How to Learn to Love to Practice

Is there a secret to staying in the zone?

In interviews, famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to “do what you love.” But mastering a skill, even one that you deeply love, requires a huge amount of drudgery. Any challenging activity—from computer programming to playing a musical instrument to athletics—requires focused and concentrated practice. A perfect golf swing or flawless butterfly stroke takes untold hours of practice (actually around 10,000 hours, according to Malcolm Gladwell) and countless repetitions to perfect.

Anyone who wants to master a skill must run through the cycle of practice, critical feedback, modification, and incremental improvement again, again, and again. Some people seem able to concentrate on practicing an activity like this for years and take pleasure in their gradual improvement. Yet others find this kind of focused, time-intensive work to be frustrating or boring. Why?

The difference may turn on the ability to enter into a state of “flow,” the feeling of being completely involved in what you are doing. Whether you call it being “in the zone,” “in a groove,” or something else, a flow state is a special experience. Since Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept of flow in the 1970s, it has been a mainstay of positive-psychology research. Flow states can happen in the course of any activity, and they are most common when a task has well-defined goals and is at an appropriate skill level, and where the individual is able to adjust their performance to clear and immediate feedback.

Flow states turn the drudgery of practice into an autotelic activity—that is, one that can be enjoyed for its own sake, rather than as a means to an end or for attaining some external reward. That raises the question of how we can turn this to our advantage: How can we get into a flow state for an activity that we want to master, so that we enjoy both the process of improving skills and the rewards that come with being a master?

No fairy tale: Origins of some famous stories go back thousands of years

Statistical analysis of language evolution helps estimate storytelling dates.

“Beauty and the Beast” is practically “a tale as old as time.” So are a few other folktales, new research shows.

Statistical ties between a set of folktales and languages from parts of Europe and Asia have helped researchers date the origins of some stories to thousands of years ago. The roots of the oldest one — a folktale called “The Smith and the Devil” — stretch back to the Bronze Age. The findings, reported January 20 in Royal Society Open Science, may dispel the thought that some well-known folktales such as “Rumpelstiltskin” and “Beauty and the Beast” are recent inventions.

“These stories are far older than the first literary evidence for them,” says coauthor Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University in England. 

When linguists study a language’s evolution, they trace grammatical and phonetical structure through time. “What we were interested in doing is seeing if you could do that for other elements of culture,” Tehrani says.

Tehrani and Sara Graça da Silva of the New University of Lisbon in Portugal studied 275 magic-based stories from a database of more than 2,000 types of folktales. Magic stories include beings or objects with supernatural powers and are the largest folktale group. Statistical analyses of the relationship between the folktales and language, as well as between the folktales and how they may have been shared by neighboring peoples, left the team with 76 stories that they thought were strong candidates for accurately estimating folktale age. Family trees, or phylogenies, of Indo-European languages throughout Asia and Europe helped the researchers investigate how the region’s language history related to these folktales.

Fight on to preserve Elfdalian, Sweden’s lost forest language

When I visited the remote Swedish town of Älvdalen, I was immediately struck by the tranquil splendour of the undulating, forest-covered valley in which it is situated. The river Österdalälv, which runs to the valley and has given it its name, was still partly frozen, and the gleaming ice resonated with the last patches of snow that were strewn across the landscape. Here, in this Swedish Shangri-La, I was set to meet the last speakers of Elfdalian, a tiny and well-hidden linguistic gem that only very few know about.

Elfdalian (älvdalska in Swedish and övdalsk in the language itself) sounds like something you would more likely encounter in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rather than in a remote Swedish forest. But the small town of Älvdalen, which gives the language its name, is not an Elven outpost. It is one of the last strongholds of an ancient tongue that preserves much of Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. And it is now to be taught in the town’s preschools for the first time in September, marking a small victory for a group campaigning for its preservation.

Elfdalian is currently used only by about 2,500 people, but is a treasure trove for linguists. Hidden between the trees and hills, it has preserved linguistic features that are to be found nowhere else in Scandinavia, and that had already disappeared from Old Norse by 1200 AD.

