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JP
Breaking News
Musing about curators and curation and news 
JP via confused of calcutta on Mon, 06 Oct. 2008
Curators are of necessity fastidious people, charged with leading the acquisition and care of objects related to a particular field of study or collection.
In the past these objects were physical in nature, real and tangible. Some of the “objects” curated were living things: zoos had curators. [An aside: My father used to tell me a story about the curator of the Alipore Zoo and his d
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Thinking about things that matter
JP via confused of calcutta on Sat, 04 Oct. 2008
I wasn’t in a position to keep up with the news last night; I was too busy looking up at a canopy of stars, talking to friends and colleagues, experiencing what it feels like to be homeless for one night. Great experience, especially when you can choose where and when, especially when it’s only once a year.
As luck would have it, yesterday turned out to be one of the coldest nights o
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'It was a stern night landscape. The sound of the freezing of
JP via aaahfooey on Tue, 23 Sep. 2008
'It was a stern night landscape. The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night color. The layers of the Border Range, indis
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'I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My
JP via aaahfooey on Mon, 22 Sep. 2008
'I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.' - Georges Simenon. More
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'..if I am walking through the city and look into one of those
JP via aaahfooey on Mon, 22 Sep. 2008
'..if I am walking through the city and look into one of those quiet courtyards where nothing has changed for decade
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Animated Spaceballs Premiers Tonight on G4
JP via SF Signal on Sun, 21 Sep. 2008
And it looks horrible. After watching the trailer, I believe this version of Spaceballs could only find a home on either G4 or Spike. I don't see any of the goofy, stupid humor of the film here, just a pre-occupation with cleavage and sex jokes. If I wanted that, I'd talk to John (Hi-yo!). The movie, while having a little bit of that, was still entertaining at times, especially when ma
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Musing about maps and information
JP via confused of calcutta on Thu, 18 Sep. 2008
We are not far from a time when we will order maps like we order pizza. Confused? Bear with me, humour me for a bit.
Ordnance Survey maps have always been rich in information:
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*Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids* by Kenzaburo Oe. Set in the
JP via aaahfooey on Wed, 17 Sep. 2008
Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids by Kenzaburo Oe. Set in the second world war, this novel follows the fortunes of a group of teenaged reformatory school boys, evacuated from the city and dragged about the countryside until a village that will take them in is found. When they are finally taken in, an outbreak of disease causes the villagers to flee, leaving the despised group of boys
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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the
JP via aaahfooey on Tue, 16 Sep. 2008
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.-Gustave FlaubertThat's what.
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Los 5 trucos para negociar de William Ury
JP via Historias de JP on Tue, 16 Sep. 2008
En medio de la negociación debes tener la capacidad de tomar distancia para pensar: ¿por qué estoy aquí? Y ¿qué espero? Esto te dará una mayor perspectiva y ayudará a mantener la serenidad necesaria para tomar cualquier tipo de decisión.
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*Great Apes* by Will Self.Listen up, you yahoos, there's
JP via aaahfooey on Sun, 14 Sep. 2008
Great Apes by Will Self.Listen up, you yahoos, there's nothing here Jonathan Swift hasn't already said. But Self's tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find himself a chimp in a world of sentient chimps is certainly the coked-up, post-Beat version of the old satirical trope for our times. Lovingly scatalogical depictions of chimp social behaviour hold a funhouse mirror up to our
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GIVEAWAY: Anathem T-Shirts
JP via SF Signal on Sat, 13 Sep. 2008
Unless you've been under rock, you know that Neal Stephenson's latest book, Anathem was just recently released. In celebration, Wiredset has given us two Anathem t-shirts to give away, a Men's L and a Women's M.
The T-shirt is back, and contains the definition of the word "Bulshytt". What is the definition you may ask? Let's let Neal tell us himself:
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Twenty years from now they'll be singing they were singing that they were singing sweet home Alabama all summer long
JP via aaahfooey on Sat, 13 Sep. 2008
The only stupider than Kid Rock paying homage to a Lynyrd Skynyrd chestnut by ripping it off and changing the lyrics, while sucking all the guitar jamming and sense of groove out of it is people singing along to said song.Dude, you're singing along to a hit song about singing along to a hit song.Just consider the hall of mirrors of utter pop cultural vapidity your life has become.
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Fernando Pessoa's *The Book Of Disquiet *is getting to me,
JP via aaahfooey on Fri, 12 Sep. 2008
Fernando Pessoa's The Book Of Disquiet is getting to me, despite my smug assumptions - I'd thought I was too evolved from the gloomy cuss state to totally appreciate the book's unrelenting pessimism and ironic self-regard. But there are virtuoso passages of rare lyrical beauty, observations that must resonate with the experience of any hapless denizen of any city and, most incredibly,
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Pal Anoofa on Bangalore: 'That city is dying the worst kind of
JP via aaahfooey on Wed, 10 Sep. 2008
Pal Anoofa on Bangalore: 'That city is dying the worst kind of death. And people want to dance'.
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To Spore or Not to Spore
JP via SF Signal on Mon, 08 Sep. 2008
With apologies to the Bard...
I've been looking forward to the new PC game, Spore, for awhile now. I even went so far as to purchase the Spore Creature Creator to get a taste of the game. (Result: Needed more info than was provided to me, but I'm slow)
The hype just kept building, but a few chinks in the damn appeared this past week, with a couple of European s
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Karen Russel is two or three lexical generation ahead of me.
JP via aaahfooey on Mon, 08 Sep. 2008
Karen Russel is two or three lexical generation ahead of me. Neologisms like 'tankini' throw me for a loop, not because I can't back-engineer them and figure out what they mean but because they seem like words from a future generation of speakers to me, inhabiting as I do a word world where the Beats and Joyce still seem pretty radical. I'm often overwhelmed, and frankly unable to swallow some
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A perceptive essay on Mann's *Dr. Faustus* and Kafka's *The
JP via aaahfooey on Thu, 04 Sep. 2008
A perceptive essay on Mann's Dr. Faustus and Kafka's The Castle, written in response to new translations of both novels issued in the late 90s.'Kafka's art of understatement complements Mann's art of grandiloquent, self-consciously outdated overstatement in parody of traditional modes. But at bottom an u
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Recently, an apartment complex in Whitefield was innundated
JP via aaahfooey on Thu, 04 Sep. 2008
Recently, an apartment complex in Whitefield was innundated by waters rising as a result of the freakish rains that have been lashing Bangalore. The residents were evacuated, with the exception of a friend of my wife's. This woman has pet animals at home - cats and a dog - and as they could not be evacuated as well, elected to stay in her flat (fortunately well above the flood waters) and make
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I've been dipping cautiously into *St. Lucy's Home For Girls
JP via aaahfooey on Thu, 04 Sep. 2008
I've been dipping cautiously into St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves by Karen Russell, and it's a slog. The stories often wind up being quite memorable and even moving, but the writing style is a bit of a pain. I suppose it's just too jumpy, modern and perhaps too American for my more sedate Old World tastes and pedantic ways. I suspect that I might have embraced this b
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