“The way Vermeer painted this wall is consistent with a photograph. It is not consistent with human vision.” In a fascinating new documentary by Penn and Teller, a digital-graphics artist spent five years building a lens, a room, and a harpsichord to figure out how.
Vermeer was a Hacker
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker‘s The Better Angels of Our Nature posits that human violence is becoming less and less common in civilized culture. If your interest was piqued by the book’s review in The New York Times, you will no doubt be interested in his Edge Master Class as well.
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The Faces of War
Photographer Lalage Snow photographed Scottish soldiers before, during, and after their deployments to Afghanistan. The photographs show “the toll that fighting … takes on our troops.”
Caballo Blanco Goes Missing
In Born to Run, author Christopher McDougall talks about the legendary accomplishments of ultrarunner Micah Tue, aka Caballo Blanco, or “the wandering White Horse of Mexico’s Copper Canyons.” Last month, Tue disappeared after embarking on a 12-mile run in Gila National Forest. Distraught, worried, and curious, McDougall set off on a hunt to track him down.
Ur-Road Movie
“It was the perfect literary crime”
Amid recent discussion here and elsewhere about what to do about bad reviews, in the Washington Post Chris Bohjalian writes of the time he resisted the temptation to pan a book by the teacher who almost crushed his nascent literary career.
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Choose Your Own Epiphany
With the help of the folks at Ploughshares and Medium, Year in Reading alumna Megan Mayhew Bergman is publishing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure literary short story. To participate, read the first chapter (as well as the introduction) online, then tweet Bergman to tell her where the story should go from there.
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Listening in on The Missouri Review
Recommended Listening: The Missouri Review’s new weekly podcast, Soundbooth, which will feature interviews and readings with authors, editors, agents, and more. The first episode is a conversation between editor in chief Speer Morgan and marketing director Kris Somerville on the research they do for the journal’s feature section. You can subscribe here.
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