Nepenthe

Billy Connolly's " 14 things I hate about everybody ." 1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time....I know where my watch is pal, where the f*ck is yours? Do I point at my crotch when I ask where the toilet is? 2. People who are willing to get off their arse to search the entire room for the TV remote because they refuse to walk to the TV and change the channel manually. 3. When people say "Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too". F*cking right. What good is a cake if you can't eat it? 4. When people say "it's always the last place you look". Of course it is. Why the f*ck would you keep looking after you've found it? Do people do this? Who and where are they? 5. When people say while watching a film "did you see that?". No tosser, I paid 10 quid to come to the cinema and stare at the f*cking floor. 6. People who ask "Can I ask you a question?". Didn't really give me a ...

Must Read : "Two weeks later I had an epiphany. It changed my life, and I hope it's changed the course of psychology. I was in my garden with my five-year-old daughter, Nicky, and to make another confession, even though I've written a book about children and have worked with children, I'm no good with them since I'm time-urgent and task-oriented. I was weeding, and Nicky was throwing weeds into the air, dancing, singing and having a wonderful time -- and I shouted at her. She walked away, puzzled, and walked back and said, "Daddy, I want to talk to you." I said, "Yeah, Nicky?" And she said, "Daddy, do you remember before my fifth birthday" -- she had turned five about two weeks before -- "I was a whiner? That I whined every day?" I said, "Yeah, I remember -- you were a horror." "Have you noticed since my fifth birthday, Daddy, I haven't whined once?" "Yeah, Nicky." And she said,...

España Más allá de los símbolos, más allá de la pompa y la ceniza de los aniversarios, más allá de la aberración del gramático que ve en la historia del hidalgo que soñaba ser don Quijote y al fin lo fue, no una amistad y una alegría sino un herbario de arcaísmos y un refranero, estás, España silenciosa, en nosotros. España del bisonte, que moriría por el hierro o el rifle, en las praderas del ocaso, en Montana, España donde Ulises descendió a la Casa de Hades, España del íbero, del celta, del cartaginés, y de Roma, España de los duros visigodos, de estirpe escandinava, que deletrearon y olvidaron la escritura de Ulfilas, pastor de pueblos, España del Islam, de la cábala y de la Noche Oscura del Alma, España de los inquisidores, que padecieron el destino de ser verdugos y hubieran podido ser mártires, España de la larga aventura que descifró los mares y redujo crueles imperios y que prosigue aquí, en Buenos Aires, en este atarde...

Alhambra Grata la voz del agua a quien abrumaron negras arenas, grato a la mano cóncava el mármol circular de la columna, gratos los finos laberintos del agua entre los limoneros, grata la música del zéjel, grato el amor y grata la plegaria dirigida a un Dios que está solo, grato el jazmín. Vano el alfanje ante las largas lanzas de los muchos, vano ser el mejor. Grato sentir o presentir, rey doliente, que tus dulzuras son adioses, que te será negada la llave, que la cruz del infiel borrará la luna, que la tarde que miras es la última.

Turning the Tide , Noam Chomsky's blog .

WOA! Wonder of the Day: World of Awe , created by new media artist Yael Kanarek, is a multi-media narrative that revolves around the story of a traveler in search of a lost treasure. The project engages the ancient genre of the traveler's tale to explore the connections between storytelling, memory, travel and technology that ranges from the lament over the absence of a lover to a comical declaration of loyalty to a floppy disk. To expand the story, World of Awe spins a network of projects and collaborations online, in galleries and in performance spaces. Click on the capsule to enter :-)

From the dragon Fáfnir , inspiration for Tolkien's masterpieces, we arrive at a very good website about maps, ancient, modern, and captures of time: EuroAtlas , in English and French.

