Roland Boer's Blog, page 92

Funnel-web season

It's that lovely time of the year again: the days are mild, evenings crisp, water's a bit 'fresh' and the funnel-webs are out. The Sydney funnel web is beautiful, shiny black, and lethal. I happened to believe they lived only in the Sydney area. Actually, they inhabit a territory that stretches from my home town, Newcastle, down through Sydney to Wollongong.

The ones who are out are the males. Like the typical Aussie male, they stagger about at night hoping for a root. This process usually takes

Ooooohhhh ... Josef!

NT Wrong alerted me to this one, from Prague's Museum of Communism's Get Intimate With History show:


Not to be outdone, here's Lenin (not at the museum, I'm afraid) in a way you've never quite seen him before:

Or maybe in the sauna ...

Mmmm ... Vlad!

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Those damned spell-checkers

Following on from my post on slips of the typing finger ... I used to have an insistent spell-checker that would always highlight Boer and suggest Boner in its place.[image error]

For the G20 Protestors and the anarchist who died

The blogs are running hot with news of the violent police crackdown on the G20 protestors - see Lenin's Tomb and Vulgar Marxism. Sadly, one of the protestors has died. So here's to them all.



Thanks for this great picture to Burke Gerstenschlager, formerly of Continuum Press - at least until the 'downsizing' due to the economic 'crisis'. [image error]

Freud meets Woody Allen

A while back on a flight from Vienna to Berlin, a man noticed the book I was reading.

As we arrived in Berlin he said, ‘I noticed the book you are reading. May I have a look?’

‘It’s a great read’, I said as I passed over Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.

‘I like books like that ...’, he said. ‘Is it like Woody Allen?’[image error]

Well-adjusted Freud

In contrast to those who take up psycho-analysis now, Freud seems to have been remarkably well-adjusted – if books such as The Psycho-Pathology of Everyday Life are anything to go by. Much of it is self-analysis, and even the examples of others are pieces of self-analysis sent to Freud by those people. The key is that rather than becoming annoyed at oneself for a lapse of memory, a moment of clumsiness, a misreading or a slip, there is another reason that emerges from the unconscious. The uncons

Down Guantanamo Way

My travels by ship have come across some of the more glorious moments of spreading the gospel and European civilisation, especially down Guantanamo way.

On his second voyage, which set out with the express purpose of setting up a Spanish colony, our good friend Columbus decided on an enlightened program: he demanded that the native Taino on Hispaniola should bring him gold. Those who didn't would have their hands cut off. The catch was that the island didn't have much gold. Since they were keen t

One cent

The saying of one who is ‘careful’ with his or her money: you can find much misery with ten dollars, and great pleasures with one cent.[image error]

Das Kapital - the musical

Emanuel Pfoh put me on to this brilliant story here concerning plans in China to turn Marx's Das Kapital into a musical.

I kid you not.

Chinese producers are attempting to transform Das Kapital from a hefty treatise on political economy into a popular stage show, complete with catchy tunes and nifty footwork.

The director He Nian – best known for his stage adaptation of a martial-arts spoof – has promised to unite elements from Broadway musicals and Las Vegas shows in a hip, interesting and educati

The futility of (some) scholarship

I'm reading a great thesis by Sean Burt on Ezra-Nehemiah and he has this wonderfully dry sentence on the vapid pursuits of scholarship:

'For much of the past century, the discussion has revolved around the matter of the chronological problems of determining which person [Ezra or Nehemiah:] arrived in Jerusalem first'.

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