Some Stocking Stuffers

…and Hanukkah gifts.

To get away from “the pale cast of thought” that researchers suffer from at times, I thought I’d post about some sensual matters that have nothing to do with law. Herewith some little goodies that have come my way recently:

• The ArtsJournal.com’s AJ Blogs lead off, because we’re a blog, after all. Here you’ll find blogs by interesting experts on all the arts from architecture through jazz to the visual arts.
• Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: “Articles, a blog, and a book-in-progress by the music critic of The New Yorker” says it all, nearly. He’s also funny, opinionated and occasionally outrageous.
• Staying with music, there’s Naxos Web Radio. For a little more than US$9 a year, you can get FM quality classical music without adds. There are more than 60 channels, including jazz, piano, film…and Chinese music. Whistle while you work.
• For something a little edgier in serious music, try Iridian Radio, one of the many semi-pro channels on Live365, “Music that’s smart, but still warm to the ears -John Adams, Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson.” Free with ads; not too pricey to avoid the ads.
• Exactitudes is for people who like people — photos of people very like each other, in fact. “By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.” Cool to look at.
• If people are not your thing when it comes to looking, you might like the “artforms of nature” in the hundred marvelous drawings from around 1900 by Ernst Haeckel. Every bit as complicated as law and a whole lot more beautiful.
• The Slaw tartan exists! I built it using the Vivienne Westwood create-a-tartan website. Meant to be worn as a library tartan, or, as some researchers will have it, a hunting tartan, it can be seen here.
• Wouldn’t be a real holiday without something yummy for the tummy. Cassoulet is near on the best winter dish I know, so here are twelve cassoulet recipes, one for each day of Christmas:
  1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12

Enjoy.