Del.icio.us links for May 19th through May 21st:
- PUNKADIDDLE: Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time 9: Winter’s Heart (2000) – To step briskly ab sublimi ad ridiculus, Jordan’s career manifests something similar. Insofar as Heroic Fantasy is a fundamentally narrative artform, to which readers go in order to experience the pleasure of following the movement of characters through time, Jordan says: no. Wotix is the closest he has yet come to a book that disperses that force of narrative momentum—that great strength of the novel as a mode—into a great swarm of indistinguishable coexistent characters and non-progressions. If the traditional novel takes the shape of a quest, a linearly horizontal progression through narrative time, Wotix explodes that linearity in a bewildering near-dimensionless knot or tangle of non-progression. (I <3 sarcasm.)
Tags: writing fiction fantasy robertjordan criticism - Death to the spoiler police – I am a great fan of the pleasures of surprise. When I discuss or review new films and books, I’m cautious not to disclose key plot twists. But as I find myself in the thick of finale season and drowning in a sea of springtime blockbusters, it seems I can’t have a decent water cooler conversation without feeling like I’m tap dancing through a minefield of, “Wait, wait, don’t tell me!” So let’s get a few things straight: Starting with the fact that once a work enters the pop culture vernacular, it is not society’s responsibility to provide you with earmuffs until you finally get around to experiencing it.
Tags: spoilers reviews criticism popculture - Bastad! Rats! on MySpace Music – Fun gruff melodic shouty punx band!
Tags: none - Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed – ur minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them.
Tags: brain information lifehacks psychology - This ‘brave’ coalition is more like a cowardly cabal | spiked – The coalition between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is not a bold leap forward into a ‘brave new world’ for politics. It represents a cowardly retreat from political engagement and debate by isolated elitist cliques desperate to cling together for security. [...] However, most critics of the coalition are also on the wrong track. Contrary to claims from the Labour left, it is not a Thatcherite Tory regime hiding behind a Liberal mask. And contrary to the claims from right-wing Tory critics, the deal does not mean the government has been hijacked by leftie Lib Dems. Instead, this unprecedented coalition confirms the end of British party politics as we have known it, the final abandonment of any pretence that the old ideas of left and right still have any meaning in parliament or beyond. It can be seen, not so much as a ‘betrayal’ on either side, as a barefaced admission that so far as the political elites are concerned there is no principle left to betray.
Tags: coalition electoralpolitics neoliberalism liberaldemocrats conservativeparty - A Piece of Internet History – “On May 20, Duke will shut down its Usenet server, which provides access to a worldwide electronic discussion network of newsgroups started in 1979 by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis.” Usenet <3
Tags: history internet communication usenet technology - Defend the Republic! Ban the burqa! – As Muslim women become liberated, they take off their burqas. A programme for the liberation of Muslim women – or immigrants in general – would be a fine thing, and yet this would involve changing their conditions of life and aiding their full participation in Belgian or French society. To ban the burqa is to take on the question of marginalisation at the most superficial level; it is to attack the symbol, to tear off the niqabs and to believe that this is liberation.
Tags: islam feminism liberalism politics burqa - Mocking Muhammad: a shallow Enlightenment – Muhammad-baiting is a shallow, theatrical performance of Enlightenment values. It is a simple (in both meanings of that word) and shortcut way of demonstrating that you are for Freedom and Truth at a time when those values actually lie in tatters in Western society and few seem to know what they really mean or even whether they’re worth defending. For those who find the thought of really standing up to cultural relativism and anti-Enlightenment backwardness too terrifying a prospect, drawing Muhammad has become a quick-and-easy way of demonstrating that you’re a secular, liberal kinda guy.
Tags: islam liberalism enlightenment racism clashofcivilizations - The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment – Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
Tags: usa israel palestine judaism politics religion culture occupation liberalism