text:
Orhan Pamuk's Unlikely New Role
From the Newsstand
Kaya Genç January 9, 2012 | 2 books mentioned 3 min read
In less than a fortnight, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel Laureate in literature, made headlines in Turkish newspapers not once, but twice. It would have been an ordinary thing a few years ago when Pamuk, commonly perceived as one of Turkey's major political dissidents, would make news with his comments on the killings of Armenians in 1915 or the Turkish state's heavy handed treatment of its Kurdish minority. But this time newspapers seem to have discovered a new aspect of Turkey's most famous writer: his private life.
When Pamuk, who has a daughter from his first marriage that ended a decade ago, started dating Indian novelist Kiran Desai in 2010, photographs of the couple walking on a Goa beach in India were published by a mainstream newspaper edited by one of Pamuk's old political enemies. Pamuk and Desai were quickly named as a power couple, one journalist calling them Mr. Nobel and Miss Booker. But after two books (Museum of Innocence and The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, both containing Pamuk's words of gratitude to Desai for helping him with the final English texts) and numerous interviews accompanying the Turkish edition of Desai's Booker prize-winning Inheritance of Loss (all of them focusing on details of their relationship rather than Desai's novel), Turkish media seemed to have lost interest.
That was until this December, when a young Turkish artist was photographed alongside Pamuk in New York's Columbus Circle mall. The following week, newspapers were covered with pictures of her paintings and a full page interview in the daily Sabah, whose American version first published the photographs, had the very Flaubertian headline: "I am Füsun from Museum of Innocence!" This was a reference to Pamuk's latest novel where the protagonist, engaged to be married, begins an affair with a younger girl, who journalists were now eager to identify as having been inspired by Pamuk's new girlfriend. Among readers of the interview were Pamuk's loyal fans who hoped to learn bits of information about his new novel which will reportedly be published in Turkish this year. It tells the story of a street vendor who sells "boza," a traditional Turkish beverage, and there was speculation as to whether the cover of the book would be produced by Pamuk's new girlfriend, who has painted portraits of boza sellers in the past.
The latest piece of news, the most surprising to date, was published on the last day of the year. It alleged that Pamuk had an "illegitimate son" from a German professor specializing in Turkish literature. Pamuk is claimed to have never seen his son, who is now five years old. These dramatic claims were made by "an old girlfriend of Pamuk," whose name was carefully left out of the piece.
Turkish newspapers made life very difficult for Pamuk in 2005 when he was turned into a hate figure by the ultra-nationalist Ergenekon gang which is claimed to include, alongside retired generals, solicitors, and politicians, a number of journalists who orchestrated campaigns against Turkey's dissident figures, labeling them as traitors and enemies of the country. During 1990s right-wing newspapers were notorious for their portrayal of Kurdish and socialist intellectuals: many artists, like the singer Ahmet Kaya, were forced to leave the country after editors made a habit of picking on them. Last year a Kurdish MP was forced to resign after photographs showing him with a girlfriend were published in the papers.
With their newfound "private" methods, editors seem to have inflicted a deep wound as they turned the famously reserved Orhan Pamuk, whose political views continue to disturb the ultra nationalists, into a playboy figure in just a few weeks. It looks like an attempt by editors to exact revenge by hitting him below the belt. For Pamuk's loyal readers, all this surely reads like one of Pamuk's own novels which always feature him as a character, but the serious point to be made here is that Turkish media's attempts to trivialize dissidents by focusing on their private lives has a touch of the News of the World scandal about it, and this new tactic will probably be a new cause of concern for Turkey's dissidents this year.
Kaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. He is the author of Under the Shadow (I.B. Tauris, 2016) and An Istanbul Anthology (American University in Cairo Press, 2015). Kaya is writing a history of Turkish literature for Harvard University Press. His first English novel, The House on Arundel Street, will be published next year. kayagenc.net/writing.
