| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
 Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:29 am Post subject: |
 |
|
Where the Stress Falls
Essays
Hardcover
By Susan Sontag
| Quote: | Nobody looks through a book of pictures of women without noticing whether the women are attractive or not.
To be feminine, in one commonly felt definition, is to be attractive, or to do one's best to be attractive, to attract. (As being masculine is being strong.) While it is perfectly possible to defy this imperative, it is not possible for any woman to be unaware of it. As it is thought a weakness in a man to care a great deal about how he looks, it is a moral fault in a woman not to care enough. Women are judged by their appearance as men are not, and women punished more by the changes brought about by aging. Ideals of appearance such as youthfulness and slimness are in large part now created and enforced by photographic images. And, of course, a primary interest in having photographs of well-known beauties to look at over the years is seeing just how well or badly they negotiate the shame of aging.
In advanced consumer societies, it is said, these "narcissistic" values are more and more the concern of men as well. But male primping never loosens the male lock on initiative taking. Indeed, glorying in one's appearance is an ancient warrior's pleasure, an expression of power, an instrument of dominance. Anxiety about personal attractiveness could never be thought defining of a man: a man is, first of all, seen. Women are looked at. (From A Photograph Is Not an Opinion. Or Is It?, pgs. 240-241) |
| Quote: | Imagine a book of pictures of women in which none of the women could be identified as beautiful. Wouldn't we feel that the photographer had made some kind of mistake? Was being mean-spirited? Misogynistic? Was depriving us of something that we had a right to see? No one would say the equivalent thing of a book of portraits of men.
There were always several kinds of beauty: imperious beauty, voluptuous beauty, beauty signifying the character traits that fitted a woman for the confines of genteel domesticity - docility, pliancy, serenity. Beauty was not just loveliness of feature and expression, an aesthetic ideal. It also spoke to the eye about the virtues deemed essential in women.
For a woman to be intelligent was not essential, not even particularly appropriate. It was in fact considered disabling and likely to be inscribed in her appearance. Such is the fate of a principal character in The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins's robustly, enthrallingly clever novel, which appeared in 1860, just before (Victorian England photographer Julia Margaret) Cameron started making her portraits. Here is how this woman is introduced, early int he book, in the voice of its young hero:
The Woman in White
DVD
Based on the novel by Wilkie Collins
I looked from the table to the window farthest from me, and saw a lady standing at it, with her back turned towards me. The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from teh far end of the room set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window - and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps - and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer - and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!
Reveling in the effrontery and delights of the appraising male gaze, the narrator has noted that, seen from behind and in long shot, the lady satisfies all the criteria of female desirability. Hence his acute surprise, when she turns and comes toward him, at her "ugly" face (it is not allowed to be just plain or homely), which, he explains, is a kind of paradox:
Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted - never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression - bright, frank, and intelligent - appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting int hose feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman is beauty incomplete.
Marian Halcombe will turn out to be the most admirable character in Collins's novel, awarded every virtue except the capacity to inspire desire. ...
To see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model - to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure ended - was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream.
Collins's male narrator is touching a gender fault line, which typically arouses anxieties and feelings of discomfort. The contradiction in the order of sexual stereotypes may seem dream-like to a well-adjusted inhabitant of an era in which action, enterprise, artistic creativity, and intellectual innovation are understood to be masculine, fraternal orders. ...
In a woman beauty is something total. It is what stands, in a woman, for character. ...
... To be sure, what has done the most to change the stereotypes of frivolity and fecklessness afflicting women are not the labors of the various feminisms, indispensable as these have been. It is the new economic realities that bolige most American women (including most women with small children) to work outside their homes. The measure of how much things have not changed is that a woman earns between one-half and three-fourths of what a man earns in the same job. And nearly all occupations are still gender-labeled: with the exception of a few occupations (prostitute, nurse, secretary) where the reverse is true and it needs to be specified if the person is a man, one has to put "woman" in front of most job titles when it's a woman holding them; otherwise the assumption will always be that one is referring to a man. (-- pgs. 243-248) |
The Male Biological Clock
The Startling News About Aging, Sexuality and Fertility in Men
Hardcover
By Harry Fisch, M.D.
And get this:
Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Findings
March, 2009
| Quote: | | A British study found that London traders with relatively long ring fingers earn eleven times as much money as do men with short ring fingers, and a survey found that female investors' portfolios recently lost only one third as much value as those of male investors. ... (-- p. 84) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4169#4169
Last edited by editor on Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Wage Gap Divides Men Too
8th Annual Year in Ideas
By Aaron Retica
Dec. 14/08
| Quote: | Economists have been trying for decades to understand the considerable gap in wages between men and women, but they have not paid enough attention to our psychological attitudes toward breadwinning, according to Timothy Judge and Beth Livingston, organizational psychologists at the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida. What if the real difference isn’t between men and women but between men who think women belong at home — and everyone else?
