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Are you not amazed at how she evokes soul, body, hearing, tongue, sight, skin, as though they were external and belonged to someone else? And how at one and the same moment she both freezes and burns, is irrational and sane, is terrified and nearly dead, so that we observe in her not a single emotion but a whole concourse of emotions? Such things do, of course, commonly happen to people in love. Sappho’s supreme excellence lies in the skill with which she selects the most striking and vehement circumstances of the passions and forges them into a coherent whole.   Longinus, On the Sublime
Sappho’s poem of jealousy survives only because the ancient critic Longinus quoted it as a supreme example of poetic intensity--now Ken Knabb has put up 26 translations of it in the English at the Gateway to the Vast Realms , the literature and texts section of his Bureau of Public Secrets. And wait! There's more!
posted by y2karl at 10:04 PM PST - 10 comments

George Soros' blog: hot on the heels of the early-adopter in chief, Bill Gates, George Soros has joined the blogging community. Needless to say, the onetime scourge of British monetary policy is not using LiveJournal but he does have a provocative position over the war in Iraq. Warren Buffet by contrast, despite having signed on as a Kerry economic adviser, appears to concur with the pre-emption doctrine. Does anything about the US election make sense anymore? The capital markets seem to have agreed that the outcome point is moot - can popular opinion (.pdf) be far behind? Some disagree. (.pdf)
posted by dmt at 6:29 PM PST - 8 comments

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."
posted by homunculus at 4:52 PM PST - 12 comments

What's up with Christopher Hitchens nowadays? Here is an interview with him by Johann Hari.
posted by semmi at 1:10 PM PST - 58 comments

How Bush Did. Later for the polls, pundits, and analysis. The five minute .wmv found here sums up the President's performance. Partisan, sliced, edited, and damned scary funny.
posted by adampsyche at 12:30 PM PST - 55 comments

OK, OK, we've all heard by now about Virgin Galactic, and their plan to offer customers a markedly suborbital ride and a few underwhelming minutes of zero-G. But some of us know that the future of commercial spaceflight still and always belongs to Pan Am, whose proud (though marred) building still stands in Midtown like a sign pointing to a better, more glamorous future - a future we'd almost stopped beliving in. What a shame that the legendary airline's current, much-reduced incarnation has such humble ambitions: seems to me we need to dream like this, now more than ever.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:16 AM PST - 16 comments

Q: Is George Bush being quietly coached while he's speaking in public? There's a weird moment during the debate (one of many) when George Bush says "let me finish" but wasn't being interrrupted. Indymedia has a post on it too, including an mp3 of the moment. So, is Bush being coached, even during the debates, and more to the point, how did he lose when he was being fed what to say?
posted by amberglow at 10:27 AM PST - 130 comments

Curious George and the high tension power line : A cartoon story in 9 parts, on how a cute little monkey out of his depth gets turned into a stuffed ashtray holder.
posted by troutfishing at 8:10 AM PST - 15 comments

"Iraqi blogger" indulges in disinformation. "Sam" of http://hammorabi.blogspot.com has graphic pictures on his site of children killed by Zarqawi terrorists in Baghdad on Thursday. Horrible and tragic, indeed. Even more tragic, however, is that a Reuters camera crew filmed their identical twins, who died that same day after a US airstrike in Fallujah. Is "Sam" a victim of US disinformation, or is "Sam" a practicioner? Could "Sam" be an uncle, perhaps?!
posted by insomnia_lj at 7:32 AM PST - 27 comments

The European Dream Sure. They are doing better than the U.S. in so many aspects of living but we are number one with our military! Or perhaps that is why they do so well? Note: their view of religion does not come anywhere near the crazed attention religion plays in American life, in our politics, tax relief, social legislation etc....
posted by Postroad at 7:17 AM PST - 48 comments