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Sunday, February 19th, 2012
I am embarking on a new project this week. Recently Yascha Mounk of The Utopian contacted me to ask if I'd like to contribute some short translated pieces to their site's blog. Naturally (given that I've been reading and thinking about Vásquez' work so much lately) the first thing to come to mind was Juan Gabriel Vásquez' weekly column for El espectador, which seems almost perfectly suited for this format. I made contact with Anne McLean and received permission to give this a try -- the first column is up, his January 26th column about Salman Rushdie's canceled appearance at the Jaipur literary festival: Bullies and their certainties.
posted morning of February 19th, 2012: Respond
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Saturday, February 18th, 2012
sà sÃ, tu aviso estóy escuchando pero hallo que no me importa esto rodeo del confesionario dar, del medio narrativo, del reflejo retro. Asà afirmando, estóy la suerte cerrando: no me debo preocupar de que puedo me apartar del camino recto y angosto
y vago garabatear la escrita mustia de disculpa.
En cambio, me gloriaré -- en todo caso, fanfarronearse es una forma de confesionario, ¿verdad? Cantaré autodescriptivamente qui quiri quÃ,
fingiré que mi ceguera perpleja fuera alguna ventana.
posted evening of February 18th, 2012: Respond
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Nearly everyone in this town of fewer than 2,000 people some 95-miles east of San Francisco has a story about the two men, who were known as wild partiers and methamphetamine users.
“It’s freaky when you realize you knew someone like that,†said Jennifer Brown, 57, a bartender from nearby Clements.
Mr. Shermantine and Mr. Herzog were regulars at several of the local bars, including the Linden Inn, owned by John Vanderheiden.
“I heard him boasting about how he killed a guy just to kill him,†said Mr. Vanderheiden, who said he shrugged off Mr. Herzog’s stories as barroom bragging until 1998, when his 25-year-old daughter, Cyndi, disappeared after a night out with the men. It is difficult to picture reading this story without wondering whether Herzog has started working on his documentary. Only icing on the cake that one of the murderers is named Herzog.
posted evening of February 18th, 2012: 2 responses
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Friday, February 17th, 2012
posted evening of February 17th, 2012: Respond
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Thursday, February 16th, 2012
Thanks to Damir Galaz-Mandakovic Fernández of Tocopilla y su historia for running this report on Domingo Zárate Vega's visit to Tocopilla in 1932. The photo is from a local newspaper.
In 1932, in a time of chaos, misery and crisis in the country and likewise at the local level, there appeared in Tocopilla a figure both picturesque and controversial, of national fame, named Domingo Zárate, alias ‘The Christ of Elqui.’ He was a preacher who had taken up travelling throughout Chile and the neighboring countries, Bolivia and Peru, after he learned of his mother's death in 1922. Ever since then, as a form of penitence, he had devoted his life to evangelical sermons, had given up his clothing for a simple sackcloth and sandals, had let his hair and his beard grow unchecked. Hundreds of people came to hear his preachings; children were scared by his strange appearance, which provoked jeers and catcalls from the unfaithful -- he would reply in his own defense, ‘...better to be serious than to jest, especially when we are dealing with the Gospel. They will laugh at me, perfect, it is not the first time, not for Our Lord Jesus Christ; the public will have its say...’ (Revista Sucesos 1932 p. 7: Universidad de Tarapacá archive)
posted evening of February 16th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, February 13th, 2012
(via Book Riot)
posted evening of February 13th, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, February 12th, 2012
posted evening of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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 Matthew's posting of an article about fonts at Google+ reminds me that I have not posted yet about the recent typeface change at READIN -- partly or mostly out of the conviction that it is not the sort of thing that would make any difference to anybody who is not me... But what are blogs for if not stuff that would make no difference to anybody but the author?
Lately I have been writing everything (everything I write on the computer that is not code) in Palatino Linotype, and finding that it is much easier on the eyes than any other typeface I have tried. (I do not love the numerals; but most of what I write in non-programming contexts is alpha characters.) So I modified the site's stylesheet to specify that typeface name as the primary choice; if you have the face installed (and it seems to be pretty standard-issue), that's how the site should render. Giovambattista Palatino was an Italian calligrapher of the 16th C., who in 1556 wrote a manual of lettering styles. Hermann Zapf is a German typeface designer of the 20th C., who in 1948 named a set of faces after Sig. Palatino.
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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 New cave paintings have been discovered at the Caves of Nerja in Andalusia, a system of caverns "discovered by a group of boys hunting bats in 1959." Although this is not yet confirmed, initial carbon dating of the images (left, a painting of the seals which the cave-dwellers hunted) indicates they are approximately 43,000 years old, or nearly half again as old as the images at Chauvet. Researcher José Luis Sanchidrián Torti (of the University of Córdoba) speculates they may be the work of Neanderthals. (A Facebook commenter points out that this would be appropriate, given the Neanderthal nature of Spain's contemporary justice system.) Thanks for the link, Rob!
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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My father built a time machine and then he spent his whole life trying to figure out how to use it to get more time. He spent all the time he had with us thinking about how he wished he had more time, if he could only have more time.
Time-travel paradoxes and jokes are one of my favorite things in science fiction. Today I started reading Charles Yu's first novel, How to live safely in a science fictional universe, which is looking in its early pages like it is going to be an extended time-travel paradox/joke, and a hilarious one. And not just that, also a character study, what looks like it will be a successful one -- I am identifying closely with the narrator and his quest to "relive his very worst moment, over and over," to "go back and fix his broken life."
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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