Unique among Nordic languages

Elfdalian has, for instance, preserved nasal vowels that disappeared elsewhere. Nasal vowels are well-known from French, as in un bon vin blanc (“a good white wine”), but not from the modern Nordic languages. In Old Norse, nasal vowels are only found in a single manuscript from 12th-century Iceland, but linguists never thought much of it – until it was discovered that modern day Elfdalian has nasal vowels in the exact same words.

Because of its relative isolation, Elfdalian evolved in an entirely different direction than the modern Scandinavian languages. Its sounds, grammar and vocabulary differ radically from Swedish. So, while speakers of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian can easily understand each other in simple conversations, Elfdalian is completely unintelligible to Swedes who are not from the area.

For centuries, it was unnecessary for the majority of the native Elfdalian-speaking population to learn standard Swedish, as the economic networks were locally-oriented and there was no compulsory schooling in Swedish until the mid-1800s. As a result, Elfdalian remained a vigorous language until well into the 20th century.

Can going to the theatre boost academic achievement?

Sarah Cassidy reports on Start - an initiative to link young people from deprived backgrounds with the arts - and how it is capturing young hearts and minds.

On a cold winter's day in east London a class of eight- and nine-year-olds are wrestling with some big questions. Is it right to steal from the rich to give to the poor? Should someone's choice of job be restricted because of their gender? These are just some of the issues thrown up for the children after watching a production of Robin Hood.

The previous day the children, from Nightingale Primary School in Woolwich, south-east London, could be found laughing uproariously at the show at Greenwich and Lewisham Young Person's Theatre, which they attended for free as part of a groundbreaking programme which aims to bring the arts to children from deprived backgrounds.

Research shows that the numbers of primary school-age children visiting theatres, galleries and museums have plummeted over the past five years. But the situation is worst for children from poor backgrounds and thousands of them leave school without ever having set foot in one of these establishments.

Government statistics show that the number of children going to the theatre has fallen from just under half in 2008-09 to fewer than a third last year. Only 30 per cent of primary pupils engaged in dance activities in 2013-14 (compared to 43 per cent in 2008-09), while 37.2 per cent partook in a musical activity out of school (down from 55.3 per cent five years earlier).

The Start programme aims to counter this decline by linking participating schools with local arts venues and funding a programme of activities which take pupils to visit theatres, galleries and museums and sends artists back into the schools. The programme has linked leading venues such as the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings with schools in deprived areas.

The scheme was set up in 2006 by The Prince's Foundation for Children & the Arts – a charity founded by Prince Charles after he visited a pupil referral unit in Birmingham and found children studying Romeo and Juliet without ever having seen the play.

At Nightingale School, in one of the UK's most deprived wards, very few pupils had ever been to a theatre before their school joined the programme. Under the scheme they will watch performances at the theatre and take part in follow-up workshops.

Lost City Discovered in the Honduran Rainforest

In search for legendary “City of the Monkey God,” explorers find the untouched ruins of a vanished culture.

  
An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with dramatic news of the discovery of a mysterious culture’s lost city, never before explored. The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied “White City,” also referred to in legend as the “City of the Monkey God.”

Archaeologists surveyed and mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds, and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived a thousand years ago, and then vanished. The team, which returned from the site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable cache of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned.

In contrast to the nearby Maya, this vanished culture has been scarcely studied and it remains virtually unknown. Archaeologists don’t even have a name for it.

Christopher Fisher, a Mesoamerican archaeologist on the team from Colorado State University, said the pristine, unlooted condition of the site was “incredibly rare.” He speculated that the cache, found at the base of the pyramid, may have been an offering.

“The undisturbed context is unique,” Fisher said. “This is a powerful ritual display, to take wealth objects like this out of circulation.”

The tops of 52 artifacts were peeking from the earth. Many more evidently lie below ground, with possible burials. They include stone ceremonial seats (called metates) and finely carved vessels decorated with snakes, zoomorphic figures, and vultures.

The most striking object emerging from the ground is the head of what Fisher speculated might be “a were-jaguar,” possibly depicting a shaman in a transformed, spirit state. Alternatively, the artifact might be related to ritualized ball games that were a feature of pre-Columbian life in Mesoamerica.

Students play Led Zeppelin on Xylophones

Watch this amazing video of the 2014-2015 Louisville Leopard Percussionists rehearsing "Kashmir", "The Ocean" and "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.

