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Monday, June 16, 2003 |
Hear Comes Everybloom. Did you miss Paddy Dignam's wake? Ah well, there's still time to celebrate Bloomsday -- if you're in Dublin, you can (among many other delights) take a stroll across the newly-opened James Joyce Bridge. Or, if you have a spare $60,000, you could even buy your very own Ulysses first edition. As for me, I'll be hoisting a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. (And as for Paddy? -- Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are. -- Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow.) [MetaFilter]
I missed it. One of these days I'll celebrate Bloomsday right. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of that epic day. I can point you towards early sheet music of the source for the title of Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?
12:43:21 PM Permalink
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Orwell and me. The author of Animal Farm would have plenty to say about the post-9/11 world, writes Margaret Atwood . [Guardian Unlimited]
The 20th century could be seen as a race between two versions of man-made hell - the jackbooted state totalitarianism of Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four, and the hedonistic ersatz paradise of Brave New World, where absolutely everything is a consumer good and human beings are engineered to be happy. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it seemed for a time that Brave New World had won - from henceforth, state control would be minimal, and all we would have to do was go shopping and smile a lot, and wallow in pleasures, popping a pill or two when depression set in.
But with 9/11, all that changed. Now it appears we face the prospect of two contradictory dystopias at once - open markets, closed minds - because state surveillance is back again with a vengeance. The torturer's dreaded Room 101 has been with us for millennia. The dungeons of Rome, the Inquisition, the Star Chamber, the Bastille, the proceedings of General Pinochet and of the junta in Argentina - all have depended on secrecy and on the abuse of power. Lots of countries have had their versions of it - their ways of silencing troublesome dissent.
11:17:33 AM Permalink
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The tide begins to turn. A must read, from the Washington Post:Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. [Orcinus]
11:10:52 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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