nepenthe SYLLABICATION: ne·pen·the NOUN: 1. A drug mentioned in the Odyssey as a remedy for grief. 2. Something that induces forgetfulness of sorrow or eases pain. ETYMOLOGY: Alteration of Latin népenthes , from Greek népenthes ( pharmakon ), grief-banishing (drug), nepenthe, neuter of népenthés : né , not; see ne in Appendix I + penthos , grief; see kwent(h) - in Appendix I. OTHER FORMS: ne·penthe·an --ADJECTIVE From Bartleby

Kudos for The Word Detective

Tell me how you drive and I'll tell you what kind of an idiot you are :-)

Porto Lisboa from a Cat's View

AUSENCIA Habré de levantar la vasta vida que aún ahora es tu espejo: cada mañana habré de reconstruirla. Desde que te alejaste, cuántos lugares se han tornado vanos y sin sentido, iguales a luces en el día. Tardes que fueron nicho de tu imagen, músicas en que siempre me aguardabas, palabras de aquel tiempo, yo tendré que quebrarlas con mis manos. ¿En qué hondonada esconderé mi alma para que no vea tu ausencia que como un sol terrible, sin ocaso, brilla definitiva y despiadada? Tu ausencia me rodea como la cuerda a la garganta, el mar al que se hunde.

Susan Sontag (all time fav of mine since Against Interpretation . She has a book On Photography : "Most tourists feel compelled to put a camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable they encounter. Unsure of their reasons they take a picture. This gives shape to the experience: stop, take a photo and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic - Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working ... " "Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood." My well beloved Roland Barthes too... Camera Lucida : Reflections on Photography

Wishlist: Land, As Far As the Eye Can See - Portuguese in the Old West by Donald Warrin and Geoffrey L. Gomes "The Portuguese pioneered everywhere on the western frontier. Their stories-emblematic of the successful lives built by countless enterprising immigrants-has never been told, that is, not until this sensitive, pathbreaking book." Richard Orsi, past editor, California History This is a pioneering work in a field long neglected by both popular and academic historians. It is the tale of men and women from Portugal who settled the frontier in the vast American West. It is innovative in structure, mingling in its parts biographical studies, geographical focus, and occupational pursuits. Scrupulous research from an impressive variety of sources went into this study, making it a particularly well documented, lucid, fluent, almost kaleidoscopic analysis of the topic. Opening with an overview of Portuguese history, emphasizing migratory trends, the text gi...

How colorful military phrases -- such as "hair on fire" -- infiltrate the English language. (Do check the Related Articles)

Viva Madrid , by Mario Vargas Llosa in The Guardian

Javier Vallhonrat , Vuelvo a Tí, Casa de Humo, Vuelvo a Tí

Hear Hear :-) (and loooong essay) The Abolition of Work : The following disclaimer is reproduced from the verso of the title page: "Not Copyrighted. Any of the material in this book may be freely reproduced, translated or adapted, even without mentioning the source." Italicised material appears between asterisks. Typos are my own. Typed in by Kurt Cockrum, noted armchair theorist, anarcho-hedonist dilettante, curmudgeon-philosopher-king of himself and *bon* *vivant*, in the Summer of 1992, in the Duwamish River watershed of Cascadia bioregion.

Elevator space in Japan is considered both as an example of transit space generally and as an example of the practice of a particular national identity. In Japan, these variations serve to express the improvisational, private character of personal interaction possible inside elevators, over against the fixed, public character of behavior outside them.

I found this to be an awesome idea: a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph... Here's the main page and here's the gallery page. Decontextualization, Deconstruction anyone? Jacques Derrida, where are you?