These student musicians, who come from several different schools in Kentucky, are between the ages of 7-12 and each learns several different instruments such as xylophones, marimbas, drums, timbales, vibraphones, congas, bongos and piano.

http://www.booooooom.com/2015/02/25/video-day-kids-play-led-zeppelin-xylophones/

Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter

Shakespeare sometimes gets a bad rap in high schools for his complex plots and antiquated language. But a quick peek into the rhythm of his words reveals a poet deeply rooted in the way people spoke in his time — and still speak today. Why do Shakespeare’s words have such staying power? David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor uncover the power of iambic pentameter.

Lesson by David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor, animation by Brad Purnell.

Poetry is well and truly in the margins – will it ever get out?

I was on a train recently reading a book of poems by Carol Rumens when the elderly man sitting across the table said, “Do people still read poetry?” He frowned as though rats had re-infested his basement: my chosen book was so preposterous he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Experiment when you’re next around people who have read Wolf Hall, people who would go to see a play by David Hare or an exhibition of contemporary art. Ask them how recently, if at all, they have read a poem published since the year 2000. They are very likely to agree that they never read contemporary poetry.

Last May, Jeremy Paxman said that poetry was now “conniving at its own irrelevance” because poets were only talking to each other. He was speaking as a judge of the Forward prize for poetry, and poets were outraged – on Facebook many of my poet friends foamed at the mouth. But even speaking to defend poets, Michael Simmons Roberts had to concede that the habit of buying books of poetry has been lost.

This is now such a settled state of affairs that it is hard to remember that it was ever different, that poetry used to occupy a central place in culture. In the 1920s, T S Eliot’s depiction of modern civilisation as a Waste Land influenced everyone with intellectual interests – and in the 1930s, W H Auden’s diagnosis of a sickness at the heart of capitalism came to the lips of many people when they wanted to describe their current cultural condition. Eliot and Auden wrote as the inheritors of a powerful tradition that had lasted for six centuries.

But then things quickly began to change. By the 1960s, poets such as Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath were still widely read and discussed, but poetry was beginning its migration to the cultural margins. The shift may have been encouraged by the growing prevalence of popular music: many people in this period kept saying that Bob Dylan was a more important poet than the usual ones who couldn’t play the guitar. And the rise of “pop” poets such as Roger McGough and Brian Patten drained all the challenge out of poetry in order to make it work in their performances. These were mildly entertaining, but they were never anything like as effective, or even as poetic, as the work of genuine performers of the period.

From electric ink to aromapoetry – the physical book is not dead, it’s about to be reborn

"Analogue” and “digital” are the two polar opposites of our modern world. The word “analogue” has become our catch-all term for what we see as slow, one-way and limited in functional possibilities; while “digital” is our synonym for the dynamic, interactive and fluid.

Analogue is old; digital new. Paper has always been the epitome of the analogue: a physical medium which can receive, present and preserve information but otherwise remains static and fixed.

It’s our entrenched understanding of these polarities that are to blame for the well-worn idea that the physical book is dying. This is simply not the case – “analogue” technologies such as ink and paper are now being developed in ways that can and in all likelihood will revolutionise the material, printed book.

Sketching circuits

Conductive inks such as those produced by the British firm Bare Conductive mean that pen and ink can be used to make circuits – and a piece of paper could feasibly become a circuit board, much like that in a computer but infinitely more flexible and versatile.

 

 

This particular company makes a touch board which allows users to create a keyboard using pen, paper and conductive ink. And Tom Metcalfe and Michael Shorter at the University of Dundee have used similar materials to create a pair of paper headphones.

Artists in particular are using conductive inks to create artworks which offer new forms of interactivity. In his Lagoglyphic Sound System, the Brazilian-American artist Eduardo Kac showed how conductive ink could be used for silk-screen printing. As the viewer touches different parts of Kac’s print, different musical sounds are heard.

Queen of the Underworld Sheds New Light on Greek Tomb

Newly revealed mosaic may hold key to unlocking mystery: Who was buried in the massive mound?

