Archive for November, 2009

The Butterfly Effect

Posted: November 24, 2009 in Artistry, Culture, Taste

I saw a recent documentary film on Russian ballerinas. I don’t really get dance, and though I’ve seen my fair share, I usually can’t distinguish merely good from truly excellent execution in terms of either technique or expression. However, in the course of the film, one of the profiled ballerinas rehearsed what I am guessing [...]

There you go again, I can imagine my interlocutors saying in a Reaganesque moment, again with the torture. Between torture and the closely related modern security state, I’ve blogged numerous times (sorry, no links — just do a search) to report my disgust and condemnation, not that any of it matters. Registering those sentiments is [...]

A friend gave me the first book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson to read. I don’t read a lot of fiction, but this is a nice diversion from my usual fare. The novel is so thoroughly derivative of Tolkien I find myself irritated frequently, but it has its own ideas and [...]