Man az del mohsen namjoo-unplugged #4

Human body odour

Scientists have worked out why mosquitoes make a beeline for certain people but appear to leave others almost untouched. Specific cells in one of the three organs that make up the mosquito’s nose are tuned to identify the different chemicals that make up human body odour. To the mosquito some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odour. It is those people who are most likely to be bitten.
The researchers believe the discovery of the way the mosquito smells will lead to the development of a new generation of repellents that would block mosquitoes’ nose - preventing them finding humans prey - within five to 10 years.
While helping those people who always seem to get bitten and people with allergic reactions to bites, such substances could also save millions of lives in the fight against malaria, most prevalent life-threatening disease in the world.
Mosquitoes use three organs to smell and taste – a feathery antenna which can identify a wide range of different chemicals, a proboscis used for short-range detection and the maxillary palp for longer range smelling. (...more>>)

"What is the Italian for mensch?"

The very name of Primo Levi stops the heart. Affection then floods in, because, of all Holocaust survivors, he is among the closest--through his books, his darkly humane books. When Irving Howe reviewed one of Levi's books, the last line of that review was "What is the Italian for mensch?" Many of us shared the question.Levi was liberated from Auschwitz in January 1945 and, with some other Italians, headed for home. No transportation was provided, and it took more than eight months, with wanderings toward and away from Italy, before he reached his home city, Turin. Years later, he wrote an account of this journey, called in Italy La Tregua (The Truce), because those eight months seemed like an interlude in the world's growlings, between the end of World War II and whatever was coming next. The book was published here as The Reawakening. Just to twist matters further, when Francesco Rosi made a film of it in 1997, he went back to The Truce as his title.
Rosi's film was fiction, with John Turturro as Levi, and, earnest though it was, it never reached the essential gravitas. Now, on the twentieth anniversary of Levi's death, an Italian film-maker named Davide Ferrario presents Primo Levi's Journey. This is not a version, in fiction or otherwise, of Levi: it is the chronicle of a journey made by Ferrario and his co-screenwriter Marco Belpoliti as they followed, figuratively, Levi's footsteps from Auschwitz to Turin. They mean to show us, as far as is tenable, the Europe that today supplants the one through which the Auschwitz survivor made his way. The intent is unavoidably ironic, and in considerable measure it succeeds.(more by Stanley_Kauffmann from New Republic)
For more posts on Primo Levi click here and here

yes... more of Mohsen Namjoo #3

More of Mohsen Namjoo

Mohsen Namjoo

HE plays the setar, a traditional Persian lute, and is a master of classical Persian literature and poetry. But the sounds he draws from the instrument, along with his deep voice and his playful but subtly cutting lyrics about growing up in an Islamic state, have made Mohsen Namjoo the most controversial, and certainly the most daring, figure in Persian music today.
Some call him a genius, a sort of Bob Dylan of Iran, and say his satirical music accurately reflects the frustrations and disillusionment of young Iranians. His critics say his music makes a mockery of Persian classical and traditional music as he constantly blends it with Western jazz, blues and rock.
Mr. Namjoo, 31, is a singer, composer and musician, but most of all, his fans say, he is a great performer.
“I wanted to save Persian music,” he said in an interview at one of his studios in Tehran. “It does not belong to the present time and cannot satisfy the younger generation. The fact is that Persian music is very close to other styles, and it is possible to mix in other styles with a little shrewdness.”
His blending of Western and Persian music produces unexpected moments that jar the traditionalists but are thrilling to his fans, who are mostly young artists and intellectuals. His music sounds Persian, but the melodies take away the melancholy that often suffuses classical Persian music.
But it is Mr. Namjoo’s lyrics, his fans say, that make his music so important. He sings old Persian poetry, such as works by the 13th-century mystic poet Rumi or the 14th-century poet Hafiz, with its connotations of love and lust. But with his mastery of Persian literature, he is able to write his own lyrics into the accepted forms, adding layers of meaning. (more from NYtimes)

Jacob Ben David Bong’oron Yom Tov Poel

Jacob Ben David Bong’oron Yom Tov Poel-also known by various other Latin and vernacular versions of his name, he was a Jewish astronomer to King Pedro the Ceremonious in the mid-fourteenth century, and came from a distinguished scientific family; his father was a famous maker of instruments and his son was also an astronomer, who caused some controversy when he converted to Christianity in the face of the rising anti-Semitic sentiment current in later fourteenth-century Aragon. Jacob calculated his Tables for use at the latitude of Perpignan, beginning in the year 1361,
This is an extremely rare (and probably unique) illustrated anthology of six astronomical and scientific texts, derived at least in part from ancient classical learning, which had survived from Greek through Arabic and thence into Hebrew scholarship into Christian Spain, and at least in part from original astronomical observations of the fourteenth-century Jews All in all, the manuscript represents a unique blend of Greek, Arabic and Hebrew scholarship, written in Christian Spain. It is secular and scientific and yet richly illuminated on vellum and illustrated luxuriously. No comparable anthology is recorded, and the text appears to be unpublished. It is very probably the finest Hebrew astronomical manuscript remaining in private hands
The manuscript is richly illustrated. This deserves emphasis, for medieval Hebrew manuscripts with actual pictorial illustrations are rare, and in private ownership now almost unknown. The miniatures show a tantalizing mixture of classical Greek sources, transmogrified through centuries of copying, and actual depictions of fourteenth-century life: decorated vases, swords and utensils, a magnificent galleon in full sail, Arabic costumes, and so forth. The Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection is a private library focusing on late medieval and early modern manuscripts. Mr. Schoenberg is a Penn alumnus and current chair of the Library's Board of Overseers. It has long been his desire that private collectors do more to facilitate access by scholars to their collections. The advent of the World Wide Web has now made it possible for private and institutional collections to be seen as scanned images and as encoded text. And so, the Penn Library has entered into a unique collaboration with Mr. Schoenberg that will allow researchers to view virtual facsimiles of manuscripts from his collection. While it will take several years to finish the project, scholars will be able to see and use texts as they become available to us (...from SCETI Online Collection: )

Fuck the Children

"Have you ever been to a really loud party? I mean a good loud party where the music is playing too loud and everybody is talking too loudly and in order to be heard even by the person standing right next to you, you've got to be screaming at the top of your lungs. But every now and then at a party, it seems as though everyone shuts up at about the same time. And only your voice...can be heard. Right! I know! I know! Well, what I'm going to do, I'm going to have my testicles laminated."
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