November 2010
‘When Maoists put a grass mohican on the Churchill statue, British conservatism seemed to go mad for a few days’
From 3am Magazine: Police are the historic enemy of the protestor and Bloom reminds us that at the Met’s formation most people were anti-cop. The idea of putting random civilians in uniform and giving them power over the rest seemed insane, a recipe for mayhem. Critics had a point....
Read MoreHow can it be that a tree blooms in winter?
Strip Show: In defense of bare trees | by Miriam N. Kotzin
The Smart Set
Driving alone on a highway through the desert of the Southwest, I passed a sign announcing the “Last Services for 100 Miles.” I asked myself, “How...
Read More‘Obama knew little economics, however, and he took the word of the orthodox…’
From London Review of Books: Of all Obama’s appointments, the most damaging to his credibility with liberal supporters were Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, the chief economic adviser and the secretary of the treasury. Geithner has the air of a perpetual young man looking out for the interests of...
Read MorePlaying the News: Berfrois Interviews Simon Ferrari
by Russell Bennetts Simon Ferrari is a doctoral student in digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He recently co-authored Newsgames: Journalism at Play with Ian Bogost and Bobby Schweizer. Simon blogs about gaming at Chungking Expresso. Berfrois What are Newsgames? Are they closer in nature to...
Read MoreBallet Lives!
Is Ballet Really Dying? | by Claudia La Rocco
Slate
Ballet is dying. Maybe already dead. Impossible, you say, I've got tickets to a show!
Read MoreDiscount him 30% for embroidery
From Barnes and Noble Review: Autobiography of Mark Twain, reviewed by Ward Sutton, Barnes and Noble Review
Read MoreGyan Prakash: Myths of the Island City
Photo by Stephane Le Gal by Gyan Prakash Mumbai Fables, the latest book from historian Gyan Prakash, has been praised by Salman Rushdie as “a fascinating exploration of my favourite city, full of insider knowledge and sharp insights.” Here Prakash explains the genesis of the book and the upcoming film...
Read MoreHow could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so wrong about the environment?
Kenneth Brower has a number of theories: 1. Contrariness 2. He doesn’t really mean it 3. Educated fool 4. Old age 5. Collision of faiths From The Atlantic: In August 2009, Dyson appeared on the Charlie Rose show. His inimitable voice—somehow both diffident and firm, its original British...
Read MoreWalden’s Finest
From The New York Review of Books: There have been other comic strips that dealt with politics, but they did so sporadically, and as one-trick diversions—Al Capp satirizing the welfare state with his schmoos, Walt Kelly turning Senator Joseph McCarthy into Simple J. Malarkey—but Trudeau has reflected on politics...
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A response — Bartleby’s response — foregrounding the fact that it is the “I” that “prefers not to”: not that ‘I cannot’ nor ‘I...
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As a poet, you are your grandmother; you are browsing the obituaries with a red pen and an address book in your hand. The...
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Eric Weisbard wrote twenty years ago, introducing the voluminous, era-summarizing, contrarian and contradictory Spin Alternative Record Guide.
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What, then, is sociocide? Sociocide resonates with the term demodernization formulated by A. V. Tishkov to account for the consequences of the war in...
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Poet Fiona Sampson is a former career violinist, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, overt references to music appear in her work.
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In May, in the garden of the elevated house at the bottom of the hill, four shrubs of stunning azaleas come into full blossom....
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Florence showed me what she called the most famous of Chinese poems. She had made her own translation from a Chinese language newspaper clipping....
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To begin at the end: After nearly two hours exploring facets of exploitation in the globalized food system, Luc Moullet closes Genèse d’un repas/Origins...
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Now it seems the state’s radical conservatives are degrading the historic, populist-provincial mentality of Iowa; they are revising the state’s legacy within the broader...
Read MoreA few years ago all I had was a certain ambition and an understanding, more or less, of how things work in this world....
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The persistence and proliferation of pseudoscientific thinking in contemporary culture demands explanation. Clearly there are some pragmatic reasons for its expanded existence, and people...
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The memories are like stutters. Sometimes I inhale for air, and exhale a shaking chain of memories. A choking hazard. I for the ghost....
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As many former Eastern Block countries in the EU display a hardly dissimulated form of racism and religious hatred, Albania, always a little behind...
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Elle called Silverman’s image of her wearing a shirt with several naked Lena Dunhams a “beautiful tribute.” Dunham, the article tells us, “seemed to...
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A few years ago all I had was a certain ambition and an understanding, more or less, of how things work in this world. I lived in the tiny room of a pension on B----- street. Funds were running low.
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I was eighteen years old when I was introduced to the fascinating world of Alasdair Gray. I read Poor Things (1992) in the second year of my undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow,
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It’s easiest to start from the impulse to problematize the position of the flâneur. The ugly word privilege hovers around it, and we turn to questions that we know the answer to, “Who, exactly, is allowed to wander, like so?”
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From the backseat, Jude saying, Mama, I HATE Republicans, and the way he says HATE, saying it the way only a seven-year-old can.
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That Diana and the Amazons speak ‘hundreds’ of languages is believable, given their situation and seeming enlightenment; that English becomes their go-to choice for daily chats off the Greek coast, less so.
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On the ancient river, seagull rock crests out of the waters. An outcrop within its sight is thorned by a few young silhouettes, taking turns plunging into the river some feet below. Riverboats and water taxis, white river cruise-ships weave short and cyclical tours between the two shores.
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In the spring of 1793, the entomologist Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Herbst, as a means to supplement his lectures at the newly founded Berliner Tierarzneischule
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