December 2010
60 posts
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Ways and Days, 2010
Right now, I am on a bus from Ankara to Istanbul, a bus with WiFi, hot tea and dark views of the snow.
Mrs. Tragos and I will spend the last day of 2010 wandering about Istanbul, then heading off to London and San Diego.
The past 363 days have been strange and almost oppressively various.
It’s almost hard to imagine that the same me, the same Tragos, can be counted present and awake for...
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Family Times
My little brother (age 22): I'm tired, man, I stayed up watching your downloads and stuff...
Me: Downloads? Erm, Tragos?
Tragos (my husband): The bestiality and necrophilia? because most of it's that...
My little brother: Urghhh, no I...You're married to my sister!
Tragos: Just necrophilia?
My little brother: Nooo! Why are you married to him?
Tragos: Dead on dead?
Me: Not much action, just great stills...
My little brother: Argh!! When am I going home?
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“λάθε βιώσας”
– “Live hidden”
- An Epicurean saying
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“Losing our faith in art is, in a secular culture, what losing our faith in God...”
– Adam Gopnick, “The science and imagination behind modern dessert”, The New Yorker, January 3, 2011
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Mostly Farewell, Noble Tumblrs!
Fellow citizens: I must officially announce that I am not made of such stuff as is needed to forge through this world of infinite netdom. I am the web version of the tourist swimming against rather than across the riptide.
I’ve already signed off from Facebook and Twitter. Neither were hard to do. This is.
It’s a world of wonders you’ve all created here, and I’ll miss...
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“The philosopher Slavoj Zizek enjoys a good joke. Here’s one of my favourites:...”
– Simon Critchley reviews Violence, By Slavoj Zizek - The Independent
He continues:
“The main ambition of this book is to bring together subjective violence with the objective violence that is its underside and precondition. “Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious ‘dark matter’ of...
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"How Mariah Carey Makes Goats Produce More Milk" →
“A farmer has discovered that by repeatedly playing her festive favourite All I Want For Christmas Is You to his herd he can increase milk production by 20 per cent…”
— The Express
Credit goes to Mrs. Tragos for this amazing find.
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“Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and...”
– —Dante, c. 1315 (via laphamsquarterly)
But then there is also this:
..Seggendo in piuma in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre, sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma cotal vestigo in terra di sé lascia qual fummo in aere ed in acqua la schiuma.
— Dante, L’Inferno, Canto 24, ln. 47 - 51
...
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Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Multiverse: Our... →
Time to break out Pullman’s His Dark Materials again. Are you still out there Will? Lyra?
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“Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.”
– Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
ontheborderland asked: Perhaps you are already aware of this, but if not may I suggest a "Goats in Trees" calendar might be just the thing? http://www.animalden.com/goats-in-trees-calendar-13218.html
ontheborderland asked: Perhaps you are already aware of this, but if not may I suggest a "Goats in Trees" calendar might be just the thing? http://www.animalden.com/goats-in-trees-calendar-13218.html
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MOLESKINE ® LITERARIO: El Nobel detrás de la... →
ivanthays:
Mario Vargas Llosa y Morgana. Foto: Daniel Mordzinski
Estupendo el artículo de Fernando Iwasaki en el diario ABC donde cuenta cómo vivieron el Premio Nobel a Vargas Llosa aquellos que, por su cuenta y riesgo, decidieron ir a ver a Mario Vargas Llosa en frac. Su conclusión es osada pero me…
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“The past was real! The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellant.”
– Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (via laphamsquarterly)
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“Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with...”
– W.H. Auden (via sometimesagreatnotion)
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djrimbaud:
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA •• CANCIÓN DE...
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“The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally escaped...”
– Rambler #134, by Samuel Johnson (On procrastination)
My pal dosant writes mostly in Italian but he’s a very wise boy. You should follow him and encourage him to write more in English, and to stop making me procrastinate by posting clever things like these, which just prompt me to spend a good few...
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“If in this speech I summoned all the writers to whom I owe a little or a lot,...”
– Mario Vargas Llosa, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, my translation
[Si convocara en este discurso a todos los escritores a los que debo algo o mucho sus sombras nos sumirían en la oscuridad. Son innumerables. Además de revelarme los secretos del oficio de contar, me hicieron explorar los...
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“Reading turned dreams into life and life into dreams, and put just within my...”
– Mario Vargas Llosa in his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech (my translation).
[La lectura convertía el sueño en vida y la vida en sueño y ponía al alcance del pedacito de hombre que era yo el universo de la literatura. Mi madre me contó que las primeras cosas que escribí fueron...
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El discurso del Premio Nóbel, Mario Vargas Llosa... →
ivanthays:
Mario Vargas Llosa en Estocolmo
Gracias al diario El País podemos leer, completo, en versión web o en PDF, el discurso del Premio Nobel Mario Vargas Llosa titulado “Elogio de la literatura y la ficción”
El enlace en web está aquí.
Algunos de los momentos destacados:
La lectura…
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“Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à...”
– Aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 — 1944) from his memoir Terre des Hommes (via hlewisallways)
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“War and Peace” was admittedly a model, because I think reading that novel is an...”
– Jonathan Franzen on Freedom| Art Beat |PBS
On a scale of one to ten, how much am I looking forward to receiving a copy of Freedom as a Christmas present now?
(via byronic)
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