Nepenthe

Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? Do you speak Esperanto? Even if you don't, you've probably heard of the world's most popular artificial language. Spoken by a dedicated international community, this easy-to-learn language has been pushing for global understanding for a century now. This month Esperantists, as people who speak Esperanto are called, are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of their founder, Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof. Zamenhof grew up in a small town in the Russian Empire where the people spoke Belarussian, German, Polish, and Yiddish. He saw all the troubles and misunderstandings this multilingual community had and decided that an international language would be the best way to promote peace. He devised one and published a grammar and dictionary in 1887. The language has no verb declensions, no exceptions to its simple rules, and a uniform way to turn a word from a verb to a noun to an adjective. Called Esperanto ("One who hopes"), it soo...

A Telegraph gallery

The Listen to Africa expedition is a two year journey by bicycle to record some of the sounds of Africa – from oral histories and music to soundscapes and wildlife; recording and publishing sound seems an appropriate way to communicate from a continent that has so much to say and is so rarely heard outside of its own borders. While we have no fixed ideas about the subject matter, the Listen to Africa website will inevitably reflect the interests of the team: human rights and humanitarian welfare, wildlife and environmental protection, music and citizen journalism. We are also keen to work with African people and groups along the way, especially in local and community radio, podcasting and blogging. If you work in these areas, and if you’re interested in working with us, we’d love to hear from you . Listen to Africa isn’t a charity; the expedition will be self funded, partly through commissions. Nor are we raising money for charity. We will though be visiting people and grassroo...

[Illustration: André Carrilho ] Roger Phaedo had not spoken to anyone for ten years. He confined himself to his Brooklyn apartment, obsessively translating and retranslating the same short passage from Rousseau’s “Confessions.” A decade earlier, a mobster named Charlie Dark had attacked Phaedo and his wife. Phaedo was beaten to within an inch of his life; Mary was set on fire, and survived just five days in the I.C.U. By day, Phaedo translated; at night, he worked on a novel about Charlie Dark, who was never convicted. Then Phaedo drank himself senseless with Scotch. He drank to drown his sorrows, to dull his senses, to forget himself. The phone rang, but he never answered it. Sometimes, Holly Steiner, an attractive woman across the hall, would silently enter his bedroom, and expertly rouse him from his stupor. At other times, he made use of the services of Aleesha, a local hooker. Aleesha’s eyes were too hard, too cynical, and they bore the look of someone who had already seen t...

2009 has proved that rumours of the death of the short story – so often forecast that almost every review of almost every collection seems duty-bound to repeat and thus propagate it – are greatly exaggerated. The consensus running through the end-of-year reviews is that it's been a vintage year for short fiction, and I agree. I come here to praise the short story, not to bury it. Starting at the top, one of the world's greatest living short story specialists, and one of its greatest writers full-stop, took the 2009 Man Booker International prize . Canadian Alice Munro published her 14th collection, Too Much Happiness , earlier this year. A powerful grouping of stories more violent than her normal work, it shows her enormous talent remains undiminished as she nears her ninth decade. Mavis Gallant is already well into hers, and while no new work is forthcoming an edition of her previously uncollected stories, The Cost of Living, has just been published. As for the brand new, t...

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Uma ideia Casa das Letras

Rui Zink e os «Contos de Vampiros» Histórias de vampiros com a particularidade de serem contadas por autores portugueses, é a proposta de Contos de Vampiros, livro coordenado por Pedro Sena-Lino e editado pela Porto Editora. Miguel Esteves Cardoso, José Eduardo Agualusa, Hélia Correia e Rui Zink, entre outros, aceitaram o desafio. «Nove terríveis contos de vampiros, originais e assinados por autores portugueses contemporâneos directamente para os seus maiores receios de leitores. A partir do momento em que iniciar a leitura, a responsabilidade é inteiramente sua», lê-se na contracapa. A NS’ correu o risco e conversou com Rui Zink, autor do conto «O Monstro». O que nos conta? É a história de um homem que, num trivial mas doloroso processo de divórcio, passa a odiar as mulheres e descobre que a sua é um vampiro.  A moda dos vampiros voltou? Os vampiros são mortos-vivos, não é? Pode parecer que se foram embora, mas acabam sempre andando por aí, quais Santana Lopes. Como se e...

