to What would you do if you were the only female in the world? and Lyonel Perabo’s answer to What would you do if you were the only male in the world? This mainly played out in the comment threads on each question.
Read them to contextualise this artist’s impression of their doom. A rather one-sided doom…
https://www.quora.com/What-would…
cc Pegah Esmaili, refer Pegah Esmaili’s answer to What would you do if you were the only female in the world?
In Memoriam, Jimmy Liu
https://www.quora.com/Have-you-e…
(Nick Nicholas): Jay Liu. Gone, never forgotten.
(Lyonel Perabo): We should have a memorial stone for him, somewhere…
How did you get your nickname?
They’re defunct nicknames, and I’m answering this for my fans. 🙂
When I was in Year 8 in high school: Acka Nicka. Because I hit puberty a little early, and acne (Australian slang: ackers) followed soon after.
When I went to a less Lord Of The Flies high school in Year 9: Nick Squared. Because my name and surname are pretty similar.
EDIT: Oh, forgot:
opoudjis is my online name; my PhD was on the distribution of the Modern Greek particle opou, and a Greek lexicographer (who was writing the entry on the word at the time) greeted me once with “Oh! You’re the other opou-guy!” (Είστε ο άλλος οπουτζής!)
More at: opoudjis
Was Brexit’s 50% threshold too low?
A referendum that is of epochal consequence for a polity needs to be decisive, in order to settle the issue, instead of converting the referendum to a neverendum. Which is why referendums to change constitutions (for those countries that have them) don’t have a 50% threshold; and why federal polities require enhanced majorities of states as well as votes. And given how disruptive the consequences are, the dice do indeed need to be loaded against change, whoever is advocating it.
That’s not Athenian democracy, but neither is anything else in Britain or the West. That is a reasonable check and balance on a popular vote, in favour of stability.
What Cameron was thinking when he came up with this particular referendum is irrelevant to that. The nuttiness of the British political system, whereby you can have a referendum but not deem it binding, is also irrelevant to that.
What song makes you so sad that you actually tear up?
Gustav Mahler: Der Tambourg’sell.
It’s an wrenching, heart-on-sleeve story of a soldier about to be executed. And the stanza that resounds with me most is not the final (“Farewell, marble rocks; farewell, mountains and hills”); it’s not even the second (“Oh, gallows, you tall house, you look so frightening”).
It’s the third:
Wenn Soldaten vorbeimarschier’n,
bei mir nit einquartier’n.
Wenn sie fragen, wer i g’wesen bin:
Tambour von der Leibkompanie!When soldiers march past,
that are not billeted with me,
When they ask who I used to be:
Drummer of the first company!
“Who I used to be.” All my life’s regrets, rolled into one.
A comic strip on Arnold von Harff
This is for Dimitra Triantafyllidou and for Kelvin Zifla.
It’s in Greek, so it’s not for most of you.
One of the first records of Albanian is in the travelogue of Arnold von Harff, as he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via the Balkans in 1496. Everywhere he went, he recorded a few words and phrases in the local language.
The phrases included “maiden, shall I sleep with you”? (Not, oddly enough, in the Albanian section.)
I was wondering how to convert the Greek section into a comic strip. Dimitra had the inspired comment: “Hah! Who know that the first pickup artist [καμάκι] of the Balkans was a German!”
The comic strip is in Greek, but I think you get the drift…
In memoriam Gerasimos Arsenis
Context: Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s answer to How does one cook lokma?
I was bantering with Dimitra on the Melbourne nouveau Lokma place, St Gerry’s. Named after the patron saint of Cephallonia, Gerasimus of the Jordan.
Which reminded me of the funniest joke I’ve heard in Greek, told by the late Gerasimos Arsenis, another Cephallonian. As recounted in Greek at Γιώργο, χάσαμε…
https://www.quora.com/How-does-o…
And here is the drawn version thereof:
Is there a piece of Classical music you wanted to like, but just couldn’t?
OP, and I’ll go first.
Havergal Brian’s Symphony No. 1 “The Gothic”.
I first heard of Brian from the Guinness Book of Records, back before it became a picture book. My curiosity was reawakened this past year through some random link taking me to the Havergal Brian Society’s pages. His life story is cool; his early work sounds like Mahler on steroids—as do the criticisms of his early work; his late stuff sounds enigmatic, but still full of awesome marches.
I borrowed everything on him I could find from the Melbourne Uni Music library. Biographies, analyses, appreciations. And I sat down to listen to the Gothic on Youtube. Several times.
I wanted to like it. I really really wanted to like it. And it does have some amazing moments.
But I have to agree with most critics. It’s just too incoherent to love or even get into. And the whole “it ends anticlimactically, on purpose” thing, which people trot out as a defence, works for Mahler’s 5th, and it may (if you’re being charitable) even work for Mahler’s 7th (a damn good symphony, but I don’t buy the finale either).
But in this case, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.
Whence this blog
It all began with Karen Chung’s answer to What did someone do that made you think they were really smart?
Karen most awesomely illustrated the scenario she described, with XKCD-style stick figure art.
Well, I exclaimed in comments. If she can do something so awesome, I can certainly do something half-arsed and attention-grabbing.
Some of this art will be done with mouse and Graphic Converter. (Think MS Paint.) Some will be done with stylus and MacBook Trackpad and Inklet—and GraphicConverter. Some will be done with my trusty LAMY safari pen. All will be devoid of perspective, chiaroscuro, detail, or any artistic sensibility.
Enjoy.