On average, according to “Is the Gap More Than Gender?” which was published in September in The Journal of Applied Psychology, men who say they believe in a traditional role for women earned a stunning $8,549 more per year than men who profess egalitarian values. Egalitarian-minded women earned $1,330 less than their male counterparts, and traditional women earned another $1,495 less.
Judge and Livingston’s study is based on data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from thousands of people as they matured between 1979 and 2004. Periodically, investigators asked questions like whether “employment of wives leads to more juvenile delinquency.” Judge and Livingston used the answers to assess where people fell on the traditional-to-egalitarian continuum. After the researchers controlled for hours worked, education, occupational segregation and an array of other factors, the effect of what they call “gender-role orientation” was stark. And it held up even for those who change their own orientations. “If you are a man and you become more egalitarian, it has a really detrimental effect on your earnings,” Judge explains.
Judge and Livingston have several theories about why the effect is as strong as it is. Perhaps egalitarian men don’t negotiate salary as strongly as traditional men because they see doing so as “thuggish, alpha-male” behavior — or perhaps employers unconsciously discriminate against “egalitarian men who don’t conform to stereotypes.” Livingston’s biggest concern about the study is that a few people have interpreted it to suggest that you should raise your boys to be chauvinists. “One radio host asked me whether he should go into the next room and call his boss a bitch,” Livingston told me, “which I would not advocate.” |
Yes, and get this in the same issue:
Women in power are set up to fail
| Quote: | Are women set up to fail — by being appointed to positions of power only in hopeless situations?
Two British academics say so, and they claim to have proved it this year. In one study, they took 83 businesspeople — roughly half of them women — and described to them two companies, one that was steadily improving in profitability and another that was steadily declining. The subjects were told to pick a new financial director for the firm and were presented with three candidates: a man and a woman who were identical in experience and a lesser-qualified male. The subjects were slightly more likely to pick a man to lead the successful firm but were far more likely to pick the woman to lead the failing one. Two other experiments with similar designs yielded the same result: When presented with men and women to lead a company that’s going down the tubes, people pick the woman.
What’s going on? In a write-up of their experiments in The Leadership Quarterly in October, the academics, Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, called it “the glass cliff,” which they contend is an invisible form of prejudice. In other words, people will give women a position of power only when there’s a strong chance of failure. Why? “If someone has to be the scapegoat to take the fall, you’re not going to put your best man forward,” Ryan says. Women are thrust into desperate situations precisely because they’re likely to fail, generating “proof” that women can’t handle responsibility.
The theory has some historical evidence to back it up too. When the academics examined the performance of the 100 biggest firms in Britain, they found that women were disproportionately hired as C.E.O.’s only after their firms had been struggling for years. When firms were doing well, they rarely appointed women to lead.
Ryan and Haslam say the data also suggest the glass cliff applies to minorities. When you consider this year’s American presidential election, the glass-cliff theory becomes particularly tantalizing — because it might neatly explain the rise of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Perhaps it was only during extremely hard times that America would finally consider a woman and a black man for the highest office. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4186#4186 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 11:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
From Punters:
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Gradgrind is no more
From kettles in the loo to poker and dead swans, a schoolmaster's work is never done. John Humphreys recalls his days in charge and reveals a few secrets
SCHOOL LIFE
Autumn, 2008
| Quote: | | George Edwards, the chief education officer for Cambridgeshire, once went to inspect a one-horse school out in the fen, arriving at lunchtime when the pupils were at play. Deciding not to intrude into the head's well-earned break, he strolled around the building, finding nobody on duty. Peering through a classroom window, he saw the head, his two assistant teachers and the caretaker, sitting round a school desk playing poker. As he gazed in disbelief, one rose, crossed the room and pulled the school-bell rope, four sonorous strokes ringing out across shimmering cornfields. As the echoes of the last one faded, the door of the pub opposite opened and the landlord emerged, bearing a tray with four foaming tankards, bound for the schoolroom. (-- p. 24) |
| Quote: | Win the bursary lottery
Called West and live in Twickenham: Congratulations - you've just won the bursary lottery. For everyone else, Janette Wallis investigates the Byzantine world of school bursaries and gives a guide on how to strike it lucky
| Quote: | ... what can the average family do to grapple with the fee burden?
Choose a minor, off-beat sport and major on it. ...
Consider smaller schools. ...
Force your child to learn to play the organ (or another instrument). ...
Join a religion. ...
If boarding is your goal, check out the State sector. ...
Get divorced. ...
Local boy can make good. ...
Change jobs. ...
Seek unusual bursaries. ...
