Inside Woody Allen
From and a few examples here .
Mensagens
The Changing Face of Ireland
At the beginning of the 1990s, monolithic Ireland, fixed fast for half a century in the thraldom of confessional statehood, began a rapid transformation. The Catholic church was the first pillar of state to totter - of state, yes, for the church in Ireland had been for centuries as much if not more a political than a spiritual institution; indeed, as we have subsequently discovered, the Holy Ghost, which for long we had thought our reigning spirit, turned out to be a rare bird indeed within these shores. The ecclesiastical power-failure in Ireland was precipitated by media revelations of scandals within the church, scandals which the church authorities had succeeded in covering up for decades even though many people, including many journalists, knew of them. Why the long, forbearing silence over the doings of peccant bishops and paedophile priests, and why suddenly the rush to print? Besides the draconian libel laws under which they were compelled to operate, Irish newspaper editors si...
Amazing, amazing pictures from Hawai
in National Geographic Magazine's Portuguese print edition. And globally, powered by IBM
You can judge a person by their book covers
The French, as usual, have a nifty phrase for it: livre de chevet, meaning the book that says something (very flattering) about you. A survey commissioned by the British Airports Authority confirmed what everyone knew: namely, that when we lay out £20 on a book we are prone to see it as not just nourishment for the mind, but a fashion accessory. Books furnish a room and - if carried ostentatiously in the right places - they decorate one's person as elegantly as anything from Nicole Farhi. In the survey, one in every eight young readers confessed to buying a book "simply to be seen with the latest shortlisted title". Those were the honest ones. Of readers who purchased Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (the most garlanded novel of our time), half confessed to never having finished it. Doubtless many never started. None the less, they may not have thought the purchase price wasted. A good book makes you look good. Publishers are well aware of this. Up to a quarte...
The Chemicals Between Us
The annual Organic Top 40 is Ode's international selection of sustainable products and honest companies. This year's overview is specially devoted to those that seek to limit our exposure to chemicals. This Organic Top 40 is far from complete-and that's good news. Fortunately, it's impossible to provide information on all the options that exist out there for avoiding superfluous chemicals. This overview, compiled in cooperation with The Green Guide ( www.thegreenguide.com ), is intended to inspire you by making you aware of the many products being manufactured around the world in the fight for a toxin-free body. It is meant to encourage you to look for and find more examples, both close to home and on the Internet. We have left food off this list, since otherwise it would be too long. But it's certain that choosing to eat organic foods is the best way of all to make sure chemicals stay outside your body. [Examples I know:] Living room DVD player Sony Sony's DV...
How to Speak Southern Ah: The thing you see with, and the personal pronoun used denoting individuality. "Ah think Ah've got somethin' in mah ah." Ast: To interrogate or inquire, as when a revenue agent seeks information about illegal moonshine stills. "Don't ast me so many question. I makes me mad." Attair: Contradiction used to indicate the specific item desire. "Pass me attair gravy, please" Awl: An amber fluid used to lubricate engines. "Ah like attair car, but it sure does take a lot of awl." Bawl: What water does at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. "That gal cain't even bawl water without burnin' it." Bleeve: Expression of intent or faith. "Ah bleeve we ought to go to church this Sunday." Cent: Plural of cent. "You paid five dollars for that necktie? Ah wouldn't give fiddy cent for it." Co-cola: The soft drin...
Gastronaut :-9
Last Sunday, I was busy doing something unspeakable to a fragolina grape (I leave it to your imagination) when I caught sight of the latest Sainsbury's ad on the telly. Now, normally I wouldn't stop doing anything to a grape, especially a fragolina grape, for an ad, but this was shocking: Jamie Oliver was urging us to be more adventurous with our food, to embrace the unusual, to taste something new every week. Heavens to Betsy, I thought: our best-loved chef and our, um, third-best-loved supermarket combining forces to combat the evil axis of quick 'n' easy recipes and mimsy, rictus-grin, lifelessly cosy meals that have invaded our homes, spreading gustatory ennui. This was ground-breaking stuff. I should declare my hand here: I've been an advocate of adventurous food for years. Call me pretentious, call me old-fashioned - call me what you will - but I've always thought that the alchemical ingredients of sex, drama, shock and laughter can transform a meal an...