 

Greek archaeologists have discovered the image of a young, red-haired goddess being swept off to the underworld inside a 2,300-year-old tomb near the ancient site of Amphipolis in northern Greece. Identified as Persephone, daughter of Zeus, the goddess portrayed on a mosaic floor provides a key new clue to what in recent months has become a much publicized mystery: Who was laid to rest in the immense, marble-walled tomb 61 miles (99 kilometers) northeast of the Greek city of Thessaloniki?

Monumental in scale and Macedonian in style, the Amphipolis tomb (also known as the Kasta tumulus) lies close to the Aegean port that Alexander the Great used for his fleet. Archaeologists have dated the tomb to the last quarter of the fourth century B.C., likely placing its construction in the fractious period following Alexander's death in 323 B.C. All this has fueled intense speculation that the tomb was built for someone close to Alexander, but clear evidence has been lacking.

Greece's Ministry of Culture and Sport announced at a news conference on Thursday that the newly discovered image of Persephone closely resembles one in a painting from the royal cemetery of Vergina, where Alexander the Great's father was buried. This discovery, noted Lena Mendoni, general secretary of the Ministry, links the Amphipolis tomb to the royal lineage of Alexander the Great. "The political symbolism is very strong," Mendoni said.

The new find is raising hope that the tomb will add another chapter to the tumultuous history of the ancient Macedonian royal house. "Without doubt," said archaeologist Katerina Peristeri, principal investigator of the Amphipolis tomb, "the deceased was extremely important."

The Afghan girls raised as boys

In Afghanistan, ranked the worst country in the world to be born a girl, some parents are bringing up their daughters as sons. Then comes puberty and the ‘bacha posh’ are expected to switch back.

 

Watching Mehran, age six, play football at her school in Kabul, you would think that being a girl in Afghanistan wasn’t so bad at all.

As she moves in and out of the game on the sparsely covered grass lawn, her expression of focus shifts to a satisfied grin when she finally gets to the ball. Barefoot in dusty sandals, she kicks it as hard as she can into the field. Her shirt hangs loosely over her pants, and her short, black hair spikes out in every direction. She’s messy now – dirty even – but she doesn’t much care. There is no need for Mehran to be pretty, or to appear “proper” or shy, as is required and expected of other Afghan girls, who refrain from too much physical activity in their demure dresses and all their hair carefully tucked in under head scarves.

This – to be one of the boys – is Mehran’s privilege.

Mehran is a bacha posh – the literal term translated from Dari for a girl “dressed like a boy” in Afghanistan, the country that the UN says is the worst in the world to be born a girl, and where the average life expectancy of a woman is 44 years. The bacha posh are the secret underground girls of this deeply conservative society, where men and boys hold almost all the privileges, and where the mother of a newborn girl is often greeted with disappointment for not having brought a son into the world.
“They gossip about my family,” Mehran’s mother said the first time I met her. She explained how having four daughters had made her decide to bring her youngest to the barber for a haircut a year earlier, and to tweak her name to a masculine-sounding form, in order to present her to the outside world as a son in trousers and a shirt.

When I began my research in 2009, after first meeting Mehran, the existence of these girls was denied by many foreign experts on Afghanistan. It seemed unlikely that the country’s harsh gender segregation would allow for such deviations. But it is an ancient practice that Afghans can reference as far back as the time before Islam took hold in the country.

Why you hadn’t heard of Patrick Modiano until he won the Nobel, and why you must read him now

To the English-speaking world at least, the awarding of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature to French author Patrick Modiano will probably have come as a surprise. Many won’t even have heard his name.

There is good reason for this. He is renowned in his native France for keeping a very low profile, only venturing into the public spotlight momentarily with the appearance of each new novel. What’s more, few of his novels have been translated into English.

This is probably because the incredibly distinctive ingredients of his universe do not travel particularly well. The poetic, evocative prose that works so well with his fragmented, mysterious narratives, his famous “petite musique”, cannot in translation do the original any justice whatsoever.

This distinctive “little music” is one of the many things that make Modiano’s writing unique. His extensive knowledge of French literature, culture and history is energetically displayed from his very first novel, La Place de l’Etoile (1968). His admiration for Proust and Céline and his love of French poets like Verlaine are a constant in his work. Verlaine’s rhythms can sometimes be seen to infuse his own writing.

