Tuesday, October 08, 2002

 
"If you wish to understand the forces which have driven the rise of populist movements in Europe in recent years, read Houellebecq."
John Lichfield

Auto - Camus - 24km outside Sens - January 4 1960 1.55pm

I was stumbling into urgency when the seething wordploy Writing for the Living Web crossed my path and gave me the full Arundhati Roy transcript fever. Now I may be a thief, a lemur, a Lost Mariner, undertaking twice daily Journeys into the Abyss; didn't I see you there just loitering by the apologists?
Would you hesitate to break the back of a word?

The Measure of All Things is one of the finest narrative histories I have ever read.
Read the review by Robert MacFarlane.

Octavio Paz writes - For us who lack gods: pullulation and time.
All we have left is "causes and effects, antecedents and consequences". Octavio Paz

As the nerds of Slashdot discuss a review of The Weblog Handbook about here,
or was it there, I really can't be sure.

"The so-called human condition is a point of intersection with other forces." Lifted from Octavio Paz's 1967 introduction to the Miserable Miracle by Henri Michaux, translated by Helen R Lane.

"Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system." - PJ O'Rourke
(Vancouver Sun, December 20, 1991)
Caffeine Delusions Bud Life
An Eighth - 1/8th ounce bag of weed weighs 3.5 grams.
"Whatever Congress decides, and no matter how long it takes a box of Spoon Size Shredded Wheat to go from twelve ounces to 340 grams, the truth is this : the United States of America effectively converted to the metric system in, or around, 1965 - by 1970 there was not a college sophomore worth his government grant who did not know how much a gram of hash weighed. That little piece of empirical data had become a matter of pride. And, on many occasions, a matter of survival ...
And so today everyone over the age of twelve knows that there are 28.3 grams to the ounce and 35.2 ounces or 2.2 pounds to the kilogram. he may not know how many swimming pools to the standard football field, but he knows how to buy ... "
From 'Snowblind : A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade' by Robert Sabbag (Canongate, 2002, page 101) Originally published in 1976.
Brick - a pressed kilo (2.2 pounds or 1000 grams) of cannabis or coke in the shape of a brick. Although the U.S. uses standard measurements, the usage caught on.
Look inside insight sideways. A measure to treasure. The paradox of oxygen and gold. Encoded Trees.
Primacy of the Body - Excerpt
Focusing and Philosophy - Articles on Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit

On the primacy of the link:

"It is the link that gives weblogs their credibility by creating a transparency that is impossible in any other medium. It is the link that creates the community in which weblogs exist. It is the link that distinguishes the weblog -- or any other piece of online writing -- from old-media writing that has merely been transplanted to the Web."
Rebecca Blood - The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog

Blood covers all the bases


posted by Andrew 10/08/2002 02:56:00 PM