Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, linguist and professional slacker. This week, we're escaping the doldrums.
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Doesn't it feel like right now, we're all just stuck in place, waiting? Waiting on a vaccine, waiting on election results, waiting for breaks in the weather, waiting, waiting, waiting...but it's the monotony that grinds us down.
Yup. Exactly this. Only, like, metaphorical, you know? Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash
According to the NOAA website, the doldrums are:
a belt around the Earth extending approximately five degrees north and south of the equator. Here, the prevailing trade winds of the northern hemisphere blow to the southwest and collide with the southern hemisphere’s driving northeast trade winds.
This resulted in very little wind down at the surface, meaning that back in the days of tall ships, sailors could become becalmed for days or weeks at a time and the phrase "stuck in the doldrums" came to mean being stuck and unable to move.
But that doesn't seem quite right to me. See, if you were on a tall ship in a previous century that became becalmed, you would still be in motion. Eventually, given enough time, the current would fetch you up somewhere. The danger for sailors at the time was that ships did not and could not carry enough provisions to make sure that the sailors would survive the weeks it could take for the wind to pick up again. But the real danger was the monotony.
Monotony makes us do crazy things. Here are some things I've been tracking this week that might help you kill the monotony.
Sunset Boulevard Street Views
Via Kottke:
Since 1965, American artist Ed Ruscha has been taking photos all along the length of Sunset Boulevard in LA. The Getty has made those photos available on the Getty Research Institute website and Stamen Design built this fantastic interface called 12 Sunsets for virtually cruising up and down the street.
NASA Moon Kits
NASA has asked some interesting people what kit they would find essential for a trip to the moon. Then they opened it up to the public. The number of kids and pets chosen to accompany their humans is strangely touching.
New Fandom Dictionary
Tumblr is home to a lot of fan content; this post about the jargon and terminology arising in and around fandom circles caught my eye. This is how language changes and evolves. It is absolutely fascinating to see it happen in real-time.
Bitch, I Might Be
Another Tumblr post, this one is a reminder from me, to me, that I don’t know everything. When I first saw this image, I thought it was clever, but the person who put together the entire explanation deserves immense credit both for their interpretation of the meme and for their ability to clearly show why it is an important step in the evolution of pop-art in its own way.
Iyashikei
Japanese is one of the “cool” languages right now that people all over the globe are mining for new content. Whenever I see an article discussing how the Japanese-word-du-jour is an important concept we need to be aware of, my first step is to ask my Japanese wife, “Is this really a thing?” It usually isn’t, even if it is a lot of fun (looking at you, tsundoku.)
In this case, iyashikei (literally: healing) came across my radar in relation to anime. TV Tropes says the the term refers to anime, “created with the specific purpose of having a healing or soothing effect on the audience.” My wife said, “yeah, sure but it’s usually more about practices you do for yourself, like go to an onsen.” So, there you have it. Interesting idea none-the-less.
The New York Public Library
And libraries in general. Even if you’re not able to borrow books from them, for whatever reason, many public libraries have reading lists, online research tools, and digital archives available to everyone. Some specific recommendations:
And that’s what I’ve got for this week. Until next time, stay safe, stay sane. Stay curious.
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Joel