It’s pricey, but Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Review: Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler looks interesting to me. The original link is from Conservative blog for peace, where the posted muses on the possible fate of the English language. Me, I enjoyed the moment in Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire when an old Polish (I think it was) photographic artist stated plainly something like, “English? Nobody writes poetry in English anymore.” Sterling writes that the poetry fell out of English when it (futuristically) really became the global language, and from then on people turned to their vernaculars …
Month: March 2005
Inhumanity
Okay, I have no idea why suing Caterpillar makes any sense, even in context, but this makes me mad. When the Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid attacked home demolitions being conducted by the army, what did his opponents do? They complained that he was comparing the Israeli Army to the Nazis. “The demolition of houses in Rafah must stop,” he said. “It is not humane, not Jewish, and causes us grave damage in the world. At the end of the day, they’ll kick us out of the United Nations, try those responsible in the international court in The Hague, and …
Hub of Asia?
This is a rant. You may wish to skip it, unless you want to see yet another example of a ranting, furious foreign who was offended by a widely accepted practice in Korea.
Is Hate Really All Bad?
I love smackdowns. Textual ones, anyway. Adam Lipscomb used to excel at them on an online mailing list where I first met him (ah, the sordid little story of that… ah, never mind). Actually, he still excels at them. I take immense pleasure in Adam’s smackdowns because basically, he and I have the same politics. The difference is that in the case of a disagreement with, say, you, I’ll just calmly unpack all the facts and implications that prove you’re an idiot, at length, tirelessly. (Well, tiredly too, sometimes.) Adam, he does things a little differently. Differently like a butcher …
Oh-oh…
Strange how a tiny sound can bring back a whole moment, a whole person to mind, isn’t it? I don’t know why I am listening to Tori Amos right now—yes, I’ll admit I am, but clarify that I’m not at all depressed. Perhaps it was my lengthy writing about apostasy in the previous post, but something put me in the mood. The album is Under The Pink and the moment and person who came to mind was an old classmate and friend, Chiraz.