An introduction

This is a semi-public place to dump text too flimsy to even become a blog post. I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you have a lot of time to waste. You'd be better off at my livejournal. I also have another blog, and write most of the French journal summaries at the Eurozine Review.

Why do I clutter up the internet with this stuff at all? Mainly because I'm trying to get into the habit of displaying as much as possible of what I'm doing in public. Also, Blogger is a decent interface for a notebook

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Mark Morford: I love you, but your tantrism is not my tantrism

The ancient Tantric masters, however, tell a different kind of story. They say it's all a bit of a sham, this extremism, a grand and ongoing tragedy, that such behavior is what happens when you get so far away from Self, from calm and self-reflective center, to the extent that only the most extreme experience and loudest screaming will keep you awake and interested in going on living.

That is to say, it's a sign of severe spiritual lack, of the most tormented, enraged and furiously demanding ego that only the most painful, excessive human experience -- bizarre sex, excessive drugs, physical brutality, body torment, violent religious belief, rage, gross-out food, you name it -- will make you feel, well, anything at all. The relationship is inverse, downward spiraling: The further away you are from true Self, the more extreme experience is required just to feel a pulse.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Kasyanov's party

The formation of the latest coalition among the Russian opposition seems to have inspired little other than cynical pessimism. The men behind it -- Mikhail Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Vladimir Milov -- are reasonably prominent, and seem potentially capable of working together, but nobody seems to hold out much hope for them.



BBC Monitoring reports Stanislav Belikovsky talking on Echo Moskvy, with understandabe cynicism:




The so-called pro-democracy forces are uniting for the 127th time. We still see the same figures, and it is at least too early for them to start looking for supporters the very next day, or at least to demand loyalty. At first they need to produce results: register their party, form its list (of candidates), and at least enter the parliamentary campaign with this list, not to mention subsequent actions in the form of putting forward a single candidate (for the presidential election). [via JRL]




Meanwhile a pundit interviewed in Russia Today has this to say:




Nemtsov and Ryzhkov will fiercely criticize Putin, as well as Medvedev to a lesser degree. They are also going to bash the ruling United Russia. Chances are the administration might need just that. After all, if there is no conflict in a play, there is no action. A play without “bad guys” always flops with viewers. This is why “bad guys” may come in handy. If they are registered, the election campaign will go like this: they will bark at Putin, while others will bark at them. They will be the sort of whipping boys, which is good for them as well, as it attracts more attention. A party like that would give an edge to the entire campaign. Their worst enemy will be the Yabloko party, as this is a matter of survival for Yabloko, which currently monopolizes the liberal flank.



I don’t think that today anybody in the United States believes that these people can become a serious political force. I think that there are fewer Americans who believe in that than members of our own administration. I also think that at the moment Russia’s present rulers who will continue to stay in power are suiting the United States.


Saturday, September 18, 2010

Reviewers: Ted Gioia

Have been looking at various highly-regarded book reviewers, trying to figure out which I can trust. First up, Ted Giola.

This is the review that makes me distrust Ted: a positive review of a book I loved, but one that totally misses the point. Compare him to Sheila O'Malley. Ted:

But the most masterful aspect of the plot is the superimposition of
the two love stories, the 20th century one involving Mitchell and his
accomplice Dr. Maud Bailey, a famous LaMotte scholar, and the
19th century romance between Ash and LaMotte. The contrast is
not just one of couples, but also social mores, etiquette and gender
roles. Byatt is in complete control as she juxtaposes the pacing and
complications of these side-by-side stories.


Sheila:

Byatt doesn’t write about people who live in their subjective experience of life. She writes about academics and writers and research assistants – whose “love” for life is expressed through their driving obsession for whatever topic – people who spend their whole lives researching one minor female Victorian poet … and any real love that comes into the life of a person like that will either have to take a back seat, OR somehow inform and deepen that other obsession.
...
A.S. Byatt writes in this realm like no one’s business. She is the heir of George Eliot (someone she openly emulates). Life is BIG, and important – and it is not just our personal lives that give it resonance – but our passions, obsessions, intellectual pursuits and the wider culture and how it informs how we live.


Which one has managed to get inside the novel, and give you a reason to pick it up? No question, is there?

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Sarrazin

The most depressing thing about the Sarrazin affair? The amazon.de reviews -- almost all positive. What a hideous collection of knuckle-draggers.



And even in Berlin, there's are apparently still venues willing to give Sarrazin a platform. Among them Urania, to its shame.

Spiegel/ ЖЖ

Der Spiegel recently had a 2-page spread on the Russian blogosphere. Nothing especially insightful, I must admit, but there's no harm in having a little introduction.


Indeed, these days, it's usually bloggers -- rather than members of the traditional media -- who expose scandals and give voice to grievances. Blog reports by a student on conditions at a nursing home near Moscow, for example, led to the firing of its corrupt director. And, this spring, when a Mercedes belonging to a high-level manager at the oil giant Lukoil sped into a car in the opposite lane and killed two women, crime scene photographs published online exposed police attempts at a cover-up.

Drugoi got picked out as exemplar; his readers' reactions here

on Badiou

Splintering Bone Ashes on Badiou:




This was precisely what I had been looking for, motivated in a political sense not by a desire to prevent the suffering of the poor, but to unblock the lock on the new, this impassable impasse, THAT was to be the imperative of thought.


Saturday, September 4, 2010

Sheila O'Malley

Random googling has just confronted me with Sheila O'Malley, and she's won herself an instant position as my second-favourite source of book reviews. On a slight tangent, here's something that should be ingested by any blogger:




My ideal reader is someone who shares my sense of humor, who “gets it”, someone who doesn’t roll their eyes at excitement or enthusiasm, someone who loves to get fired up about this or that, who isn’t put off by a grown woman blithering like a 13 year old. My ideal reader is someone who likes to go deep. Who isn’t afraid to go deep. My ideal reader is not the kind of person who needs to make a joke, nervously, when the mood gets serious.