WALKING across a bridge, I saw a man on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.” “Why not?” he asked. “Well, there’s so much to live for!” “Like what?” “Are you religious?” He said: “Yes.” I said: “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?” “Christian.” “Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Protestant.” “Me, too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?” “Baptist.” “Me, too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Church of the Lord?” “Baptist Church of God.” “Me, too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God?” “Reformed Baptist Church of God.” “Me, too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?” He said: “Reformation of 1915.” I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off. JESUS came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death. Jesus said: “Whoever is without sin among yo...
Mensagens
In launching a new paperback series on important writers titled How to Read... (e.g., How to Read Shakespeare ), W.W. Norton is including How to Read Hitler , by British historian Neil Gregor. [July 18, 2005] marked the 80th anniversary of the publication of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf ( My Struggle ), the future Nazi leader's autobiography and manifesto. (...) Every year, American publishers flood stores with books about Nazism, driven by authors who can't stop writing them and consumers who can't stop reading them. (...) But no publisher chose to add a new edition of Mein Kampf . (...) Yet the smallest crack in the usual silence about the Nazi leader's own writing will take place in September. In launching a new paperback series on important writers titled How to Read... (e.g., How to Read Shakespeare ), W.W. Norton is including How to Read Hitler , by British historian Neil Gregor. (...) Hitler preferred the title Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, ...
The Napa-fication of La Rioja HEADING east from Santo Domingo de la Calzada, south of Bilbao, the landscape of the Rioja is covered in grape vines. There are poppies in bloom, 14th- and 15th-century towns along the way, small tractors zipping through the fields, men in white shirts bent over, tending rows, and vines planted unevenly on every available patch of land. At a Cepsa gas station just outside Logroño, the region's capital, the convenience store is stocked - not with Twix bars and Diet Coke - but with vintage Rioja wines, baguettes, chorizo, cheeses and artichoke hearts. This is a place that takes its wine and food seriously. The Rioja is known for its wines - the world-famous reds and, increasingly, its crisp, modern and oak-aged whites - and has had a long time to build its reputation. Grapes were introduced by the Romans, and export to France and Italy began in the 16th century. But now some ripples of change are spreading across this small autonomous region just be...
The Nazi leaders' retreat is happy to welcome a new wave of visitors - tourists. The unmarked path wanders from a small mountain road into a pine forest, and a pile of rubble covered with moss. The remains of a wall, broken metal pipes and crumbling steps leading nowhere have an air of neglect and melancholy, as if trees crowding around them were trying to hide dark memories. This is close to the truth: the ruins are of the inner sanctum of an alpine fortress where Adolf Hitler unleashed the dogs of war on Europe. It was here in the Berghof, a Bavarian country house guarded by 2,000 SS commandos, that he argued with Chamberlain over Sudetenland, and ordered blitzkriegs against Poland and Czechoslovakia. "Those were the best times of my life ," he said later. " My great plans were forged there ." Like the Bavarian royal family and Viennese high society before him, Hitler had been drawn to the hamlet of Obersalzberg on Mount Kehlstein by the bracing air and specta...
Japonisme - 1872 (Philippe Burty) - "to designate a new field of study of artistic, historic and ethnographic borrowings from the arts of Japan. «Vincent van Gogh , an avid collector and admirer of Japanese artists, would have felt a kinship with Hokusai (creator of the masterful "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji") had he known how little money Hokusai made during his lifetime.» Learn more on how van Gogh, Manet, Whistler et al were seduced by Japanese art in The Allure of Japanese Art , from The Washington Post and know that «The Origins of L'Art Nouveau is a catalogue raisonné of an exhibition that will open in Barcelona next month (Sept. 6 until Jan. 29, 2006).»
Thank you Penguin 70 years for sneaking up on me and letting me know Roger McGough's The State of Poetry . Who is this poet? There are Fascists There are fascists pretending to be humanitarians like cannibals on a health kick eating only vegetarians. Fame The best thing about being famous is when you walk down the street and people turn round to look at you and bump into things. italic ONCE I LIVED IN CAPITALS MY LIFE INTENSELY PHALLIC but now i'm sadly lowercase with the occasional italic I also bought Antony Beevor's Christmas at Stalingrad (an excerpt from the opus), H. G. Wells's The Country of the Blind (old favourite), and W.G. Sebald's Young Austerlitz (another excerpt from the opus). and do take the Penguin Quizzzzzz
When meat is not murder It is the ultimate conundrum for vegetarians who think that meat is murder: a revolution in processed food that will see fresh meat grown from animal cells without a single cow, sheep or pig being killed. Researchers have published details in a biotechnology journal describing a new technique which they hailed as the answer to the world's food shortage. Lumps of meat would be cultured in laboratory vats rather than carved from livestock reared on a farm. Article continues <a> <img></a> Scientists have adapted the cutting-edge medical technique of tissue engineering, where individual cells are multiplied into whole tissues, and applied them to food production. "With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply," said Jason Matheny, an agricultural scientist at the University of Maryland. Accordi...
Mum was right. You will feel a whole lot better after a cuddle Some turn to yoga or t'ai chi, others swear by red wine. No stone has been left unturned in the age-old pursuit of a long and healthy life. But now medical researchers have concluded that the secret of longevity may lie in nothing more outlandish than what comes naturally to mothers the world over. A good old-fashioned cuddle, say the scientists, can reduce heart disease, cut down stress and promote longevity. The researchers even advise nervous public speakers to indulge in a bit of hugging before they go on stage to face their audience. At the heart of it is a so-called "cuddle hormone", oxytocin, a chemical associated with a range of health benefits, which shows a marked increase in the blood supply after just 10 minutes of warm, supportive touching. The finding might explain why married couples enjoy better health than singletons. Some studies have suggested that divorce, bereavement and social isolation ...
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!" Jack Kerouac , On the Road
Animals in Translation About one in every 500 people has autism, a condition characterised by severely impaired social and communication skills and by repetitive interests and activities. The author of this eye-opening book, Temple Grandin, believes that such people have an especially close affinity with animals and are better placed than others to empathise with animals and to understand their behaviour. Many experts ridicule such generalisations, but Grandin is utterly confident that she is right, and she speaks with authority: not only is she a professor of Animal Science but she is autistic. Grandin deserves to be taken seriously since she has unequivocally demonstrated her special understanding of animals. Hard-nosed accountants in the fast-food industry pay her considerable sums to advise them on how best to treat the cattle in their slaughterhouses. By dramatically improving the conditions in abattoirs, often through insightful but inexpensive changes to conventional practices...
Why Truman Dropped the Bomb The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair--though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the "traditionalist" view. One unkindly dubbed it the "patriotic orthodoxy." But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were bra...
