Friday Links – November 10 2017

Some thoughts on why you hate modern architecture (and, if you don't, should). "Another thing you will often hear from design-school types is that contemporary architecture is honest. It doesn’t rely on the forms and usages of the past, and it is not interested in coddling you and your dumb feelings. Fans of Brutalism—the blocky-industrial-concrete school of architecture—are quick to emphasize that these buildings tell it like it is, as if this somehow excused the fact that they look, at best, dreary, and, at worst, like the headquarters of some kind of post-apocalyptic totalitarian dictatorship."

Is Christianity a religion of the book? "Both Judaism and Christianity are 'commentarial,' midrashic traditions because both regard scripture as a secondary witness to something infinitely greater, namely, the presence of God with his people. The revelation of God to Moses at Mount Sinai transcends the Mosaic record, as do the historical events to which the New Testament authors testify."

There goes Tom Hanks, trying to make literary festivals cool. “During the event, Hanks spoke about his love of typewriters, of which he said he now has over 150. ‘I’ll tell you this, collecting typewriters is a lot cheaper than collecting cars,’ he joked, revealing he is drawn to their ‘permanence’. Not only do the machines last, he said, but when a typewriter imprints a letter, word or thought, it actually sinks through to the fibres of the paper.”

A sealstone on a prehistoric Greek tomb is threatening to rewrite art history. “Indeed many of the details in the ‘Pylos Combat Agate,’ as it has been dubbed for the type of rock it is carved on, become clear only when viewed with photomicroscopy, which has left the researchers wondering about the technique behind it. ‘Some of the details on this are only a half-millimeter big,’ said Davis. ‘They’re incomprehensibly small.’”