A friend sends the lyrics to Randy Newman’s new song, “In Defense of Our Country.” There is a YouTube video of it, but rather than embed that here, I direct you to the Gumbo Pages where it is already embedded. The lagniappe is, you get to meet a new New Orleans blog. I’d like to … More Randy Newman
It appears that the AAUP will recommend censure for Loyola University of New Orleans, for violations of academic freedom and tenure in the wake of Katrina. Read all about it. It would be ideal if the Administration awoke now, rather than later. Axé.
My ceramics class had its first midterm-like event today. This involved showing our work in progress and discussing it, both technically and thematically. Conversation turned to body modification and its relationship to self-fashioning. My own body modifies itself automatically. Right now it is traveling backwards in time due to all the lifting, jumping, and throwing … More Body Modification, Self-Fashioning
Many people liked Milan Kundera’s “Die Weltliteratur” (The New Yorker, 8 January 2007, 28-35), but I was slightly bored – perhaps because I am so familiar with the issues this piece raises, but also because it seemed so provincial, limited as it is to Europe and to a few very classic authors. I do realize … More Die Weltliteratur
The sun came out and we opened all the windows. Music poured out onto the veranda where we ate greens and smothered chicken, and then walked down to the parade. Night parades are magical. Torches gleam, horses prance, and masked riders float just below the tree branches. Plumes quiver on the high hats of the … More Magical
I. It is said that my great-great-grandfather had a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and corresponded with Marx, and that this correspondence is archived in the Kremlin. That was long ago, before his school in St. Petersburg was closed by the Czar, and the family was saved from deportation to Siberia by a friend of my … More A Middle Class Story
“El secreto del arte es tener duende. El duende es el espíritu escondido de la España sin consuelo. Todo lo que tiene sonidos negros tiene duende. Estos sonidos son el misterio…” The secret of [this] art is to have duende. Duende is the hidden spirit of the inconsolable [part of] Spain. All that has black … More La señorita del abanico
I am too intellectual, it is said. That is a problem because the intellectual can never be personal, and the personal is what counts. I am hiding my face, and I ought to reveal myself. I disagree. It was my original intention in these pages to be as ethereal as Le Colonel Chabert. Cybernetic words … More On Masks
I was going to post about Anna Nicole Smith, and then did not because I decided everyone else would. But Colorado Bob says, let us all contact media and tell them to stop speaking badly of her. I agree. Bob gives these addresses at MSNBC: dabrams@msnbc.com KOlbermann@msnbc.com countdown@msnbc.com letters@msnbc.com viewerservices@msnbc.com There is further information on … More Anna Nicole Smith
Whiteman: I would like to exhibit immature behavior in the following four ways, and I would like you to participate. PZ: No. Whiteman: You disappoint me. I thought you were a culture-crosser. I am from another culture, so you should learn from me and do as I say. PZ: Not this time, sorry. Whiteman: But … More And Yet Again, the Whiteman
coldhearted scientist وداد 