Berfrois

January 2011

Steroid Slugger was never released…

Steroid Slugger was never released…

Points of Entry, Persuasive Games, 2007 From Columbia Journalism Review: In the summer of 2007, one of the hottest debates in America centered on immigration. Every pundit and politico had an opinion on the merit-based system proposed in the McCain-Kennedy Bill, either criticizing its rejection of family ties or...

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Dreams Rise in the Darkness

Dreams Rise in the Darkness

Eine DuBarry von Heute, Alexander Korda, 1926 by David B. Clarke  The cinema has never shone except by pure seduction, by the pure vibrancy of non-sense – a hot shimmering that is all the more beautiful from having come from the cold. – Baudrillard (1990a, 96)  1.      Réalité Vérité  Until...

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Verbing

Verbing

From Intelligent Life: Some lovers of the language deplore the whole business of verbing (Benjamin Franklin called it “awkward and abominable” in a letter to Noah Webster, the lexicographer, in 1789); others see it as proof of a vibrant linguistic culture. Certain words seem to bring people out in...

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Justin E.H. Smith: On the Internet

Justin E.H. Smith: On the Internet

Today the Internet is in fact doing what the most grandiose claims about the book maintained that that humble object could do: duplicate the world, provide a perfect reflection of the order of nature...

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‘Diaghilev at all times was what he was’

‘Diaghilev at all times was what he was’

Firebird, Ballerina, Léon Bakst, 1910 From The New York Review of Books: In the 1930s, when he was trying to establish American ballet, Lincoln Kirstein complained that “balletrusse” was one word. Successor companies to the defunct Franco-Russian Ballets Russes, cashing in on its name and legend, were spreading themselves...

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Toppling Accomplished

Toppling Accomplished

The Toppling | by Peter Maass

The New Yorker

After the marines arrived, a small group of Iraqis gathered around a statue of Saddam Hussein in the middle of the square and tried to bring it down with a sledgehammer...

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