by Fabio Camilletti This essay analyses the relationship between the uncanny and time by focusing on the notion of ‘time-slip’ as reflected in three American novels of the 1970s: Jack Finney’s Time and Again, Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return and Stephen King’s The Shining. Through a comparative analysis of these texts, the essay inquires into the…
Read MorePlants behave in some oddly intelligent ways: fighting predators, maximizing food opportunities. But can we think of them as actually having a form of intelligence of their own? Italian botanist Stefano Mancuso presents intriguing evidence. About the Speaker: Stefano Mancuso is a founder of the study of plant neurobiology, which explores signaling and communication…
Read MorePhotograph by Taís Melillo via Flickr From Guernica: “We are in a tension between the speed of history—which happens very, very fast—and progress, which happens very, very slowly,” Gilles Peress wrote in 1999. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, history happened fast, and the pace hasn’t let up since. But it was within this…
Read MoreIn a series of witty punchlines, Patrick Chappatte makes a poignant case for the power of the humble cartoon. His projects in Lebanon, West Africa and Gaza show how, in the right hands, the pencil can illuminate serious issues and bring the most unlikely people together. About the Speaker: Using clean, simple pencil…
Read MoreFrom The Believer: Robert Jordan, born James Oliver Rigney Jr. in 1948, sold more than 40 million books in his lifetime. His Wheel of Time series, a still-unfinished multivolume epic spanning, at last count, thirteen books, more than 10,500 pages, and approximately 3,734,312 words, is among the world’s most popular fantasy series since J. R.…
Read Moreby Juliana Beasley The following excerpt is taken from the introduction to ‘Lapdancer’ by Juliana Beasley. Some of the images are NSFW. A couple of years after I had graduated from NYU, I began working in a strip club in Queens. It was to be one of many clubs that I would pass through over…
Read MoreThe Stranger has announced cartoonist Jim Woodring as the winner of their 2010 Literature Genius Award: There are only a small number of medium-changing geniuses in the history of cartooning who have managed to develop a singular visual language, and Jim Woodring is one of them. His re-creation of the world in gorgeous, obsessive-compulsive, wavy…
Read MoreThe coming boom We can already see the outline of the next crisis. The Federal Reserve is, just like in 2002 and 2003, preaching the need for low interest rates in order to recapitalise banks and encourage risk-taking. The deep dangerous flaws in Europe mean the ECB is also going to err on the side…
Read Moreby Sean Bonney The Pythagorean harmony of the spheres proposed a perfect cosmology, a hierarchy built on scalar realities that justified social conditions on earth, where everybody was in their place, and nobody was able to question the beauty and perfection of these relationships. But for the system to work, for the justifications to hold…
Read Moreby Jake Adelstein with Lisa Katayama Several months ago, I introduced you to Jake Adelstein, the fearless-to-a-fault Jewish-American reporter who spent 12 years as a crime beat reporter in Japan and wrote about it in his book Tokyo Vice. In Tokyo Vice, we meet Adelstein’s arch-nemesis, a former yakuza boss named Tadamasa Goto; we also…
Read More On a cool, clear night (typical to Southern California) Warren G travels through his neighborhood, searching for women with whom he might initiate sexual intercourse. He has chosen to engage in this pursuit alone. Nate Dogg, having just arrived in the east side of Long Beach, seeks Warren. On his way to find Warren,…
Read MoreThe discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would pose real problems for our anthrocentric religions, argues Paul Davies: All the world’s major religions were founded in a pre-scientific era. The sacred texts and the various creation myths were formulated long before humans had a good understanding of the natural world or the nature…
Read Moreby Daniel Metcalfe Daniel Metcalfe’s book ‘Out of Steppe’ describes his journey through Central Asia. In this excerpt he describes the Karakalpak landscape around the Aral Sea. The Soviet tourist destination, previously the centre of a successful fishing industry, is now depopulated, polluted by the chemicals used to prop up the failing cotton industry and…
Read Moreby Thorvaldur Gylfason In Mel Brooks’ brilliant film and Broadway musical The Producers, an over-the-hill Broadway producer, Max Bialystsock and his hapless accountant, Leo Bloom recognise two great truths. It is very hard to produce a hit and very easy to produce a flop – and they can make more money by producing a flop…
Read MorePink Tentacle have posted an image gallery of ‘manner posters’ that featured on the Tokyo subway between 1976 and 1982. The small selection here illustrate the way in which the artists often co-opted famous images in order to get across the message of good commuter etiquette. Full gallery at Pink Tentacle
Read MoreFollowing David Cameron’s promise of a crackdown on benefit “fraud”, a revolting campaign has been launched in the Sun against “scroungers” and “cheats”. Readers are encouraged to report those they suspect of over-claiming benefits to the Sun who will presumably then expose, humiliate and demonise them as an example to others. Take a look at the…
Read Moreby Greg J. Smith A section is an assemblage of dark spots on a plane. It maps the residual of surgery on an object by a plane of incision.” – Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi. The above quotation describes the architectural section as a precise operation, a surgical…
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