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand; The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand; The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea; And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee. They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day; But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay. We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout, And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about. All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North; All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth; All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread, For very life and nature we tacked from head to head. We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared; But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard: So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye. ...

Nietzsche's idea of eternal return has perplexed many philosophers. You, though, will merely find my eternal returning to the idea of eternal return over the coming pages merely annoying. But is not annoyance the heaviest of human burdens? Yet does not the absence of annoyance, the lightness, confer the unbearable burden of insignificance? Parmenides would have posed this question in the sixth century had he been an east European intellectual intent on grinding his readers' noses into the superficiality of his thought. Which then shall we choose? Lightness or heaviness? Probably neither, for even the stupidest person can see this is a false dichotomy, that both ideas are equally invalid. If something only happens once, could not that make it more, not less, significant? But these counter-revolutionary thoughts have no place in the Prague Spring of 1968, so let's continue with the novel. I have been thinking about Tomas, the Czech surgeon, for some years but only in the l...

The Life & Love of Trees -- Trees are vital—without them we simply wouldn't be here. Not only essential, they have been an inspiration throughout our history. In breathtaking photographs and stories we are taken on a journey from the boreal forest at the edge of the Arctic to the rainforests girdling the planet; from ancient bristlecones to fresh-leaved seedlings; from the charming and familiar to the scary and rare. An elegantly written and highly accessible text is complemented by an extraordinary collection of images created by some of the world's leading nature photographers. Lewis Blackwell is recognized as a leader in creative and photographic practice. For almost a decade he led the creative development of the world’s largest photo agency, Getty Images, and previously he was widely regarded as a trend watcher and innovator with his work as editor/publisher of the prestigious title Creative Review . He is a visiting professor at the School of Creative Leadership at...

As a collector of words, here's my list of the best the decade had to offer, taken from my book, The Wonder of Whiffling. These words and expressions were all coined in particular parts of the world in specific years: they're principally slang and jargon; catching on, but still waiting to be formalised into our dictionaries. 2000 witches' knickers (Ireland) shopping bags caught in trees, flapping in the wind get corrugated ankles (UK campus) to get drunk glomp (US campus) to jump and hug someone from behind drink-link (UK campus) a cash dispenser 2001 goat heaven (Caribbean) a state of unfettered freedom, enjoyment, indulgence evoking both bliss and excess 2002 cuddle puddle (New York) a heap of exhausted ravers trout pout (UK) the effects of collagen injections that produce prominent, comically oversized lips resembling those of a dead fish urbeach (US) an urban beach (a trend that began with the Paris Plage 2002) barbecue stopper (Australia) an issue...

Um sismo de intensidade 6.0 na escala de Richter  e de intensidade de 5.0 na escala de Mercalli fez-se sentir à 01h37 de quinta-feira no litoral de Portugal Continental e na Madeira . O tremor de terra teve uma duração aproximada de três minutos Seguiram-se  16 réplicas de menor magnitude, entre os 1.9 e os 2.6 na escala de Richter, a última registada às 03h47, segundo os dados do Serviço de Sismologia do Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia . De acordo com o United States Geological Survey (USGS), o epicentro do sismo de maior intensidade situou-se no oceano Atlântico (Oeste de Gibraltar), a 185 km de Faro , 265 km de Lisboa e 295 km de Évora . Sentido em praticamente todo o país, não há registo de quaisquer danos materiais ou humanos, segundo informação disponibilizada ao i pela Central do Regimento de Sapadores Bombeiros , em Lisboa, a unidade da Protecção Civil que atende o número de emergência (117). A Protecção Civil de Faro – capital de d...

