The Odd Fascinations of Mushrooms, Music and Mileage
Forest of Distraction #4
The cheapest trip from London to Rome in January 200 CE would take you approximately 82 days and cost 12.41 denarii per kilogram of wheat your were transporting. I can only assume that it would be a little bit less if you were just making the trip on your own.
I don’t know why someone would go to the trouble of building an online tool to calculate the time and cost of traveling around the Roman Empire by various means of travel, but I’m delighted such a tool exists. One of the best things about the Internet is how it lets us share our odd fascinations and hobbies, whether that’s ancient travel routes or slime molds. I guess my hobby is odd fascinations, and I’m happy to share a few with you here today.
The Transformational Power of Music
Dacher Keltner in Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life:
“When Yumi moves her bow across her cello’s strings, or when Beyoncé’s vocal cords vibrate as air moves through them, or when Gambian griot superstar Sona Jobarteh plucks the strings of her kora, those collisions move air particles, producing sound waves — vibrations — that move out into space. Those sound waves hit your eardrums, whose rhythmic vibrations move hairs on the cochlear membrane just on the other side of the eardrum, triggering neurochemical signals beginning in the auditory cortex on the side of your brain.
“Sound waves are transformed into a pattern of neurochemical activation that moves from the auditory cortex to the anterior insular cortex, which directly influences and receives input from your heart, lungs, vagus nerve, sexual organs, and gut. It is in this moment of musical-meaning making in the brain that we do indeed listen to music with our bodies, and where musical feeling begins.
“This neural representation of music, now synced up with essential rhythms of the body, moves through a region of the brain known as the hippocampus, which adds layers of memories to the ever-accreting meaning of the sounds. Music so readily transports us from the present to the past, or from what is actual to what is possible, spatiotemporal journeys that can be awe-inspiring.
“And finally, this symphony of neurochemical signals makes its way to our prefrontal cortex, where, via language, we endow this web of sound with personal and cultural meaning. Music allows us to understand the great themes of social living, our identities, the fabric of our communities, and often how our worlds should change.”
Fungal Galaxies
“In 1942, Amethyst mushrooms, Elaeomyxa Cerifera was found. In order to dismissal ascospores like a glowing star the fungi’s fruiting structures splits are open. It’s totally like a galaxy hidden in mushroom. These can be seen in big logs or rostrum that are encrusted with lichen or leaflike hepatics.
“A scientist named Sarah Lloyd loves to research and photograph these mush rooms and she has spend a lot of time in that. She found some of these in her place and then she felt interesting and decided to find out all the mushroom around everywhere. She has a big collection of these with more than 1700 of fungi.”
“The mushroom is covered with glowing colors like purple and there are also shades of blue and green. Many of us don’t get the chance to see them in this life and if really want to see them, they can be found in Tasmania and you need the perfect tool for that too.”
On the Road Again
“Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents.
“Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.
“For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
“Taking account of seasonal variation and accommodating a wide range of modes and means of transport, ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history.”
(ORBIS)
This week on dumoski.com, I launched a daily blogging project and wrote about When Awe Strikes, Planting Gardens of Curiosity Seeds and My Quest to Find the Magic, among other things.
What hobbies, odd fascinations and quests are holding your attention these days? Please share in the comments!