Hubble imitating Art, as in Van Gogh's Starry Night

After much toil and compunction, and finally acknowledging that I would have to broaden the language scope of my searches, I chanced upon a Spanish translation from Russian of Hamlet y Don Quijote by Turguenev. It'll be my nighttime reading :-)

Saramago contra los políticos y medios de comunicación La última novela del premio Nobel de Literatura portugués José Saramago, ‘Ensayo sobre la lucidez’, saldrá de las imprentas portuguesas el próximo 25 de marzo. Y, una vez más, la prosa del luso destila crítica contra los poderosos. En esta ocasión, Saramago ha puesto en su punto de mira a los gobernantes y los medios de comunicación. Fuentes editoriales revelaron que la obra se debate entre la ironía, el humor y critica a diversas instituciones portuguesas, por lo que el propio escritor ha dicho ya en varias ocasiones que resultará "polémica". La profecía autocumplidora del autor Saramago, que reside y escribe en la isla española de Lanzarote (Canarias), pronosticó que el ‘Ensayo sobre la lucidez’ creará un escándalo mayor que el "Evangelio según Jesucristo", editado en 1991. El nuevo título de Saramago comienza con unas elecciones municipales, cuyo resultado causa la sorpresa del Ejecutivo, que dec...

Hey now, hey now Don't dream it's over Hey now, hey now When the world comes in They come, they come To build a wall between us We know they won't win Now I'm walking again to the beat of a drum And I'm counting the steps to the door of your heart Only shadows ahead barely clearing the roof Get to know the feeling of liberation and relief

Blog In an upbeat Independence Day column in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, the incurable optimist, wrote about all ''the lights that didn't fail'' America -- from cops and firemen to peach-growing farmers and cancer-curing scientists, from local churches to TV comedians to blogging. Blogging? She explained the word as ''the 24/7 opinion sites that offer free speech at its straightest, truest, wildest, most uncensored, most thoughtful, most strange. Thousands of independent information entrepreneurs are informing, arguing, adding information.'' Blog is a shortening of Web log. It is a Web site belonging to some average but opinionated Joe or Josie who keeps what used to be called a ''commonplace book'' -- a collection of clippings, musings and other things like journal entries that strike one's fancy or titillate one's curiosity. What makes this online daybook different from the commonplace book is that this fo...

we neeeeeed colour................ By Pete Turner

Receita para Vinho Quente 1 copo de Vinho do Porto 1 folha de louro 1 pau de canela cravinho Leve ao lume um tacho com o vinho e três colheres de sopa de água. Acrescente as especiarias e deixe ferver durante 5 minutos em lume brando. Sirva imediatamente :-) Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her humble purse at a time - be it remembered! - when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse her. -- Thomas de Quincey (1821) Siza Vieira's port wine glasses: ...

Salvador Dali, escultura, no Palácio Porto Côvo em Lisboa

El mundo offers a journey on some of the literary cities of Europe . Of course Lisbon is sooooooooo there...

" I lager sono i laboratori dove si sperimenta la trasformazione della natura umana[...]. Finora la convinzione che tutto sia possibile sembra aver provato soltanto che tutto può essere distrutto. Ma nel loro sforzo di tradurla in pratica, i regimi totalitari hanno scoperto, senza saperlo, che ci sono crimini che gli uomini non possono né punire né perdonare. Quando l'impossibile è stato reso possibile, è diventato il male assoluto, impunibile e imperdonabile, che non poteva più essere compreso e spiegato coi malvagi motivi dell'interesse egoistico, dell'avidità, dell'invidia, del risentimento; e che quindi la collera non poteva vendicare, la carità sopportare, l'amicizia perdonare, la legge punire. " "La manifestazione del vento del pensiero non è conoscenza, ma è la capacità di distinguere il giusto dall'ingiusto, il bello dal brutto. E in realtà questo può impedire le catastrofi, almeno per me, nei rari momenti in cui si è arrivati ad un...

