a portrait of the artist as a young man
Nov 06
Nov 05
“For the past ten years, Luis Soriano, a teacher in the small town of La Gloria, Colombia, has been following the same ritual. Every week-end, he gathers his donkey in front of his house, straps on the “Biblioburro” pouches to its back, and loads them with a selection of books from the eclectic collection he has acquired over the years. Off on his mobile library, he travels into the hills and through the fields to the villages beyond where children await his visits impatiently. He firmly believes that bringing books to people who don’t have access to them can improve the country and open up possibilities for the future generation of Colombia.”
[via Alan Jacobs at TextPatterns]
Nov 03
My old roommate sent me a picture of what may be the one of the better Halloween costumes of this season: Osama Bin Latte
“ … those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians will do well to be extremely reticent on the subject. Indeed, it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn’t one, either in faith or morals. Where faith is concerned, very few of us have the right to say more than—to vary a saying of Simone Weil’s—“I believe in a God who is like the True God in everything except that he does not exist, for I have not yet reached the point where God exists.” As for loving and forgiving our enemies, the less we say about that the better. Our lack of faith and love are facts we have to acknowledge, but we shall not improve either by a morbid and essentially narcissistic moaning over our deficiencies. Let us rather ask, with caution and humour—given our time and place and talents, what, if our faith and love were perfect, would we be glad to find it obvious to do?
— W.H. Auden [via luke]
Nov 02
two to read (shameless self-promotion)
P.E. Logan’s review of How I Became a Famous Novelist
&
The lost Halloweens of one writer’s fundamentalist childhood.
It’s National Novel Writing Month.
Oct 30
![The “Oasis of the Seas,” the world’s new largest cruise ship was recently christened. If you have read David Foster Wallace’s essay, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” this should strike you as horrific.
[via Dagens Nyheter]](http://8.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kscr85PzQc1qz4foko1_500.gif)
The “Oasis of the Seas,” the world’s new largest cruise ship was recently christened. If you have read David Foster Wallace’s essay, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” this should strike you as horrific.
[via Dagens Nyheter]
The New Yorker: Last-Minute Costume Ideas
Halloween is tomorrow, but you don’t have a costume? Here are some classy, simple ideas you can whip up in a jiffy.
- A bug: Cover yourself in dead bugs.
- Scary dog: Get a scary dog from the pound and let it loose in a party. The next day, tell everyone that the dog was you.
- A fireman: Light yourself on fire. Ta-da! It is Fire Man! (Or Fire Woman, depending on you.)
- Your twin brother or sister: You don’t even need to have a twin to pull this one off. No one will know if you’re lying.
- A radiator: Get in a metal box. Light yourself on fire. Voila! Radiator Man!
And remember kids, never take candy from strangers, except for Halloween, when that is all that you do.
[here]
“ Rand’s particular intellectual contribution, the thing that makes her so popular and so American, is the way she managed to mass market elitism — to convince so many people, especially young people, that they could be geniuses without being in any concrete way distinguished. Or, rather, that they could distinguish themselves by the ardor of their commitment to Rand’s teaching. The very form of her novels makes the same point: they are as cartoonish and sexed-up as any best seller, yet they are constantly suggesting that the reader who appreciates them is one of the elect.
— Adam Kirsch on Ayn Rand
Oct 29
» Rock and Roll Suicide
JM Harper on Kanye West’s We Were Once a Fairytale
Oct 28
![This poster was created for the Illinois Statewide Library Project. It shows a boy holding a book in his raised hand: “September. Back to work. Back to school. Back to books.” Illustrated between 1936 and 1940 by the WPA Art Project in Chicago. [via Vintagraph]](http://8.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks924wpIw81qz4foko1_500.jpg)
This poster was created for the Illinois Statewide Library Project. It shows a boy holding a book in his raised hand: “September. Back to work. Back to school. Back to books.” Illustrated between 1936 and 1940 by the WPA Art Project in Chicago. [via Vintagraph]
![This is one of the most unusual motorcycles I’ve seen in a long time: it’s a ‘Killinger und Freund’ built in 1935 in Munich, Germany. The art deco styling is obviously eye-catching, but it’s hiding something even more interesting: this machine has a driven front wheel, like the Rokon. And underneath that huge front fender is the engine itself. The motor is a sizeable 600 cc two-stroke triple—or perhaps three one-cylinder engines joined together. Yet the bike was reportedly very light, at just 135 kg. There’s obviously a story behind this picture too: is the soldier an American who found the bike in the dying days of the war, and posed for a picture taken by a colleague? The Allies rolled into Munich on 30 April 1945, and Wikipedia reports “One motorcycle was discovered by the US Army in the spring of 1945 at a German military installation, but it is not known if this was the original prototype or another Killinger und Freund Motorrad.”
[via Monoscope via Bike EXIF]](http://5.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks91spdArC1qz4foko1_500.jpg)
This is one of the most unusual motorcycles I’ve seen in a long time: it’s a ‘Killinger und Freund’ built in 1935 in Munich, Germany. The art deco styling is obviously eye-catching, but it’s hiding something even more interesting: this machine has a driven front wheel, like the Rokon. And underneath that huge front fender is the engine itself. The motor is a sizeable 600 cc two-stroke triple—or perhaps three one-cylinder engines joined together. Yet the bike was reportedly very light, at just 135 kg. There’s obviously a story behind this picture too: is the soldier an American who found the bike in the dying days of the war, and posed for a picture taken by a colleague? The Allies rolled into Munich on 30 April 1945, and Wikipedia reports “One motorcycle was discovered by the US Army in the spring of 1945 at a German military installation, but it is not known if this was the original prototype or another Killinger und Freund Motorrad.”
[via Monoscope via Bike EXIF]
» Stockholm's bunnies burned to keep Swedes warm
Sounds like it should be an onion article.
Heaven or Hell?
Being confined confined to a country chateau for ten days with seventy-five academics who are obsessed with deconstruction is some people’s idea of heaven and other people’s idea of hell.
[Mark C. Taylor in Field Notes from Elsewhere]
