The glow of grime Of course this 'sheen of antiquity' of which we hear so much is in fact the glow of grime. In both Chinese and Japanese the words denoting this glow describe a polish that comes of being touched over and over again, a sheen produced by the oils that naturally permeate an object over long years of handling—which is to say grime. If indeed 'elegance is frigid', it can as well be described as filthy. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki & Thomas J. Harper, In Praise of Shadows timeaestheticsfilthflaws
Walking lessons A Tweet twitter.com Lecturing Birds on How to Fly, from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile If children started school at six months old and their teachers gave them walking lessons, within a single generation people would come to believe that humans couldn't learn to walk without going to school. learningschoolchildhood