Frey Lives On
Edan Lepucki May 14, 2008 | 2 books mentioned 5 2 min read
At first I couldn't tell if Janet Maslin's review of James Frey's novel Bright and Shiny Morning was a joke or not. I guess she liked the book, but her homage to Frey's style is so terrible, the start-stop prose so laughably bad, that I assumed she was making fun of the poor guy:He wrote a big book. He wrote about a city. Los Angeles. He made up a lot of characters, high low rich poor lucky not, every kind, the book threw them together. It was random but smart. Every now and then he would pause the story, switch to the present tense and throw in an urban fact.David L. Ulin at the Los Angeles Times had a different reaction to the novel, calling it, "one of the worst I've ever read." Ouch.At the Vroman's blog, Patrick has an exclusive interview with the author himself. Frey discusses, among other things, his future as a memoirist, the city of Los Angeles, and, of course, his new novel:Ultimately, though, I tried to write a book that was unlike anything that has preceded it, that is devoid of any real influence, and that's singular in its composition and voice, but also immediately recognizable as my work. I have tried to do this with each of my books. I want to tell stories in new, fresh ways. I want my writing to reflect the age in which we live, which is fast, contains vast amounts of information, and uses new ways to present the information. I always read while I write, but for pleasure, not inspiration or influence.I wonder if this is really possible. Frank Conroy reportedly once said, "Voice is the amalgamation of books read," and I tend to agree. But I suppose Mr. Frey lives by Ezra Pound's famous dictum: "Make it new." It'll be interesting to see how readers react to Frey's latest endeavor. Will they agree with Maslin or Ulin, or somewhere in between?
Edan Lepucki | 2 books mentioned 5 2 min read
Jonathan Safran Foer is a Dog Person
C. Max Magee November 28, 2006 | 2 books mentioned
As an urban dog owner I greatly enjoyed Jonathan Safran Foer's article in the New York Times about the trials and tribulations of having a dog in a city. This op-ed piece is an argument against a plan to eliminate "off leash" hours in city parks. As someone who has many times appreciated the ability to let his dog "off leash" in parks in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia, I agree with Foer. I also enjoyed his musings on what it means for us (as in humanity) to have this desire to bring animals into unfriendly environs like cities. Kudos, as well, to Foer for letting his guard down in this piece in a way that many other writers might not have. (via Gwenda)
A Play is a World: Conservative PC, Liberal PC, and Taking Art Seriously
Rob Goodman May 20, 2011 | 2 books mentioned 1 7 min read
Zadie Smith Looks at the Avant-Garde Novel
Kevin Hartnett November 21, 2008 | 2 books mentioned 1 2 min read
In the current New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith dives deep into the philosophical frame of avant-garde novels in a review of Tom McCarthy's Remainder. The article is, generally speaking, written more for an academic audience than a casual reader (if you don't have a precise working definition of "lyrical realism" it can be hard to gain traction in places), but overall it provides a provocative framework for thinking about the ways that postmodern thought has influenced the form of the novel.McCarthy is the General Secretary for the International Necronautical Society, a group founded around a mash-up of postmodern thinkers and writers – Derrida, Heidegger, Dostoevsky – and fond of manifesto-esque statements about the "brute materiality of the external world."As an intellectual perspective, postmodernism is concerned with the untruth of systems, be they moral, metaphysical, or hermeneutic and in the realm of art it takes aim at the question of narrative authenticity – who exactly is the "I" telling the story. The result is the destruction of traditional form and the rise of the avant-garde. When false systems are stripped away – including the form of a story and the social constructions which gird a narrator's identity – what remains is the "brute materiality" of the world. For this reason, Smith writes, "it's not unusual for avant-garde fiction writers to aspire to the concrete quality of poetry."But poetry, as Auden famously put it, "makes nothing happen," and something has to happen in a novel. Remainder is a search for authenticity, for the Real McCoy, and as Smith describes it, the novel finds it in the game of cricket (her review of Remainder appears alongside an equally rigorous review of Netherland) which is elevated, Smith writes, for its "pure facticity." The game is an array of objects ordered in space: a ball, a batsmen, crisp white lines, and proceeds by a series of events that can be definitively known.What has always perplexed me about avant-garde literature is why the writer conceiving a story does not receive the same high status as a wad of gum on the sidewalk or a cricket ball flying through space. For all the worry of avant-garde literature, I am convinced that a human being telling a story is every bit as real as a rock.