Finally, don't be flattered into accepting a place at a school on the basis of an honorary scholarship - one that carries no fee reduction. These are becoming more common as schools struggle to offer more financial aid to the neediest families. Being a scholar can mean extra work and duties for your child, with little in return. (-- pgs. 10-12) |
|
| Quote: | Exams under the spotlight
Your child may now face BTECs, IGCSEs or a Cambridge Pre-U - but do you know what they mean? Janette Wallis demystifies school exams
| Quote: | Time was when two Bs and an A on your A-level exams were more than adequate to win a place at the UK's top universities. Then came the Laura Spence row in 2000, when the girl with 10 A*s at GCSE and four predicted A grades at A level was turned down by Oxford. According to Gabbitas, Oxbridge now rejects more than 10,000 pupils a year with at least three As at A level.
To separate the wheat from the chaff, universities are allowed to see students' individual grades in each of the six modules that go towards an A-level result, and, from 2010, a new A* grade for those achieving more than 90% in A-level exams will be added.
Advanced Extension Awards (AEAs) can also help to identify high fliers, and, in addition, Imperial, along with Oxbridge, UCL and the Royal Veterinary College, require applicants for medicine and veterinary medicine to sit the BioMedical Admissions Test (BMAT).
International Baccalaureate (IB) the new gold standard?
The IB exam has been taken up by 131 British schools and is usually offered beside A levels. An IB is viewed as more demanding than A levels, as pupils are required to study six subjects, write a dissertation and take part in community service. Its increasing popularity could be because it boosts schools' league-table position, owing to the high points UCAS assigns to IB results. (-- p. 22) |
|
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4196#4196 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ways of Seeing
Paperback
By John Berger
| Quote: | To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.
And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distrinct elements of her identity as a woman.
She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. ...
One might simplify this by saing: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and woman but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of visiion: a sight. (-- pgs. 46-47) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4213#4213 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:48 am Post subject: |
|
|
Singing My Him Song
Hardcover
By Malachy McCourt
| Quote: | When Diana and myself searched for the residential facilities for Nina, it was with the expectation that we would find a permanent, loving home for her. A place with the trained people in the facilities to help her acquire ordinary life skills such as feeding and dressing herself. ...
Our next stop was Willowbrook State School for the Retarded on Staten Island, another institution in a bucolic setting. From their very comfortable and spacious houses atop small hills, the director and his senior staff had splendid views of lovely sweeping greenswards on several hundred acres of wooded lands.
They told us there was a two-year waiting list, but if we consented to admit Nina through the hepatitis program, she could be placed immediately. As it was explained to us, they were testing a new vaccine, and it was nearly totally effective, except for a few small glitches. They also told us that as 100 per cent of the residents got hepatitis, it would be advisable to get this vaccine anyway. What they didn't tell us was that the program was totally experimental, and that the residents at Willowbrook were the guinea pigs. Nor did they mention that the U.S. Army was funding the program.
Yes, parents and relatives did give consent, but as the ramifications of hepatitis and the hepatitis program were not explained fully - indeed, obfuscation was the order of the day - it was not "informed" consent. Of course, nobody would believe that the noble and honorable United States government would ever use innocents in a disease-inducing project. When I asked, much later, why monkeys were not used in the experiments, I was told that monkeys were very expensive. ...
Diana and myself were invited to join the Benevolent Society for Retarded Children, Willowbrook Division, a subgroup of the National Association for the Help of Retarded Children. Both of these groups were moribund and resistant to change. Their main function seemed to be having annual lunches and dinners to honor the self-satisfied directors and commissioners of the various institutions that were quietly and systematically destroying the residents of their hell-holes.
But we looked around carefully, and slowly the full savagery and horror of Willowbrook State School began to emerge. We were surreptitiously contacted by some folk who were working at this awful place, and they put us in contact with other parents who had not been brutalized by imposed guilt or fear of retaliation against their kids. Dr. Mike Wilkins and Elizabeth Lee, a social worker, began talking to the press, though forbidden to do so by the director, Dr. Jack Hammond, a dour sourpuss of a man.
Also leading the charge was Dr. Bill Bronston, a dynamic, intense man, so suffused with passion and compassion that there were days he was so emotionally charged he could hardly speak. Bronston was tenured and could not be dismissed except for cause, but Mike Wilkins and Elizabeth Lee were in a precarious position, as they were not tenured employees and were in danger of losing their jobs.
Ira Fisher, another social worker, took us on a tour of the back wards. When he opened the thick, heavy doors, I was assaulted by smells and sights and sounds that were so awful I didn't want to believe what was in front of me. A look at Diana told me she was stunned by the desperate savagery of this pitiliess place, littered with twisted and grotesque bodies, writhing and rocking on floors gleaming with the slime of every excretion a human body can produce. Strange, high-pitched howls and low groans rent the air interspersed with dervish-like leaping and jibbering beings. The hard, spare floors and walls reverberated with a deafening, dissonant symphony. Not only were some of the residents retarded, they were driven totally mad by the conditions of their so-called state school.
These "recreational" areas held as many as 80 residents, with perhaps three attendants to administer to their needs. High in the corners of these dank dungeons, there flickered the everpresent television, showing soap operas with sleek men agonizing over imaginary lost millions and perfect females weeping over imaginary lost loves. Amidst these insane horrors, with soap operas playing out above their heads, the attendants, no less battered by the conditions than their charges, tried to shuttle and cajole the residents to the lavatory, or to lunch or to dinner, which would last all of five minutes.
