February 2012
2 posts
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December 2011
1 post
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“Despite the perpetual rain, the sordid merchants, and the Homeric vulgarity of...”
– Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Marquez Garcia
November 2011
1 post
September 2011
18 posts
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Racism begins at home, too. →
“To be dark in India is not necessarily to be invisible. Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up. The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.
Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin. The matrimonial classifieds every weekend ask for or offer prospective brides who are never described as dark; at best...
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Review of Haruki Murakami's 'The Wind-Up Bird... →
61 essential postmodern reads: an annotated list -... →
Love the little key at the bottom. Isn’t it just seeming that-a-way: like a checklist.
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“I think the West missed a trick, because it adopted — certainly in Africa and...”
– From article, ‘The Seesaw of Power‘ (Dambisa Moyo in the NYT)
A really interesting debate on the future of sociopolitical & (of course) economic power. I have my own little rant about aid & charity, and the way it’s often conducted, here. Feedback of course is very warmly invited. I...
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Salman Rushdie: A Globe of Heaven: the whole story →
salmanrushdie1:
A GLOBE OF HEAVEN by Salman Rushdie
A celestial globe is a portrait not of the earth but of the skies. Globe-makers in many cultures - Persian, Mayan, Indian, European - over the centuries made many such representations of the heavens and of the pictures they saw there, working in papier-mâché,…
A new story from Rushdie - as revealed on Tumblr! Now to some extent I...
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August 2011
31 posts
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“Immigration is, on the whole, good for economies; and right now, rich countries...”
– Immigration is a sensitive subject at the best of times, and this is not one of them. At least our position is clear. (via theeconomist)
Hear, hear.
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On the novel form, & then some →
nerdy lit. blogging - on the novel form, Kundera’s L’arte du roman and why we shouldn’t expect novels to be (directly) politically relevant all the time.
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“That life is a trap we’ve always known: we are born without having asked...”
– The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera. (Getting a bit existential here, but his views on Kafka are so good. It makes me want to read Kafka so badly! This reminds me of the best play-line ever written, from Beckett’s Endgame. “HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?”)
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“But the dream of the soul’s infinity loses its magic when History (or what...”
– The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera
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“In 1957, five years after the UN moved into its headquarters on East 42nd...”
– “What’s the capital of the world?” - from More Intelligent Life.
It’s at moments like these that journalism is at its finest and most beautiful - where poetry and a true concern for zeitgeist meet, I think. “…what makes a city thrive: millions hustling for a...
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Hadley Freeman on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn trial
guardian:
Rape accusations – like abortions, or becoming a single mother – are not something most women do for a lark, squeezing them in between mani-pedis and Pilates or, in the case of Diallo, cleaning another man’s toilet. That Diallo lied about a rape in order to gain asylum in America where she has since been so humiliated by a “sexual encounter” is just one of the bitter ironies...
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“People used to buy bootleg CDs and Japanese imports containing music that none...”
– Vinyl is back. In America vinyl sales are running 39% above last year’s levels. (via theeconomist)
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“In our quest for freedom, we learn to be free. We have to act out our belief in...”
– Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘Liberty’, Reith Lectures 2011. This is something I fervently believe: freedom is more than an ideal; it is an action. It is not only something that can be curtailed, but it is one that can be actively exercised as resistance to that curtailment. And I hope people do.
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smoky jazz-infused parisian corners →
this is majorly inspiring a massive smoky-jazz/musty-swing phase in me right now. expect videos and musical delights.
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“Vergangenheitsbewältigung”
– A great German word - it means “coming to terms with the past” (essentially them saying what we say in one long word as opposed to 6!). But that’s slightly reductive - it misses the layers of nostalgia, redolence, and reaction that it contains. Word found in this Economist...
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The Guardian: QOTD: A crackdown on social media is... →
guardian:
Jeff Jarvis responds to UK prime minister David Cameron, who has said authorities will look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social media sites “when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”:
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what…
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“Spiritual freedom, like moral victory, must be distinguished from a more...”
– Isaiah Berlin
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'The World Through a Plastic Lens' →
Photo-blogpost, feat. Holga pictures from England, Malaysia, India, France & Vietnam!
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ClickityClick! →
To all film camera addicts in KL, Malaysia - there’s an amazing new shop open in Pavilion called ‘The Click Shop’, which not only sells a million cameras in crazy sizes, but also POLAROID FILM; HOLGA FILM; COLOUR SLIDES TO MAKE AMAZING PHOTOS etc etc. It’s a great resource - go check it out!
@DMReporter: Liz Jones in Somalia →
dmreporter:
Surprise! @LizJonesSomalia is a fake! Oh wow. No-way! Pah! Who knew?
About two thirds of you, actually - which is great, because if I’d got 50 negative replies a minute I’d have stopped a long time ago. I’m genuinely delighted that so many people get the joke and totally appreciative of the…