Nepenthe

On Sunday, Rachel Carson would have been a hundred years old. This got me thinking about a couple of books just out, written with the same indignant passion that drove Carson. It can be agreed that Carson’s “Silent Spring,” which sparked environmentalism, has had a great impact on the world. What kind of impact, though, can a book have like Vincent Bugliosi’s “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”? Mr. Bugliosi spent 22 years building what will likely be the most definitive case possible that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The case required 1600 pages — forget doorstop; his new one could be practically a whole door. Because a book of that length will be read cover to cover almost exclusively by people utterly obsessed with the assassination, in its wake, the suspicion among much of the general public that Kennedy’s murder was driven by a conspiracy will stay put. Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK” will always be a more vivid and memorable statement...

The Catholic Church has ruled that, contrary to previous church doctrine, unbaptized children do not spend time in limbo until the End of Days. Here are other doctrine decisions the church has made recently. Lifted ban on having sex with the lights on and your eyes open Swiffer® officially validated as a miracle Accepted the Freemasons' softball league invitation Acknowledged that the Spanish Inquisition probably could've been handled better Celibacy for clergy now optional, but those who remain chaste eligible for fantastic monthly prizes Size of collection plates increased Habits may now be tie-dyed or carry the logo of a nun's favorite sports team Reconsidered belief that there's an invisible, all-powerful man in the sky who created everything

The Greeks understood that comedy (the gods' view of life) is superior to tragedy (the merely human). But since the middle ages, western culture has overvalued the tragic and undervalued the comic. This is why fiction today is so full of anxiety and suffering. It's time writers got back to the serious business of making us laugh. (...)

Romania, during the final days of Communism. Otilia and Gabita are students; they share a room in a hall of residence in Bucharest. Gabita is pregnant. The girls arrange to meet a certain Mr. Bebe in a cheap hotel. He will perform Gabita’s illegal abortion. But Mr. Bebe refuses their money and demands to be paid in kind. Cannes Festival IMDb

Paul Newman says he's given up acting. "I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to," Newman, 82, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday. "You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed book for me." Newman, star of films such as "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," added: "I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough." He has other plates spinning. Newman plans to focus on the Dressing Room, his new organic restaurant in Westport, Conn., and his Hole in the Wall Gang camps for critically ill children. His Newman's Own brand of dressings, pasta sauces, popcorn and salsa has raised more than $200 million for charities. Newman, who won an Oscar for his leading role in 1986's "The Color of Money," was last seen _ or heard, rather _ as the voice of Doc Hudson in the 200...

The Rainforest Alliance raises a glass to Willamette Valley Vineyards, which is set to become the first winery in the world to use cork stoppers harvested from responsibly managed forestlands certified by the Rainforest Alliance to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. The winery, based in Turner, Oregon, was recently awarded FSC Chain-of-Custody certification by the Rainforest Alliance. The Rainforest Alliance was responsible for awarding FSC certification at each step throughout the process, beginning with certifying the worlds first cork forest in 2005, later certifying the cork manufacturing facilities, owned by the Amorim Group, and now certifying Willamette Valley Vineyards to help achieve this global first in the wine industry. Carlos de Jesus, marketing and communications director for Amorim & Irmaos S.A., the world’s largest cork processor and the first FSC-certified cork company, congratulated Willamette on its certification. “We would like to emphasi...

O Escritor Invisível - A Tradução Tal Como é Vista Pelos Tradutores Portugueses, de Jorge Almeida e Pinho, um ensaio que pretende enquadrar a actividade da tradução em Portugal e constituir-se como uma compilação de elementos para-textuais relativos ao processo de tradução, será lançado no próximo dia 25 de Outubro, quarta-feira, pelas 17.00h, na Sala de Reuniões, Piso 2, da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. A apresentação da obra estará a cargo do Professor Doutor Gomes da Torre. Jorge Almeida e Pinho é docente do Ensino Superior desde 1991, leccionando várias disciplinas na área da Tradução e Interpretação no ISAI, Porto. Tendo concluído, em 1998, o primeiro mestrado português em Estudos de Tradução, é, actualmente, director da Licenciatura em Tradução e Interpretação do ISAG, director da revista científica Génesis e um dos representantes eleitos pelas instituições de Ensino Superior no Conselho Nacional de Tradução, para além de manter actividade regular de...