... Among the co-conspirators was one of the bravest people I've ever met, one Bernard Carabello, a 20-year-old man who had been a resident of Willowbrook for 16 years. Bernard was diagnosed as mentally retarded, and it was forcefully suggested to his mother that she institutionalize him, which she did, when he was four.
As he was considered retarded, the officials spoke openly in front of him, and he fed us information about what was going on inside the facilities. If it had been known he was funneling this intelligence to us, he would have been beaten and put into one of the isolation cells, or they might have designated him a 'biter,' and, as was done with those so designated, pulled all his teeth. Without the benefit of anesthetic.
Bernard would later go on to become a prominent activist in all areas connected with the handicapped. He earns a good salary and travels extensively hither and yon, giving talks and consulting wherever he is needed. (-- pgs. 127-139) |
About the Willowbrook court decisions:
| Quote: | From: "Library Archives" <archives>
To: "editor" <editor>
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: Malachy McCourt and Willowbrook
Dear L.M. Murray,
As far as I know, the consent judgments are not available online. In some cases, they are unavailable even on Lexis-Nexis. We have print copies of anything that we've listed in our guide, and they are available through some other libraries.
Catherine Carson, Assistant Archivist
Archives & Special Collections
College of Staten Island Library |
Becoming pally with legendary disability advocates, Diana and Malachy McCourt:
| Quote: | From: FAMILY804@aol.com
To: Editor@bcdisabilities.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 7:12 AM
Subject: Malachy McCourt's 75th Birthday and Fundraiser
Attached please find your invitation to my 75th Birthday Party and Fundraiser. Pulitzer prize winning author Frank McCourt will be opening the show. Music will be provided by David Amran and Mary Courtney. This should be a great evening. Please invite a friend.
If you cannot open the attached invitation, please visit www.symphonyspace.com and look for the September 20th listing of this event.
Malachy McCourt |
Alas, we must decline:
| Quote: | From: editor
To: FAMILY804@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: Malachy McCourt's 75th Birthday and Fundraiser
Oh, you mad Irishman! Governor indeed.
I cannot think of anything I'd rather do than kick up my heels with the beloved McCourts of New York at Symphony Space, venue of some of the most memorable literary readings ever recorded. I know this because I have a bunch, which cost a bundle, and they will not let you purchase just one tape even when some villainous wag in a hospital pinches Jerry Stiller (the real one) reading The Anarchists' Convention, but never mind that.
I love all the brothers' books and have purchased all in their various forms, which also cost a bundle. Hied it once in a downpour over to the Chan Centre to hear Frank read from T'is a few years back. (Remember the Irish Times headline? T'isn't! What bounders!)
Unfortunately, I will have to deprive you of my charming company as crossing that border now with the Busher's banditos at the ready scares the bejabbers out of me. I will, however, mark the date on my calendar and play a Pogues CD over a pint in your honor. Quaere whether a pay per view podcast might not allow greater participation. Consider it.
In the meantime, Malachy and Diana continue to enjoy plenty of traffic at my Disability Heroes forum, where I have shamelessly scalped a large portion of of the book describing your good work on behalf of Willowbrook's foresaken inmates:
http://www.bcdisabilities.com/bcdisforum/viewtopic.php?p=285&sid=0d927b60c437dc06bf225c2fa65b25d2#285 . Those of us who are today bringing forward new cases of similar institutional abuse owe you a debt of gratitude, so thanks a tonne!
And a very, very happy 75th! Congratulations! If you guys are ever in Vancouver on the Left Coast of Canada, please look us up and we'll dine you like kings.
With much love and admiration,
L.M. Murray
Editor@bcdisabilities.com
http://www.bcdisabilities.com
Tracking disability justice initiatives worldwide. |
Symphony Space
(Selected Shorts A Celebration of the Short Story, Vol. I)
Featuring Jerry Stiller reading The Anarchists' Convention by John Sayles
Audio Cassette
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4262#4262
Last edited by editor on Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:54 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 8:42 am Post subject: |
|
|
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Questions for Susie Orbach
Her Beautiful Mind
The psychologist talks about how the Western body became a global brand, whether she treated Princess Diana and why Cleopatra wasn't image-obsessed.
By Deborah Solomon
March 8/09
| Quote: | ... “Body hatred,” as you call it, has become a leading Western export. Young women in South Korea are undergoing surgery to Westernize the appearance of their eyelids.
It’s supported by their parents. They don’t experience this as a terrible thing, that they’re being passive victims and idiots. They see it as a chance at modernity. Fiji is the country where 11.3 percent of girls were bent over the toilet bowl three years after television was introduced. (emphasis added)
Do you believe there is actually a direct connection between watching a show like [b]Gossip Girl and developing bulimia?[/b]
Yes, the girls were trying to remake their bodies in the shape of skinny Western bodies. In general, the Western body has become a global brand.
