January 2011
56 posts
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“… can a modern reader, even if he is supremely learned and endowed with the...”
– —Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World (1929), trans. Ralph Manheim, New York Review of Books, 2007, pp. 158-159. Emphasis mine. (via msodradek)
I agree. To somehow believe you can ignore Dante’s “subject and doctrine” in favor of his form is like drinking a martini...
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superfluidity: Αἰγυπτίων οἱ λοιποὶ τὰ αὐτὰ... →
superfluidity:
News outlets are taking different stands on the spontaneity of the Egyptian protests, but most are describing it as a spontaneous surge of popular demand in the wake of events in Tunisia. In my mind, I’ve been comparing it to the Athenian revolution of 508/7 BC, a popular uprising behind the…
As always, Superfluidity provides telling context for the events at hand.
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“If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act...”
– Adam Haslett in his Financial Times review of Stanley Fish’s new book, How to Write a Sentence.
Sitting here at my temporary desk, surrounded the remnants of last night’s beer and this morning’s coffee, bemused after a late afternoon nap, my shoulders hunched before the altar of...
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English Al Jazeera is livestreaming coverage of... →
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Camus en téléchargement gratuit au Canada →
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URGENT: Egypt has shut off the internet →
squashed:
I just received a call from a friend in Cairo (I won’t say who it is now because he’s a prominent activist) telling me neither his DSL nor his USB internet service is working. I’ve just checked with two other friends in different parts of Cairo and their internet is not working either.
This just happened 10 minutes ago — and perhaps not uncoincidentally just after AP TV posted a...
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“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the (U.S.) media.”
– Noam Chomsky (via julieanne)
Chomsky makes the mistake of seeing the Orwellian for the Huxleyian. By which I mean:
No, I don’t think your world’s most egregious dictators, Ben Ali included, would be impressed by the Obama administration’s dogged patience in the face of FOX...
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Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse? →
nybooks:
Timothy Snyder
As we recall the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, sixty-six years ago today, we might ask: who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?
In the second half of the twentieth century, Americans were taught to see both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as the greatest of evils. Hitler was worse, because his regime propagated the unprecedented horror of the...
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The Revolt of the Elites in 'N+1' →
The editors of N+1 offer a distinction between actual elites (“the deciders”) and cultural elites, between the “señorito satisfecho,” the Glenn Beckian little mister satisfied with everything he already is, and the cultural striver, who exposes herself to difficulties of expression and articulation.
It made me think of the self-satisfaction that drives a person to accuse...
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Nabokov's Butterfly Effect Proven Right →
Generations of lepidopterists are humiliated by a novelist, once again.
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“It is clear that the peoples of Europe have a lot less experience than Americans...”
– The Turkish Nobel novelist Orhan Pamuk, writing in the New York Review of Books.
The article, titled “The Fading Dream of Europe,” is an interesting love letter—at once bitter and warm-hearted—to a writer’s former source of inspiration.
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“More than once in Iran’s history, after the country was vanquished by...”
– Our dear family friend, Dr. Abbas Milani, Zoroaster and the Ayatollahs (via seaofgreen)
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“Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted.”
– Sarah Bakewell quoted in the New York Times. Bakewell recently published her book How to Live; Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. This quotation here is her advice to all those who have taken on the modern habit of separating our philosophical and actual lives,...
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What do the world's youth dream of these days?
Somebody actually posed the question straight up to the globalized youth of today. The Foundation for Political Innovation asked 32,700 16 to 29 year-olds from 25 countries a series of questions about their opinions, dreams, and thoughts.
You can read the full article on the report here, reported by the French newspaper Le Monde.
Here are some of the poll results that I found...
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“To Limbo Dante banished the vast multitudes of the cowardly and pusillanimous,...”
– Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World (1929), trans. Ralph Manheim, New York Review of Books, 2007, pp. 109-110. Emphasis mine.
Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli, né lo profondo inferno li riceve, ch’alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d’elli.
Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out,...
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“…Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. (via azspot)
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a man who deserves his holiday.
(via squashed)
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“Each of us lives in two realms, the “within” and the “without.” The within of...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. (via thebronzemedal)
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“We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and...”
– Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was published in the August 1963 issue of The Atlantic. Read the whole thing here. (via theatlantic)
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MLK & Plato: Some Men Are an Island
Playboy: If you were marooned on the proverbial desert island, and could have with you only one book—apart from the Bible—what would it be?
King: That's tough. Let me think about it—one book, not the Bible. Well, I think I would have to pick Plato's Republic. I feel that it brings together more of the insights of history than any other book. There is not a creative idea extant that is not discussed, in some way, in this work. Whatever realm of theology or philosophy is one's interest—and I am deeply interested in both—somewhere along the way, in this book you will find the matter explored.
Playboy: If you could send someone—anyone—to that desert island in your stead, who would it be?
King: That's another tough one. Let me see, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing Mr. Goldwater dispatched to a desert island. I hope they'd feed him and everything, of course, I am nonviolent, you know. Politically, though, he's already on a desert island, so it may be unnecessary to send him there.
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“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. (via superfluidity)
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Ms. Odradek: Christian Concreteness vs. Classical... →
The story of Christ is more than the parousia of the logos, more than the manifestation of the idea. In it the idea is subjected to the problematic character and desperate injustice of earthly happening. Considered in itself that is, without the posthumous and never fully actualized triumph in…
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Dante: Father of Modern Science →
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self-expansion at Tragos HQ
We are in San Diego, where the beach, sea and sky are dazzling and where Tragos grew up.
Tragos was sitting in the kitchen tapping away on his laptop and I walk in and nibble cashews at the kitchen counter...
Me: Did you read that nytimes article on "sustainable love" and "self-expansion"?
Tragos: Hmm? [He comes over and joins me at the cashews]
Me: There's this article by Tara Parker-Pope on what makes a happy marriage, she's that wellness columnist who's written the book, For Better: The Science of Marriage?
Tragos: Did she write the article about how to train your husband like Shamu?
Me: No, that was a great article*...No, she keeps writing articles that reference her book, you know, like cannibalizing a dissertation into articles...Some of them are interesting. I've heard her discuss Gottman's relationship research; remember the Four Horsemen of the (Divorce) Apocalypse: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling? [Tragos looks like he's really into the cashews]
Me: That's why it's so good that we don't roll our eyes at each other, that was one of the "Contempt" behaviors they noticed in couples headed for divorce? [Tragos comes over to hug me, my hands are clasped behind his back, my cheek on his chest]
Me: So yeah, this article explained how the more self-expansion a person experiences through their partner the more satisfied and committed a person is in the relationship...[Tragos takes a gigantic breath, his ribs push into me, my hands are snap apart, I grudgingly take a step back and look up at him, his cheeks are full, he looks like he's about to pop)
Me: Err...Are you OK? [Tragos inexplicably continues to grow]
Me: Do you have hiccups? [Tragos, all blimpified, shakes his head and gestures that all is manifest within him or something. I come out to have a constructive relationship conversation and he's clearly just messing around and not even listening to what I was trying to explain. I'm annoyed. I think about rolling my eyes.]
Tragos [deflates in a rush of air]: Self-expansion!
Me [giggling incredulously]: I love you.
It should be noted that I was in one of those we need to discuss things modes. So we went down for a walk along the beach (I much prefer walking around during "discussions"). Compared to me, Tragos is about 100% more articulate and comfortable discussing relationship stuff and stays focused until we meet whatever goals we need to. It was me then, during our walk along the coast, who broke off to comment "That's the fourth naked man I've seen. Are we on a nudist beach?" Yes, dear readers, of course we were...