M.J. Rose

A friend recently explained to me that octopi are intelligent – very, very intelligent. I decided to look into this bizarre claim. Read on and be flabbergasted –

Deep Intellect

Inside the mind of the octopus

BY SY MONTGOMERY

Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine

Photograph: Brandon Cole

“ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from New Hampshire to the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England Aquarium, hoping to touch an alternate reality. I came to meet Athena, the aquarium’s forty-pound, five-foot-long, two-and-a-half-year-old giant Pacific octopus.

For me, it was a momentous occasion. I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the size of an orange…”

The rest, here.

First of all, I love the word “abandonments” – and here are some in miniature. Made of Legos. Amazing!

LEGO Abandonments: Home-Made Model Haunted Houses

(Article by Urbanist)

“Hundreds of hours and in some cases over one hundred thousand pieces have gone into the creation of this series of seriously detailed LEGO models, each constructed to replicate the processes of decay in miniature…”

Click here for the gallery.

…The power of words is no less potent than a love potion. I think it’s quite obvious that Virginia Woolf knew the secret to writing an effective love letter –

Throw Over Your Man: Virginia Woolf’s 1927 Love Letter to Vita Sackville-West

by Maria Popova

“…and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads.”

“What makes an extraordinary love letter? After Monday’s omnibus of famous correspondence, I revisited a lovely decade-old book titled The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, which features missives from icons like Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka, and Mozart, covering everything from tender love to lust to bitter breakups.

Among them is this 1927 letter from Virginia Woolf to English poet Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had fallen madly in love….”

More here.