…probar m
Archive for November, 2003
Se buscan mujeres para…
Saturday, November 29th, 200310 peligros de vivir en la blogosfera
Saturday, November 29th, 2003Un fantasma recorre Europa
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
When I asked wannabee club queen Jodie Marsh what the point of her was, she chuckled and replied: “There’s no point to me. I’ve got no talent. I just want to make as much money as I can, as easy as I can and have as much fun as I can doing it.”
Reading this makes me see Jodie Marsh in a whole new light. While I don’t think I’d like her as a flat mate, it shows she certainly has a fair bit more self awareness than you’d credit her with when you see pics of her tottering out of clubs claiming to be the new Jordan (she certainly shows more than many journalists).
Perhaps it’s because I too am pretty talentless, that I’m all in favour of celebrity culture. At a time when the economy as a whole is starting to flounder, ‘Celebrity’ is probably one of our great growth industries keeping thousands of journalists, PR people, photographers and assorted flunkies in full time employment. Not to mention the celebrities themselves, most of whom – by their own admission – would have little else to do all day, but have now been transformed into medium size businesses.
Not only that, but it’s incredibly egalitarian: when Jade Goody can make from nowhere onto a magazine cover, you realise that traditional barriers of looks, wealth and class have finally melted away. Social mobility in action. Gordon Brown would be proud.
Palabras de Simon Waldman. Ten
Retrato del artista cuarent
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
Joyce: I was saving that for the epiphany. There are seagulls shitting now all over the pillars at the General Post Office and at the Bank of Ireland, there are seagulls shitting on the oily skin of the Liffey & there are seagulls shitting on all the workers loading hops into all the furnaces inside the Guinness factory walls. Alright, Molly, what city’s smell can you tell us about?
Molly: …in Trieste the canal is chocolate with the white ice cream mountains you can see sometimes not since the fog came down I cannot walk in the evenings I go to the circus…
Joyce: Breathe, girl, breathe. Excellent. Exactly what I was going for. You didn’t use the grammar point of course, or the vocabulary point, or, technically speaking, your sense of smell. Excellent, nevertheless. Anyone else?
Stefan: [sighs] In Zurich, there is one town hall, there are some kirches, there is one police headquarters.
Joyce: I’ve never thought of “town hall” as an odor but now I imagine I’ll smell it everywhere I go. Wonderful work, your fractured grammar communicates the misery of existence in Zurich perfectly. Romano?
Romano: Er, Tuesday?
Sacado de “Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-aged ESL Instructor”, en McSweeney’s, la insoportable revista post-post-modernista (o popomo) dirigida por Dave Eggers. No se crean que hay ninguna intenci
A Happy Poem for this Sunday
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
Once I said lightly
Even if the worst happens
We can’t fall off the earth.
And again I said
No matter what fire cooks us
We shall be still in the pan together.And words twice as stupid.
Trully hell heard me.She fell into the earth.
And I was devoured.
Ted Hughes, presuntamente hablando de Sylvia Plath en 1981. Foto de Ren
La vida no pesa nada
Saturday, November 29th, 2003
British Artists: Bush, Go Home
Thursday, November 27th, 2003
Anti-war protesters literally spelled out their message to the US President tonight – Bush Go Home. The direct statement was made shortly before George Bush and his wife Laura were due to land in Britain for a state visit.
Around 80 people layed down at the Tate Modern in central London form the three words in the Turbine Hall – their message reflected on the mirrored ceiling above. The protesters took advantage of a temporary exhibition, The Weather Project, by artist Olafur Eliasson to voice their anger.
Scores of spectators and participants clapped and cheered as the letters formed into a simple but blunt statement. It did not take long for those round the edge of the demonstration to help form the final word, Now.
One of the organisers, who only wanted to be known as John, said he was really pleased with the way the message had looked. He said: “It worked really well, this was designed to get a message across. I think it is a brilliant use of art for the people.” The 35-year-old artist and multi-media lecturer from Clapham, south London, said the message was clear to President Bush.
A spokesman for the Tate said the gallery was not aware of the protest in advance. But he said: “People have been expressing themselves in this space and reacting to the work since it opened in October. “We hadn’t expected people to lie on the floor – it is very interesting to see all the different reactions to the work.”
It is understood that the half Danish, half Icelandic artist Eliasson was among the spectators at the protest.
La instalaci
LinEx, en Wired
Thursday, November 27th, 2003
This deeply rooted regional approach could prove a more nurturing environment for Tux than either the EU, with its stifling bureaucracy, or the US, where lawyers for SCO are eager to sue the daylights out of anyone who dares to propagate the penguin. Right now, most of the action is in government, where officials are beginning to wake up to the advantages of open standards and malleable code – and not having to pay Americans for any of it. India is releasing Linux variations in local dialects from Assamese to Telugu. China, Japan, and South Korea are collaborating on their own OS. South Africa recently approved an open source strategy, and similar things are going on in Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Peru, and Ukraine.
These initiatives, as dramatic as they are, directly benefit only functionaries and tax collectors. Those who, like Extremadura’s Ibarra, view open source as force for social liberation have their eyes on Brazil, which is now run by Luiz In
Vegetal and Mineral Memory: The Future of Books, de Umberto Eco
Thursday, November 27th, 2003
After having spent 12 hours at a computer console, my eyes are like two tennis balls, and I feel the need of sitting down comfortably in an armchair and reading a newspaper, or maybe a good poem. Therefore, I think that computers are diffusing a new form of literacy, but they are incapable of satisfying all the intellectual needs they are stimulating. Please remember that both the Hebrew and the early Arab civilisations were based upon a book and this is not independent of the fact that they were both nomadic civilisations. The Ancient Egyptians could carve their records on stone obelisks: Moses and Muhammad could not. If you want to cross the Red Sea, or to go from the Arabian peninsula to Spain, a scroll is a more practical instrument for recording and transporting the Bible or the Koran than is an obelisk. This is why these two civilisations based upon a book privileged writing over images. But books also have another advantage in respect to computers. Even if printed on modern acid paper, which lasts only 70 years or so, they are more durable than magnetic supports. Moreover, they do not suffer from power shortages and black-outs, and they are more resistant to shocks.
Up to now, books still represent the most economical, flexible, wash-and-wear way to transport information at a very low cost. Computer communication travels ahead of you; books travel with you and at your speed. If you are shipwrecked on a desert island, where you don’t have the option of plugging in a computer, a book is still a valuable instrument. Even if your computer has solar batteries, you cannot easily read it while lying in a hammock. Books are still the best companions for a shipwreck, or for the day after the night before. Books belong to those kinds of instruments that, once invented, have not been further improved because they are already alright, such as the hammer, the knife, spoon or scissors.
Quiz