Jet Li HomeWebsite Thin Places, Where We Are Jolted Out of Old Ways of Seeing the World Getting to a thin place usually requires a bit of sweat. One does not typically hop a taxi to a thin place, but sometimes you can. That’s how my 7-year-old daughter and I got to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. Video camera in hand, she paused at each statue of the various saints, marveling, in a hushed voice, at their poses and headgear. She was with me, too at the Bangla Sahib gurdwara, a Sikh temple in New Delhi. At the gurdwara, time burst its banks. Not all sacred places, though, are thin. Thankfully, Rumi’s tomb, in Turkey, has not met such a fate.
Interview with Guy Laramée, Artist: Part 1 | ANOBIUM “The erosion of cultures – and of “culture” as a whole – is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice,” says Québécois artist Guy Laramée. His four-page CV details only a portion of his artistic career, which has included exhibits, collections, essays, interdisciplinary performances, and sculpture, stands as a testament to his dedication to art as a style of living. I first learned of Laramee’s work through his photogenic Great Wall project. For this project, Laramee carved sculptures and landscapes into the books (photos of which are interspersed in this piece) comprising a hundred-volume historiographic series about the so-called “Great Wall of America.” I contacted Laramee to ask if he would be open to a conversation about his work, and the work of art in general. Q: In your artist statement, you talk about the difference between progress and primitivism. First, let me say that it is the ideology of progress that I question, not change itself.
Shouts & Murmurs: How I Met My Wife SHOUTS AND MURMURS about man who describes meeting his wife at a party. In his description, he drops many prefixes. It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner.
arthurcclarke In October of 1945, an article titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?" was published in Wireless World magazine, in which world-renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke discussed the idea that, in the near future, artificial satellites placed in a geostationary orbit (now sometimes known as a "Clarke Orbit") could be used as repeaters to relay radio signals. Eleven years later, Clarke wrote the following letter to Andrew G. Haley. In it, he mentions the aforementioned article and then expands on his earlier writings by correctly predicting the future development of both satellite television and GPS. Transcript follows. (Source: Res Communis; Image: Arthur C. Transcript Aug 56Dear Andy,Odd that we should have crossed in the post!
IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER On July 18 of 1969, as the world waited anxiously for Apollo 11 to land safely on the surface of the Moon, speechwriter William Safire imagined the worst case scenario as he expertly wrote the following sombre memo to President Nixon's Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman. Transcript follows. (Source: The National Archives; Image: Armstrong & Aldrin on the Moon, via.) Transcript To: H. Wood For Wood > Vintage Wings of Canada French author Pierre-Antoine Courable and his Belgian cohort Jean Dewaerheid have brought the force of serious research to the seven decade-old legend of Allied bomber crews hitting fake German airfields with fake British bombs. Now, they are looking for former Commonwealth airmen who might have been party to the shenanigans which have become urban legend. In what could easily be the finest and boldest example of death-defying and cheeky nose-thumbing during the Second World War or any conflict for that matter, bomber and intruder crews of the Royal Air Force and USAAF are reputed to have bombed the Luftwaffe's decoy airfields and dummy aircraft, not with high explosives or incendiaries, but with nothing more than dummy bombs made of wood, and painted with the smug remark “Wood for Wood”... all just to make a point. Imagine if you will. Just as you finish pushing a massive wooden Ju-87 Stuka tail first into the surrounding forest, you hear the sound of approaching aircraft. "I see.
Grave of the Fireflies Grave of the Fireflies received critical acclaim from film critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times considered it to be one of the best and most powerful war films and, in 2000, included it on his "Great Movies" list.[3] Two live-action remakes of Grave of the Fireflies were made, one in 2005 and one in 2008. Plot[edit] The flashback begins with a fleet of several hundred American B-29 Superfortress bombers flying overhead. Setsuko and Seita are left to secure the house and their belongings, allowing their mother, who suffers from a heart condition, to reach a bomb shelter. They are caught off-guard as the bombers begin to drop thousands of incendiary bombs, which start huge fires that quickly destroy their neighborhood and most of the city. Seita and Setsuko finally decide to leave and move into an abandoned bomb shelter. In the film's final sequence, the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are seen healthy, well-dressed and happy as they sit together, surrounded by fireflies. Cast[edit]
Horizon - Fermat's Last Theorem Fermat's last Theorem: There is no positive integers x, y, z, and n > 2 such that At the age of ten, browsing through his public library, Andrew Wiles stumbled across the world's greatest mathematical puzzle. Fermat's Last Theorem had baffled mathematicians for over 300 years. But from that day, little Andrew dreamed of solving it. Tonight's HORIZON tells the story of his obsession, and how, thirty years later, he gave up everything to achieve his childhood dream. Deep in our classroom memories lies the enduring notion that "the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides": Pythagoras's Theorem for right-angled triangles. In 1637, a French mathematician, Pierre de Fermat said that this equation could not be true for or for any equation where n is greater than 2. Simon Singh and John Lynch's film tells the enthralling and emotional story of Andrew Wiles. Then disaster struck. A year later, at the point of defeat, he had a revelation. Sophie Germain
Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: Why is it so loved? Kahlil Gibran is said to be one of the world's bestselling poets, and his life has inspired a play touring the UK and the Middle East. But many critics have been lukewarm about his merits. Why, then, has his seminal work, The Prophet, struck such a chord with generations of readers? Since it was published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Although practically ignored by the literary establishment in the West, lines from the book have inspired song lyrics, political speeches and have been read out at weddings and funerals all around the world. "It serves various occasions or big moments in one's life so it tends to be a book that is often gifted to a lover, or for a birth, or death. The Beatles, John F Kennedy and Indira Gandhi are among those who have been influenced by its words. "This book has a way of speaking to people at different stages in their lives. The book is made up of 26 prose poems, delivered as sermons by a wise man called Al Mustapha.
Fiction: The Secret Number, by Igor Teper 20 November 2000 Dr. Simon Tomlin studied the man sitting across the table from him. Rocking back and forth in his chair, with his shoulders slouching, his eyes darting all around the room, and his upper lip twitching every few seconds, the man conveyed a distinctly squirrel-like impression. "How are you today, Professor Ersheim?" "Fine, fine, thank you, just fine," replied the man without looking at him. "Have you been sleeping all right?" "Oh, yes, I've been sleeping quite well, sleeping like a baby," replied Ersheim, nodding vigorously in sync with his rocking. "That's good to hear." Ersheim suddenly stopped rocking and looked straight at Tomlin, eyes bulging. "Who are you talking about, Professor? "The numbers, Doctor, the numbers. "And what would that be, Professor?" "Bleem, that's what. "We have been over this, Professor -- there is no integer between three and four." "Tell that to Laszlo Bleem, Doctor," said Ersheim. "Laszlo Bleem died in a car accident, Professor." "Oh, grow up!
Harrison Bergeron French Translation from Avice Robitaille. Hindi Translation by Ashwin.Urdu Translation by RealMSRussian translation THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law.