Mir > Recent Status Updates

Interesting that the wind that was strong the people barely escaped being pulled into the void didn't suck the furniture in.

(This book seems very carefully thought-out so I'm assuming there is a point and it isn't a carelessness.)

"Necessity" has been a neglected term in scholastic discussions of civic virtue, political participation, and social relationships. While "necessity" has been a key word in our nation's public and legal vocabularies for centuries, its rhetorical influence has waxed and waned. Sometimes the term has been used to discuss exceptional situations when the rule of law has been violated...

"Go away before I mock you," he says.

A 1988 defense of eugenics by, ironically, James Crow.
(I assume this is famous geneticist James F. Crow, although the author fails to cite.)

I find it odd that at this realization Timothy's mind doesn't immediate jump on the person he couldn't track down because he kept changing jobs, but I guess these clues are less obvious in real life than when they author's laying it out for you. ;)

The two MCs are conversing, finally. He does not have a steampunk arm yet and there has been no adventure so far, only petty annoyances.

Rejection of antecedents, art history, even admiration for past art.

Reality and the image repel one another. An incantation lies between them: the word.

Cubism "achieved maximum reality" but didn't have "wings."
Constructivism and nonfigurative painting are "eye candy relying on a play of forms -- resemble school writing exercises."

The modern painter will bear buds not fruit

So far finding this a bit dull, but I'll try to hang on till the MCs actually interact. Hopefully the adventure in the Negev will be more interesting than people being invalids in England.

And Sasha continues to be a useless idiot who does nothing but screw up. I don't get why he is part of the stage crew -- couldn't they be friends with him without having him constantly endangering everyone?

Is "alchemy" here literal or metaphorical? Is Piero a prisoner of war or a wounded person on their side? Does Rhodry's wife realize he's having an affair?

Is His Lordship *supposed* to be dumb?

I've noticed that's become a more acceptable character choice in recent year.

This seems to be a different meaning of "incubus" than standard -- something that possesses dead bodies.

Fabricant's study is a departure (she says) from 18th century landscape study which tends to focus on idealization or perfection of the physical terrain through art.

Swift is like Pope in transforming features of his concrete environment into a symbolic commentary on society and his place in it.

...brought a backpack full of snacks and other useful things when shopping with a female.

Hmm. What are these useful things a smart man brings when shopping with a female?

"You're not allowed to defend me because I'm the tough one" is a terrible relationship vibe.

The Terrans are so uncooperative I'm wondering why they even call a PI in the first place...

TMW you're out at night trying to get waylaid by a vampire and instead people keep stopping you to give you helpful warnings about how you're in a bad part of town.

This is funnier than I remember the first book being.

Funerals, long lost friends, encounter with a demon... rough day. Let's get dinner!

Grad school was long enough ago that I can be merely amused by people who say things like, "You really must read my monograph." At least in fiction.

This process of decontextualization and recontextualization is an act of translation; like all translations, it is characterized by varying degrees of transparency and opacity.

...

The sixteenth century, it has been argued, witnessed a shift in linguistic theory from the dominance of the verb to the dominance of the noun.

supposedly neutral...for the value of neutral that meant “whatever the highest bidder wants.”

I suppose cornering the cranberry market could be as cut-throat as any other business proposition.

the artefact cannot signify by itself. It can only acquire signifying force by being inserted into a discursive chain by means of a label, for labels are representations, while artefacts are not.

The Kunstkammer of Peter I of Russia included a young hermaphrodite, who escaped, and a peasant boy with two digits on each hand and foot, who didn't and was stuffed and exhibited.

Interesting discussion of the collection-labelling of ethnographic objects and what qualities are evoked.

Mason uses as example a Melanesian overmodelled skull, which was various described throughout its history as "decorated skull" "mummified head" (which it sounds like it wasn't) "melanesian head decorated(? emblezado) with conch shells" raca negroide do Pacifico" "overmodelled skull, Sepik, 27 cm"