London Calling was “an emergency broadcast from rock’s Last Angry Band, serving notice that Armageddon was nigh, Western society was rotten at the core, and Rock & Roll needed a good boot in the rear,” RS wrote at the end of the 1980s. In our 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, we call the LP — which ranked Number Eight — “19 songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness.” Rolling Stone

Swedish doctors will soon be able to prescribe singing lessons, pottery classes or art appreciation as part of a new public healthcare initiative SWEDEN IS testing a new approach – Culture by Prescription – in a state-funded pilot project to reduce sickness benefit, doctors’ visits and the “pill-popping” associated with long-term depression and stress-related illness. In the same week that the Swedish government proudly announced a taxpayer-funded investment in this less traditional form of rehabilitation, Swedes were shocked to learn that hospitals in their country are increasingly turning to electroshock therapy (ECT) to treat depression. A Swedish Television Network (SVT) investigation showed that the number of ECT treatments carried out per year in the country has risen sharply since 2000 from 18,000 to 45,000. With a reputation abroad for sometimes being cold and reserved, some psychologists believe that a national obsession with self-control and getting on with life is takin...

Cinematical Seven: Kids Movies that won't drive you crazy ;)

 

photo: Shane Murphy m Can there ever have been a more appropriate memorial to a writer than the new Samuel Beckett bridge that opened in Dublin on 10 December? The several thousand tons of steel deck and pylon were fabricated in a factory in Rotterdam, then carried across the sea by a barge labouring in the churning swell. A stately bridge carried over the turbulent water by a boat? Here's a conceit so surreal it makes Waiting for Godot read like a cereal packet. The designer was Santiago Calatrava, the Valencian architect who has made expressionist bridges and weirdly torqued structures a trademark. Never mind that Beckett made a virtue of muted understatement. The writer once said "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness". Calatrava does not think that way. He's in the landmark business. This is Calatrava's second bridge in Dublin – the first was dedicated to James Joyce and opened in 2003. The new Beckett Bridge is technically...

With savage winds whistling off the Angara River and a temperature nudging minus 40, Irkutsk at the dog end of winter is not a hard city to want to leave. It's not just that it's a world drained of colour. Nor is it the grey Soviet-era housing blocks and the grey pallid citizens scuttling to get inside housing blocks out of the cold. Nor is it even the nicotine shroud hanging over the city from the surrounding industry. Though God knows these things combined would test even the most sanguine of men. No, what really hits you is the sense of isolation. Two thousand miles west of the Pacific, 3,200 miles east of Moscow and south of nowhere, stranded in Russia 's great empty quarter, the Siberian city feels as if it is being punished, in exile. I had been there just 24 hours, but that was plenty. Early the next morning, I headed east. Also in the minibus were a local guide, Alex, and five friends on holiday from Moscow. We rolled across the steppe. Mile after mile of flat, ...

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OPEN A BOOK! THE WORLD AWAITS YOU! Book-opoly allows players a glimpse inside the many worlds of classic literature. It’s a traditional property trading game where players buy, sell and trade their way to fun with family and friends. Interesting facts about the books and the authors are printed on the back of each property deed. Roll the dice and advance to Read. Collect Bookstores and trade them in for Libraries. Who knows! You may soon be elected President of the Book Club…or you may be tossed out of the game for three turns and sent to WATCH TV!

What a strange volte face there has been in the ­attitudes of Hollywood studios in the last 30 years. Originally, JRR Tolkien 's tales of Middle Earth was a ­literary series which producers struggled to squeeze into uncomfortably curtailed celluloid confines. These days, they're being encouraged to expand far beyond their natural boundaries. This week, Th e Hobbit's writer and producer Peter Jackson revealed the ramifications of the decision he and director Guillermo del Toro made earlier this year to scrap their initial plan for the two-film project. There will be no Saruman, no Aragorn and no Gimli the dwarf, all stalwarts of Lord of the Rings who nevertheless do not feature in JRR Tolkien's earlier tome. "Gandalf, being a 2,000-year-old wizard, is still around and plays a major role in The Hobbit , and we're having Ian McKellen reprise," said Jackson. "There's a couple of other characters: Elrond, who was played by Hugo Weaving [in the or...