Six Things, Volume 93

Timemap | Science | Chandler | Cuba | Magic | Snowflake

Jan 04, 2025

You might be interested in geography. You might be interested in history. You might be interested in the broad area where the two subjects intersect.

If any of those three criteria apply, you will probably have a nice time with the World History Atlas – just the thing for those afternoons when you can’t or won’t accept that the New Year is well underway and you have work and tax returns to do.

Ahem.

You can choose between four tabs: Regions, Rulers, People and Battles. Exploring the ‘People’ tab was how I learned that Joe Strummer, lead singer of The Clash, was born in Ankara. And if you need any reminding about the predisposition of humans for pointless territorial disputes, all you need is a quick scroll through the ‘Regions’ tab down the ages.

Thing 2 – Science

Wonder is important. Let’s have more of it.

A good starting point might be to spend a few minutes looking at Nature’s best science images of 2024.

It’s difficult to choose a favourite when you’re confronted with such a selection, ranging as it does from the microscopic to the immense, but I have a particular fondness for Bertie Gregory’s image of an Emperor Penguin chick taking its life in its flippers and showing its peers the way downward.

And while we’re on cute little seabirds and their journeys to the sea, it turns out that throwing pufflings off a cliff is, somewhat counterintuitively, good for them.

Thing 3 – Chandler

“Could that woman SMELL more the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight?” – Raymond Chandler Bing

There are two kinds of people: those who see the word ‘Chandlerisms’ and think of bishops kicking holes in stained glass windows, and those who ask if they could BE wearing any more clothes. (There is, admittedly, a niche third group – those who might come up with the mangled quote above.)

I veer towards Raymond rather than Bing. So it was good to see this post on Bluesky featuring Chandler’s list of potential book/story titles, each of them a terrific writing prompt in its own right.

The list comes from the book The Notebooks Of Raymond Chandler, which contains several more similar gems. There’s a review of Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming’s fourth James Bond novel: “In Chapter 1 Mr. Fleming very nearly becomes atmospheric, and with Mr. James Bond as your protagonist, a character about as atmospheric as a dinosaur, it just doesn’t pay off.”

Then there’s this list of similes – pick your favourite. For me, it’s a toss-up between “a mouth like wilted lettuce” and “a great long gallows of a man”.

If you discern a similarity between Chandler’s aptitude for one-liners and P G Wodehouse’s, you might be on to something. While the worlds they portray seem fundamentally opposed (although Wodehouse did have a penchant for more or less comedic gangster types, especially in some of his earlier work), both writers were educated at Dulwich College during the tenure of Arthur Herman Gilkes. I don’t think it’s too fanciful to suppose that their mastery of prose owes something to his influence.

Of the Chandlerisms on this page, I’m irresistibly drawn to the one about the bluebottle singing the prologue to Pagliacci.

Thing 4 – Cuba

I am (and not for the first time) indebted to Chris Coates for saving me 16.66% of my weekly labour. This time he’s reminded me of the existence of this stunning one-shot sequence from the 1964 film Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba). It was prompted, he tells me, by the cigarette factory footage in last week’s Six Things. Which just goes to show [insert something here about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but somehow do it without quoting Douglas Adams, which people will by now have had more than enough of].

Thing 5 – Magic

David Blaine does his thing in front of Harrison Ford, who also does his thing.

Impressive though Blaine’s thing is, I prefer Ford’s.

Thing 6 – Snowflake

Snowflakemaker is a fun site where you can, as the name implies, design your own snowflakes. A pleasing little distraction exercise. You can download your images, as above, or, if you’re an old school ‘paper and scissors’ type, create a printable template.

Definitely one to do with the kids – just be careful not to make two identical ones.

Six Things