Berfrois

November 2010

Fall is the season for poetry

Fall is the season for poetry

The Poetry of Autumn | by Anne Finch

Poetry Foundation

“The poetry of earth is never dead,” wrote John Keats, and yet that quintessential poet of autumn, his own life fading as the colors of his glory blazed and flew, was...

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Geert Wilders is not Liu Xiaobo

Geert Wilders is not Liu Xiaobo

by Markha Valenta Cas Mudde was quite right to point out recently how liberal arguments are being used in the interests of illiberal attacks on Muslims. However, in the Dutch case this reflects anything but a progressive national consensus It is rather striking, at first sight, to note how...

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Subhas Chandra Bose is dead (a safe bet as now he would be 113)

Subhas Chandra Bose is dead (a safe bet as now he would be 113)

From History Today: On September 16th, 1985, in a dilapidated house in Faizabad, formerly the capital of Oudh province in India, a reclusive holy man known as Bhagwanji or Gumnami Baba (‘the saint with no name’) breathed his last. Locals had long suspected that he was none other than...

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Simply a Brothel

Simply a Brothel

The Kreutzer Sonata, Rene Prinet, 1901 From The Boston Review: In Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata, the time is the 1880s; the place, a train traveling somewhere in Russia; the situation, a middle-aged man with glittering eyes is telling a stranger the true story of why he killed...

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We must learn to “fly” biology…

We must learn to “fly” biology…

Learning to “Fly” Biology | by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

American Scientist

Biological engineering is nothing new. “Biology is technology,” Carlson declares on the opening page; indeed, he says, “Biology is the oldest technology.”

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The Pirate’s Prophet

The Pirate’s Prophet

 From The Nation: The desire to preserve what remains apparently pure about the making of art in contemporary life drives much of the argumentation of Common as Air, which emerges over the course of its several hundred pages as a treatise on the uncertain fate of expressive work in...

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