Early on in the 2004 supernatural Russian thriller Night Watch , the protagonist, trying to prevent a witch from casting a spell on his unborn child, yells at the top of his lungs in protest. For English-speaking audiences, the subtitles do more than just translate the literal meaning: the words "no" and "stop" with three exclamation points are shown on different parts of the screen in large, moving letters. In another scene, as a swimming character hears a voice in his head causing his nose to bleed, the words "come to me," appear in red letters that dissolve like blood in the pool. "We discussed with the studio [Fox Searchlight] how to make the movie more entertaining for English-speaking audiences," says director Timur Bekmambetov of the first in his three-part epic trilogy. "We thought of the subtitles as another character in the film, another way to tell the story." Times have certainly changed since the frustrating days of unrel...

The 18th-century painter and calligrapher Ike Taiga was something like the Pablo Picasso of Japan. The comparison, while superficial, is hard to resist as you wade into the dazzling, almost daunting retrospective of Taiga’s work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and begin to absorb the many sides of his achievement.

I am just theologian enough to know that "Give us this day our daily bread" carries metaphorical meaning. But it has a literal sense too, of course, and one that would have made sense to every citizen of a wheat-eating culture until very recently, when the idea of daily baking all but disappeared. This book gives an account of the painful 20th-century demise of perhaps the world's greatest baking tradition, that of the French, and then its sweet and unlikely second rising toward the century's end. Along the way, Steven Laurence Kaplan raises powerfully important questions about the proper scale for an economy—about how big is too big, and how small is impractical—that go well beyond both France and bread. Indeed, Kaplan's book spurs thought about what a postmodern economy might look like, and whether it might be possible for it to deliver satisfaction instead of simply piles of stuff. The book doesn't raise these questions explicitly. Alas, it is either badl...

A wolf and a donkey share a cage in the northwestern town of Patok in Albania, about 40 km (25 miles) from capital the Tirana, May 9, 2007. The donkey was brought into the enclosure to be fed to the wolf, which was caught in the northern Albanian mountains four months ago. The animals have since become attached to each other, cohabitating in the cage for the last 10 days, and attracting curious villagers and local media. [Reuters]. Portanto, digo eu, as gentes que trataram disto podem estar a fazer mais dinheiro com o espectáculo que nem previram nem merecem, do que fariam só com o lobo, sabe-se lá em quê.

A Frans Lanting project.

In the summer of 1936 Harpo Marx, the beaming, curly-headed buffoon and the most anarchic of the Marx brothers, made a visit to Europe. One of his admirers was the Surrealist painter Salvador DalÍ, who considered the Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers to be the “summit of the evolution of comic cinema”. DalÍ travelled to Paris specially to meet Harpo at a party. The meeting was a success and the two men, both wildly flamboyant showmen, remained in touch. A few months later, DalÍ sent Harpo a handmade Christmas present. It was a harp, decorated with gilded ornamentation, but with barbed wire for strings and teaspoons and forks for tuning knobs, all wrapped in Cellophane. Harpo was delighted had a photograph taken of himself seemingly playing it, with bandages on his fingers as if he had injured himself while plucking the strings. This was sent to DalÍ with an invitation to visit him if he were ever in California. Within a month DalÍ was in Hollywood, where he announced...

At the height of European imperialism, exotic postcards were an enticement to far-off lands that, thanks to the colonialists who sent them, would never be the same again. By Paul Theroux It seems as natural to dream of the exotic as to dream at all. We are born with an impulse to wonder and, eventually, to yearn for the world before the Fall in which we may be the solitary Crusoe, the guiltless adventurer, the princeling with a jewelled sword. Because the dream's perfection suggests that it is unattainable, man searches for proof that it is not. And whatever fantasy one has reveals one's peculiar hunger. It might be very simple: the sunny island paradise. Or it might be complex: the oriental kingdom of silks and plumes. However ornate or imposing the architecture, the monuments, the palaces, they are the background; in the foreground of the exotic are people. Much of the lure of what we know of the exotic springs from photographs. In the beginning, photo-graphy was the proof th...

Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits. “I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition. The site was critical too—and Archer found the perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build the structure into the wall?” Not only did the wall anchor the cottage, but stones from another section were used in the cottages construction. “It literally grew out of the site,” Archer said. Perhaps stranger things have happened in Tolkien’s world, but few houses in this one go to such lengths to capture a fictional fantasy in the context of archite...

The BBC is to screen Ewan McGregor's latest motorcycle odyssey, Long Way Down . Actor McGregor and friend Charley Boorman will travel 15,000 miles from John O'Groats to the southernmost tip of South Africa. Their trip will be turned into a six-part documentary series for BBC2. Long Way Down is the follow-up to Long Way Round , which saw them circumnavigate the globe and was screened on Sky One. McGregor, 36, said: " Long Way Round changed us all - it bonded us together and made our dreams come true - and it's not often something like that happens. So to be given another opportunity to do something like this is amazing." The series raised over £100,000 for Unicef and Long Way Down will also raise money for charity. It will last three months and take in 20 countries. Most of the journey will be spent in Africa and McGregor hopes to highlight the continent's mounting problems of Aids, hunger and malaria. McGregor and Boorman set off this weeken...