Hybrid novels

Modiano views time, memory and the past as the subject matter of all great novels – and this and a fascination with identity underpin his fictional universe. He writes a very hybrid kind of text in which various elements pull against each other generating the ambiguity that has become his trademark. And so the highly literary combines with elements of the detective or crime novel. Historical figures and details from his own life sit alongside the purely invented and the distinction between the two is hard to discern.

Archaeologists revisit ancient Mediterranean shipwreck near Greek island

"I have personally investigated 40 or 45 shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean and never seen one like this," said Brendan Foley.

ANTIKYTHERA, Greece, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Researchers recently completed a third trip to a remarkable ancient shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera, a remote Greek Island.

The ship is more than 2,000 years old, and because of the wealth of treasures its sunken wreckage has revealed, archaeologists suggests the vessel was a sort of luxury ocean liner -- "the Titanic of the ancient world."

On their latest trip down to the rotting ribs of the ancient ship, divers surfaced with newfound treasures -- a table jug, a bronze spear, fragments of bronze and marble statues. Divers have been visiting the wreckage since 1900, when the ship was first discovered. More impressive treasures have been pulled from the ocean floor in years past -- intact marble statues of horses and warriors, jewelry, furniture, luxury glassware, and even a complex machine some have called the "world's first computer."

"I have personally investigated 40 or 45 shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean and never seen one like this. It is full of luxury goods. It is an enormous ship, massively built and built of the highest quality material available in the first century BC," Brendan Foley, of the Woods Hole Oceonographic Institution in Massachusetts, told the Guardian.

Foley is one of the archaeologists working to further explore the sunken ocean liner. Both an international team of scientists and a Greek team of researchers have been revisiting the site, using special diving equipment enabling them to remain below the surface for up to three hours at a time.

Bookless library opened by new US university

Florida Polytechnic University's enormous facility promises to make 'many more books available for the students' in digital form.

 

There are no dusty bookshelves or piles of textbooks in the library of Florida's newest university. Welcoming its first students this week, Florida Polytechnic University's new library houses not a single physical book.

Instead, its inaugural class of 500 will have access to around 135,000 ebooks. "Our on-campus library is entirely digital," said director of libraries Kathryn Miller. "We have access to print books through the state university system's interlibrary loan program. However, we strongly encourage our students to read and work with information digitally."

The 11,000 square-foot library is situated within a huge, white-domed building, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Eschewing physical books, it is a bright, open space featuring computer terminals, desks, and comfortable spots to read.

A budget of $60,000 (£36,000) has also been set aside for students to read ebooks that the library doesn't already own. Once a book has been viewed twice on this system, it will be automatically purchased. The set-up, said Miller, "allows for many more books to be available for the students, and the university only has to pay when the student or faculty member uses the book", allowing students "to make direct choices regarding the books they want to read and have available in the library".

The new university offers courses exclusively in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and Miller said that one of its objectives was to "prepare students for the high-tech workforce by giving them hands-on experience with advanced technology".

Censorship of books in US prisons and schools ‘widespread’ – report to UN

Free-speech organisations find US government is ‘failing to protect the rights of its most vulnerable citizens’ as popular books – including Shakespeare – are banned from institutions.

There is “widespread censorship” of books in US prisons, according to a report submitted to a UN human rights review, which details the banning of works about artists from Botticelli to Van Gogh from Texan state prisons for containing “sexually explicit images”.

The report from two free-speech organisations, the New York-based National Coalition Against Censorship and the Copenhagen-based Freemuse, to the United Nation’s (UN) Universal Periodic Review states that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) lists 11,851 titles banned from its facilities. These range from the “ostensibly reasonable”, such as How to Create a New Identity, Essential Throwing and Grappling Techniques, and Art & Design of Custom Fixed Blades, to what it describes as “the telling”, including Write it in Arabic, and the “bizarre” (Arrival of the Gods: Revealing the Alien Landing Sites at Nazca was banned for reasons of “homosexuality”).

Prisoners in Texas are entitled to be mailed books and magazines, but the titles are checked on arrival against a “master list” of acceptable works. If they do not appear on the list, then it is the decision of the post-room officer as to whether they are objectionable.