Pablo Neruda hubiera cumplido el próximo 12 de julio cien años; una centuria que se celebrará en casi todo el mundo para homenajear a un poeta que creó algunos de los versos más recitado en el siglo XX. Ahora, y como antesala de esta efeméride, la Casa de América acoge unas jornadas sobre Neruda en España . [...] El premio Cervantes recordó que Neftalí Ricardo Reyes-Parral, que así se llamaba Neruda, fue un mal estudiante, por ejemplo de francés e inglés, y que se escapó con razón de Chile y de su vida bohemia a tiempo, "porque, si no, hubiera arruinado su carrera", para irse a extremo Oriente a trabajar con uno de los administradores coloniales. "Oriente lo angustió, no le gustó nada, y siempre decía que él era totalmente occidental. De allí, sólo recordaba, según me dijo en alguna ocasión -recordó Edwards con humor-, los grandes y muchos brazos de esas mujeres diosas". Después de esta etapa de Oriente y auspiciado por alguno de sus jefes, el poeta de...

Dionisus do Douro! Pêlos no púbis como um homem Cachos nas mãos ossudas! E bêbado de mosto e de alegria É luz da negra noite e do claro dia! -- Miguel Torga Canção do Vinho do Porto Oiro líquido para os olhos, Doirados sonhos desperto: Jardim d'Abril para o olfato, Sou prà boca um céu aberto! Do Chipre o clássico vinho E a própria ambrósia dos Numes, Nem aos calcanhares me chegam Na luz, na cor, nos perfumes. Velha Roma, abranda a embófia, Desse teu orgulho eterno: Ao pé de mim é zurrapa O teu cantado Falerno! Metido nesta garrafa Por mão sabida e prudente, Como jóia, fui passando Pelas mãos de muita gente. Até que um dia, por voltas Da sorte obscura e secreta, Vim ter, sem saber porquê, À garrafeira dum poeta. Sem saber porquê, não digo, Sei muito bem por que vim: É poeta, sou digno dele, Como ele é digno de mim. -- Eugénio de Castro As Farpas, I O vinho do Porto é um vinho aguardentado, produzido na ma...

We don't need your language lesson Fond as I am of Germany and Germans, I do think they have an absolutely terrible national trait of telling other people where they are going wrong. Coupled with a very direct way of speaking, this often seems to the rest of the world indistinguishable from shocking rudeness. It must be very puzzling to be German, all in all; you turn up, you start explaining to an Englishman at a party that it is time his nation stopped talking about the Second World War, that the British Empire was a wicked thing, that Britain ought to adopt the euro. What you get back is usually, "Hmm, yes, you may have a point." You are probably rather baffled when your new friend, alas, can't come to dinner this week or next or the week after because he will be washing his hair. Yes, every night, alas. The incoming German ambassador, Thomas Matussek, was asking for the same response in an interview with this paper yesterday. The subject of the Ambassado...

Had to post this before going to bed Photos from a soldier in Irak. Impressive: Part 1 and Part 2 .

Viewed by David Hockney On January 18, 1951, Picasso made a painting entitled "Massacre in Korea". The next day he went back to painting children. The Zervos catalogue raisonne shows it somewhat isolated in a number of portraits of children -innocence and the future. The Korean war had begun in June 1950 and in December that year there were stories in newspapers of atrocities in Korea that included accounts of the shooting of women and children. Picasso's picture was reproduced in the newspapers at the time (I remember it, I was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy in Bradford). It was generally dismissed as propaganda and compared very unfavourably with "Guernica", and was rarely discussed again. Years later, on seeing it in the Picasso show at MOMA, I was struck by it. It stayed with me, and I began to see another interpretation. In 1950, images from the Second World War were still vivid and shocking; recovery from the war was just under way, wh...

"My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water" Mark Twain observed, in a note. Was he bragging or complaining? Did he realize that two of his books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, were among the richest word-wines ever vinted in America? Long before the nineteenth century ended Mark Twain was a world figure—in the field of letters our only world figure. His white suit and white hair were recognized everywhere. He traveled widely and even had an honorary degree from Oxford, not to mention Yale and the University of Missouri. His cranky, abstemious admirer George Bernard Shaw went so far as to say that it was Mark Twain who taught him that "telling the truth was the funniest joke in the world." But did Twain's enormous success have much to do with truth-telling, or did he, like Shaw, treat truth like a bicycle that could be abruptly kicked aside when the author couldn't make it ...