Artists Performing in Sydney Crowded House Jack Johnson Wolfmother The John Butler Trio Missy Higgins Eskimo Joe Sneaky Sound System Paul Kelly Ghostwriters Toni Collette & the Finish Blue King Brown The U.S. show will feature live on stage: Kanye West AFI Kelly Clarkson Akon KT Tunstall Alicia Keys Ludacris Bon Jovi Sheryl Crow Melissa Etheridge Dave Matthews Band Rihanna Fall Out Boy Roger Waters Smashing Pumpkins John Mayer The Police Live on stage in London will be: Beastie Boys Black Eyed Peas Bloc Party Corinne ...

As a 13-year-old fighting in Sierra Leone's civil war, Ishmael Beah was forced into a drug-fuelled life of bloodletting and revenge. Now, having fled to America, he has written a cathartic - and bestselling - memoir. A Long Way Gone is by any measure an extraordinary book, by turns intensely harrowing - he spares nothing in his descriptions of the horrors of war and his own role in it - and deeply inspiring. If there is one abiding theme it is this: it is easy to cross the line from humanity to barbarity; far, far harder to cross back. Interview and Extract from The Telegraph

O Processo 1. Um espécime humano é preservado temporariamente para parar a decomposição. 2. O espécime é dissecado para apresentar sistemas e estruturas específicos. 3. A dissecção é imersa em acetona para evacuar toda a água do corpo. 4. Desidratado, o espécime é colocado num banho de polímero de silicone e selado numa câmara em vácuo. 5. Em vácuo, a acetona sai do corpo em forma de gás e é substituída pelo polímero de silicone até ao mais profundo nível celular. 6. O polímero de silicone endurece com a cura. 7. O espécime preservado permanentemente, com a estrutura intacta, está preparado para ser examinado e estudado. De Maio a Setembro de 2007 Palácio dos Condes do Restelo - Rua da Escola Politécnica, N. 42, 1250-102 Lisboa Coordenadas GPS : 38º 43' 02.27" N 9º 08' 59.47" W

A few years after leaving MI6 I bumped into a young woman who had worked with me on a particular mission. We had only a few moments of snatched conversation on a crowded platform, but when I asked her how the job was going she told me that she had left the service. I looked surprised because she had been very good at the job, but she simply shrugged and said: “Well, it’s just a game for big boys, really, isn’t it?” This is part of the problem for the Intelligence Services in attracting female applicants today. There is a sense of Boys’ Own adventure which first interests many men (including myself) in the idea of working as a spy. For women, this is often not enough – and there are other problems as well. MI5 has already had two female director-generals (Stella Rimington and Eliza Manningham-Buller) , but there has been no sign of a woman at MI6 even at director level, the grade below chief. This is partly because MI6 works overseas, where all the usual problems of being a...

As answers to obesity go, the idea two American scientists dreamed up could transform our notion of work. Instead of having the overweight walk to walk, the pair have designed a desk that enables them to walk at work. The walking desk - or "vertical workstation" as the researchers prefer to call it - is fixed to a treadmill which enables the office worker to kill two birds with one stone - send emails, check invoices and write reports and burn calories at the same time. Professor James Levine and Jennifer Miller of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, say using their device for a couple of hours a day could help obese employees shed up to 30kg in a year. They tested the contraption on 15 people who had sedentary jobs and never did any exercise. The participants set the speed of the treadmill themselves, and carried on working at the computer fixed above it on a frame with two adjustable arms. One arm carried the screen, the other the keyboard and mouse. The participants b...

Mati the blacksmith was worried. A Romanian gypsy, he was usually in lively good humour, but today he was distraught. Recently men from a television company had come to his village, offering to install satellite dishes for free, and his daughter had taken one. Now he had been sent a bill for renting it, and he didn't have the money - or a television. His daughter had gone to work in Hungary and taken it with her. So he feared the worst. Would the police take him to prison? His neighbour, a local councillor, read the contract and reassured him. All he had to do was tell the company he didn't want the satellite dish, and they would take it away. Mati beamed. Life was simple again. The incident a couple of weeks ago highlighted a clash of cultures deep in the rural heart of Romania, where a way of life that has been virtually unchanged for centuries is struggling to adapt to the demands of a new age. In Mati's village, five miles from the nearest paved road, rush hour begins s...