How Do They Harvest Caviar?
As of last Friday, the United States no longer permits the importation of fancy beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the ban as part of an effort to protect endangered sturgeon near Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. Do sturgeon die when fishermen take their eggs? Yep. Almost all caviar is harvested from dead fish. Fishermen on the Caspian wait until the mature female sturgeon (which are at least 10 years old) are ready to migrate upstream and lay their eggs. Once caught, the sturgeon will be transferred to a large boat, where workers slit her open and remove her eggs. The caviar is cleaned to prevent spoilage and then packed up; the rest of the fish is sold for flesh. Why can't the fishermen postpone the harvest until the sturgeon lays her eggs? First of all, the eggs would be almost impossible to gather. A female that's ready to spawn might be swollen with pounds of black caviar clumped together on her ovarie...
Bono interview by Mischka Assayas, an excerpt:
«Bush Is a Humble and Funny Guy, While Most of the Members in His Cabinet Are Not Religious Extremists In his conversations with Michka Assayas, the rock star and champion of the poor speaks of previous meetings in the White House and Washington: I was in a photo with President Bush because he’d put $10 billion over three years on the table in a breakthrough increase in foreign assistance called the Millennium Challenge. I had just got back from accompanying the president as he announced this at the Inter-American Development Bank. I kept my face straight as we passed the press corps, but the peace sign was pretty funny. He thought so, too. Keeping his face straight, he whispered, “There goes a front page somewhere: Irish rock star with the Toxic Texan.” I think the swagger and the cowboy boots come with some humour. He is a funny guy. Even on the way to the bank he was taking the piss. The bulletproof motorcade is speeding through the streets of the capital with people waving at the l...
Vivir en el 2005 implica que... 1. Accidentalmente tecleas tu password en el microondas. 2. No has jugado al solitario con cartas verdaderas en años. 3. Tienes una lista de 15 números telefónicos para ubicar a tu familia de sólo 3 miembros. 4. Le envías un e-mail a la persona que se sienta junto a ti. 5. La razón que tienes para no estar en contacto con tu familia es porque no tienen correo electrónico. 6. Te vas a casa después de un largo día de trabajo y cuando suena el timbre de tu teléfono fijo, te preguntas qué te querrán vender, porque ninguno de tus amigos lo usa ya (eso si es que tienes teléfono fijo). 7. Cuando haces llamadas telefónicas desde tu casa, marcas el "0" para que te dé línea. 8. Has estado sentado en el mismo escritorio cuatro años y has trabajado para 3 empresas distintas. O bien has estado en edificios de 4 compañías diferentes y tú siempre trabajabas para la misma. 10. Tu jefe no tiene la habilidad para hacer tu trabajo . 11. Cuando llegas...
Momento de Portugalidade?
Ceuta and Melilla belong to Spain. But they are located in Morocco. Tiny enclaves surrounded by refugees from around the world who have only one goal: Europe. Portuguese journalist Paulo Moura has concerned himself with the fate of these people for over three years. One of his reportages was nominated for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2004. Starting from a forest near Tangier in the north of Morocco where migrant men and women have hidden for years, he described their numerous strategies to leave Africa behind them. And he investigated the motivations of traffickers who deal in human life. In an interview with Christa Hager, Moura describes the changing conditions for the refugees, their desperate plight, the situation of women and the hierarchies among the migrants themselves. Der Standard : In recent years, the EU has let it be known it has plans to create outposts for African refugees in North Africa. Haven't these outposts existed for a long time now? ...
South Park, Cultural Phenomenon
Trey Parker has a confession to make. "I've started confiding in people, other artists mostly, that I hate making 'South Park' and I always have," he said during a recent visit to New York. He continued: "It's super stressful. I'm always miserable. I want to kill myself every week." Mr. Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park," will have that problem for at least the next three years. Over the summer, they signed an agreement with Comedy Central to produce the animated series about four foulmouthed Colorado boys through the end of 2008. (The monetary terms of the deal have not been released.) But the show's enduring success does not mean that making "South Park" has become any easier for its two creators, who met in college at the University of Colorado. Between them, Mr. Stone, 34, and Mr. Parker, 36, write, direct and edit each episode, and they give their voices to most of the main characters. The second h...
