Introducing the long-awaited sarcasm point
The English language must evolve. Not with emoticons or lol or brb or l8r or GRATUITOUS all caps used for emphasis, not with Spanglish or bumbling Bushisms or even cryptic Kerryisms. We don't need more quotation marks that "hedge" or try to make the same "old" thing sound "fresh." What we need is an honest effort to incorporate the way we live today. My fellow Americans, we need to embrace a new punctuation mark—one that embraces the irony and edge of contemporary conversation and clarifies rather than condenses or confuses. It is time for the adoption of the sarcasm point. Why the sarcasm point? We have a mark that conveys that we mean or know something. We have one that says it with volume and force! We have one that communicates that we don't know something, don't we? We need one more: to do for language what shade did for drawing, what color did for television, and what eyebrows did for express...
Mensagens
A precious case from Middle Earth Sméagol ( Gollum) is a single, 587 year old, hobbit-like male of no fixed abode. He has presented with antisocial behaviour, increasing aggression, and preoccupation with the "one ring." Sméagol comes from a wealthy and influential family, his grandmother being a wise woman in the river folk community. Nothing is known about Sméagol's birth or schooling. He was spiteful to others and had only one friend, Deagol, whom he later murdered after stealing the ring from him. For Sméagol this was an important life event; the ring enabled him to disappear and listen secretly to conversations. His family and community, appalled by his actions and believing he was a thief and murderer, banished him to a solitary life in the misty mountains. He lived for many years with the ring as his only friend and began to detest the outside world—loathing the sun, moon, and wind. He ate only live animals or raw fish. Eventually Sméagol creat...
The aphorism "A hammer, when presented with a nail, knows to do only one thing" applies, par excellence, to George W. Bush. As governor of Texas, Bush tackled the social problem of street crime by presiding over the busiest execution chamber in the country. At the time of the thirteen death row exonerations in Illinois, Bush stated publicly that although states such as Illinois might have problems with a faulty death penalty system, he was certain that in Texas no innocent person had ever been sent to death row, much less executed. That remains to be seen. What is clear is that he had, as governor, no quality of mercy.
Sister Helen Prejean - from Dead Man Walking - and her new book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions , excerpted in The New York Review of Books
The answers ... Section one 1. Catherine Morland. Forget Babe Ruth - it's what we call "rounders". 2. In Persuasion, the Crofts' chaise almost "runs foul of a dung cart". 3. Yes. As officiating clergyman the Rev Elton performs the ceremony that unites Miss Woodhouse with Mr Knightley. 4. Sir Thomas Bertram, on his return from flogging slaves on his sugar plantation in Antigua. He means Miss Frances Price. 5. No. Austen's fiction is a smoke-free zone. Gentlemen never puffed in a lady's presence, any more than they swore, farted, or relieved themselves in the chamber pot behind the dining room screen. Section two 1. First Impressions. Wise change, Jane. 2. No. The novel is, by reference to militia postings, identifiably set in the mid-1790s. It's 18th century. Back to the text, you hacks. 3. Wickham seduces Georgiana Darcy at Ramsgate when she is 14. He seduces Lydia Bennet, aged 15, in Brighton - then, as now, the philanderer's f...
A question of pride
The women of Britain have spoken. Pride and Prejudice is the novel that has most transformed the lives of the nation's better half, according to Woman's Hour. But how well do they know the author? Let's play Mistressmind. Answers at the bottom of the page ... First, five general questions. 1. Which Jane Austen heroine plays baseball? 2. There is one mention of excrement in the six major novels. Where? 3. Does Mr Elton (he who proposes after too much of "Mr Weston's good wine") actually marry Emma? 4. Who says, "Why do I not see my little Fanny?" 5. There is gambling, seduction and booze in the novels. Is there a whiff of tobacco breathing over the pages? On to the winning novel itself. 1. What was P&P originally called? 2. The Guardian, last Thursday, called P&P "Jane Austen's salty-tongued commentary on the plight of women in the 19th century". Is it? 3. There are two instances of paedophile ab...
