“Unknown Man: I’ll be around for some time. I have a mission to accomplish. […] Unknown Man: And all the time the volcano beneath our feet is seething and boiling. We are riddled through and through with conspiracies, secret societies, plots… Onek: Yes! The dirty bloody hunchbacks are plotting! Unkown Man: What hunchbacks… Onka: My […]
Andrzej Zybertowicz puts up a strong, if entirely illogical, defence of the law requiring journalists to swear to whether they did or did not cooperate with the secret services of communist Poland in Wednesday’s Rzeczpospolita. Journalists should sign the loyalty declarations beacuse they are “the fourth estate.” It’s that simple. I have scoured the constitution […]
Adam Curtis‘s documentary “The Trap – What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom?“, shown on BBC2 last Sunday, presented the thinking person’s conspiracy theory. Think Don DeLillo rather than Dan Bown. So rather than arguing that Opus Dei covered up Mary Magdalene’s male drag act or sputtering that the Carlyle Group masterminded 9/11, Curtis suavely […]
Not all journos here are finding the legal requirement to pledge that you never informed under communism so irksome as those prima donnas who claim that this is mere humiliation, since in any case the archives are about to be thrown open to journalists (and that, as mentioned before, means nearly everyone — including you, […]
Last night BBC4 screened an solid documentary on the decline of New York City during the 1970s, a steep fall from grace that culminated in the infamous blackout/riot of July 13-14, 1977.The programme offered a survey of some of the factors that brought Gotham to its knees: the collapse of a once-dynamic manufacturing base, the […]
I spent last weekend Liverpool–the absence of postings this week can be partially explained by the fact that I was there for my brother’s stag party. The quote of the weekend was innocently uttered by a member of our party while watching Saturday’s Liverpool-Man U clash in a cavernous drinking emporium somewhere off the main […]
From March 15th all journalists born before 1972 working in Poland will have to sign a declaration that they did not spy for the Polish People’s Republic. That includes me: Polish law has a very wide definition of journalism and the bill makes no distinction between Poles and foreigners. Nor does it make any attempt […]
“Monachal” means pertaining to monks. The OED gives a citation from 1587. A “vaticination” is an inspired or oracular vision – attested in 1603. Perhaps Leavis was making fun of Conrad.
Wikipedia on dialogue in theatre of the absurd: “repetitive or nonsensical dialogue and dramatic non-sequiturs are often used to create dream-like, or even nightmare-like moods.” For example: XX: I think that you people are under a curse. […] AA: I like what you said just now. XX: Do you? AA: The great problem is to […]
Pay attention class. Up till now the primary degree in Poland was not a BA but an MA. This takes five years of study and is awarded on submission of an MA thesis. After the MA you can go on to do a PhD – also by research – and then a “habilitacja.” The consequences […]