Kevin Hartnett | 2 books mentioned 1 2 min read
From the Newsstand: Workshop Porn
Garth Risk Hallberg June 3, 2009 | 2 books mentioned 1 2 min read
Its laudatory impulses notwithstanding, Louis Menand's worthwhile essay in the current New Yorker on Mark McGurl's The Program Era – an account of the rise of the creative writing program – doesn't quite save the book from sounding depressing. For those with ambitions to write fiction, Menand offers a whirlwind tour of a sausage factory. Except that in this case you're not the guy who likes to eat sausage, but the guy (or gal) who raises the hogs. Or maybe you are the hog itself. Reading Menand reading McGurl, you get the very same sense of a vast, tentacular, and mildly deterministic academic-industrial complex you might get in… well, a creative writing program. Which speaks to the characteristic thoroughness of Menand's writing. And, presumably, of McGurl's book.Largely absent from Menand's account (and Mark Grief's review in Bookforum), however, is the question of money. Even for those who agree emphatically with Menand that "there is no 'craft of fiction' as such," the value of two or three years of subsidized writing time is hard to understate. Rilke had the Princess of Thurn and Taxis; we have AWP. And though the rise of the M.F.A. program may well exert a systemic pressure on the writer, it need not, as Menand is at pains to point out, vitiate the visionary. By far my favorite nugget in the Menand piece is his mention of two workshops filled with idiosyncratic talent:Ken Kesey, Robert Stone, Larry McMurtry, Ernest Gaines, Tillie Olsen, and Wendell Berry taught by Wallace Stegner at StanfordJohn Irving, Andre Dubus, Gail Godwin, and John Casey taught by Kurt Vonnegut at Iowa.I've also heard tell of a workshop that includedJhumpa Lahiri, Ha Jin, Peter Ho Davies, and Marshall Klimasewiski taught by our guest contributor (and National Book Award finalist) Joan Silber at Boston University.If any of you out there have taken, or know of, similarly stacked workshops, we'd be curious to hear about them, if only as a way of letting M.F.A. applicants cling to a little of the glamor McGurl and Menand have done the rest of us the great favor of dispelling. Somehow the prospect of participating in an aesthetic of "class-based self-consciousness" pales next to the thought of getting drunk with Richard Ford and ripping on Jay McInerney… and hasn't that always been (along with the financial assistance, of course) the most compelling reason to apply to a writing program?
The new Paris Review
C. Max Magee September 23, 2005 | 2 books mentioned
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered
Emily Colette Wilkinson August 10, 2009 | 2 books mentioned 1 2 min read
August 6th marked the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and today marks the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. As part of its op-ed page this weekend, the Los Angeles Times offered several firsthand accounts of the bombings by survivors, taken from a documentary made by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center. You can find the complete, translated transcripts of these testimonies at this link.Here is an excerpt from the testimony of Akihiro Takahashi who was 14 at the time of the Hiroshima bombing:That was the moment when the blast came. And then the tremendous noise came and we were left in the dark. I couldn't see anything at the moment of explosion just like in this picture. We had been blown by the blast. Of course, I couldn't realize this until the darkness disappeared. I was actually blown about 10 m. My friends were all marked down on the ground by the blast just like this. Everything collapsed for as far as I could see. I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden. Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned into rags due to the heat. I was probably burned at the back of the head, on my back, on both arms and both legs. My skin was peeling and hanging like this. Automatically I began to walk heading west because that was the direction of my home. After a while, I noticed somebody calling my name. I looked around and found a friend of mine who lived in my town and was studying at the same school. His name was Yamamoto. He was badly burnt just like myself. We walked toward the river. And on the way we saw many victims. I saw a man whose skin was completely peeled off the upper half of his body and a woman whose eye balls were sticking out. Her whole baby was bleeding. A mother and her baby were lying with a skin completely peeled off. We desperately made a way crawling. And finally we reached the river bank. At the same moment, a fire broke out. We made a narrow escape from the fire. If we had been slower by even one second, we would have been killed by the fire.
