Umberto Eco on what makes an idiot
In an interview published in Speigel yesterday, Umberto Eco argues, among other things, that humans create lists because we’re afraid to die.
He also talks about his library, which the interviewer thought to contain about 30,000 volumes:
I’m afraid that, by now, it might actually be 50,000 books. When my secretary wanted to catalogue them, I asked her not to. My interests change constantly, and so does my library. By the way, if you constantly change your interests, your library will constantly be saying something different about you. Besides, even without a catalogue, I’m forced to remember my books. I have a hallway for literature that’s 70 meters long. I walk through it several times a day, and I feel good when I do. Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes.
My favorite lines were the last two, when he declines to make a list of things he loves or does not love:
If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.
memento Mori, “To This Favour” by William Michael Harnett, originally uploaded by pirano.
Bowling lane furniture
I went to a birthday/bowling party last week in Ljubljana’s Šiška neighborhood at an alley/pub located in the basement of a multi-purpose building, a typical example of the drab uninspired socialist architecture prevalent here in the 60s. The place had the cozy and welcoming feel of a neighborhood bar, and with its thick light brown paneling, an aura of a 70s suburban basement rec room chic.
On the way it was misty and dark, a slight chill to match the light drizzle. Walking across 9 May Square –can someone tell me the significance of the date and why this square next to an elementary school is named after it?– I felt like I was taking a stroll through a cheezy cold war movie. That was before I saw the cool fallout shelter door next to the bar entrance, just a few meters to the right of two pinball machines.
When the alley decides to hang up its sets of nine pins for good, or simply decides on a flooring upgrade, I want to be around for the disposal sale so I can get my hands on something like this, made by William Stranger of Stranger Furniture.
Via Inhabitat :
Check out a slide show here. Excellent stuff!
Seeing a little something of life – NYT review of Vonnegut’s ‘Look at the Birdie’
Nice review last week in the NY Times of Look at the Birdie, a collection of previously unpublished short fiction by Kurt Vonnegut, which was instantly put on my Xmas gift list — for others, and for me. From Dave Eggars’ intro:
It’s been two years since Kurt Vonnegut departed this world, and it’s hard not to feel a bit rudderless without him. Late in his life, Vonnegut issued a series of wonderfully exasperated columns for the magazine In These Times. During the darkest years of the Bush administration, these essays, later collected in “A Man Without a Country,” were guide and serum to anyone with a feeling that pretty much everyone had lost their minds. In a 2003 interview, when asked the softball question “How are you?” he answered: “I’m mad about being old, and I’m mad about being American. Apart from that, O.K.”
From the story, King and Queen of the Universe:
“Three days later,” Vonnegut writes, “Henry told Anne he loved her. Anne told him she loved him, too. They had told each other that before, but this was the first time it had meant a little something. They had finally seen a little something of life.”
I found the drawing at top, by Darick Robertson, via Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time, a collection of drawings by various artists depicting literary figures. Check it out!
Sarah, let the sunshine in
Not only was the press kept away from a Sarah Palin’s speech hosted by Wisconsin Right to Life in Milwaukee on Friday, but there was also a long list of prohibited items as well as a bag search. Among the no-nos:
• No exit and re-entry allowed
• No cell phones
• No recording devices
• No video or still cameras
• No laptops
• No photos or recording allowed
• No strollers or car seats
Lots of no-nos, no?
Du Silence, by Fernand Khnopff, originally uploaded by pirano.
Climate change denial spreading like.. wildfire.
George Mombiot writes in The Guardian:
There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.
falls lake 1, originally uploaded by pirano.
Trick and treat
Via Daily Dish:
A fourth-grader is about to give a report about her dad stationed in Iraq
Nineteen Eighty-Four turns 25
For the first time in a long while, I listened to the Eurythmics soundtrack for the film 1984 last night, and it struck me how much it really sounded like 1984. The beats and rhythms, the synthesizers the electric drums.
Released 25 years ago this month, a squabble (or misunderstanding) with director Michael Radford kept 98 percent of the music out of the film. And it’s too bad since this was probably the Eurythmics’ best album. I caught the tour the following summer when they passed through Cleveland. The opener was Sex Crimes with Annie Lennox beautifully screaming “sex sssex sex” as she walked out of a giant zipper that was stretched across the front of the stage.