“Of the 11,851 total blocked titles, 7,061 were blocked for ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ and 543 for sexually explicit images,” says the report, naming artists including Caravaggio, Cézanne, Dallí, Picasso, Raphael, Rembrandt and Renoir among those whose works have been kept out of Texas state prisons.
“Anthologies on Greco-Roman art, the pre-Raphaelites, impressionism, Mexican muralists, pop surrealism, graffiti art, art deco, art nouveau and the National Museum of Women in the Arts are banned for the same reason, as are numerous textbooks on pencil drawing, watercolour, oil painting, photography, graphic design, architecture and anatomy for artists,” states the submission, with prohibited literary works by Gustav Flaubert, Langston Hughes, Flannery O’Connor, George Orwell, Ovid, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Shakespeare and Alice Walker also on the banned list.

Loeb Classical Library 1.0

When James Loeb designed his soon-to-be-launched series of Greek and Roman texts at the turn of the twentieth century, he envisioned the production of volumes that could easily fit in readers’ coat pockets. A century later, that compact format is still one of the collection’s hallmarks. Beginning in September, however, the iconic books will be far handier than Loeb had hoped: users of the Loeb Classical Library (LCL) will have the entire collection at their fingertips. After five years of dedicated work on the part of the library’s trustees and Harvard University Press (HUP), which has overseen LCL since its creator’s death in 1933, the more than 520 volumes of literature that make up the series will be accessible online. Besides allowing users to browse the digitized volumes, which retain the unique side-by-side view of the original text and its English translation, the Digital Loeb Classical Library will enable readers to search for words and phrases across the entire corpus, to annotate content, to share notes and reading lists with others, and to create their own libraries using personal workspaces.

LCL managing editor Michael Sullivan, whose position was created earlier this year to supervise the virtual library, said that the digitization project is “a major leap forward in the history of the Loeb.” According to HUP executive editor-at-large Sharmila Sen, the launch of the digital LCL marks “a moment of rebirth” for the historic collection. She explained that in the years preceding the library’s 2011 centenary, the trustees and HUP administrators began to think about how to make the LCL “relevant to the twenty-first century.” Even though online databases of Greek and Latin literature have existed for years, said the library’s general editor, Jeffrey Henderson, a classics professor at Boston University, the digital Loeb will be unprecedented in its accessibility and scope: for the first time, readers without knowledge of Greek and Latin will be able to explore a vast range of the classical literary heritage online through high-quality, modern translations. He added that the project, which cost the LCL foundation more than $1 million, will serve as a model for the digitization of other HUP series, noting, “It’s strange that the oldest literature becomes the model for the digital age.”

Consolidating a vast literary corpus involving two different alphabets into an interconnected, elegant, and easy-to-use website required much behind-the-scenes work, Sen said. Designing the software for the digital library and transferring the data have concluded, she noted, but the project overseers view the current product—which will be available by subscription to institutions and individuals—as only a 1.0 version. The website will be a dynamic workspace, Henderson pointed out, adding that user feedback will help the editors increase its functionality.

Bone author Jeff Smith speaks out ahead of US Banned Books Week

‘You can’t take away someone’s ability to choose what they want to read,’ says Smith, as forces of free speech mobilise for 2014 event focusing on graphic novels and comics.

“The point,” says cartoonist Jeff Smith, whose multiple award-winning comic Bone was one of the books that parents tried hardest to ban in America last year, “is that they are trying to take away someone else’s ability to choose what they want to read, and you can’t do that.”

Smith was speaking as the forces of free speech mobilised in the US for Banned Books Week, the annual festival that opens on 21 September and which, in the wake of attacks on acclaimed books from Bone to Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, is taking a special focus on comics and graphic novels this year. The most challenged book of 2013 – the book that received the largest number complaints in schools and libraries across America – was Dav Pilkey’s children’s graphic novel Captain Underpants. Smith’s Bone came in 10th, with the series – described as “one of the 10 greatest graphic novels of all time” by Time – drawing fire over its “political viewpoint, racism, violence”, according to the American Library Association.
“I’ll be honest, I had two simultaneous reactions when I heard Bone was in the top 10,” said Smith. “First, that I was being attacked and I didn’t know why. Then a thought like: hey, this isn’t the worst thing that can happen. A lot of my heroes are on this list. Mark Twain, Melville, Bradbury, Steinbeck, Vonnegut; authors whose work is about something – that do the kind of writing I aspire to.”

