I was about to ask Santa for some books but

I was about to ask Santa for some books but then I realised I actually have a pretty good chance of quite a lot of reading this Christmas...


Well, to be honest, I have finished 'Mythos' from Stephen Fry at Torquay mainly because my daughter was always asking me for more stories once I begun to say 'once upon a time ...well, in fact, more properly the impersonation of time, God Cronos, decided once upon a ...well forget the beginning for the mome...oh wait ...He decided to eat one by one his own children'
And every night I have to feed again her young mind - as many generations have done -  with the day to day Olympic-issues creating humanity/cursing humanity/intercoursing with humanity (I skipped a little bit this point, I'm afraid) Fry's book has been such a source of fun for both of us.

I have finished others as well - this one cheating because I had started at home - the Fry Chronicles and The river of consciousness from Oliver Saks. When I start every new Sack's  I feared for a moment 'this will be the one that I would not like', fortunately, it has never been the case. My passion for the poet of science is firmly established, and the more I read him the more I like his prose.
I forget to talk about Neil Gaiman 'The view from the cheap seats ' and 'I shall wear midnight' from Terry Pratchett....
Well, That's all for the moment.

The monster ... and his symmetry

Hay más de un libro que uno debería comprar  aunque solo sea por las  impagables citas  que encabezan sus capítulos. Lo siguiente es una pequeña muestra de las desplegadas al inicio de cuatro de los diecisiete capítulos de 'Symmetry and the monster' , una de esas golosinas para saborear despacio.

Structures are the weapons of the mathematician

N. Bourbaki

Las estructuras son las armas de un matemático

Los chicos de Bourbaki, de los enciclopedistas de toda la vida.

The infinite we shall do right away. The finite may take a little longer

Stanislaw Ulam

El infinito lo hacemos sobre la marcha. Para lo finito nos tomamos nuestro tiempo. (Lo mejor : era cierto porque hablaba de clasificación de grupos)

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler

Todo debería ser hecho del modo más simple posible, pero no más.

Albert Einstein

No hace falta añadir nada más (eh!, tampoco quitar nada )

Thus the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what no one has yet thought about wich everybody sees.

Erwin Schrödinger

La tarea no es tanto ver lo que nadie ha visto aún, mas bien pensar lo que nadie ha pensado sobre lo que todo el mundo ve.Seguro que para realizar sus conquistas el bueno de Schödinger se ponía más poético, pero cuando quería ser preciso, no había quien le pudiese.

He puesto unas traducciones algo 'lights' porque en frases enjundiosas es difícil que se refleje la precisión de las palabras originales, aunque espero que la idea sí se capte.

London Tube : Personajes Undergroung

Es ver las oscuras y lóbregas  imágenes del metro de Londres que celebra aniversario y recordar.

Recordar los pintorescos e irrepetibles personajes que lo pueblan en Neverwhere de Neil Gaiman, como Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar :

There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar apart : first, Mr Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr Croup; second, Mr Croup has eyes of a faded, china blue, while Mr Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, While Mr Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr Croup has no obvious jewellery; fourth, Mr Croup likes words, while Mr Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.

Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere

Los lugares secretos que en su corazón duermen:

The advertisements on the walls where for refreshing and health-giving malted drinks, for two-shilling day excursions by train to the seaside, for kippered herrings, moustache wax and bootblack. They were smoke-blackened relics of the late twenties or the early thirties. Richard stared at them in disbelief.It seemed completely abandoned: a fotgotten place. 'It is British Museum station,' admited Richard.'But...but there never was a British Museum station. This is all wrong'
'It was closed down in about 1933, and sealed off' said Door.

Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere

Y las imágenes de la ciudad a vista de pájaro:

He was fond of St Paul's, and it, at least , had changed little in the last three houndred years. It had been built in white Portland stone, which had, before it was even  completed, begun to turn black from the soot and the filft in the smoky London air and now, following the cleaning of London in the 1970's, it was more or less white again; But it was still St Paul's.

Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere

Un libro para amantes de la fantasía, pero también para enamorarse de una ciudad y paladear un idioma. Una guía alternativa a la ciudad bajo la ciudad.

Voces emotivas : ¿una cuestión de huevos?

[...] But central to music in London as elsewhere at this time [XVIII] were the Castrati - men who has been castrated in their early teens to ensure that their voice never broke [...]But what did the voice sound like? Apparently is unique ability to move came from the delicacy of the boy soprano voice combined with the power of adult lungs.

Curiosly many of the most successful modern pop stars, such as Chris Martin from Coldplay and Tom Chaplin from Keane, use the highest register of their natural tenor voices to create songs that are particullary emotionally intense.The effect is without question reminiscent of the castrato voice.

London's strangest tales : Castrated singers

Pues no me había parado a pensar que la riqueza emotiva de las voces de Keane o Coldplay viniese de su semejanza con los castrati. La verdad es que siempre me he imaginado más a un castrati como un contratenor, aunque seguramente su registro sería más alto... bueno, más soprano ;)







 En realidad me imagino a Andreas Scholl. Un auténtico maestro.

Decefío amoroso

He inventado esta palabreja 'Decefío' = ( deceso + desafío) para lo que el poético y sugerente blog vida de Niki ha denominado un breve pero interesantísimo duelo lírico .

La cosa es que necesito ayuda de alguien más versado en poesía -y no, no vale verla como un subgénero de las matemáticas en este caso - que yo para intentar tomar ahora la palabra (como G. Celaya) y lanzar un verso inspirado sobre amor vs muerte.

En particular me gustaría encontrar contrapunto adecuado a los versos de A. Tennyson cuyas palabras inician el reto.

En ellas he podido leer este precioso fragmento :

What art thou then? I cannot guess;

But though I seem in star and flower

To feel thee some diffusive power,

I do not therefore love thee less.

¿hay alguien que se atreva?