So I’m sitting in my room, working on my linguistics home exam, and I’m trying to explain why the verb paint in the sentence his father was painting a picture is not the same verb as the paint in the sentence his father never painted again, right? My line of resoning is the kind I [...]
Posts filed in Awe
Ever so often, I run into something which strikes me with awe. This category’ll be used on posts where I mention such things.
The Matrix
Just watched The Matrix, but seeing as I’ve already reviewed this movie somewhere else on this blog, I’m going to limit myself to pointing out how much the whole Matrix/human batteries thing seems like something out of Marx.
You’ve got your people, right, who can be likened to either the people in Marxist theory in general, [...]
The Histories by Herodotus
[Approximately 435 BCE] 2003.
Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt (1954).
Introduction and notes by John Marincola (1996, 2003).
600 pages of main text.
166 pages of paratext.
For better or worse, you just don’t get life stories like this anymore (Or, the only thing missing is piracy)
“Raised in an Ibo village (in modern Nigeria), Olaudah Equiano (ca 1745-1797) was kidnapped by African raiders and slod into slavery. He survived the horrors of the Middle Passage to the New World, where an English naval officer bought him ito serve as a cabin boy and renamed him Gustavus Vassa, after a sixteenth-century Swedish [...]
I was, in fact, not aware of this
“To Athens and Sparta Xerxes sent no demand for submission because of what happened to the messngers whom Darius had sent on a previous occasion: at Athens they were thrown into the pit like criminals, at Sparta they were pushed into a well — and told that if they wanted earth and water [signs of [...]
Curse of the Golden Flower
I had myself a small movie marathon last night, and as a couple of the movies I watched might be of interest to my readership (I do after all have a fairly good estimation of both you gentlemen’s tastes), I though I’d review them. First one out is Yimou Zhang’s Curse of the Golden Flower.
An English villager’s complaint
Ye friends to truth, ye statesman who survey
The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay,
‘T is yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and an happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;
Hoards e’en beyond the miser’s wish abound,
And rich men flock from [...]
WALL-E
As I went to see WALL-E (from now on Wall-E, as Nature abhors a shout, even though it’s supposed to be an acronym) last a couple of days ago, I was feeling highly ambiguous and thus also a bit scared. You see, my hopes for this movie were nothing short of astronomic, as just about [...]
Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
2008.
536 pages (Gollancz Fantasy trade paperback).
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gaugin.
This being the opening quote of Last Argument of Kings, the concluding volume in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, one can perhaps perceive that this is a bleak affair. As I remarked in my reviews of the first [...]
I don’t want Bendis to ever go away!
So, I’ve been reading Ultimate Spider-Man lately (bye-bye, decent exam-period meals), and at first I thought it would be boring to read a superhero comic with only one superhero. I imagined it would be far less interesting than the more group-oriented superhero comics I’ve read before, like Astonishing and Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, as [...]
Amadeus
Had quite the movie-athon yesterday. Here’s part two, Amadeus, with three and four coming as soon as I can find the time to read them.
Amadeus is often portrayed as the lifestory of one of if not the best musical composer in the history of mankind. (Disagree? Go listen to his Requiem while you wait for [...]
Wayne’s World
Earlier this week it struck me that it’s been almost two years since I watched Waynes World, and so, naturally, I sought to rectify this.
Amazingly, I still laugh out loud when I watch this movie. Which is incredible, really, when you tale into account that this is a spoof movie, an SNL movie, where a [...]
Lord of War
It’s been nearly two weeks since I watched Lord of War, so this’ll be a brief review, but better late than never, eh?
First off, what struck me during this second watching of Lord of War was how similar, in many ways, it was to Charlie Wilson’s War. They both dealt with serious subjects, and they [...]
Angel: After the Fall, issues 3-5
I’ve been doing a lot of nothing lately. In fact, I’ve been doing so much nothing that I’ven’t even read the last three (or four, now, I guess) issues of After the Fall. Luckily, I was able to rectify this last night, and man, am I glad I did.
As frustrating as it is to read [...]
Is there anything more fun that an academic insult?
“I en klasse for seg er Christian Meier. I Res Publica amissa. Eine Studie zur Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik, Wiesbaden 1966, finner han at bruk av valgforbund er sjeldnere enn factio-skolen (Taylor, Scullard og Ronald Syme) har hevdet. For øvrig er boka preget av total mangel på kildekritikk idet moralistiske utsagn fra [...]
Atheists <3 Averröes (or ibn Rushd, if you prefer)
“In the Christian intellectual environment of the thirteenth century, apparent conflicts between argumentation in natural philosophy and argumentation in matter sof theological doctrine became exceptionally acute. The newly introduced writings of from the ancients — Greek philosophy and science, accompanied by Arabic and Hebrew commentary — rigorously set forth propositions alien to fundamental dicta of [...]
A Message from the Lost Son: Why I Love Heraclius
“The Persians were applying inexorable pressure on what remained of the empire. Heraclius was faced with a stark choice: he could either wait for the Persian grip to tighten, fighting a series of rearguard actions which offered little chance for ultimate success, or he could throw caution to the wind and take battle to the [...]
Without Hitch’s art, this isn’t a tenth of as great as it could be
“That said, I think I know who might have released those files.”
“Who?”
“My evil half-brother, Loki. A messenger from Asgard came to warn me that he escaped from his bonds again and journeyed to Midgard to do everything he could to –”
“Thor, please.”
“What?”
“Just shut up.”
[Whispering, as Cap turns his back and leaves:] “You go to church [...]
… and the first ones of 2008
A few ones more…
Ghostbusters
Do I really have to sum up the plot? Didn’t think so. So, this used to be one of me and my friends’ favourite movies when we were 7-8 years old, and I have no idea how long I’ve spent playing Ghostbusters with sticks or LEGO. The movie was still fun, but [...]
2007 — The year’s movies
All the movies are rated on a scale from 0.5 to 10.
THE YEAR’S FIRST HALF.
January.
1. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Am. 2000) 8.0.
2. Taxi Driver (Am. 1976) 7.5.
3. Batman Begins (Am. 2005) 9.0.
4. Eragon (Am. 2006) 2.5.
5. Underworld (Am./Br. 2003) 6.5.
6. Catch Me If You Can (Am. 2002) 8.0.
7. Sense and Sensibility (Br./Ch. 1995) 7.0.
8. [...]
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