October 2010
2 posts
2 tags
2 tags
August 2010
1 post
May 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Language and Extinction
In recent years, much has been made of the idea that humans possess a “language instinct”: infants easily learn to speak because all languages follow a set of rules built into their brains. While there is no doubt that human thinking influences the form that language takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, language in turn shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more...
April 2010
0 posts
“I don’t hate people, I just feel better when they aren’t around.”
– Bukowski
January 2010
1 post
1 tag
December 2009
1 post
3 tags
November 2009
4 posts
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Did Gauguin Cut Off Van Gogh's ear? →
As that story goes, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear with a straight razor after he and Gauguin parted. But Kaufmann and his colleague, Rita Wildegans, dug through original police records, biographical material and van Gogh’s letters. They concluded that Gauguin, an accomplished fencer, attacked van Gogh with a rapier after van Gogh threw a wine glass at him. “The traditional...
1 tag
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October 2009
2 posts
“One has to be able at every moment to place one’s hand on the earth like...”
– Rilke, Letters on Cezanne
September 2009
4 posts
WatchA Leaf.
WatchBrass
WatchPlastic
July 2009
8 posts
1 tag
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
WatchCivilization by Marco Brambilla
2 tags
June 2009
1 post
3 tags
Self Promotion →
I’ve a new story in Perfect Eight magazine, Issue #4, on page 47.
May 2009
4 posts
1 tag
1 tag
“Thus the poor, the unemployed, the homeless and wage less represent first of all...”
– Antonio Negri, The poor: a threatening and indispensable enemy.
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“What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.”
– Roland Barthes
April 2009
5 posts
Beyonce Sends Her Look-a-like For Personal Art... →
VIENNA (AFP) – US pop star Beyonce has angered a high-brow art museum in Vienna by sending a look-a-like to her own special personal tour of the museum, while she went shopping, according to newspaper reports here Wednesday. Tabloid dailies Oesterreich and Heute said the R&B diva had been due to visit the Albertina, one of the Austrian capital’s most famous museums which attracts around...
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“I experience less of the good I expected from writing these Memoirs; the...”
– “Lacenaire”, The Memoirs of Lacenaire, translated by Philip John Stead.
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China Seeks To Get Rid of Rare Names →
For Ma Cheng and millions of others, Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one,...
March 2009
9 posts
2 tags
French Sony Workers Hold Boss Hostage →
“Taking a boss hostage is becoming an increasingly common protest gesture in France. Last year, the English boss of a car-parts factory in eastern France was held for 48 hours in his office, sleeping on a massage table and being provided with blankets and sandwiches. He said he felt like “a prisoner in Alcatraz”.
In another incident last year, police stormed an ice-cream...
Madagascar troops refuse to fire on protestors →
“On Sunday the depth of the crisis and the level of social discontent in Madagascar directly affected a group of soldiers of the Army Corps of Personnel and Administrative and Technical Services who had been ordered to move against protestors on the streets. The soldiers refused to obey orders to fire on the people and repress anti-government demonstrators. Following this, they then...
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“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can...”
– Schopenhauer
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Shepard Fairey Threatens Trademark Infringement →
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“It is not enough that I should succeed - others should fail.”
– David Merrick
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France Refuses Sale of Debord's Personal Archives... →
“The French state has refused to allow the personal archives of the founder of the Situationist International to leave France. The injunction of 29 January [2009], signed by the Minister of Culture, Christine Albane, and published on Thursday in The Official Journal, stipulates that the archives assume “a great importance for the history of the ideas of the second half of the 20th...
February 2009
8 posts
3 tags