The Guardian on Before Sunset:
"Something I've noticed about Hollywood of late is that, at the end of each year, I find it increasingly hard, looking back over the movies I've written about, to recollect most of them with any clarity. I'm not losing my memory. I'm only 41, and I can give you chapter and verse on films I saw in the 1970s and 1980s. No, I forget movies now mainly because they're forgettable. I think I managed to get through the entire June-to-November period without seeing a single worthwhile new movie come out of Tinseltown. My movie of the year was Before Sunset, Richard Linklater's wise and wistful sequel to his sublime, nine-year-old Euro-American romance Before Sunrise. Talky, soulful, intelligent and, at 80 minutes, remarkably succinct and profound, it was an eloquent repudiation by example of the bloated and empty spectacles - and sequels - that mainstream Hollywood laid upon us. But much of its appeal had to do, tangentially at le...
NOCHE ESCURA
En una noche oscura,
con ansias en amores inflamada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!,
salí sin ser notada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
A escuras y segura,
por la secreta escala disfrazada,
¡oh dichosa ventura!,
a escuras e en celada,
estando ya mi casa sosegada.
En la noche dichosa,
en secreto, que nadie me veía,
ni yo miraba cosa,
sin otra luz e guía
sino la que en el corazón ardía.
Aquesta me guiaba
más cierto que la luz del mediodía,
a donde me esperaba
quien yo bien me sabía,
en parte donde nadie parecía.
¡Oh noche que guiaste!,
¡oh noche amable más que el alborada!,
¡oh noche que juntaste
Amado con amada,
amada en el Amado transformada!
En mi pecho florido,
que entero para él solo se guardaba,
allí quedó dormido,
y yo lo regalaba,
y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
El aire de la almena,
cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía,
con su mano serena
en mi cuello hería,
y todos mis senti...
This I got while investigating:
Tema Obrigado / «arigato» Pergunta/Resposta Numa discussão sobre a influência e marcas residuais da língua portuguesa na Ásia, caso da palavra "soldatu" na Malásia, um dos presentes jurou ter lido algo sobre a palavra japonesa "harigato" ter derivado da nossa "obrigado", coisa que por razões histórico-linguísticas me parece um absurdo.
Gostaria de saber se já alguma vez depararam com esta opinião absurda, e se tal poderia ter algum fundamento para além da pura coincidência de alguma semelhança.
Obrigado. Daniel
Portugal Arigato (sem h , que representaria aspiração inexistente neste vocábulo), com origem no nosso obrigado , não seria tão absurdo como isso, mas o facto é que os Japoneses consideram a palavra autóctone, apesar de na sua língua existirem centenas de termos de origem portuguesa. Portanto julga-se que é pura coincidência a semelhança dos dois termos. Arigato propriamente quer dizer agradeço-lhe...
The Transformation Of Material Things
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chuang. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.
Chuang Tzu , translated by Lin Yu-Tang, 1948
The Legend of Dragon Peak and A New Era for Whole Leaf Tea
600 plus years ago, in 1391, the founder of the Ming dynasty, the Hung-Wu Emperor, (aka Zhu Yuan Zhang, shown above) decreed that tributes of loose-leaf tea would replace traditional compressed teacakes. Simply put, the emperor thought cake tea was snobby and wasteful. Born of humble background, orphaned, and raised in a Buddhist Monastery, Zhu Yuan Zhang thought previous Chinese nobles had wasted too much time with elaborate tea making rituals.
His simple love of leaf and water transformed the art of making whole leaf teas throughout China and changed the way most of the world learned about and thought about tea.
The emperor’s first whole leaf tribute tea was probably Dragon Peak Green. The reason for this comes from a preceding period of struggle, when the emperor was battling to reunify China after centuries of Mongolian rule. According to the story, after losing the battle of JiuJiang, the emperor’s presci...
Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada
Teu exagera ou exclui.
Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és
No mínimo que fazes.
Assim em cada lago a lua toda
Brilha, porque alta vive.
Ricardo Reis
_____________________________
Para ser grande , sé entero. Nada
Tuyo exageres o excluyas.
Sé todo en cada cosa. Pon cuanto eres
En lo mínimo que hagas.
Así en cada lago la luna entera
Brilla, porque alta vive.
Ricardo Reis
EXILIO
a Raúl Gustavo Aguirre
Esta manía de saberme ángel,
sin edad,
sin muerte en qué vivirme,
sin piedad por mi nombre
ni por mis huesos que lloran vagando.
¿Y quién no tiene un amor?
¿Y quién no goza entre amapolas?
¿Y quién no posee un fuego, una muerte,
un miedo, algo horrible,
aunque fuere con plumas
aunque fuere con sonrisas?
Siniestro delirio amar una sombra.
La sombra no muere.
