Posts tagged lists

Food for thought when one is tempted to skip over the more boring sections of, say, the Book of Numbers.

re: cultural worlds, language, lists

Nate:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order—not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. ... We also have completely practical lists—the shopping list, the will, the menu—that are also cultural achievements in their own right. ...

The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.

Of course all these lists of "50 best things" are, even at their best, arbitrary and hyperbolic. But they're also fun—clearly scratching some itch in the collective mind of reader and writer. In the case of food/travel lists like this one, they really can be a treat.

re: asia, cultural worlds, england, europe, food and drink, lists, philippines, turkey

Nate:

20. Best place to buy: Olive oil
Turkish embassy electrical supplies, London

The most unlikely olive oil vendor in the world? At his electrical supply shop in London’s Clerkenwell, Mehmet Murat sells wonderful, intensely fruity oil from his family’s olive groves in Cyprus and south-west Turkey. Now he imports more than a 1,000 litres per year. His lemon-flavoured oil is good enough to drink on its own.

76 Compton Street, London EC1, 020 7251 4721,www.planet mem.com

26. Best place to eat: Filipino cuisine
Lighthouse Restaurant, Cebu, Philippines

“The Lighthouse in Cebu in the Philippines is my favourite restaurant. We always eat bulalo (beef stew), banana heart salad, adobo (marinaded meat), baked oysters, pancit noodles, lechon de leche (suckling pig) and, to drink, green mango juice – my daughter is addicted to it! The staff are so friendly and welcoming. The chef has been there for more than 20 years, so the food is very consistent.”

Gaisano Country Mall, Banilad, Cebu city, Philippines, 0063 32 231 2478

Sometimes wastes of time come full circle. From the good folks at McSweeney's Books, naturally.

re: art, books, cultural worlds, lists, music

Nate:

The 300 page book All Known Metal Bands is a simple listing of every heavy metal band name that exists or has ever existed, in every genre, that I could find, in what turned out to be a year and a half of research. Where a name was used by more than one band, the name is listed once for each band. The pages are black, the type is silver, and it will make you want to do naughty things. Of the 51,000 bands listed, the most commonly used name is Legion. There are 24 bands named Legion. There are 20 bands named Genocide, and 20 called Requiem. There are 2 called Cryptic Stench, but there is only one Black Darkness.

That great lover of paper ephemera Nicholson Baker would likely note all the extraneous, but scrutinizable data left on the edges of these cards in their handling and sorting—an unrecorded search history in the sections of card-edge gone dark and felty with repeated sorts.

re: information, lists, paper, taxonomies, technology, technology and change

Nate:

Edge-notched cards were invented in 1896. These are index cards with holes on their edges, which can be selectively slotted to indicate traits or categories, or in our language today, to act as a field. Before the advent of computers were one of the few ways you could sort large databases for more than one term at once.