Thursday Things: 101st Edition
15 July 2021. Vol 3 No 28 By Dan McGirt. #101
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A library in Prague. I want to live here. Not Prague, just the library. Photo by Jonathan Francisca on Unsplash
101st Edition of Thursday Things! 🎉 I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice that last week I published the 100th edition of Thursday Things, which I launched with the first edition in August 2019. So we’ll celebrate the 101st edition instead. Thank you to all the Happy Subscribers who have come along for the ride these past 101 weeks!
How Voltaire helped spread the legend of Europe's most famous prisoner, the Man in the Iron Mask. This article is an excerpt from a new book, The Man in the Iron Mask: The True Story of Europe's Most Famous Prisoner, which I just added to my wish list. The story of the Man in the Iron Mask is one of my favorite “mysteries of history”.
Who was the Man in the Iron Mask? We may never know the truth. If you are somehow unfamiliar with this story, here is the gist of it:
During the reign of King Louis XIV, an enigmatic man spent several decades confined to the Bastille and other French prisons. No one knew his identity or why he was in jail. Even stranger, no one knew what he looked like—the prisoner was never seen without a black velvet mask covering his face. The anonymous prisoner has since inspired countless stories and legends—writings by Voltaire and Alexandre Dumas helped popularized the myth that his mask was made of iron—yet most historians agree that he existed. So who was he?
My theory: It was Leonardo DiCaprio.
Write it down! This does not surprise me. It is also true — though I’m not going to track down the study right now — that people who take handwritten notes (in a class, meeting, or other setting) retain what they heard better than people who rely on memory alone or who take typed notes. So it makes sense writing by hand would help you learn a new language better too. Handwriting Is Better Than Typing When Learning a New Language, Study Finds
Researchers tasked 42 adult volunteers with learning the Arabic alphabet from scratch: some through writing it out on paper, some through typing it out on a keyboard, and some through watching and responding to video instructions.
Those in the handwriting group not only learned the unfamiliar letters more quickly, but they were also better able to apply their new knowledge in other areas – by using the letters to make new words and to recognize words they hadn't seen before, for example.
Something about handwriting recruits different or additional neural pathways in your brain, which helps you learn faster and better:
The research shows that the benefits of teaching through handwriting go beyond better penmanship: There are also advantages in other areas of language learning. It seems as though the knowledge gets more firmly embedded through writing.
I’m learning Spanish and Portuguese on Duolingo, which is fun, but it’s a website/app. I need to start writing words down by hand too.
Get enough sleep or you’ll be grumpy, says science. Sleepless nights can quickly mess up emotions, study says.
"Many of us think that we can pay our sleep debt on weekends and be more productive on weekdays," said lead author Soomi Lee, an assistant professor in the School of Aging Studies at the University of South Florida.
"However, results from this study show that having just one night of sleep loss can significantly impair your daily functioning," Lee said in a university news release. …
Sleep loss resulted in negative emotions such as anger, nervousness, loneliness, irritability and frustration. Physical symptoms surfaced, too, including upper respiratory issues, aches and gastrointestinal problems.
I’m very pro-nap, for exactly this reason. Did you get enough sleep last night? Why take chances, when you can take a nap?
Please don’t sneeze! An Archivist Sneezes on a Priceless Document. Then What? An interesting look at what happens when important historic documents, books, and art are damaged. The author toured the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia:
The tour greatly eased my fears about inflicting accidental damage when handling primary documents. In a space that’s part artist’s workshop, part science lab, conservators work magic, performing feats of restoration I never imagined possible. I watched as a paper conservator submerged an Auguste Rodin watercolor in a bath of deionized water to undo the darkening the paper had experienced from light exposure. At another table, several 1920s panoramic photos of rodeo performers sat waiting to have enormous longwise tears painstakingly repaired. Coiled for storage, the photos had grown brittle and tore when unrolled. In front of another conservator was a large abstract painting, thick and impossibly black with a heart of blue. On its way to America from a London gallery, its frame failed. Once the conservator had cleared the shattered glass embedded in the art, he hunched over a magnifying glass, holding up tiny flecks of the paper’s edges that had ripped off to find where they belonged.
It is fascinating what archivists and restorers can do to preserve fragile documents. And many important documents have been digitized, so a record of their content remains, even if something happens to the original. Well, at least as long as an electromagnetic pulse doesn’t fry the internet…
Nomophobia. I’d think that would be fear of being stranded in Nome, Alaska in the dead of winter. But it’s not! New study finds “nomophobia” – the fear of not having your phone – affects 89% of college students
A new study has found that “nomophobia” is now the overwhelming norm among college students. The study suggests that 89% of college students now have either moderate or severe nomophobia. In 2012, that figure was only 77%.
The official definition of nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact, or of being away from one’s phone. Anxiety and excessive worry over a lack of control over one’s life can be the root cause for this phobia.
I usually take my phone with me when I go out, sure. But sometimes I leave it behind on purpose. And if I forget it, so what? I grew up when phones were attached to walls and I really don’t care much about being “out of contact” for a few hours. Or days. What about you? Do you have nomophobia?
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