Naguib Mahfouz, 1911-2006: R.I.P.
“Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist, playwright and screenwriter who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature and was widely regarded as the Arab world’s foremost novelist, died today, Reuters and The Associated Press reported. He was 94.” [from the New York Times article]
Lie by Lie
The first drafts of history are fragmentary. Important revelations arrive late, and out of order. In this timeline, we’ve assembled the history of the Iraq War to create a resource we hope will help resolve open questions of the Bush era. What did our leaders know and when did they know it? And, perhaps just as important, what red flags did we miss, and how could we have missed them? This is the first installment in our Iraq War timeline project.
Subglacial Meltwater
“It is very unlikely that the volume of these discharges would equal those of the Miocene (epoch), when the Labyrinth formed, because the ice sheet then was much more dynamic and temperate and therefore likely contained — and discharged — substantially greater volumes of subglacial meltwater,” Hodgson said.
Toilet Humor #49
Pee Diddy
The Existential Melon
Always alone…
Thom Mayne, New Orleans
“You are literally starting over,” he said.
Shia Revival
If you want to know something of the complexity behind the politics and conflicts in the Middle East just now, there is no better volume than Shia Revival by Vali Nasr. It has just been published and is both readable and gripping while plunging the reader into the Byzantine labyrinths of tension behind the scenes that are played out daily on our televisions. We often watch the horror with little comprehension. This text is a missing link for it helps ground the public affairs of current Middle Eastern politics in the long histories of conflict especially between Sunnis and Shias in the Muslim community.
link
Derek Webb’s Album, ‘Mockingbird’ For Free
Why is Derek Webb giving it away for free?
“i love music. i have grown up with music as a close confidant. and i believe in the power of music to move people. there’s something remarkable about the way a melody can soften someone to a new idea.
as an artist (and often an agitator), this is something i am keenly aware of. my most recent record ‘mockingbird’ deals with many sensitive issues including poverty, war, and the basic ethics by which we live and deal with others. but i found that music has been an exceptional means by which to get this potentially difficult conversation going. and this is certainly an important moment for dialogue amongst people who disagree about how to best love and take care of people, to get into the nuances of the issues.”
For further info on the cd, go here (hat tip to Ariel at Bittersweet Life)
Pre-fab is Better than No-fab
Instead of paying twice for mobile homes in New Orleans, wouldn’t it have been better for the reconstruction money to go to somewhere…better?
Mea Culpa
palinode:
A poem in which the author retracts something said in an earlier poem.
Obviously
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From a Regional Freecycle List
Wanted: slide for “Little Tykes” Classic CastlePosted by: “bottomsgirl2″
I was given an outdoor play castle and it is missing the slide that
attached to it. If anyone has that slide for some reason and wants to
get rid of it we would gladly pick it up. Thank you.
I dunno. Given the context, something about the sobriquet “bottomsgirl2″ makes me sorta queasy.
That and thinking about the “we” who “would gladly pick it up”.
Tretchikoff Is Dead . . .
. . . thus removing the final obstacle to the ascendancy of Thomas Kinkade.
Artist Vladimir Tretchikoff, whose painting The Chinese Girl became the highest-selling print in history, has died in South Africa aged 92.
Unfortunate
“We saw this particular photo when the prints came through here in Canada. …But we can definitely say this is a picture of a dog’s leg, and it is not something else.”
Virtual Fraud
I believe Dentara Rask committed fraud.
I believe he owes the IRS a lot of money.
A Wild Rumor
Paul Bunyan
had a spice rack.
Funeral Strippers
Chinese officials have decided to crack down on the practice at some rural villages of hiring strippers to perform at funerals. The practice is intended to attract more attendees to funerals because many people believe that a greater number of people improve the deceased’s chances for better afterlife. They also think that more people bring luck to the survivors as well.
Coming out of the closet.
I voted for him.
Sorry.
I was thinking about the Standells because
for reasons unknown their song “Dirty Water,” with its prominent “Boston, you’re my home” line, was running through my head. And this led me to recall their much more powerful, later song “Try It”, which was banned in–yes, I think so–Boston, among other places. And it led me to wonder how, in less than 40 years, Massachusetts, the citadel of Puritan blue-nosedness, became the “liberal” state that conservatives love to denounce. I don’t have an answer to this conundrum.
Verb tenses
“There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered,” the president said. “Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.”
Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power
Super Power uses machines, apparatus and specially designed rooms to exercise and enhance a person’s so-called perceptics. Those machines include an anti-gravity simulator and a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, said the former Scientologists.
Weekly Picture 59
Night Sky, Maine 2006
The Yes Men
“Everything is going to change about the way we work, and the change is going to start here today in New Orleans,” the man said during his speech.
Coconut Water
“It’s a natural isotonic beverage, with the same level of electrolytic balance as we have in our blood. It’s the fluid of life, so to speak.” In fact, during the Pacific War of 1941-45, both sides in the conflict regularly used coconut water – siphoned directly from the nut – to give emergency plasma trasfusions to wounded soldiers.”