Emily Colette Wilkinson | 2 books mentioned 1 2 min read
Changes at the Book Review
C. Max Magee January 29, 2004 | 2 books mentioned 2 min read
A quote from Steven Erlanger, the cultural editor of the New York Times on the changes afoot at the Book Review: "To be honest, there's so much s—. Most of the things we praise aren't very good." This, I suppose, is a rather blunt way of saying that things are changing at one of the most influential and widely used repositories of book reviews in the world. (Imagine that: people using book reviews. More on that later.) The charge leveled against the Book Review by its new keeper is that it has become formulaic in its style and perhaps a bit arcane in choosing which books to review. First to go will be the lengthy reviews of literary fiction, which will be replaced by an increased focus on non-fiction and popular, or mass-market, fiction. Furthermore, a concerted effort will be made to publish reviews that are more controversial with hopes, ultimately, of injecting enough hurly-burly into the Book Review that people will flock to see the literary wars waged on its pages. This practice of intentionally soliciting vicious, opinionated reviews in order to draw publicity and readership to a publication is probably almost as old as the book review itself, but recently, as the reviews have become more outrageous, the backlash has become louder. Early in 2003 the people behind McSweeney's rolled out The Believer, a magazine more or less dedicated, as outlined in Heidi Julavits opening piece in the first issue, to combating the pointlessly mean review. The results have been mixed, but they continue to fight the good fight, even maintaining a "Snarkwatch" on their website. Yet the "snarkiness" has continued unabated. Last spring all of literary Britain was up in arms over Tibor Fischer's unceremonious dressing down of Yellow Dog, a new novel by one of Britain's favorite sons, Martin Amis. The review, which appeared in the Telegraph, was entitled "Someone needs to have a word with Amis" and included the line "I won't tell you anything about the contents of Yellow Dog, but what I will tell you is that it's terrible." (LINK) Then, last summer a truly offensive review of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs was penned by a gentleman named Mark Ames for a publication called NYPress. This review included the line, "I cannot ever recall reading a book as toxic, disingenuous and stupid as Klosterman's new collection of essays." (LINK) Ultimately, the review served its purpose, and, as it made the rounds via email and blogs, Ames and the NYPress put their names on the map. And now the New York Times Book Review is joining the fray, straddling that blurry line between entertainment and information; strange bedfellows indeed. There is certainly nothing wrong with trying to engage your readers nor is there anything wrong with entertaining them or titillating them so long as it is done within the framework of advising the reader on the merits or deficiencies of a particular book while at the same time taking on the responsibility of being the first word on a book whose ultimate importance has yet to be determined. The New York Times Book Review is a household name, but, until I worked in the bookstore, I had no idea how many people use the Book Review, really use it. They walk into the store clutching clipped reviews like life preservers in a sea of books, trusting that those reviews will not let them drown. If book reviews don't serve that purpose first, what purpose could they possibly serve. For more on the topic, check out this column at Poynter Online.
C. Max Magee | 2 books mentioned 2 min read


text:
Computers Equal Radiologists in Assessing Breast Cancer Risk
Findings demonstrate that breast-density evaluation can be done as well by an automated system as a radiologist.
May 23, 2018 • By Elizabeth Fernandez
Automated breast-density evaluation was just as accurate in predicting women's risk of breast cancer, found and not found by mammography, as subjective evaluation done by radiologists, in a study led by researchers at UC San Francisco and Mayo Clinic.
Both assessment methods were equally accurate in predicting both the risk of cancer detected through mammography screening and the risk of interval invasive cancer — that is, cancer diagnosed within a year of a negative mammography result. Both methods predicted interval cancer more strongly than screen-detected cancer. The study was published May 1, 2018, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Breast density can increase tumor aggressiveness, as well as mask the presence of tumors in mammograms, explained UCSF Professor of Medicine Karla Kerlikowske, MD, who led the study with Mayo Clinic Professor of Epidemiology Celine Vachon, PhD. "This means that women with dense breasts are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancers, especially those that are interval cancers, because their cancers are more likely to remain undetected for longer."
"These findings demonstrate that breast-density evaluation can be done with equal accuracy by either a radiologist or an automated system," said Kerlikowske. "They also show the potential value of a reproducible automated evaluation in helping identify women with dense breasts who are at higher risk of aggressive tumors, and thus more likely to be candidates for supplemental screening."
Another important result of the study was that both automated and clinical breast density assessment methods were equally accurate at predicting both screen-detected and interval cancers when breast density was assessed within 5 years of cancer diagnosis.
"These findings have implications for breast cancer risk models, in particular those that predict risk of the more aggressive interval cancer," said Vachon, the paper's senior author. "Breast density measures can be used to inform a woman's risk of screen and/or interval detected cancers up to five years after assessment."
Thirty states have laws requiring that women receive notification of their breast density, which is graded on the standard four-category Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) scale: a. almost entirely fatty; b. scattered fibroglandular densities; c. heterogeneously dense; and d. extremely dense. "Women who are accurately identified to have dense breasts and be at high risk of an interval cancer are more likely to have appropriate discussions of whether supplemental imaging is right for them," said Kerlikowske.
