J.M. Harper:

This is not my home.

Have you seen Of Time and the City?

Of Time and the City is both a love song and a eulogy to Liverpool. It is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes its toll.

Have you seen La Jetee?

Vignette II: Ce N'est Pas Ma Maison

Yann Arthus-Bertrand:

HOME is an ode to the planet's beauty and its delicate harmony. Through the landscapes of 54 countries captured from above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand takes us on an unique journey all around the planet, to contemplate it and to understand it. But HOME is more than a documentary with a message, it is a magnificent movie in its own right. Every breathtaking shot shows the Earth - our Earth - as we have never seen it before. Every image shows the Earth's treasures we are destroying and all the wonders we can still preserve. "From the sky, there's less need for explanations". Our vision becomes more immediate, intuitive and emotional. HOME has an impact on anyone who sees it. It awakens in us the awareness that is needed to change the way we see the world. (HOME embraces the major ecological issues that confront us and shows how everything on our planet is interconnected.)

Surely by now you have seen Koyaanisqatsi?

A motion picture essay which takes a revealing and shocking look at modern life and its imbalances.

HOME, a Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Train Runs Through Bangkok Market

A blog by Clifford J. Doerksen:

My current research has me looking through microfilmed tabloid newspapers of the 1930s. My progress is greatly impeded by my inability to scroll past unrelated “human interest” stories, most of them tiny nightmares like something out of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts (which you should read immediately if you haven’t already). Anyway, I’ve started this blog as a place to memorialize these spectral and transient tragedies.

The Hope Chest

Charlotte Brewer on the OED:

We are now, involuntarily and unceasingly, it often seems, assailed by a superabundance of electronic information, which can confuse and repel as much as it enlightens us. By contrast, when we pick up a book, we are making a deliberate choice that is limited to the contents between the cover, and we can see, feel, and smell what we are getting.

Only Words

Wordnik: An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them

Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait—if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!

Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, just as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.

Wordnik

From the readers at Schott’s Vocab Blog, and Douglas Hofstadter:

“I prefer Nathan’s,” Tim said frankly.

“I wish we had some flowers,” said Tom lackadaisically.

“Get to the back of the boat!” Tom said sternly.

“I’m the world’s most cannibalistic human,” said Tom, full of himself.

Weekend Competition: Tom Swifties

Milton Glaser:

1. You can only work for people that you like.
2. If you have a choice never have a job.
3. Some people are toxic; avoid them.
4. Professionalism is not enough or the good is the enemy of the great.
5. Less is not necessarily more.
6. Style is not to be trusted.
7. How you live changes your brain.
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
9. Learn how to age gracefully.
10. Tell the truth.

Adam Shand:

It's possible to get accustomed to anything. Make bloody sure you are aware of what you've become accustomed to.

Have you seen "Doubt"?

Father Brendan Flynn: You haven't the slightest proof of anything!
Sister Aloysius Beauvier: But I have my certainty!

Martin Schwartz:

Science makes me feel stupid too. It's just that I've gotten used to it.

Ten Things I Have Learned

Amy Gardner:

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.

This part doesn't: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, "You just hit our line."

Recently, on the other coast:

Police are hunting for vandals who chopped fiber-optic cables and killed landlines, cell phones and Internet service for tens of thousands of people in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties on Thursday.

Ten fiber-optic cables carrying were cut at four locations in the predawn darkness.

On China Miéville's The City:

The place is drab, the people glum, the culture a faded pastiche of Ottoman, Slav, Byzantine and Austro-Hungarian Mitteleuropa. It's a decaying, depressed world reminiscent of the 1949 film "The Third Man," where shadows, paranoia, secrecy and unseen forces reign.

The One Fiber Optic Cable No One on the Dig for Tysons Rail Wants to Hit

Aleksandar Hemon's new stories have earned Starred Reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist:

... beautifully twists the language in this collection of eight powerful and disquieting stories.

Hemon arranges words like gems in a necklace.

Writing with steely control and an antic eye, Hemon has assembled another extraordinary work.

Hemon infuses everything, from a freezer to bees in a hive, with barbed insights into our instinct for aggression, longing for connection, and unquenchable need to tell our stories, whether in poems, letters, drunken orations, or confessions to strangers.

Hemon is a world-class writer of seismic depth, riptide humor, wine-dark language, and unflinching candor.

Love and Obstacles