You’ve publicly expressed an interest in suing Weight Watchers.
Yes. Fifi, which is what I call my book “Fat Is a Feminist Issue,” was in part a plea to give up dieting and learn to recognize hunger and appetite and respond to them. Dieting, I argued, caused compulsive eating and destabilizes our relationship to food.
In what way?
If you continually diet, you are putting your body in a quasi-famine situation. It slows your metabolism down and breaks the thermostat. Diets don’t work. They don’t help you understand why you’re eating more than your body wanted in the first place. ...
Do you believe that men are biologically inclined to favor unwrinkled flesh?
Actually, I don’t buy that myth. I think most men crave intimacy, connection and interest, and one of the painful aspects of life today is that women are encouraged to turn to quite dramatic cosmetic procedures in the face of loss.
I trust you won’t succumb to cosmetic surgery.
No. I’ve become accustomed to the way I look. I look my age, which is 62. If I were afraid of wrinkles, I’d probably be hiding in a cupboard, because I have a lot of them. (-- p. 13) |
Fat Is a Feminist Issue
Paperback
By Susie Orback
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4291#4291 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 11:36 am Post subject: |
|
|
A Tale of Two Cities
Paperback
By Charles Dickens
| Quote: | "In short," said Sydney, "this is a desperate time, when desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game; I will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one carried home by the people to-day may be condemned to-morrow. Now, the stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win is Mr. Barsad."
"You need have good cards, sir," said the spy.
"I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold. -- Mr. Lorry, you know what a brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little brandy."
It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful -- drank off another glassful -- pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.
"Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking over a hand at cards: "Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name. That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic English, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad?"
"Not to understand your play," returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.
"I play my ace, denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don't hurry." ...
"Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time."
It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. ... (From A Hand at Cards, pgs. 295-297) |
Barsad earlier on the witness stand:
| Quote: | | Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn't precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison? -- Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever been kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. ... (From A Disappointment, p. 75) |
Listen:
A Tale of Two Cities
Abridged, alas!, Audio CD
Narrated perfectly by Scottish actor Ian Richardson, who assumes a different voice for each character and with extraordinarily excellent diction throughout!
View:
A Tale of Two Cities
DVD
With screen legend Ronald Colman
A Tale of Two Cities
DVD
With actor/author Dirk Bogarde
Go mad!
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4295#4295 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 9:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
The White Tiger
Paperback
By Aravind Adiga
| Quote: | When you get here, you'll be told we Indians invented everything from the Internet to hard-boiled eggs to spaceships before the British stole it all from us.
Nonsense. The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop.
Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench - the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters int he coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.
The very same thing is done with human beings in this country. ...
Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?
Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer's money and ran? What would his life be like?
I will answer both for you, sir.
The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop.
The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed - hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters - can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.
It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir. (From The Fifth Night, pgs. 149-150) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4325#4325 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
Stephen Fry in America
Hardcover
By Stephen Fry
| Quote: | New Jersey is, let's be honest, the Essex of America. Jersey girls and Jersey boys will forever be mocked in jokes and songs for their dumbness, illiteracy, vulgarity and sexual availability. The industrial ugliness of much of the state where it borders the Hudson and looks across the river to Manhattan is hard to deny: ...
Best known in the 19th and 20th centuries for its boardwalk, all seven miles of it, Atlantic City on the south Jersey shore was one of the nmost prosperous and successful resort towns in America. After the Second World War it freefell into what seemed irreversible decline, until, as a last-ditch effort in 1976, the citizens voted to allow gambling. Two years later the first casino in the eastern United States opened and ever since Atlantic City has been second only to Las Vegas as a plughole into which high and low rollers from all over the world are irresistibly drained.
And so I find myself driving into hell.
... I must brave the interior of the most tawdry and literally trumpery tower of them all ... The Trump Taj Mahal. ... I can pardon Trump all his vanities and shady junk-bonded dealings and financial brinkmanship, I would even forgive him his hair, were it not that everything he does is done with such poisonously atrocious taste, such false glamour, such shallow grandeur, such cynical vulgarity. At least Las Vegas developments, preposterous as they are have a kind of joy and wit to them. ... Oh well, it is no good putting off the moment, Stephen. In you go. ...
Above my head glitter the chandeliers that for some reason Trump is so proud of. '$14 million worth of German crystal chandeliers, including 245,000 piece chandeliers in the casino alone, each valued at a cost of $250,000 and taking over 20 hours to hang,' trumpets the publicity.
'An entire two-year output of Northern Italy's Carrera marble quarries - the marble of choice for all of Michelangelo's art - adorn the hotel's lobby, guest rooms, casino, hallways and public areas.' Yes, it may well have been the marble of choice for Michelangelo's art. English was the language of choice for Shakespeare's, but that doesn't lift this sentence, for example, out of the ordinary. And believe me the only similarity between Michelangelo and the Trump Taj Mahal that I can spot is that they've both got an M in their names.
