The Civ 4 Modern soundtrack

The Civ 4 Modern soundtrack
Composer - John Adams

AnfortasWound
ChairmanDances
Chconne
ChristianZeal
CommonTones
GrandPianola1
GrandPianola2
Harmonielehre
HymingSlews
LoopsAndVerses
MeisterEckhardt
ShakingAndTrembling
ThePeopleAreHeroes
TrombaLontana

French actress takes New York by storm

Isabelle Huppert

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Faces of the week

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Faces of the week

"Mikhail Mikhailovich, I challenge you to a duel!"

If you can read this article while making the toast, you could be saving valuable seconds

"But it doesn't pay to be too obsessed with how much time we spend on the minutiae, because even the greatest achievements break down into minutes of mundanity."

With dozens of novels, essays, short stories and translations, Mr. Ba established himself decades ago as one of China's greatest modern writers. Along with Lu Xun, Mao Dun and Lao She, he helped describe and define modern China's awakening and upheaval early in the 20th century.

I remember vaguely as a child (or maybe the memory is constructed) that I saw the television redition of "Family". It was the scene where the youngest child leaves home behind and sails up river. However the significance eluded me then and it was not until last year, when I actually read the novel that all the parts connected.

Let this be a homeage to this literary giant.

Isolated and vulnerable

Something that transpired during the weekend:

Happened downstairs

At first I thought the uproar was just over the game, but minutes later I open the window the parking lot was filled with police cars and ambulances.

Renaissance for the nationality that dared not speak its name

"while it has the defence of being a Plasticine fantasy, is also guilty of sentimentalising and simplifying England; but unexpectedly this vision no longer feels like the concoction of a 'heritage' country for export but as a heroic refusal to bend to American expectation. In a culture enraged by US arrogance and expansionism, parochialism becomes a form of radicalism and resistance."

"Then Amnon... said to her, 'Get up and get out!'"

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait ...
a heaven that leads ... to ... hell

(sonnet 129)

'Our Inner Ape': Hey Hey, We're the Monkeys - New York Times

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut - New York Times

Death to the Crusade - New York Times:

"Things get stranger in Phase 2 of the war, named Operation S�vres after the Treaty of S�vres, which was signed after World War I and intended to carve up Turkey as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. In this phase, the United States attempts to partition Turkey between two historic rivals, Greece and Armenia, and allows a Kurdish state to come into being. Turkey responds with a creative solution straight out of a West Point seminar on worst-case scenarios. First, the Turks form a new alliance with China, Russia and Germany. Then, a brave Turkish secret agent named Gokan goes ballistic. In a shocking scene, he steals a poorly guarded nuclear weapon and takes out Washington. At the moment of impact, everything turns to vapor, including one Washington mother welcoming her children home from school. She leaves a trace outside her house 'as if her photograph had been taken and the negative was there on the concrete.' Presto, the crisis is over, catharsis achieved, and Turks can go to bed knowing the invader has been soundly and justly defeated."

'Female Chauvinist Pigs': Girls Gone Wild - New York Times

"Berger wrote: "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. . . . The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object." "Ways of Seeing" was published in 1972, and Berger's theory of female objectification hinged on women's historical lack of real-world power or independence: "Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated." But things have changed a lot since 1972. Many women can buy their own plane tickets and pay their own rent. They can treat themselves. Why, then, do they persist in watching themselves through male eyes?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_UFO_Defense

The evidence is that the 1995 Islamist attacks on the French metro were in fact carried out by the Algerian secret service

"This left the generals in an untenable position. In their desperation, and with the help of the DRS, they hatched a plot to prevent French politicians from ever again withdrawing support for the military junta. As Aggoun and Rivoire recount, French-based Algerian spies initially given the task of infiltrating Islamist networks were transformed into agent provocateurs. In spring 1995, Ali Touchent, an Algerian agent, began to gather and incite a network of disaffected young men from north African backgrounds to commit terrorist attacks in France. The DRS's infiltrators, led by Zitouni, also pushed the GIA to eliminate some of the FIS's leaders living in Europe."

Thomas Jones: Shortcuts

"Once upon a time, there were two cavemen called Bill and Ben, who were rivals for the affections of a beautiful cavewoman called Beryl. (If you think this story is going to take a reactionary turn, you’re not wrong. But that’s because it belongs in the tradition of evolutionary psychology just-so stories, which have a tendency to provide a pseudoscientific – because unfalsifiable – justification for the status quo. As how could they not? Since the circular logic behind them goes something like this: things are how they are; they are this way because that’s how they evolved; here’s a plausible reason for them to have evolved this way; they couldn’t be any other way.) One day, Bill returned to the cave after a morning’s hunting and told an elaborate and plausible story about how he had killed the sabretooth tiger that had been terrorising the neighbourhood. Ben, delighted at the news, rushed out of the cave to enjoy the tiger-free sunshine and tell the neighbours. He was promptly eaten by the sabretooth, which Bill hadn’t killed after all. With Ben out of the picture, and Beryl suitably impressed by his tall tales of heroism, Bill was comfortably able to pass on his genes, which all lived happily ever after."

LRB | Alex de Waal : Chasing Ghosts

"Alex de Waal on the rise and fall of militant Islam in the Horn of Africa"

A Girl's Guide to Killing

"Even if you ignore the generally deplorable level of the writing (which is surely an unintentional aspect of the formula), these novels scrupulously observe all the basic chick-lit conventions: the giddy girls in their glamorous jobs, the shopping sprees and fashion makeovers, the gossipy friends, the disastrous dates and the wry comic voice of a heroine so adorable she could be . . . you.

Adding a mystery component does more than give a bubble-headed form a sturdier narrative structure. By challenging the flighty heroine to solve a crime, it offers her the chance both to prove her character and fire up her sex life.

... However stressful her detective chores, the chick-lit heroine can always depend on the loyalty of supportive friends (the customary allotment includes one gay guy and one brassy girlfriend who dresses like a hooker and may even be one). But no matter how successful she is at crime busting, she'll never satisfy her clueless family..."

The Baidu Story

"Baidu" was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. ".hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood."