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Monthly Archives: April 2011

· Dostoevsky’s truth vs the Tsar’s fiction.

Were I to choose any one single episode in the life of a modern writer to fit the “truth is stranger than fiction” bill, it would be a central incident in the life of Dostoevsky that took place in December 1849.

· Shopping for miracles with Buddha on the brain.

When the Buddhist goes shopping he feels like we all do: unified, in control, and unchanged from moment to moment. The way things feel becomes suspect.

· Karl Marx and the eternal sunshine of the communist mind.

Seventy years after Marx’s death, for better or for worse, one third of humanity lived under political regimes inspired by his thought. Well over 20 per cent still do. Socialism has been described as the greatest reform movement in human history.

· David Cameron’s non-winning ways.

By reaching a swift understanding with Mr Clegg, himself all too well aware that he was the election’s big loser, Mr Cameron ushered in the age of compromise and tactical retreat that has marked the last 11 months.

· The earthquake in Japan: it’s only been a month?

IT’S SHOCKING TO ADMIT that the Japanese earthquake is just a day shy of being month-old news. It’s also hard to admit that, as in every Man v. Nature narrative, the moral of the story is completely absent. All we have are aftershocks. By SUSANNA JONES [New Statesman] – It will take generations for the […]

Rio 3: Capoeira, the duel-dance, with dreadlocks and agogô.

Anthony Howell: Capoeira is a duelling dance; the contestants weaving into mutual scissors, circling each other in apparent friendliness and then ducking into attack.

· Stopping by Fred Nietzsche’s house.

The time he spent there appears to have been peaceful, even if, according to a Nietzsche Haus curator, children would fill his umbrella with stones so that they’d fall on his head when he opened it.

· Ink-stained hippie wretches and their far-out newspapers.

The medium has changed (from small magazines, to cheaply printed local community newspapers to Twitter), but the message is the same: Social movements need organic forms of communication because without it, they die.

· Who’s the sharper expert – a politician or a monkey with a dart?

Everywhere we turn, we find an expert declaiming on some future trend, concerning nearly every activity. Should we pay much attention? No…

· Want to improve your quality of life? Get a better writer.

The truth of a life is often far more interesting, often because it flies in the face of known facts and delivers to us a man (or woman, of course) a reader would like to believe in.

· At top American colleges, it’s admission: impossible.

Even for the academically inclined, the value of college in this economic climate is increasingly subject to question.