The study, the largest of its kind to date, included 1,609 women with cancer detected within a year of a positive mammography result, 351 women with interval invasive cancer, and 4,409 control participants matched by age, race, state of residence, screening date and mammography machine. The participants came from screening practices in San Francisco and Rochester, Minn.
The researchers found that women with an automated BI-RADS assessment of extremely dense breasts had a 5.65 times higher risk of interval cancer and a 1.43 times higher risk of screen-detected cancer than women with scattered fibroglandular densities, the most common density category in average-risk women.
"There have been concerns raised about the reliability of BI-RADS breast density measures, since an assessment might vary for an individual woman depending on the radiologist and the mammogram," observed Kerlikowske, who was first author on the paper. "Automated assessments, which are done by computer algorithm, are more reproducible and less subjective. Therefore, they could reduce variation and alleviate the sense of subjectivity and inconsistency."
Co-authors of the study were Amir P. Mahmoudzadeh, MscEng, of UCSF; Christopher G. Scott, MS, Stacey Winham, PhD, Matthew R. Jensen, BS, and Fang Fang Wu, BS, of Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; Lin Ma, MS, of Kaiser Permanente Division of Research; Serghei Malkov, PhD, of Applied Materials; V. Shane Pankratz, PhD, of University of New Mexico; Steven R. Cummings, MD, of California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute; John A. Shepherd, PhD, of University of Hawaii; Kathleen R. Brandt, MD, of Mayo Clinic; and Diana L. Miglioretti, PhD, of UC Davis and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute.
This article was originally published on April 30, 2018, by the UCSF News Center. It is republished with permission.
#mammograms
#screening
#University of California, San Francisco
The Dirty Secret of America's Clean Dishes

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This is the Songjiang Hotel, being built outside of Shanghai in China.
They've taken an old quarry and turned a hole in the ground into a feature.
As previously noted they seem to have dropped the "pages" part of their name.
It's still just an online version of the printed directory. Most listings contain only a phone number and an address, not even a description of the business. You actually get more information from the hard-copy where at least they allow graphics etc (although you can view the ad from the printed directory by clicking on the 'view ad' link).
There is so much more useful information that businesses could include in their online listing. Imagine, for example, if they allowed restaurants to list their menu.
They don't cater for browse dominant users. To view the category hierarchy I need to click a link and then I end up in a horrible control which lists every leaf category alphabetically.
Their category hierarchy continues to be a complete dogs breakfast. There are too many leaf categories and consequently the structure is too deep and too fragmented. The structure is also unbalanced. 'Business Services' is a top-level category – covering everything from 'Accountants' to 'Security Guards'. 'Funeral Arrangements' is also a top-level category, although it has only seven sub-categories which hare all leaf categories.
I can't list a new ad online. Hello?
The search is still way more complex than it needs to be. Google allows me to find any page on the whole internet using a single text box. That should be the benchmark. Really, who is going to search for businesses "within 100 kms"?
They've added "My Address Book" functionality, but don't allow me to add comments. I'm completely disconnected from all of the other people searching on the site. Where is the "other people searching for this found these listings useful" functionality?
Oh well. Maybe in the next version?


text:
Biografia
Dar"ja Petrožyc'ka è nata il 31 maggio 1991 a Černihiv in una famiglia di artisti teatrali. I genitori si sono incontrati a Černihiv, dove hanno lavorato insieme al Teatro drammatico Ševčenko. Il padre si è laureato all'Istituto Karpenko-Kary ed è stato un attore professionista (artista onorato dell'Ucraina). Nel 2007, all'età di 43 anni, muore di ictus. La madre è una ballerina e attrice.

Fin da piccola amava cantare e ballare. Dall'età di quattro anni, ha iniziato a suonare sul palco del Teatro di Černihiv. Il primo ruolo era un piccolo angelo. Dopo aver suonato in numerosi spettacoli per bambini.

Nel 2008 si è diplomata presso un istituto comprensivo a Černihiv. Nel 2012 si è laureata presso l'Università Nazionale di Teatro, Cinema e Televisione di Kiev, intitolata a I.K. Karpenko-Kary, specializzata in attore teatrale e cinematografico. Ha studiato al laboratorio creativo dell'artista popolare ucraino Oleh Šavars'kyj.

Nel 2012, dopo la laurea, ha iniziato a lavorare al Teatro Accademico dei Giovani Spettatori di Kiev nel quartiere di Lypky.

