Advice books are nothing new. Here’s an example from late Medieval Europe:
“Those who have weak stomachs should sleep face down, for it will aid digestion and will not allow phlegm to accumulate through the increase of natural heat which stiffens the harmful humors. Moreover, it is extremely helpful to sleep at first on the right side, then on the left. No one on their right mind should sleep lying on their back.”
– Bartolomeo Platina, De honesta voluptate et valetudine (c. 1474)
(Translation by Erik Jensen)
This rather strongly worded hint is found in a Latin-language cookbook De honesta voluptate et valetudine by Bartolomeo Sacci (1421-1481; better known as Platina). Platina’s work was published c. 1474, and is often called the world’s oldest printed cookbook. It’s more than a collection of recipes, however; it also included his reflections on health, healthy habits, and physical activity, for instance.
As a side-sleeper, I (very non-seriously!) agree that sleeping on your back can’t be good for you. All of those wicked humors must then be free to wander around your body, you know… 😉
Image: Lancelot-Grail (The Prose Vulgate Cycle), Lancelot sleeping in a pavilion having killed the owner who lies outside, screencap of Add MS 10293, folio 283r via British Library (northern France; early 14th c.; illustration on parchment)
Subway riders in New York City are in for a treat this summer: e-books, e-shorts, and excerpts from full-length books are available in subway stations for free download.
This six-week Subway Library promotion comes from the cooperation of the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Public Library with the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Transit Wireless.
The e-books and short stories come from the NYPL’s permanent collection, while excerpts have been made available by big-name publishers (including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Plympton, and Simon & Schuster).
Along with the free reading, there is a social media competition, and a special Library Train will alternate running along the 6th and 8th Avenue lines (E and F trains). The latter has a car decorated to look like the Rose Main Reading Room inside the 42nd Street branch of the NYPL.
Read more about and browse the free selection at the Subway Library website!
“It strikes me as unusual and as noteworthy that we should see two such dissimilar films [Moana and Arrival] foreground so strongly connection between women across generations within a family. To acknowledge that women’s emotional lives do not revolve around men, and also acknowledge a strong family component, without reducing the female characters to people who have no emotional lives outside their family concerns.
“These films are also really good speculative fiction. So I recommend them.”
– Liz Bourke
ALL. OF. THIS!
SO. MUCH!
Bourke, Liz. “Sleeps with Monsters: Intergenerational Female Influences in Arrival and Moana.” Tor.com, May 23, 2017.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
The Viking age apparently is a bit of a thing in the Nordic countries this year: in addition the brand new museum in Stockholm, Vapriikki museum centre in Tampere will host an exhibition on Viking-age life in Finland starting this summer.
The exhibit covers village life in 1017. It’s based on the discovery of and archaeological finds from a whole Viking-age village called Tursiannotko in Pirkkala at the shores of lake Pyhäjärvi.
“It was the time of the Vikings. In the village of Tursia, people cultivated the land, traded, made sacrifices to the gods, and ate large amounts of pork. Both the Vikings and the Novgorodians sought the riches of the Häme wilderness; however, one small village of indomitable Häme folk still held out against the enemy…
“To celebrate the centennial of Finnish independence, the Birckala 1017 exhibition allows visitors to travel through time and visit a village in Northern Häme a millennium ago. You will get to know smithing skills, about cooking outdoors, and the principles that guided life for the Finns of the past […]”
On display will be, for example, bone arrowheads, decorated spoons, beads, tools, and a sword dated to 1050-1200 and its replica. Many items are being shown to the public for the first time.
Apart from the exhibit indoors, a yard with replicas (and non-replica sheep!) is available for trying out some of the iron age skills.
Vapriikki in housed in an old factory hall whose oldest parts date back to the 1880s. All the exhibits are covered by a single entry ticket. More info on the Vapriikki website.
This irresistible version of the Wonder Woman theme is played on a bagpipe and an electric guitar and backed up by a heavy metal drum track:
Wonder Woman Theme Bagpipe Cover | Metal Version | The Snake Charmer by TheSnakeCharmer
Produced and guitar by Karan Katiyar, bagpipes by Archy J / The Snake Charmer.
I was wondering how on earth it might work, but it did and so, so well: the hair on my arms stood up within the first five seconds—surefire way to know a piece of music is really great!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Worldcon is in Helsinki this year. As a Finnish-American couple, we are very excited about this! In the coming months, we’d like to offer some practical advice about visiting Finland to our fellow fans who are considering going to the event but haven’t had experience with Finland and Finns before.
Eppu here. Shopping in Finland has changed quite a bit in my lifetime. For most of its history, Finland was a poor relative to and fought over by Sweden and Russia. After the second World War, though, and especially after 1970s, Finland has changed drastically and is now one of the most stable, orderly, and prosperous countries in Europe. Nowadays you can find pretty much the same things in Helsinki as you would in any other Western European capitol—spiced with the Finnish flavor, of course.
Shop at Suomenlinna island fortress by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Like Erik mentioned already (HTH: Eating in Helsinki), 1- and 2-cent euro coins are not used in Finland. While legal tender, shopkeepers might nevertheless decline accepting the coins. Everything is instead rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cent number. (If you’re a coin collector and want a full set, there are 1- and 2-cent coins to buy.)
