Un enlace al cortometraje español de Nacho Vigalondo nominado a los Oscars 2005: 7:35 de la mañana
[en una página francesa con subtítulos en francés]
[otro enlace al vídeo sin subtítulos ]
Mensagens
After 130 years of typing the same way the keyboard has finally grown up. New Standard Keyboards of Santa Maria, California announced "alphabetical" keyboard that offers user-friendly benefits and quick data entry for any level user. New Standard Keyboards debuted a patented USB-interface computer keyboard at CES 2005. This keyboard has just 53-keys and offers many advances over QWERTY and DVORAK designs.
The New Standard Keyboard is a bold departure from current designs and will compete directly with standard QWERTY models as a replacement keyboard for users who value user-friendliness over arbitrary standardization. The keyboard has only 53 keys instead of 101 or more, which places them all within easy reach of the home position. It also takes up much less desk space, measuring just 12.5-inches wide x 5 inches deep x 1-inch thick.
The New Standard Keyboard solves all the problems associated with QWERTY, which was used on the first commercially produced typewrite...
Idea to embrace:
(if I could afford any diamond I would rather spend my money elsewhere)
Yes, diamonds are forever. But even the most expensive, sparkling ad campaign has never been able to put a sheen on one of the guiltiest of our guilty pleasures. The legacy from this most dazzling of earth's creations is a dark one indeed.
Cecil Rhodes, the infamous British imperialist and business magnate who founded the De Beers Mining Co., exploited tribal relationships in order to gain control of the South Africa diamond deposits in the late 19th century; he later became a key figure in the establishment of apartheid South Africa. Battles have been fought over the gemstones; during the 1990s, diamonds fueled the civil war in Angola, and further diamond-related conflicts have raged in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most recently, the London human rights organization Global Witness described how the terrorist network al-Qaida infiltrated the diamond trad...
An imaginary Editor's Rejection Letter:
ear Señor Michael of Sirvientes (do I have the spelling right?): We've now had the chance to read the long manuscript--a behemoth, really--you kindly sent us. While we appreciate your earnest attempt at developing the distinct personalities of the old chap and his fat servant, we've found the storyline to be problematic. You stuff the plot with one too many adventures that do little to advance the plot. There are too many characters whose fate the reader gets attached to but who suddenly disappear never to be heard from again. Maybe another publisher will be willing to trim the book to approximately two hundred pages; we simply don't have the time. Plus, what is one to make of the fact that Cide Hamete Benengeli is said to be the true creator of the book? Is this true? At times this seems like an ingenious device. But we've had a word with our legal department on this respect. They would be anxious about bringing out a novel whose authorship is uncertain. The f...
My fridge
Many people walk up to me, point their finger in my face and ask: "Why do you hate men so much?"
It totally dumbfounds me because some of my songs, including 'Why did you leave me you bastard?', 'Only think of your cock' and 'Sleep with her and you will be castrated' are actually about love, forgiveness and responsibility.
When I was growing up, I realised that women lived in a man's world. In Ottawa during the 1980s, the government forbid women from becoming doctors, soldiers or teachers, they forced women into marriage as teenagers and women suffered a celibacy tax unless they bore a child by the age of 20.
People abandoned their daughters in dumpsters at birth and women, such as me, were banned from singing in public unless we chose songs that praised the gift of motherhood and the pleasures of cooking. It is no wonder I had a subliminal urge to self-destruct myself and take the whole damn sex of men with me.
So wh...
A German Dream: Masterpieces of Romanticism Moonstruck by Caspar David Friedrich (1818/1824) Good stuff, bad weather. "Whenever a storm with thunder and lightning moved over the sea he would hurry out to the top of the cliffs as if he had a pact of friendship with the forces of nature, or even go on into the oakwood where the lightning had split a tall tree from top to bottom, and murmur, 'How great, how mighty, how wonderful!'" Thus a friend remembered the wanderings of Caspar David Friedrich, as a young painter on the island of Rügen in 1802. Man among the unchained elements, drawing a sense of his own mingled littleness and grandeur from their convulsion: it is the archetype of Romantic scenarios, Byron on the ocean, Turner in the Alps, and any number of alert, soulful young German idealists contemplating their travels north to the Baltic or south to the Bay of Naples. Romanticism was the primal urge of high German culture in the early 19th century. Nowhere can ...
Now this is a book review:
The Literary World System What are you doing? I mean, right now. You're reading a book review. A review of a book that, as it happens, is almost certain to become quite famous among intellectuals around the world over the next few years. And the reason it will become so famous is, in part, because of reviews like this one. After all, Perry Anderson, writing in the London Review of Books , has proclaimed that La République mondiale des lettres "is likely to have the same sort of liberating impact...as Said's Orientalism , with which it stands comparison"--a prophecy that, because it is by Perry Anderson, and because it is the London Review of Books , is, to an extent, self-fulfilling. So by reading this review--becoming one of the people who've heard of the book, who've begun to form an opinion about it, who might even buy it, read it, discuss it, cite it--you're not only learning about its impending fame, you're b...