'THE END IS NIGH' :-x Ever Granta -ing us insightful articles, this time on the environment we've been tampering with

"The problem with children's books," - comic Jay Leno says - "is that they just aren't funny. They all look like Laura Ashley illustrations with one word and a boring moral at the end." Leno's book is based on a true story from his childhood, when young Jay accidentally melted his plastic comb into a roast beef at a family barbecue. "There's no real moral other than don't stick your comb in roast beef," he says.

Neologizing 101 If you've ever heard yourself saying, ''He was, I don't know, squidgeral ,'' or thought, ''I wish there were a word for 'needing more than two hands to operate,''' you are probably a closet neologist. Neologizing, the practice of coining new words, may seem to be an arcane, specialized activity, but it's everywhere -- and the skillful employment of neologism is what gives English much of its verve. Each word in English had to start with a person trying to express a thought. For most words, the neologizer (or neologizers -- new words, like teenage trends or the calculus, are likely to pop up at the same time in very different places) is anonymous, although there are some exceptions. The humorist Gelett Burgess coined the word blurb in 1907. Yester-year , which sounds ancient, was in fact coined in 1870 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who wanted to translate a French word for which he couldn't find a suitable English ...

Cheers for Boddingtons Beer :-*

Love at first sight is not something that happens only between people. In 1964, tens of thousands of car buyers were swept off their feet by the alluring shape of a sporty new Ford called the Mustang ; four decades later, many of those relationships endure. Oh yes, they do... I fell in love in one...

Corre a menina à beira do mar corre, corre, pela praia fora que belo dia que está não está e o primeiro a chegar não perde Andam as ondas a rebentar e o relógio a marcar horas a sombra é quente, e quase não há e o sol a brilhar já ferve Corre a menina à beira do mar corre enquanto a gaivota voa vem o menino para a apanhar e a menina sentindo foge Anda o barquinho a navegar vem do Porto para Lisboa foge a menina da beira mar foge logo quando a maré sobe Andam a brincar na praia do mar as ondas do mar andam a rebentar na praia do mar andam a brincar as ondas do mar andam a rebentar as ondas do mar andam a rebentar E é tão bonita a onda que vem como a outra que vejo ao fundo a espuma branca que cada tem é a vida de todo o mundo

Why force will never bring peace After the atrocities in Spain, Jonathan Schell's polemic on violence and warfare, The Unconquerable World

Is this my future? T he Home as a Hotel Room by the NYT

NASA hears words not yet spoken It says the breakthrough holds promise for astronauts and the handicapped. "A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain," said developer Chuck Jorgensen, of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. Jorgensen's team found that sensors under the chin and one each side of the Adam's apple pick up the brain's commands to the speech organs, allowing the subauditory, or "silent speech" to be captured. The team concluded that the method could be useful on space missions or other difficult working conditions, such as air traffic control towers and even to make current voice-recognition software more active. "What is analyzed is silent, or subauditory, speech, such as when a person silently reads or talks to himself," Jorgensen said. "Biological signa...

Still Atahuallpa and Pizarro, The Royal Hunt of the Sun took me to the site of the day: Internet Broadway Database The Royal Hunt of the Sun , London, December 1964 The National conquers an empire with its premiere of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, on December 8 1964 Stage directions are not usually the highlights of a script, but it was a peculiarly laconic one that attracted John Dexter to Peter Shaffer's play. It read: "They cross the Andes." That line had been one of the reasons the play had been called unstageable by most of London's script readers. Dexter, though, was thrilled by Shaffer's gumption, and by his story - an adventure epic about a band of Spanish conquistadores who conquered the Inca empire, crossing not just the Andes but swamps and plains, too. Shaffer's ambitious script was all the more surprising since he was relatively inexperienced: his first play, Five-Finger Exercise, had had a West End run that was respectable ra...

A blog devoted to Cats ? Purrrrrrrrrrfect ~~

Barcelona on the NYT