Nel 2019, Dariy è stata invitata a recitare nella serie Kvartal 95 "Papik", che l'ha resa famosa. Il partner principale di Petrogickoy nella serie è People's Artist of Ukraine - Stanislav Boklan.

Teatro
 Il giardino dei ciliegi di Anton Pavlovič Čechov
 Il Canto della Foresta di Lesja Ukraïnka
 I dodici mesi di Samuil Jakovlevič Maršak
 L'ispettore generale di Nikolaj Vasil'evič Gogol'

Discografia

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Innoson Nigeria Limited, Nigeria's indigenous vehicle production company, has instituted a move to take over Guaranteed Trust Bank, GTB, following a ruling by the Supreme Court over the bank's N8.7 billion indebtedness to the company.
The company's chairman, Chief Dr Innocent Chukwuma, made the move through a "Writ of FiFa taken over Guaranty Trust Bank PLC for and on half of Innoson Nigeria Ltd" as a result of the Bank's indebtedness to Innoson Nigeria Ltd.
In a landmark decision on February 27th 2019, the Supreme Court had dismissed GTB's appeal marked SC. 694/2014- against the judgment of Court of Appeal, Ibadan Division.
The Court of Appeal, Ibadan division had in its decision of 6th February 2014 dismissed GTB's appeal against the Federal High Court, Ibadan Division.
Thus, the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment of the Federal High Court, Ibadan Division which ordered GTB by way of Garnishee order absolute – to pay N2.4 Billion to Innoson with a 22 per cent interest, per annum, on the judgment sum until the final liquidation of the judgment debt.
Rather than obey the judgment of the Court of Appeal, GTB approached the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeal's decision.
A statement by the Innoson group's Head of Corporate Communications, Cornel Osigwe disclosed that "The Judgment debt of N2.4B has an accrued interest as at today of about N6,717,909,849.96 which results to about N8.8 Billion.
"Based on the Supreme Court's decision of 27th February 2019 the counsel to Innoson, Prof McCarthy Mbadugha ESQ, had approached the Federal High Court, Awka Division for leave to enforce the judgment having obtained Certificates of Judgment from the Ibadan Division of the Federal High Court.


Watford have further bolstered their squad for the Premier League return by signing defender Miguel Britos and midfielder Jose Manuel Jurado.
French midfielder Etienne Capoue is determined to show Tottenham Hotspur what they are missing, having joined Watford on a four-year contract.
Watford have continued to strengthen their squad in readiness for life in the Premier League by signing the Tottenham midfielder Etienne Capoue.
Watford have named the former Atletico Madrid manager Quique Sanchez Flores as Slavisa Jokanovic's successor at Vicarage Road.
Watford head coach Slavisa Jokanovic has urged his side to secure the Championship title after sealing promotion.
Watford will be playing in the Premier League for the first time since 2006/07 next season after sealing promotion on Saturday.


text:
Claytemple Forum
VRT Section V (Few Brief Notes)
stephenfrug
Having written a veritable essay on the section IV episodes, I have only two very brief comments on these:
1. I had forgotten quite how much VRT tips his hand here. It's amazing, in retrospect, that anyone could doubt that it was (at the very least) not really Marsch writing the prison diary. (But people did! In Pamela Sargent's afterward to the Ace edition, she talks about it as ambiguous and (IMS) undecidable. I hope that Wolfe didn't see the text before it was printed; otherwise it seems rather unkind to someone who is doing you a favor (writing an afterward for your book) to let them go into print with such an error. I know that Wolfe was strict about not spoiling his own mysteries; but surely one ought to stop this side of letting a friend embarass themselves on your behalf.)
2. Your interpretation of the section on the evolution of women — the way it expresses Marsch's impoverished experience, both specifically with women romantically and with people in general — strikes me as brilliant. I have always found that section a bit bizarre & out of place; you nailed it. It's precisely this that is the great strength of your slow method: most interpretations of the book stay at a higher level, and don't touch on all these details; the time you spend on each section allows (and forces) you to examine pretty much all of them. It's a delight.
— Not so brief as all that, was I? Nuts.
G.L. McDorman
As always, Stephen, thanks for these comments. I'm especially glad that you found something worthwhile in our discussion of V.R.T.'s comments about the evolution of women.
P.S. Our Russell Kirk short-story collection arrived today!
Ryan M.