Perhaps a shock to visitors from outside the EU is the high sales tax or value-added tax (VAT; in Finnish, arvonlisävero or ALV). EU member states are required to collect VAT, but each state is free to set its own rate. Currently in Finland, VAT is 24% for general items, but there are lowered rates of 14% for food and restaurant services (excluding alcohol and tobacco) and 10% for books, medicines, and transportation or cultural event tickets, among others.
Marking the tax may also differ from what you’re used to. After I moved to the U.S., having to do calculus to find out the final purchase prices was an annoyance to me. In Finland, all prices already include any applicable taxes; what you see on the price tag is what you pay.
People living permanently outside the EU or Norway may be able to make VAT-free purchases, but note that retailers are not obligated to offer tax free shopping. If they do, there’s often a sticker at the door or at registers, and a number of requirements apply. See Tax-free sales to travellers in Finland for more.
Shop window from the Design District Helsinki, detail, by Ian Kennedy
There’s a movement to start charging a small fee on plastic shopping bags in stores, and some chains have already started, but as of this writing no consensus exists. It’s perhaps best to bring your own foldable totes or prepare to pay for bags.
If you’re planning on buying electronics or DVDs, note that Finnish DVDs are region 2, and electric sockets and plugs are Europlug type C or the grounded Schuko type F.
The iconic Moomin (Muumi) troll family created by Tove Jansson can nowadays be found in many stores and on a great variety of items. Official Moomin merchandise can be found at Moomin Shops, the most centrally located of which is inside the Forum shopping center (link to a map); there’s also a shop at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport.
Moomins on dishware by Mike Burns
Design & Fashion
Some of the world’s most imitated and admired designers and architects come from Finland. From Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair (The Prisoner tv series, Men in Black II) to the Marimekko Unikko poppy pattern (worn by Jackie Onassis) to a new generation of designers, the Finnish style tends towards modern, understated clean lines. Merchandise from design houses and individual designers are often showcased in the Stockmann Helsinki city center department store during the summer season.
Fiskars shopping by Visit Finland
Vintage & Second-Hand
Open-air markets and market halls are good places for finding vintage and second-hand items, including older design. The non-profit Fida and UFF chains sell primarily second-hand clothes. Flea markets—kirpputori or kirppis—may also work.
Window shopping #2 in Kallio, Helsinki, by /kallu
Handmade
Handmade wares vary from high design to mom-and-pop operators. Both types can often be found at a tori (an open-air market) or kauppahalli (market hall), or the former in various souvenir and/or design shops. One hot spot (though touristy) is the south side of Senaatintori (Senate Square; link to a map)—walk along Unioninkatu, Sofiankatu, Katariinankatu, or Helenankatu towards Kauppatori (Market Square) and the harbor.
A hand made seller at Kauppatori in Helsinki by Freeariello
Some links:
Aarikka—a family-owned business making handmade, primarily wooden jewelry, design products, and decorative items
Arabia—ceramic tableware from a 100+ year-old company, including Moomin dishes
Design District Helsinki—a concentration of jewellery makers, design and antique shops, fashion stores, museums, art galleries, restaurants, hotels, studios, and showrooms in downtown Helsinki (see e.g. their map)
“’I think I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t know what,’ he said.
“’Then don’t say anything. Sometimes silence is the greatest wisdom.’”
– The volunteer and N’Kya in “The Volunteer” by Maurice Broaddus
Oh, so much this. Not only because I think it’s true, but because it reminds me of a cultural difference that’s highly personal to me. In my culture, silence is definitely seen differently than in the U.S. Over the years, I’ve struggled to explain it. This is the closest I’ve come so far:
For a Finn to be silent isn’t an indication of inattention or rudeness; far from it. Silently listening is a sign of interest, i.e., not interrupting before the other speaker has had a chance to finish. Silence means attention to the topic and respect towards another person’s life and space. (Finns need a larger bubble of personal space than other Europeans.) And silence can also be an indication of deep camaraderie.
In essece, then, silence means space, and space means respect.
Broaddus, Maurice. “The Volunteer.” In The Voice of Martyrs. Greenbelt, MD: Rosarium, 2017, p. 103.
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
A new museum focusing on Vikings opened in Stockholm, Sweden, at the end of April 2017. The Vikingaliv museum is divided into two parts, a static exhibit and a ride, and it highlights details of everyday life besides just the warrior men of bloody repute, including dwellings, farming, cooking, travel, the lives of children and women, slave trade, and religious practices.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the museum is Ragnfrid’s Saga, an 11-minute long ride through dramatized settings with sound and light effects. The ride follows the story of Ragnfrid and her husband Harald, and takes visitors across the Baltic Sea from Sweden to Kiev and Miklagård (Constantinople) and finally back to Scandinavia and the British Isles. It’s currently available in Swedish, English, Finnish, Russian, German, and Chinese.
Privately owned and operated, Vikingaliv sits west of central Stockholm on the island of Djurgården conveniently close to other museums and destinations. Visit the Vikingaliv and Visit Stockholm websites for more.
Jan Fröjdman hand-built a short tour of Mars using high-resolution images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Here it is on Vimeo:
Not only did Fröjdman add color to the original black-and-white photos, he transformed them into 3D. The four-and-a-half-minute video starts with an approach to Mars from beyond the moon Phobos and then moves to several clips of “flying” above the planet, looking down over craters, plains, and other features.
“This film is not scientific. As a space enthusiast I have just tried to visualize the planet my way,” Fröjdman says.
Scientific or not, it looks absolutely beautiful. Being a visual person, I just love being able to glimpse at the scenery. Kudos!
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
Co-Geeking 