Linguists Gone Wild!
You know you're at the Linguistic Society of America's annual convention when the woman on the next treadmill at the fitness center is talking not about bond indexes or shopping tips, as would be the case back home, but about recent research on binding theory in head-driven phrase structure grammar. The American Dialect Society, which meets in association with the Linguistic Society of America, is the main scholarly group devoted to the study of language in America, and most of the time, it devotes itself to serious concerns. This year's sessions included papers on the current status of Texas German, the vowel characteristics of Atlanta speech, and an analysis of prosodic rhythm in African-American English. But once in a while we like to blow off steam, and we do this by voting for the Words of the Year, in various categories—Most Useful, Creative, Unnecessary, Outrageous, and Euphemistic; Most and Least Likely To Succeed; and an overall Word of the...
When I first went to Auschwitz, the earth was still white with calcined bone, while thousands of rusting spoons and forks lay on the site of the storehouses. Today, the earth is normal brown, the spoons have gone and the scrawny poplars planted by the SS to hide the gas chambers have become tall and beautiful. Nature wants us to forget, but human beings want to know everything that happened here and then fix it unalterably in the memory of our species. Half the British population, apparently, have never heard of Auschwitz. Some of the other half think that there is nothing left to say about it. But Laurence Rees, author of this book and director of the TV documentary series on Auschwitz which started on BBC2 last Tuesday, shows that there is a great deal left to discover. Some of this comes from his admirable hunt for witnesses, both survivors and SS perpetrators. Makers of documentaries have been using - or trying to use - these individuals for decades, with varying success, but Ree...
DANIEL CAPPELLO: How did you become interested in writing about Hayao Miyazaki? MARGARET TALBOT: My kids watched several of his movies, especially “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), on video a lot, and I started to realize that I could abide repeat viewings of them more than almost any other children's movies, with the possible exception of “The Wizard of Oz.” Naturally, I started wondering about the filmmaker who was doing me such a favor. Last summer, when I went to Japan on a United States-Japan Foundation Media Fellowship and began reporting on him, I found out that he hates the idea that children watch his films repeatedly. He's very worried about kids consuming too much media, and thinks that they should watch a movie like "Totoro" no more than once a year.
[Read on, online only, at The New Yorker ]
Assorted Tidbits:
Poetry is what gets lost in translation. Robert Frost
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Yo no sé de pájaros,
no conozco la historia del fuego.
Pero creo que mi soledad debería tener alas. Alejandra Pizarnik , Las aventuras perdidas, 1958
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Fatiga Hay demasiadas cosas
de las que preocuparse,
siempre distintas, siempre imprescindibles,
y nunca se termina,
y apenas se respira... Y además
está el muchacho que jamás nos mira,
la chica que no sabe que la amamos
Y Platón predicando represiones...
Y a esto le llaman vida... Carmen Jodra Davó
__________________
How To Disappear Completely That there
That's not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here
I'm not here In a little while
I'll be gone
The moment's already...
Digo-te pot ti... dir-te-ei por ti Por ti Pela palavra por ti Pela frescura do teu suor de rapariga Pelo teu rosto sob os meus olhos nos teus olhos Não só nos livros se fala como num livro E que só num livro tu poderias ler Mas também no que nós não podemos dizer «um pouco de tempo em estado puro» o que não podes imaginar o que... no horizonte dos teus olhos no horizonte dos teus lábios não esperes nada do que te vou dizer nem sequer o mais improvável o instante do poema é o instante de um estado nascente os meus dedos tocam os teus seios miúdos sem os inventar e reconhecem o tremor do seu límpido volume no teu corpo na palavra do teu corpo num jardim suspenso ...o que escrevo é uma teia nua uma rosa de uma aranha que tece e destece a sua renda elíptica na lonjura de uma proximidade iminente ardente errante ardente ...o poeta não te diz o porquê nem o como do que te diz a palavra fala por mim e por ti em ...
Science Fiction of the Day
(just because we're a bit far from it here in good ol'Lusitania)
How To Steal Wi-Fi
When I moved into a new neighborhood last week, I expected the usual hassles. Then I found out I'd have to wait more than a month for a DSL line. I started convulsing. If I don't have Net access for even one day, I can't do my job. So, what was I supposed to do? There's an Internet café on the next block, but they close early. I had no choice—it was time to start sneaking on to my neighbors' home networks. Every techie I know says that you shouldn't use other people's networks without permission. Every techie I know does it anyway. If you're going to steal—no, let's say borrow —your neighbor's Wi-Fi access, you might as well do it right. Step one: Lose the guilt. The FCC told me that they don't know of any federal or state laws that make it illegal to log on to an open network. Using someone's connection...