The Book of the new sun and neal Stephenson's Anathem
Hello, first time poster here. I have been following the podcast cover Fifth Head of Cerberus at work and in Episode 44, the Wrap Up, Brandon and Glenn briefly talk about Neal Stephenson's Anathem and how its use of leaves as paper could be a nod to Fifth Head. Glenn also says there are several Book of the New Sun references in Anathem. I'm a big fan of Anathem and read the Book of New Sun last year, but I'm at a loss of spotting the references. Can anyone help me out, or is this discussed in another episode?
Daniel Falch
V.r.t
I loved this story. The craftsmanship on display in introducing a third story type and having them all mesh is just wonderful. It really highlights what a next level master Gene Wolfe was and makes me incredulous that he isn't more widely known. I think that is mostly due to his fiction being too complex to be adapted into film and tv which Would have increased his audience. Your long discussion about St. Croix government in the second sections recap and discussion was great. You talked a lot about Vichy France but there are many other examples of this kind of government. From Sulla's proscribed lists in Rome, the second triumvirate, the England of Shakespeare and Marlowe and East Germany in the time this story was written. The combination of a minority, for political religious or other reasons, government that is distrustful of its population and a perceived weakness in foreign affairs is a combo that leads to this. There is no evidence that the government of St. Anne is also a military junta or threatening St. Croix in anyway. The statements about St. Anne are all made by government officials of St. Croix and are unreliable. They need St. Anne to be an enemy to justify their actions. All we see of St. Anne is the edge of a colony towns, never the main city. The fact that the military is also the customs authority is common in many countries here on Earth. I appreciated that the ballistic table in the back of the field guide was the main excuse used to detain the prisoner. The fact that it was old doesn't matter. It also is set for a different planet, a particular weapon with a specific loading and is therefore useless for what Constant claims the prisoner was going to use it for also doesn't matter. Why V.R.T. brought the field guide with him is kind of odd though, given the weight penalty for space travel. That Wolfe adds these types of details and uses them correctly is one of the things that makes reading his stories so enjoyable. Is there a race of shape shifting pastoral beings living a natural existence on an alien planet? Your discussion convinced me no, but I want it to be true. I can't remember on which podcast that you mentioned wanting a happier ending. It seems to me that the 70's science fiction market didn't want a happy ending. Most every sci fi movie between 2001 A Space OdySpey and Star Wars are pretty bleak. Dystopian worlds with environmental disasters and tyranny in government was the order of the day.
Ep 86 the death of dr. Island
Great discussion as always. In the discussion of which character could be Jesus it seems to me Diane is the only one who fits the bill. She sacrificed herself so that others could be saved. I actually don't think any of the characters fit but it's an interesting question. IQ was often made a big deal of in the 70s and 80s. I don't think it's being used correctly by most people and I'm glad it's out of favor as a measuring standard. I am always interested in fiction that have serious questions about how culture should work. In this story Wolfe created a world that valued IQ and asks at what point does that measurement no longer matter? This last year I saw a great movie called Ad Astra that asked the same kind of questions about the engineering culture of NASA and how that would translate into human migration into space. It is a fascinating movie with a lot of sutb points, like a Wolfe story needs to be seen multiple times to be appreciated.


text:
HKFP Voices • Interviews • Politics & Protest
'It's never easy to fight for what we believe in', says democracy activist Agnes Chow
By Claire Provost
Agnes Chow was still a teenager in September 2014, when she joined thousands of other young people on the streets of Hong Kong, in a historic pro-democracy protest lasting 79 days that became known as the "umbrella movement."
Last week Chow travelled to Strasbourg, France, to attend the Council of Europe's 2017 World Forum for Democracy (WFD). This year's event focused on populism and the crises of traditional political party and media institutions.
File photo: In-Media.
"It's never easy," she said, to take on "an authoritarian regime, and to fight for things we believe in." Chow spoke to WFD youth delegates Karla Ng and Skye Riggs on the sidelines of the conference.
Protest is important "even though it might fail, even though it might not be a success every time," she said. "It's not easy to fight for democracy, but the most important thing is we should not give up."
Now 21, Chow is a student at Hong Kong Baptist University – and one of the founding members of Demosistō, a new political party formed last year by some of the organisers of the 2014 umbrella movement protests.
Those demonstrations saw tens of thousands take to the streets, to demand 'universal suffrage' and the right to directly elect Hong Kong's chief executive, its top political leader, currently chosen by an elite selection committee.
