Word: curiouser
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. CONLON NANCARROW, 84, eccentric and enigmatic American-born composer; in Mexico City. One of the most curious characters in modern music, he devoted his life to composing almost exclusively for the player piano. He fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against fascist Spain in 1937. His political views led the State Department to refuse to renew his passport in 1940. He moved to Mexico, where he became a citizen...
...participants in the curious exercise were neither cultists nor performance artists but astronomers--albeit amateur ones. Recruited largely via the Internet, they were helping the astronomical pros study the occultation--or eclipse--of Aldebaran, an observation that could lead to a more precise estimate of the moon's diameter. That figure in turn could serve as a cosmic yardstick by which to measure other heavenly bodies...
...wearing staff I.D. cards around his neck sits down next to me. His hands are all scarred too. But they're old scars. And he looks curious and friendly. Often, the most dedicated workers in agencies for the homeless or addicted are those who've been there themselves and have turned their lives around and want to give back. I ask him how long it takes the bus to get off Wards Island, and if it goes back to Manhattan or goes on to Queens. There is clearly no other way on or off the island except this...
...curious paradox--and a tribute to the film's canny, delicate craft--that we're left rejoicing the outlet Sugiyama has discovered from the constraints of his society, and yet by those same constraints made to approve the comfortable resolution of the romantic question. It's tricky balancing job, and another film might have transgressed these finely etched boundaries more boldly than "Shall We Dance?" does. But no such film would be half as enjoyable...
Once upon a time, animals and words were intimate: in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt, the letter m was an eagle owl, the letter a a white Egyptian vulture. Such curious jewels pop up on every page of Susan Brind Morrow's first book, The Names of Things (Riverhead; 232 pages; $25.95). Taking herself into the Egyptian desert, Morrow works as a kind of archaeologist of the living world, digging for meanings as she watches cranes, catches "sundogs" and learns that the saddle-bill stork in the first hieroglyphs represented the soul. Language, she recalls, quoting Emerson, is "a sort...