According to Smith, this year’s focus on comics “matters a great deal”.

“Comics are now part of the literary scene, part of the discussion, and it shines a spotlight on these kinds of attacks,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the people who want to ban these books are malicious; in fact just the opposite. They have a concern which to them is legitimate. But that isn’t the point. The point is that they are trying to take away someone else’s ability to choose what they want to read, and you can’t do that.”

Greek archaeological site yields statuary from 320 B.C.

The massive tomb dates to 320-300 B.C.

 

 ATHENS, Greece, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Archaeologists are excited about the discovery of two statues from the era of Alexander the Great, found this week in an excavation in northern Greece.
The statues, life-size female forms carved in caryatid marble, are among the finds coming to light since the discovery of a tomb at Amphipolis was announced last month by the Greek government. It is thought the tomb, which dates to 320-300 B.C., may be that of a general, Laomedon, in Alexander the Great's army. Alexander is believed to be buried in Egypt.

Photos released Thursday by the Greek Cultural Ministry show an assortment of carved statuary in rooms within the tomb.

Archaeologists took two years to excavate a burial mound, and found the entrance to the tomb guarded by two sphinxes missing heads and wings. The ministry said an architrave, or door with an upper lintel, was discovered in a wall within the massive tomb, and a spectacular mosaic floor, in red and white tile, was uncovered in a room near the tomb entrance.

The burial mound -- and the tomb within -- is 497 meters (1,630 feet, or over a quarter-mile) in diameter, with a three-meter (10 feet) surrounding wall. 

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2014/09/11/Greek-archaeological-site-yields-statuary-from-320-BC/7021410465506/

Enigmatic Viking fortress discovered in Denmark

It is the first time for over 60 years that a new Viking fortress is found in Denmark, says curator Nanna Holm of The Danish Castle Centre.

Søren Sindbæk, professor of medieval archaeology at Aarhus University, explains: “The Vikings have a reputation as a berserker and pirates. It comes as a surprise to many that they were also capable of building magnificent fortresses. An example of such a structure is the Trelleborg Ring Fortress, excavated between 1936-1941 (Shown in the header image of this article).

The discovery of the new Viking fortress is a unique opportunity to gain new knowledge about Viking war and conflicts, and we get a new chance to examine the Vikings’ most famous monuments. ” The previously excavated Trelleborg-type fortresses – Fyrkat, Aggersborg and Trelleborg – are nominated for inscription in UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.

It was new, precise laser measurements of the landscape that led curator Nanna Holm on the trail of the fortress. An almost invisible rise in the field was proved by new measurements to have a clear circular outline. Nanna Holm explains: “It is a huge monument. The fortress measures 145m from side to side. We recognize the ‘Trelleborg’ fortresses by the precise circular shape of the ramparts and by the four massive gates that are directed at the four corners of the compass. Our investigations show that the new fortress was perfectly circular and had sturdy timber along the front; we have so far examined two gates, and they agree exactly with the ‘Trelleborg’ plan. It is a marvelous find. ”

Academics and Archaeologists Fight to Save Syria’s Artifacts

CAIRO — In 2011, after three decades of working in Syria, the archaeologist Glenn M. Schwartz was unable to return to his dig at the Bronze Age city of Umm el-Marra. The intensifying civil war had made work in the country impossible.

Like many archaeologists of the Middle East, Mr. Schwartz, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is watching the news from the region with deep concern and, he said, a feeling of impotence.

“It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happened in Syria in terms of cultural heritage and more so for the country at large,” he said.

The upheavals and conflicts sweeping the Middle East in recent years have caused untold human suffering, and they have resulted in deep losses to the heritage of the region.

Scholars can do little to stop the fighting and looting, but they have created blogs, websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts to monitor the destruction and raise awareness about it. By sharing excavation records, scholars outside the Middle East have helped their counterparts in the Arab world to compile online lists of missing or stolen objects.