'$4 million in uniforms and costumes outfit over 6,000 employees.' Including one butter-coloured shirt as worn by me.
'Four and half times more steel than the Eiffel Tower.'
'If laid end to end, the building support pilings would stretch the 62 miles from Atlantic City to Philadelphia.'
'The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort can generate enough air conditioning to cool 4,000 homes.'
You see, all this mad boasting says to me is 'Our Casino Makes a Shed Load Of Money'. They can afford to lavish a quarter of a million bucks on each chandelier, can they? And where does this money come from, we wonder? From profits from their 'city within a city' Starbucks concession? From sales of patent leather belts and onyx desk sets? No, from the remorseless mathematical fact that gambling is profitable. The house wins. The punter loses. It is a certainty.
This abbatoir may be made of marble, but it is a place for stunning, plucking, skinning and gutting sad chickens.
... Well, perhaps I am a bit of a grumpy guts today. I am treated very well and I do enjoy the dealing part of the game. They players facing me are grown-ups. They know what they are doing. Who am I to pee on their parade?
Still, it is with real pleasure that I leave Atlantic City behind me, certain that I shall never return. (From New England and the East Coast, pgs. 61-65) |
View the series:
Stephen Fry in America
DVD
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4329#4329 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 10:49 am Post subject: |
|
|
Bait and Switch:
The Futile Pursuit of the Corporate Dream
Hardcover
By Barbara Ehrenreich
| Quote: | Reverting to her maiden name, Ehrenreich tweaks her CV to present herself as a PR professional who is returning to the workforce after a divorce, having spent a number of years working in the home. When she submits the CV to a potential employer, however she learns that it contains a fatal flaw - a gap.
"A gap of any kind, for any purpose - child raising, caring for an elderly parent, recovering from an illness, or even consulting - is unforgivable. If you haven't spent every moment of your life making money for somebody else, you can forget about getting a job," she writes.
Indeed, most of Ehrenreich's advisers, who charge large fees for their mostly worthless advice, suggest that job-seekers should treat the job hunt itself as a kind of job, drawing up timetables like at work and filling every hour with application writing, Internet research and networking opportunities.
...As a woman over 50, Ehrenreich faces a double disadvantage in the corporate labour market, where younger workers are valued as more flexible and less demanding. After 10 months of effort and thousands of dollars in coaching fees, her only job offers are positions as a sales agent with no basic salary, no health insurance and no pension entitlements.
Few of the job-seekers she met along the way had better luck and many found themselves lowering expectations steadily until they accepted work paying the minimum wage, often as little as $7 an hour. (From Got dem ol' white-collar blues by Denis Staunton in the Irish Times Book Reviews, March 11/06, p. 13) |
Following closely the success of:
Nickel and Dimed
Hardcover
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4348#4348 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 3:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
A Long Stone's Throw
Hardcover
By Alphie McCourt
| Quote: | Soon we put the Griffin house behind us and move closer to the center of the city, to the lane behind Saint Joseph's Church. Our lane, Little Barrington Street, runs parallel to its parent, the real Barrington Street, which is a grand and proper thoroughfare up the hill and in front of us. Barrington Street is home to the shepherds of our souls, the secular priests and well do they abide in their priests' house.
Before too long, from the steps of that same priests' house, a priest will "read" my mother. He will publicly rebuke her for her sins. She had gone to the priests to ask for help for us, her children. Don't come here looking for charity, missus, he would have said. You are not a fit person to be standing here and you in your sinful state. Everyone knows that you don't go to Mass on Sunday and that's a mortal sin. His purpose was clear, for if everyone didn't know my mother's sins before, then they would certainly know them now.
"The poor are always with us," we are told by way of consolation.
"We are, Father," we remind ourselves and the priest. "For aren't we always with us and shur who else would want to be with us?"
And "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." They tell us that as well, as a reassurance, I suppose. We should rejoice in our own poverty and not envy the rich man. We, at least, have some chance of getting into heaven. The rich man has none, stuck, as he is, between the camel and the eye of a needle.
To us, a camel passing through the eye of a needle is an exciting image, but it doesn't put any bread on the table. For a loaf of bread and a quarter pound of salt butter we would take our chances with the eye of a needle. (-- pgs. 69-70) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4383#4383 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Shingwauk's Vision
A History of Native Residential Schools
Paperback
By J.R. Miller
| Quote: | ... the various educational practices of the Aboriginal populations did share a common philosophical or spiritual orientation, as well as a similar approach. For all these peoples, instruction was suffused with their deeply ingrained spirituality, an invariable tendency to relate the material and personal in their lives to the spirits and the unseen. Moreover, they all emphasized an approach to instruction that relied on looking, listening, and learning - 'the three Ls'. ...