Y mi amor
sólo abraza a lo que fluye
como lava del infierno:
una logia callada,
fantasmas en dulce erección,
sacerdotes de espuma,
y sobre todo ángeles,
ámgeles bellos como cuchillos
que se elevan en la noche
y devastan la esperanza.
Bahamut La fama de Bahamut llegó a los desiertos de Arabia, donde los hombres alteraron y magnificaron su imagen. De hipopótamo o elefante lo hicieron pez que se mantiene sobre un agua sin fondo y sobre el pez imaginaron un toro y sobre el toro una montaña hecha de rubí y sobre la montaña un ángel y sobre el ángel seis infiernos y sobre los infiernos la tierra y sobre la tierra siete cielos. Leemos en una tradición recogida por Lane: «Dios creó la tierra, pero la tierra no tenía sostén y así bajo la tierra creó un ángel. Pero el ángel no tenía sostén y así bajo los pies del ángel creó un peñasco hecho de rubí. Pero el peñasco no tenía sostén y así bajo el peñasco creó un toro con 4 mil ojos, orejas, narices, bocas, lenguas y pies. Pero el toro no tenía sostén y así bajo el toro creó un pez llamado Bahamut, y bajo el pez puso agua, y bajo el agua puso oscuridad, y la ciencia humana no ve más allá de ese punto» Otros declaran que la tierra tiene su fund...
I'm So Glad I'm A Beta
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Don't believe the hype Ever felt you're missing the point with some of our biggest cultural heroes? Admit it - everyone can name at least one hip, wildly praised band, album, film, TV show or author that they've never really rated. In this special issue, Guide writers get personal and demolish some of the greats they hate The Strokes
Four bars guitar. Stop. Four bars guitar. Stop. Then a muffled vocal that sounds like it's been recorded on a 1912 telephone line under the Atlantic. Bit more de na na na. The end. This is the Strokes - Status Quo, minus the jokey self-awareness that every single one of their songs is exactly, absolutely, 100% the same. At least the Quo looked good. The Strokes are a kind of Top Shop version of the Ramones. With Amanda de Cadenet in tow. So manufactured, they make Busted look like the Sex Pistols; so east coast posh and quotably articulate, they're basically a highly punchable cross between Mia Farrow and David Starkey, minus the hum...
The 'Vinland Map' This is a copy of the "Vinland Map" at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.. The map, which predates Christopher Columbus, may prove that he was not the first European to reach America. Danish scientists will apply modern dating techniques to the ink and paper of the original map to finally determine whether it is a forgery or not.
Danish experts will travel to the United States to study a controversial parchment said to be the oldest map of America and which, if authentic, would support the theory that Vikings discovered the New World five centuries before Columbus, officials said last week. The map, which is said to date from 1434 and was found in 1957, is believed by some to be evidence that Vikings who departed from Greenland around the year 1000 were the first to discover America. The document is of Vinland, the part of North America which is believed to be what is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland, and was supposedly discov...
TOYS ARE US
Check Robosapiens story abridged in The Independent (The image goes directly to the Robosapiens website itself)
TOYS WERE US Rubik's Cube This perplexing treat became the must-have toy, Christmas 1981. This Eighties icon shifted more than 100 million units. Sylvanian Families This figurine franchise addressed the pressing debate as to how a fox and a chicken would get on were they ever forced to live in the same house - and dress in turn-of-the-century frontier costume. They won Toy of the Year an unprecedented three times, in 1987, 1988, and 1989. Tamagotchi Fickle children forgot that a Tamagotchi is for life, abandoning these virtual pets almost as soon as the 1996 festive rush was over. Their Japanese manufacturers shipped more than 70 million units in two months to the US and UK alone. Furbies The cuddly, loquacious Furby took the toy market by storm in the late Nineties. Famously banned from the Pentagon, because they were...
Book aid: a literary pantheon follows musicians' lead on Aids in Africa
First the pop stars sang for aid to Africa, and now an illustrious group of authors are helping victims of Aids in the continent. Twenty-one writers, including five Nobel prize winners, have produced an anthology to raise money for a charity helping those with Aids and HIV in southern Africa. Telling Tales , a collection of short stories by Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Susan Sontag, Woody Allen, John Updike and 15 others, will be launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York by Kofi Annan tomorrow, before World Aids Day. The book was the brainchild of the Booker prize winning author Nadine Gordimer after it struck her that writers should follow the example of musicians, who have rerecorded Do They Know It's Christmas and have also been active in supporting Aids causes across Africa. "I became very conscious of the fact that musicians and singers were having c...
(...) marmalade. ‘I was told by the French owner of a well-known brand of jam,’ wrote the reader, ‘that the origin of the word marmalade is in fact the English mispronunciation of the French phrase ‘‘maladie de Marie’’. Mary, Queen of Scots, would visit her close ally the French king by sea from Scotland rather than risk the wrath of Elizabeth I by travelling through England. Mary suffered awful sea-sickness during the often choppy crossing. Eating portions of bitter Seville oranges was found to be an effective remedy for this illness. Hence the name of “guérir la maladie de Marie’’ (to cure Mary’s sickness) for small pieces of bitter Seville oranges.’ A likely story! When did these Marian visits to France during Elizabeth’s reign take place, then? And where does the French word marmelade come from, pray? I’ve heard a less garbled version in which the supposed origin is ‘Marie est malade’. You might as well say mal de mer. But the truth, as a less Rutherfordian reader suggested the d...
The Brain's Own Marijuana
Research into natural chemicals that mimic marijuana's effects in the brain could help to explain--and suggest treatments for--pain, anxiety, eating disorders, phobias and other conditions
Marijuana is a drug with a mixed history. Mention it to one person, and it will conjure images of potheads lost in a spaced-out stupor. To another, it may represent relaxation, a slowing down of modern madness. To yet another, marijuana means hope for cancer patients suffering from the debilitating nausea of chemotherapy, or it is the promise of relief from chronic pain. The drug is all these things and more, for its history is a long one, spanning millennia and continents. It is also something everyone is familiar with, whether they know it or not. Everyone grows a form of the drug, regardless of their political leanings or recreational proclivities. That is because the brain makes its own marijuana, natural compounds called endocannabinoids (after the plant...
The Give-and-Take At the Book Thing
BALTIMORE -- Early one morning a couple of winters ago, a homeless man scanned the spines of hundreds of books set in neat rows outside the Book Thing of Baltimore. As he searched for a good book to kill time before heading to a nearby shelter, a sparkling gold Mercedes-Benz SUV pulled up to the curb. Out stepped a fifty-something woman wearing a full-length mink coat and carrying two or three Neiman Marcus bags full of paperbacks. "It was just so cliche," recalls Book Thing founder Russell Wattenberg. "It's like one of those things where if I saw this on a TV show, I'd say they were, like, stretching it." The paperbacks were a donation to the Book Thing, a novel kind of exchange where thousands of books are given away each weekend. The woman wanted a receipt, so Wattenberg ducked into the crowded basement from which the Book Thing operates and wrote one up. When he emerged, he says, the wealthy woman and the de...
Computers as Authors? Literary Luddites Unite!
or some people, writing a novel is a satisfying exercise in self-expression. For me, it's a hideous blend of psychoanalysis and cannibalism that is barely potent enough to overcome a series of towering avoidance mechanisms - including my own computer. Writers and computers nowadays are locked in such an enduringly dysfunctional embrace that it can be hard to tell us apart. We both rely heavily on memory, for instance. We are both calculating, complex and crash-prone. And like Hebrew National hot dogs, we both seem to answer to a higher power: writers, according to Plato, were divinely inspired; computers have Bill Gates. Occasionally you hear of a Luddite novelist who shuns computers, but the truth is that most of us would be lost without them. If I rail and curse at mine, it is partly out of resentment at our miserable co-dependence. Imagine, then, the blow to my scribbler's vanity when I discovered a while bac...
Gutenberg Printing Method Questioned
Johannes Gutenberg may be wrongly credited with producing the first Western book printed in movable type, according to an Italian researcher.
Presenting his findings in a mock trial of Gutenberg at the recent Festival of Science in Genoa, Bruno Fabbiani, an expert in printing who teaches at Turin Polytechnic, said the 15th-century German printer used stamps rather than the movable type he is said to have invented between 1452 and 1455. Gutenberg (c.1397-1468), whose real name was Johannes Gensfleisch, is credited with inventing a mold for small metal blocks with raised letters on them. The blocks could be put together to form words.
After a page was printed, the type could be reused for printing other pages.
With this method, Gutenberg is said to have printed an edition of about 180 copies — of which only 48 exist today — of the 42-line bible, so called for the number of lines in each printed column.
The invention produced a literary boo...