Below is I Did It Just the Same, which refers to Winston Smith’s sex crime. Also check out Julia, Doubleplusgood, and Room 101.
LJ Pic of the Day
Borrowing from Andrew Sullivan’s ‘View From Your Window’, today’s daily pic is just a quick snap out of the home office window where the first snow in the area can be seen in the hills just east of Ljubljana.
LJ Pic of the Day
Another shot of Slovenia’s Central Bank, more specifically its telamones, taken on Saturday while waiting for Bill Clinton. Another shot of the bank and more about the building here.
Ljubljana 0170, originally uploaded by pirano.
LJ Pic of the Day
Over a couple glasses of wine this afternoon, Bill Clinton chastised me for my rather lame efforts with my LJ Pic of the Day chore, so I promised that I’d resume the project with an image of him.
The former US President popped into Ljubljana today to say hi, and to collect a reported €100,000 ($147,318) for a 45-minute lecture. (As a point of comparison, George W. Bush hit the lecture circuit at home last week, an event for which organizers charged $19, but not per person. That was the ticket price per office.)
I didn’t see and haven’t read much about his lecture, but among the more memorable quips was in reference to the ongoing Adriatic boundary dispute between Slovenia and Croatia. Paraphrasing from a Radio SLO report: “The current dispute won’t matter much in 50 years if we allow the sea levels to continue to rise.”
This was Clinton’s second visit to Slovenia, and while his stroll around town turned a few heads and attracted a few waves, the crowd didn’t quite compare with the one that turned out for Queen Elizabeth’s after-tea walkabout here last October.
Clinton in SLO 02, originally uploaded by pirano.
All we are is (mostly) dust
LA-based artist Allison Cortson creates portraits using dust she collects from her subject’s vacuum cleaner bags.
From New American Paintings #79:
For these portraits, I photograph the subjects in their homes. Then over a period of months I collect the dust from their vacuum bags. .. The paintings are completed by rendering the subjects life-size in a realistic manner in oil; the rest of their environments are created solely out of the dust collected from thier homes. In my experience I have found that every person’s dust is a different shade — subtle, but you can see it reflected in the finished piece.
Cortson’s website is here, and more of these amazing portraits are here.
Screenshot from the artist’s website
Jon Stewart on the White House-Fox News War
Hilarious. Stewart on how the Fox opinion and news sides get together to create their own delightful version of a McDLT:
LJ Pic of the Day
200 meters to go: Caroline Cheptanui Kilel on the way to a race record at Sunday’s Ljubljana Marathon, where she clocked 2:25:24, the 14th fastest performance in the world this year.
There’s another handful of other shots from the marathon here.
Caroline Cheptanui, originally uploaded by pirano.
Catching up
Sorting through piles of magazines, books, scattered notes and journal entries over the past several days, with more to follow over the next month. Some items are or will be useful (at least to me), so they’ve been added as bookmarks to myself, so for the record: anything prior to 25 October, going back to late July, has been back-dated. The exceptions being the few attempts to resurrect the LJ Pic of the Day chore, and my 24-hour memoir project which proved to be an amusing way to spend a day.
The scan, by the way, is from a modest collection of zines from the 80s. More about that here, a photo gallery of my collection is here, and an international collection, the Piran Cafe Zine Repository, is here.
always_in_vain, originally uploaded by pirano.
LJ Pic of the Day
We’ve had some nice early evening colors over the past few weeks. This was taken eight days ago, looking towards the south.
Ljubljana 0166, originally uploaded by pirano.
LJ Pic of the Day
We’ll try to kick-start this daily chore again with this, spotted near Kinoklub Vič a few weeks ago. I’m delighted to note that the square on which it’s located is still called Trg mladinskih delovnih brigad, or Youth Workers Brigades Square. Recently renovated and reopened over the summer. [map] [now showing (scroll down)]
Nice gun!
Ljubljana 0168, originally uploaded by pirano.
Love: Coming Soon, a twenty-four hour memoir – Available now! – first 13,000 downloads free
From the intro to Love: Coming Soon…
Never say never. It’s true. The world and I thank Sarah Palin as the primary inspiration behind his memoir.
When he heard that the former vice presidential candidate and former Governor of Alaska had produced a 400-page memoir in just four months, Time magazine reporter Joel Stein wondered, “What took her so long?”
