“The nineteenth century’s legacy to the twentieth century’s social scientists resembles an old house inherited from a rich aunt: worn, overdecorated, cluttered, but probably salvageable.”
— Charles Tilly,
as quoted in Torbjørn L. Knutsen’s A History of International Relations Theory.
Posts filed in Politics
“The peaceful distribution of resources within a society,” I believe is a common political scientific definition of this term. It’s roots can be found in Ancient Greek, where it apparently refered to the governing of a polis. Which is basically what this description’s first sentence said.
Inheritance
A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!
In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]
An elitist yet fascinating hypothesis
“Medan [mannspanelet] drøftar feminiseringa av samfunnet over kaffikoppen, er ein type ung mann, som mannspanelet er kjemisk reinsa for, på full fart inn i sammfunnet. Han du ser med flagrande svart dress i Dagens Næringsliv, som raider på tysdagen, hedger på torsdagen, shorter på fredagen, snorter på laurdagen og speler poker på søndagen. Resten av [...]
Starship Troopers
I was supposed to go watch Elizabeth: The Golden Age with two of my flatmates, but it seems it’s on its way out. And as there wasn’t really anything else that was all that appealing, we decided to watch a DVD instead. After a lengthy discussion, we (meaning my two male flatmates and myself; out [...]
The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford
First published in 1983,
this edition (365 pages, Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks) in 2002.
Winner of the World Fantasy Award in 1984.
In Wales, the boy Hywel rescues a wizard, and travels to the City — Byzantium — with him to become his apprentice.
In Byzantine Burgundy, an old imperial family arrives as governors, and their eldest son — Dimitrius [...]
München
München has also been neglected for a while.
It portrays both the murder of half a dozen Israeli athletes in München during the 1972 Olympics, and Mossad’s retribution afterwards. The emphasis is on the latter, and follows a team of agents who are given a list of 12 names, of prominent Fatah members they are to [...]
2007-11-15 — Quote of the Day
“Attacking his opponent Disraeli in Parliament, Gladstone remarked that ‘the honourable gentleman will either end on the gallows or die of some loathsome disease.’ To which Gladstone rejoined: ‘That depends on whether I embrace the honourable gentleman’s principles or his mistresses.’”
— An example of a witty repartee,
A Glossary of Literary Terms.
2007-11-14 — Quote of the Day
“What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”
— Friedrich Engels,
in a letter to Jean-Richard Bloch, September 21, 1890.
Concerning Documentaries
I just watched an Australian documentary about Mullah Krekar (whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad), one of the founders of the militant, Kurdish, Islamist organization Ansar al Islam, and an asylum seeker in Norway. The guy whom the Americans tried to use to link Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden a couple of years [...]
2007-10-03 — Quote of the Day
I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.
— George Walker Bush,
during a White House press conference, September 20, 2007.
Movies Galore: A Summary
It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]
2007-07-26 — Quote of the Day
“The sad thing is, if an issue is laughed at and patronised by mainstream media, then it’s up against it big-time. I read some journalist recently lecturing the anti-globalisation lobby, saying, ‘This is the way capitalism works, all capitalism is exploitation and to make it try and do something else, it’s never gonna happen.’ And [...]
2007-07-25 — Quote of the Day
“You know, to address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains.”
- Eduard Shevardnadze.
Happy Europe Day!
To each and every one of you!
Lord of War
You know, I suspect I might be an easily awed person. Either that, or I am extremely good at selecting books, comics, TV shows, movies and what have you, which awes me. Because just in the last month or so, I’ve been moonstruck by some cultural product so often, that I should have become a [...]
Thirteen Scheming Political Advisors
Naturally, just as I got up of my chair and took my first step towards the room in which all of our cleaning equipment is stored, the ingenious devil put on “Thirteen Days“, and used his silvered tongue to talk me into procrastinating for a while longer. It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon, [...]
Religion? No, thank you. Marx? Yes, please.
I was just reading “The Right Nation“, a book about the rise of the American Right, and I came to a passage which said that American conservatives such as Ronald Reagan see the United States as a nation favored by God because of its democratic virtue, and those kinds of things, and that this is [...]
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This is what I call Science Fiction!
Just came back from watching “Children of Men” in the movies, and it was bloody awesome.
The filmatographic elements were all perfect. The camerawork, done with an unsteady handheld, gave the film a more realistic atmosphere (during one scene, “blood” sprays across the lense, kinda like in “Saving Private Ryan”, except that I don’t think it [...]
VanderMeer vs. Bakker
It may be a little dated, but I just wrote a summary of the VanderMeer-Bakker debate fro this spring, over at fantasyforumet.net, and I advise everyone who cares about literature to read at least the two original essays and the interview, if not necessarily the discussion from VanderMeer’s blog, as it is somewhat tedious.
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