In spite of the Jesuits' conniving, blandishments, and pressure, it did not prove easy to recruit and retain Indian students in the seminary. The missionaries well knew that Indian society permitted a degree of individual freedom that would make schooling children in a European fashion difficult. Indians, Le Jeune noted, 'only obey their chief through good will toward him,' not from any fear of authority. Natives 'imagine that they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage to anyone whomsoever, except when they like.' In fact, many Indians thought French society strange and perverse. 'They have reproached me a hundred times because we fear our Captains, while they laugh and make sport of theirs. All the authority of their chief is in his tongue's end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent; and, even if he kills himself talking and haranguing, he will not be believed unless he pleases them. Not surprisingly, then, the two teachers who attempted to instruct the handful of Natives who occupied the seminary along with some French boys and girls had a hard time. Since 'all these Barbarians have the law of wild asses,' it was not surprising that sometimes the Indian students at the boarding-school ran off to hunt. They had to be permitted recreation 'in their own way,' and the Jesuits raised no objection when the Huron boys attempted to grow maize and build a storehouse in the Iroquoian manner.
The three new students the seminary attracted for its second year of operation were even more difficult to control than the two steady students of the previous year. 'For these new guests, giving themselves up, according to their custom, to thieving, gourmandizing, gaming, idleness, lying, and similar irregularities, could not endure the paternal admonitions given them to change their mode of life, and above all the tacit reproofs conveyed by the example of their companions, who showed as much restraint as they did lawlessness and immoderation.' ...
... Although the Jesuits modified their usual approach considerably when they began teaching elementary and coeducational classes on the St Lawrence, few other concessions were made to local conditions and pupils. These experimental classes near Quebec adhered as closely as circumstances allowed to the Jesuits' curriculum, pedagogical techniques (including a competitive emphasis on recitations, and examinations), strict discipline, and intensive proselytizing. Very quickly the Indian children responded with resistance and evasion to this harsh and unfamiliar regime. They either refused to cooperate or ran away, or both. ... (From PART ONE Establishing the Residential School System, pgs. 16-75) (footnotes omitted) |
What were a few of the more immediate consequences?
| Quote: | The arrival of an age of peace, immigration, and agriculture in British North America meant a dramatically different relationship between Natives and newcomers, a shift in relations that explains the effort of state and church to assimilate Aboriginal communities through residential schools. ... The fundamental factor was that the Indians were no longer essential to the realization of the goals that non-Natives were persuing in North America. No longer were they valued for their skills in the fur trade or their proficiency in warfare, for the simple reasons that the eastern fur trade was dead and there was no more warfare. The forest-dweller was now perceived ... as an obstacle to the newcomers' achievement of their economic purposes. Rather than a commercial or a military asset, the Indian was now a liability to people who wished to reduce the forests to tidy farms, tame the rivers by means of canals to haul their goods, and develop manufacturing.
... jurisdiction over the management of Indian affairs shifted from military to civil authorities. ... This change was a recognition that the military importance of Indians had disappeared and that British officials were seeking less expensive relations with the Aboriginal peoples now that their martial utility had ceased to exist.
... The reasoning behind this policy (assimilation) was straightforward enough. Now that Natives in the eastern portion of the colony were no long valuable as commercial partners and military allies, any expenditure upon them, such as the 'annual presents' that they regarded as the symbol of their special relationship to the crown, were a loss to Britain. (Ibid.) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4389#4389 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 2:03 pm Post subject: |
|
|
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hardcover
By Truman Capote's pal, Harper Lee
| Quote: | Although Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward. New people so rarely settled there, the same families married the same families until the members of the community looked faintly alike. Occasionally someone would return from Montgomery or Mobile with an outsider, but the result caused only a ripple in the quiet stream of family resemblance. Things were more or less the same during my early years.
There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the old citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time. Thus the dicta No Crawford Minids His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson's shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it's nothing unusual - her mother did the same. (-- p. 150) |
Listen:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
Audio CD
Narrated by U.S. actor Sissy Spacek, a Southerner herself
There are others but this would be our version of choice. |
View:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
DVD
Featuring Robert Duvall in his break-out role and Gregory Peck, reminding us of a time when Hollywood still had leading men - good-bye to all that, as Robert Graves once famously observed.
ESL students need have no fear of the mild southern colloquy in this film classic. It was made at a time when elocution was still an important asset in the acting trade. Again, as Robert Graves so neatly put it, goodbye to all that. |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4422#4422 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 8:01 am Post subject: |
|
|
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
President Obama must say no to farmers
'Farmers were the political allies of the President, so nothing could interrupt the subsidy bonanza'
Agromenes Countryside crusader
Jan. 28/09
| Quote: | ... The indications are ominous. Agricultural exporting has long been an important factor in US economic life. Huge private companies such as ConAgra, Archer Daniels and Cargill dominate the food markets of the world. Yet, most people are unaware of the significant role that farming plays in the American balance of payments. Nor do they know how closely aligned are the politicians and the farm lobby in successive administrations. Together, they have successfully blamed the EU for protectionism, as they themselves run a much more extensive agricultural support system. A panoply of taxes and duties, subsidies and exclusions keep imports out of their markets and support their exports in ours. The Farm Bill is the apotheosis of pork-barrel politics. Well-briefed and well-breeched lobbyists descend upon Washington pressing for ever-greater handouts to the industry and ever-stronger protection from imports.
