A Preference for Drawings

Bridge Tower, Prague
Rudolf von Alt, 1843

photo, Anonymous, 1927

I'll take a drawing over a photograph any day. Looking at a drawing is like seeing through the artist's eyes the process of perception, replaying his thoughts, and feeling his reactions. The subjective rendering of light and shadow, perspective, color, depth and detail, brings the scene alive, humanizes it. A good drawing delivers that essential human element--the experience of the place. In a way it's much more accurate than a photograph.

the Annoying Monk

NEW YORK—In a groundbreaking new study published Friday in The Journal Of East Asian Studies, a team of leading historians has proved that meditation originally spread from ancient China because a single, highly annoying monk went around telling everyone how much it had changed his life. 

Analyzing documents uncovered across the Eurasian continent, researchers determined that the monk, who lived in the seventh century A.D. and learned rudimentary breathing and visualization exercises from a group of Mahayana Buddhists, traveled widely and talked constantly about how practicing meditation for only a week had fundamentally altered his personal outlook. From the Korean peninsula to the Central Asian steppes, he is believed to have aggravated people everywhere he went, inevitably shifting every conversation to the importance of mindfulness and being centered, even when it was clear no one was interested.  

Read more on this exasperating monk at the Onion.