History of the buffalo – Kosambi relaxing
History ain’t what it was. Here is the great historian of India, Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi, with an amazing caption for an illustration of a water buffalo: “Water-buffalo (p.…
Tag: notes to self
The Entanglement
The Entanglement If the 18th century gave us the Enlightenment, which was a mixed blessing, as they say, what are we to make of what the 21st century…
Eugenics and Anthropology Publishing
In a reference within Trần Gia Thảo Vy’s essay on Malinowski I notice that old Bronio’s volume “The Sexual Life of Savages” (on kinship systems and beliefs, so…
An Indian rhino – from a Classical Greek description
“[45] In India there are wild asses as large as horses, or even larger. Their body is white, their head dark red, their eyes bluish, and they have a…
Declension of the lefts
This comment on the British Left was buried I guess, but had cause to think of it again today: “…the Left collapsed under the weight of a sectarian…
Saving Time – research theme
The one thing I am urgently trying to write is a text on the need for time (I don’t have time to write it, so there’s the problem).…
Novel returns
The novel is a historical and autobiographically filtered indulgence, yet the making of worlds can sweep you away for a day or a week. Right to choose, needless…
Notes on novel lists
Outside Budapest – mood. One day I will make a list of things to do (that isn’t just a contrawise procrastination). Is it weird that no-one reads novels…
Skillset training…
… Skillset work needed. Cadre who can scuba dive so as to cut the fibre optic cables providing internet to elite islands; Cadre who can reprogram delivery drones…
Re-vaulting
Everybodyism – see footnote 1. New Poetics/from the Re-vaults of almost forgotten heroes Nobody finishes everything – here are some that won’t get done soon… I gue…
Book Fetish
A detail from Yasmine Seale’s annotation of pages of Edward Lane’s 1838 translation of 1001 Nights – Sleepless 2022, Mirage 2022, Of the Sea 2022 – seen in…
180 years of fashion. RIP Mary Anne Walkley.
as reported in the Sterling Observer (2 July 1863).
Don Miller
On Time. My teacher and friend Don Miller passed away last month. We had published his book “Time and Time Again” in 2022. His memorial is on the…
If we had time to study, we might study this…
I was asked yesterday how I might explain the attraction of current right wing ideas and autocracy…: >> How do you explain the attraction of current right wing…
materialism and truth
Do we spend too much time worrying about truth and its manipulation of the senses, priority of matter etc., Rene Descartes owes us much as the destructive consequences…
Depression (not mine, ours)
Depression: I am no expert on depression, at all, but I also note that over the last two decades it has become a more visible topic of discussion…
Waste theory
Examples of advice that may not be worth the paper they are written on… I was asked to suggest things to read for the topic: “junk content on…
Translation Citation
It makes some sense to check the most often quoted, beloved bits, and expand them a little to see what that author might also have been saying Sometimes…
Immensely facilitated
VLUU L210 / Samsung L210 A scrap from a 1996 notebook, it was sent to the aut-op-sy listserve: In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels formulated a paragraph…
Comparativism
In an essay last term, students Làu Cẩm Tú and Hồ Phạm Ngọc Trân brought out the problems and possibilities inherent in Ruth Benedicts work style – though there is…
Mother of Pearl
Moving from detective fiction in Thailand to commercial reproduction makes sense when its Angela Savage. This is my next non-work read: Some review snippets lifted from Angela’s blog:…
What did you do in the war…
Just out in History and Anthropology. Not my usual kind of thing, but experiments that might lead to a new thing… The first fifty 35 people to email me can…
Schzmexit
More notes for the novel… Brexit schzmexit we need much more to fix it so that neither Tories or Labour can govern. While a Party of the New…