Police responded with tear gas and pepper spray, and eventually evicted occupiers from city spaces. Since then, activists have been arrested, prosecuted, and jailed. Others are awaiting trials.
Amnesty International warns the state "is toughening its stance" against pro-democracy organisers, with freedom of expression and assembly under attack
Joshua Wong, the skinny bespectacled student who became an icon of the movement, was imprisoned with two other activists in August. They were recently released on bail while courts consider their appeals.
Joshua Wong. Photo: In-Media.
The umbrella movement captured attention internationally, with media coverage and solidarity rallies around the world. Wong is the subject of a recent Netflix documentary, Joshua: Teenager Vs Superpower, in which Chow also appears.
A generation's "political awakening"
2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the handover of the former British colony Hong Kong to Beijing. The city has its own separate political and legal systems but it is not independent and Beijing's influence over it has provoked numerous protests.
The umbrella movement was called a defining "political awakening" for an entire generation – including young women who appeared on front lines and organised "everything from food and water distribution to communications," according to one report.
The movement's name came from the umbrellas protesters used as shields against tear gas and pepper spray. Yellow ribbons – long an emblem of women's suffrage movements – also became symbols of the protests.
Pop singer Denise Ho was an outspoken supporter of the movement. A 14-year old girl, arrested for drawing a chalk flower on a wall, was another icon.
But there were also reports of discrimination and abuse against women protesters. Last year, activist Yau Wai-ching said she had been trailed by a local tabloid reporter looking to uncover details about her sex life.
Yau Wai-ching. File photo: In-Media.
In 2014, Human Rights Watch researcher Maya Wong said that many young women and girls faced "hostility" over their participation in the protests. She blamed a "gender expectation that for women their role belongs at home. If they stand up in public, they should stand back."
At the WFD, Chow told youth delegates Ng (also from Hong Kong) and Riggs (from Australia) that she hopes "more and more females can have the bravery to participate in politics in the future."
This summer, following arrests at a sit-in protest, she and other activists filed a formal complaint with the city over male officers patrolling female holding cells, and a lack of privacy using the toilet while detained.
Some Hong Kong campaigners have also warned that women's rights progress is being held back by a lack of funding, with money going first to pro-government groups.
From protest to political party
"In Hong Kong it is more and more common for women to be involved in politics," said Chow, though this doesn't necessarily mean she agrees with their policies.
In March, Hong Kong appointed its first female chief executive, Carrie Lam, described by the Guardian as "China's preferred candidate… in a contest that pitted popular appeal against lobbying by Beijing."
Chow says Demosistō's priorities are "advocating universal values such as democracy, freedom, human rights and equality," along with "self-determination for Hong Kong," with residents given "the right to decide their own future."
Anges Chow and Carrie Lam.
She says the party must be clear and uncompromising on core values, whilst "careful not to start any kind of politics of hatred or fear or discrimination" in their opposition to the Chinese government.
We are different from other traditional or conservative political parties in Hong Kong, because we actually came from social movements and direct participation of people," said Chow, who says Demosistō members still believe in direct democracy.
"People should have some direct channels to participate in politics, not only for voting for someone… to be in some role, but also to directly be involved, and respected and heard by the government."
As student activists, Chow said they focused primarily on "big issues" like 'universal suffrage'. As a party, they're also going to "different communities, different districts… to understand what social issues are more relevant for people's lives," such as housing policy, rent, and the distribution of resources including land.
Public education is also needed "to help people understand the meaning of democracy… [and] how to get involved," she said. "We are partly advocating social movements, we're partly advocating civil disobedience… and we also advocate direct action."
The Council of Europe, founded in 1949, has a stated mission to uphold human rights, democracy and rule of law in its now-47 member states. It has a committee of ministers, parliamentary assembly, and court of human rights.
Photo: mameshiba1985, via Flickr.
The WFD is held each November, bringing civil society, political, and academic representatives together to discuss challenges facing contemporary democracies. Youth political participation has been a main theme over the years.
Ahead of the 2017 forum, dozens of youth delegates also gathered at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg for workshops and a special youth programme.
During the WFD, a group of youth delegates worked with 50.50, the gender and sexuality section of openDemocracy, to explore issues related to populism and women's rights.
Forum sessions focused on topics from fake news and storytelling to women's political empowerment and the increasingly 'female face of the far right.'
Via OpenDemocracy, Creative Commons.
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'It's never easy to fight for what we believe in', says democracy activist Agnes Chow