Under George W. Bush, those calls were answered more generously than ever before. In addition to the usual agricultural subsidies, and fortified by the appeal to national security, those who wanted to grow energy rather than food were richly rewarded. As a result, a huge American biofuels inudstry has burgeoned - landing subsidized oil in Europe at a price that undercut all our home production. At the same time, the US excluded much of the far cheaper ethanol and diesel exported from Brazil. Farmers from the corn belt were the political alies of the President, and nothing was allowed to interrupt the subsidy bonanza. Their votes were necessary to prop up remaining Republican electoral hopes.
We might have expected President Obama to steer a different course. His concern about climate change should have led him to recognise the unsustainability of biofuels produced in Iowa. His support for the poor in Africa should have alerted him to the damage done to indigenous agriculture by subsidy in the US and EU. That recession should have ensured that he would look to cut the wasteful, politically motivated, expenditure of his predecessor. All logic would point to radical reform - forcing reciprocal action in the EU.
Sadly, we will get none of it. Already, the new Secretary for Agriculture has been appointed. He is from Iowa - a pork-barrel state in receipt of huge amounts of agricultural subsidies. Secretary Vilsack fervently backs the biofuels industry for which President Obama was forced to declare his continued support during the election. So, the whole grisly dance could begin again. The US farmers pushing for yet more support; the administration demonising Europe; the EU demanding equal cuts across the board; British politicians, not knowing about the huge US subsidies, siding with the US; the EU forced to give way; yet more EU markets and jobs lost to the subsidised American industry. ... (-- p. 36) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4431#4431 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:00 pm Post subject: |
|
|
He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again - Hamlet, Act I, Scene II.
Angelas Ashes
Paperback
By Pulitizer-Prize winner Frank McCourt
| Quote: | | We go to school through lanes and back streets so that we won't meet the respectable boys who go to the Christian Brothers' School or the rich ones who go to the Jesuit school, Crescent College. The Christian Brothers' boys wear tweed jackets, warm woolen sweaters, shirts, ties and shiny new boots. We know they're the ones who will get jobs in the civil service and help the people who run the world. The Crescent College boys wear blazers and school scarves tossed around their necks and over their shoulders to show they're cock o' the walk. They have long hair which falls across their foreheads and over their eyes so that they can toss their quiffs like Englishmen. We know they're the ones who will go to university, take over the family business, run the government, run the world. We'll be the messenger boys on bicycles who deliver their groceries or we'll go to England to work on the building sites. Our sisters will mind their children and scrub their floors unless they go off to England, too. We know that. We're ashamed of the way we look and if boys from the rich schools pass remarks we'll get into a fight and wind up with bloody noses or torn clothes. Our masters will have no patience with us and our fights because their sons go to the rich schools and, Ye have no right to raise your hands to a better class of people so ye don't. (-- pgs. 272-273) |
On early efforts toward higher learning:
| Quote: | ... Mam tells me give my face and hands a good wash, we're going to the Christian Brothers. I tell her I don't want to go, I want to work, I want to be a man. She tells me stop the whining, I'm going to secondary school and we'll all manage somehow. I'm going to school if she has to scrub floors and she'll practise on my face.
She knocks on the door at the Christian Brothers and says she wants to see the superior, Brother Murray. He comes to the door, looks at my mother and me and says, What?
Mam says, This is my son, Frank. Mr. O'Halloran at Leamy's says he's bright and would there be any chance of getting him in here for secondary school?
We don't have room for him, says Brother Murray and closes the door in our faces.
Mam turns away from the door and it's a long silent walk home. She takes off her coat, makes tea, sits by the fire. Listen to me, she says. Are you listening?
I am.
That's the second time a door was slammed in your face by the Church.
Is it? I don't remember.
Stephen Carey told you and your father you couldn't be an altar boy and closed the door in your face. Do you remember that?
I do.
And now Brother Murray slams the door in your face.
I don't mind. I want to get a job.
Her face tightens and she's angry. You are never to let anybody slam the door in your face again. Do you hear me?
She starts to cry by the fire, Oh, God, I didn't bring ye into the world to be a family of messenger boys. ....
Mr. O'Halloran tells the class it's a disgrace that boys like McCourt, Clarke, Kennedy, have to hew wood and draw water. He is disgusted by this free and independent Ireland that keeps a class system foisted on us by the English, that we are throwing our talented children on the dungheap. (-- pgs. 289-290) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4434#4434 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