On Eisenstein, Bosnia, a Ria Formosa, Beckett, General Sherman (the one, not the sequoia), the Dam of the Three Gorges in China, the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, St. Petersburg (da, lotsa Russians and Russian docs), and a Werner Herzog opus, Grizzly Man . I find this one doc intriguing: A Decent Factory Thomas Balmés 79’ France 2004 Is it possible to make profit and be ethical? Ethical questions are coming more critical for Western companies when they are moving their production to the countries of cheap labour. “A Decent Factory” follows the Ethical Researcher of Nokia company on her trip to China to examine suppliers of Nokia. Clashes between cultures, between ethics and profits, become obvious in this new documentary film by Thomas Balmès. The film follows what happens when a puritan Nordic person with no historical experience of colonialism is facing the realities of globalisation through her own work.
Saramago regresa el 3 de noviembre a las librerías con una obra en la que la muerte decide dejar de matar La nueva obra del Premio Nobel de Literatura luso José Saramago, ' Las intermitencias de la muerte ', saldrá a la venta el próximo 3 de noviembre en América Latina, España y Portugal, informa el diario 'Jornal de Noticias'. La novela, de cerca de 200 páginas, se publicará una semana antes en Brasil , donde los fieles lectores del Nobel 1998 podrán disfrutar de la obra a partir del próximo 27 de octubre, aprovechando así la presencia del escritor en el país suramericano en esas fechas. Saramago narra en su novela el caos que se crea en un país cuando la muerte decide dejar de matar en el último día del año , circunstancia que genera una situación incomprensible para los ciudadanos. Las desconcertados habitantes, que comienzan a desconfiar del histórico sueño de la vida eterna, comienzan a protestar por la anómala situación y exigen medidas urgentes al Gobierno....
Imagine a world without copyright Copyright was once a means to guarantee artists a decent income. Aside from the question as to whether it ever actually functioned as such - most artists never made a penny from the copyright system - we have to admit that copyright serves an altogether different purpose in the contemporary world. It now is the tool that conglomerates in the music, publishing, imaging and movie industries use to control their markets. [From the International Herald Tribune ]
The British Library has made available 14 great books on its website . One of them is a 1508 notebook by Leonardo Da Vinci containing short treatises, notes and drawings of a wide range of subjects from mechanics to the moon. The site allows you to view the original manuscript written in Leonardo's own handwriting.
«Com a chancela de qualidade da BBC...»
Lançamento da Prisvideo e todo um site intitulado Genocide under the Nazis
Crime And Punishment
The rape of more than a million German women by Russians was a strictly guarded postwar taboo. Now the world knows... From The Nation
It is often forgotten how important translators are for the popularity and readability of works by foreign authors
On Monday, in a peculiar awards ceremony in London, six prizes were handed out for literary translation into English. Representing six languages, the prizes were mostly sponsored by the governments of the source-language countries or related institutions. Some of the awards were already well-established. But this year, in addition to awards for translations from French, German, Spanish, Greek and Dutch, a prize for translation from Russian was awarded for the first time. The winner was Oliver Ready, a former arts editor of The Moscow Times, for his work on Yuri Buida's "The Prussian Bride" (Prusskaya Nevesta). The Rossica Translation Prize was established by Academia Rossica, a London-based nonprofit that promotes Russian culture worldwide. The prize, worth ?1,500 for the translator and ?500 for the publisher, was sponsored by a Moscow-based foundation named after former President Boris Yeltsin. Three judges drew up a shortlist of six books published between 2000 and 2...
Wroclaw, Poland
From PostCrossing , my first postcard received :-) yeyyyyyyy (yes, big enough to show the astronomical clock)
Momento de Portugalidade :-)
Inês Fontinha está em lista para a nomeação para Prémio Nobel da Paz. Anúncio dia 7 do corrente no site do Nobel .