Wednesday Links

January 28, 2009 • Quotidian • 0 • Previous | Next

Here’s what’s interesting this week:

The resident Explainer over at Slate has the lowdown on why instruments struggle when it’s cold. Or hot. Or dry. Now wedding musicians have something in their arsenal when clients are stumped as to why playing for hours in the direct sun is not possible.

Guitarist’s nipple, fiddler’s neck, cellist’s scrotum. Which of these is not like the other? The Times brings news of a very amusing story involving the British Medical Journal and a phantom ailment supposedly suffered by male cellists.

The article features what could possibly be the best quote ever, courtesy of LSO cellist Noel Bradshaw, “You would have to be doing something fairly extreme to get that by playing the cello, otherwise, given the angle of the cello, you would have to have pretty enormous bollocks.”