Thursday, 28 August 2008

Max Blecher

Max Blecher

Max Blecher was a Romanian novelist who contracted tuberculosis of the spine, and spent the last ten years of his life in sanitoria before dying in 1938 at the age of 29. His book Scarred Hearts concerns a Romanian student of chemistry in Paris, who also contracts tuberculosis of the spine) and spends a year in a sanatorium, his body wrapped in a plaster body cast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Blecher

from open book

Monday, 25 August 2008

Dirty Italians

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7581039.stm

An Italian priest says he is organising the world's first beauty pageant for nuns to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour

brits gone wild

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/world/europe/24crete.html?pagewanted=1&em


Earlier this summer, flying home to Manchester from the Greek island of Kos, a pair of drunken women yelling “I need some fresh air” attacked the flight attendants with a vodka bottle and tried to wrestle the airplane’s emergency door open at 30,000 feet. The plane diverted hastily to Frankfurt, and the women were arrested.

In Laganas, on the Greek island of Zakinthos, where a teenager from Sheffield died after a drinking binge this summer, more than a dozen British women were charged in July with prostitution after taking part, the authorities said, in an alfresco oral sex contest.

More alarmingly, a 20-year-old British tourist partied with her sister and a friend into the early hours in Malia also in July, then returned to her hotel room and — although she had denied being pregnant — gave birth. Her companions say they returned later to find the baby dead; she has been charged with infanticide.

And in Dubai, also this summer, a British man and woman who met during a drinking bout were arrested and charged with having sex on a beach, after repeatedly shouting abuse at a police officer who ordered them to stop.

Sunday, 24 August 2008

Unrootedness

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/weekinreview/24powe.html?pagewanted=1&ref=weekinreview

I wanna love you, I wanna love and treat you right!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVR1vdqOoe8

As i was washing the dishes this bright morning, i started to sing the song. I asked nicole if she thought anyone had played this song at their wedding...

Medal Map

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html


it all went downhill for greece after 1896

Namibia

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=80fb2db70489c34e5289369d52b6e846c918e32e

Nigela Lawson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jKRuAAB9lM&NR=1

chocolate mousse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoDqtWQ3_Tc&NR=1


green curry


I've made the mousse before in Wuerzburg. You don't need all the marshmellows and what not. Just melted chocolate poured over whipped cream.

Nicole does the green curry (but i have been inspired for lunch tomorrow)

Ha Nigela, we got you beat!

Procrastinating from going to sleep

1:14 am

sticky toffee pudding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCD9vk5p7x0

Mark Bittman of the NYtimes...and some other dudes

teaching evolution in american schools

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=a461de77e828a63f652acbedb74c96e0928cbd04

Caky time!

Sticky Toffee Pudding and Nicole's Therapeutic-Magic Cake

Saturday, 23 August 2008

I think therefore i'm not

I think that you are what you know

I also know that i don't know anything

ergo?

Dinner Menu

Soutzoukakia smyrnaika

and

Desert


Sticky Toffee Pudding!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cooking-live/english-sticky-toffee-pudding-recipe/index.html

Rhapsodising in blue

By Toutatis, the sky will fall on our heads!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7575319.stm

Barack picks Biden

Eleni --

I have some important news that I want to make official.

I've chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.

Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this afternoon in Springfield, Illinois -- the same place this campaign began more than 19 months ago.

I'm excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of us can't do this alone. We need your help to keep building this movement for change.

Please let Joe know that you're glad he's part of our team. Share your personal welcome note and we'll make sure he gets it:

http://my.barackobama.com/welcomejoe

Thanks for your support,

Barack

W.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEyJ2kdaaTQ

I went to the cinema to see Pineapple express yesterday and this trailer came on during the previews.

You watch the first 30 seconds of it, see this young cad, and think to yourself...lord not another movie about some goodlooking loser who goes around whoring, drinking, gambling....until the penny drops and you figure out it's W. Then your jaw drops!

I can't believe Oliver Stone is making this movie!

Exiguous

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exiguous

scanty; meager; small; slender: exiguous income

The Germans playing to British stereotypes

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7577301.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wJaCedLfdg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeEyu5YSEgw&feature=related


And on the other side:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoLIU2NI66w&feature=related
It's the dude from Black Books, Dylan Moran.
More fodder for procrastination

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_43-4xjnVA&NR=1

Dylan Moran on the French:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWZZRZDcSQ&feature=related

And of course the classic Robin Williams on the french!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc78yPv_ztM&feature=related
"look, I am giving a cigarette to a baby!"

Friday, 22 August 2008

Malfeasance

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/malfeasance
Thanks Granovetter

Alexander Pope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloisa_to_Abelard

After seeing the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind

Hysteria and Opera

Question remains..Does female opearatic singing reflect prevalent notions of female hysteria of the time?

Wikipedia on Female Hysteria is fascinating!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria

Patients diagnosed with female hysteria would sometimes undergo "pelvic massage" — manual stimulation of the woman's genitals by the doctor to "hysterical paroxysm", which is now recognized as orgasm.[1]

Rachael P. Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, has observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death but needed constant treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as 'pelvic massage'): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve "hysterical paroxysm." Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician.[1]

A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the turn of the century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe and in America. By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.


By the turn of the century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance ’essentials’: nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron.[1] A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as ”Very useful and satisfactory for home service.”

La boheme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDZCjeZKmc8&feature=related

Moonstruck

I saw Moonstruck again yesterday. Probably the best Romantic Comedy ever!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhifn6Q6DQo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postal_Service

I got the JEM and Postal Service Album from Nicole. The Postal Service dude heads Deathcab for Cutie.

his voice, his american accent is so pretentious, it draws me in
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22krugman.html?hp

No one knows the definition of rich. I'm a sociologist and i still have no idea.