Since time is a precious commodity, his response was to write his own memoir in a day. It was a challenge and exercise I thought worthy enough to devote an entire day to, so I decided to produce one as well. The only difference is that unlike Palin and Stein, I didn’t employ a ghost writer or editor. As you’ll soon see, that was a major hole that should have been filled.
This was written in just under eighteen hours, five less than it took Band-Aid to record Feed the World back on November 25, 1984, a holiday season in which I witnessed first hand the outrageous lengths to which intelligent, mature adults would go just to score a grotesquely ugly Cabbage Patch doll for their spoiled children. They could have just bought them a copy of Feed the World.
The only advance work involved was a very rough outline sketched out a few days ago which sat on my cluttered desk largely ignored, and a long walk through Ljubljana’s pleasant early fall chill on Tuesday night when I muttered an occasional thought into my tape recorder. Those digital notes haven’t been transcribed yet, and it’s too late. I’m sleepy and time’s up.
The title?
It’s from some graffiti I stumbled across a few weeks ago. I’m an optimistic pessimist. I like to think that in spite of it all, something nicer could be lying in wait just around the corner.
You can download it here (PDF, 173k).
Leaving Drama behind, originally uploaded by pirano.
September Pic(k)s
This woman was marching in a procession near the Grand Place in Brussels and kindly stopped to pose for a few quick snaps. About two dozen camera-toting Japanese tourists –and me– rapidly descended.
In spite of the somewhat absurd commotion, it was one of my personal faves shot in September, when the busy summer season finally wound down. My meticulously selected dandy dozen for the month, shot in Brussels, Ljubljana, and Thessaloniki, Athens and on Paros, Greece, are here.
Previous pic(k)s of the month: [Aug 09] [Jul 09] [Jun 09] [May 09] [Apr 09] [Mar 09] [Feb 09] [Jan 09] [2008]
Brussels 027, originally uploaded by pirano.
Ljubljana unveils design for new central market
Here’s a photo gallery of some of the plans for the hotly debated ‘new’ central market area. I like that new footbridge. But the garage is a dumb idea. If traffic’s the problem (and it does suck here), why route cars into the center?
Ljubljana 0160, originally uploaded by pirano.
Coming Soon (LJ Pic of the Day)
Is there a better way to restart the LJ Pic of the Day project –as well as re-open the café– than with this, a promise that unparalleled pleasures of the mind, body, spirit and soul lie in wait just around the corner? I think not.
This was taken yesterday, near an entrance to Cankarjev Dom, Ljubljana’s (and Slovenia’s) premiere cultural center [home][eng].
About a year ago, LJ Pic of the Day reached a record 38 straight daily posts. With the typically busy summer now fading to memory, surpassing that with this daily chore is the immediate goal.
For the LJ Pic of the Day Archive, go here. If you feel a Ljubljana image overdose is in order, go here.
Ljubljana 0163, originally uploaded by pirano.
Note for an upcoming conversation with my 19-year-old nephew
In Is America Hooked on War? TomDispatch’s Thomas Englehardt writes for Mother Jones:
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it’s hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment.
Hollensturz in Vietnam by Willi Sitte, originally uploaded by pirano.
August pic(k)s
August was, as usual, insanely busy. This year I spent much of the month trying to keep up with this gentleman, the world’s fastest man.
This was shot from my press seat at the World Track & Field Championships in Berlin when Usain Bolt returned to the track a couple hours after his 9.58sec 100m world record. A quick breakdown of what that means more precisely: it took him 41 total strides at 4.28 strides per second. His average speed was 37.6 Km/H, and he reached a peak speed of just under 46 Km/H.
Anyway, not much time for photos in August. A few more from the month, taken in Berlin and Zurich and another of Bolt on the way to his 200m world record, are here.
Previous pic(k)s of the month: [Jul 09] [Jun 09] [May 09] [Apr 09] [Mar 09] [Feb 09] [Jan 09] [2008]
Usain Bolt 04, originally uploaded by pirano.
Germanwings coffee
Isn’t really all that good. But how important are onboard purchase to these low budget carriers’ bottom lines? According to a story in its in-flight magazine glorifying its bistro selection, GW sells, on average, 400,000 to 450,000 cups per year at €2.60 a pop, totaling €1,040,000 to 1,170,000 ($1,458,420 to 1,640,723).
