Tuesday Links (12/27)

Reintroducing the Middle Ages: Adam Kirsch on the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, a new series of medieval classics. In America, he argues, we undervalue the Middle Ages. In fact they are fascinating and wonderful, combining Christianity with "the pagan inheritance of the Teutonic world and the polytheism of Greece and Rome," containing everything from "pagan, erotic poetry written by priests" to "Biblical stories retold as Homeric epics." (Harvard Magazine)

How I became a 'terrorist': "Our homes were raided nightly, and we saw our friends, mothers, sisters being attacked....So a group of us kids - six of us, ages 13 to 16 - organized and fought back the only way we knew how: with rocks and a few improvised bottles filled with kerosene." Regret follows, but could he have made a different choice? Thoughtful essay.(Haaretz)

How do you measure global violence?: Is Steven Pinker right when he argues, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, that the world is more peaceful today than it's ever been? Timothy Snyder says not really: "Ask yourself: Is it preferable for ten people in a group of 1,000 to die violent deaths or for ten million in a group of one billion? For Pinker, the two scenarios are exactly the same." (Foreign Affairs)

A visual history of those 9/11 buildings in Seoul: The Dutch architecture firm MVRDV created a globe-spanning controversy with their Cloud skyscrapers, which look way too much like the Twin Towers in mid-collapse. Architecture professor D. Grahame Shane offers an architectural history of the 'cloud' concept, with links to tons of images. (The Architect's Newspaper)

You thought climbing walls were cool: One climbing wall manufacturer also sells artificial caves which you can use to practice spelunking. "The modular nature of the Speleo System makes it possible to create any cave type and can be modified in minutes by simply unbolting and rotating a section! This means you can have hundreds of possible caving challenges and configurations for the price of one." (BLDGBLOG)

What is it like to be a high-powered mathematician? Completely fascinating. "You develop a strong aesthetic preference for powerful and general ideas that connect hundreds of difficult questions, as opposed to resolutions of particular puzzles." (Quora)

[Image: Julian of Norwich, by Flickr user rocket john.]