slow reading

I've been reading Homer's "The Iliad". I've tried to do this before, and have always got stuck, mired down in too many names, and convoluted narrative. This time I'm reading it slowly. I've decided that I'm only allowed one chapter a day. It's good. It makes me take time with it, I listen to myself as I tell the story in my head. And it makes it come alive, I'm struck by the pacing, the repetitions, the skill of the narrator. When Agamemnon says to Odysseus go and tell Achilles "etc etc so on and so forth", Odysseus repeats it word for word, and when Achilles sends a message back it's also repeated in entire.

It's reminded me of "slow reading". A way of approaching philosophical reading developed and put up on the web by Lancelot R Fletcher. He writes:

. . . make the following test: Read a sentence of eight or ten words to a group of students -- to anybody -- and ask them to reproduce the sentence word for word. My experience has been that almost everybody responds by telling what they thought the sentence meant -- in different words, not the same -- and in the process, anything incongruous, perplexing or ambiguous -- anything, in short, which might be an opening for learning to occur -- tends to be disregarded. Obviously this is not a lesson that any of us can claim to have learned sufficiently. We are so preoccupied with deciding what the sentences we read and hear MEAN, and especially with deciding whether WE agree or disagree, whether WE approve or disapprove, that we generally do not pause to take note of what the sentences SAY.

And I think this is why I'm having more success with the Iliad through chapter by chapter reading, I'm actually listening to what is happening, and pausing to make sure I've read (or heard) correctly.

staples

This year I've been reading the Big Brother diary. Strangely enough it's interesting reading about ordinary people, living a boring and tedious life. Because I'm now reading the diary, I'm paying more attention to the whole deal and have found that a major part of the whole Big Brother thing, besides one person getting voted off every week, are the tasks. The House Mates this year keep betting their whole shopping budget on their tasks, and several times they haven't completed the task to Big Brother's satisfaction, so they lose all their money and have to live on staples. What are "staples" you ask? These things here are one person's allowance of food per day:

Bread making flour - 217g (The HMs bake their own bread)
Yeast - 2.1g
Canola Oil - 20ml
Salt - 6.5g
Raw sugar - 3.3g
Brown rice (raw) - 80g
Chuck or blade steak - 150g
Tinned tomatoes - 200g
Fresh snake beans - 60g
Frozen broccoli and cauliflower - 60g
Frozen carrots - 90g
Cabbage (raw) - 60g
Apple - 1 whole (180g)
Orange - 1 whole (220g)
Banana - 1 large (180g)
Sultanas - 20g
Chick peas (tinned) - 80g
Milk powder - 80g
Tuna - 100g
Rolled oats - 25g

from Big Brother // News : Living on the breadline

It's a strange selection - so much flour! so little rice, and tinned chick peas - urgh. I'll have to weigh some vegetables because 60 g of cabbage or brocolli doesn't seem much to me.

okay, so it works now!

that's good. somehow or other Blogger had a need for speed, my old connection just wasn't cutting the mustard, but now with adsl / broadband / whatever you like to call it instead of good old dial-up Blogger is blogging again.

Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece

Mum and I went to see the Greek Treasures exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum today. As the exhibition flyer says it's "a diverse exhibition of treasures" from the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. The objects range from prehistoric bowls and arrow heads up to swords and pistols and powder cases used in the War of Independence.

Mum and I agreed that we are completely ignorant of modern Greek history, Mum observed it's as if history begins for us with Archduke Ferdinand.

The exhibition includes amazingly intricate embroidery as well as the more usual things like sculpture, pottery and metal work. We had a quiet disagreement with another woman about a piece of embroidery, we maintain that the base was very fine linen, embroidered into a grid in places, whereas the other woman thought it was tapestry canvas . . . we moved on to other things.

zebras under glass

Gallery 4
Originally uploaded by cenz.

The Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum has many animals in glass cases. I wonder if the taxidermist of these zebras choose to represent them sitting down so as to fit more in.

The museum also has a Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, and cenz has a picture of it in this group.