Trial of the Will. "Reviewing familiar principles and maxims in the face of mortal illness, Christopher Hitchens has found one of them increasingly ridiculous: 'Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.' Oh, really? Take the case of the philosopher to whom that line is usually attributed, Friedrich Nietzsche, who lost his mind to what was probably syphilis. Or America’s homegrown philosopher Sidney Hook, who survived a stroke and wished he hadn’t. Or, indeed, the author, viciously weakened by the very medicine that is keeping him alive."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Dec 8, 2011 -
27 comments
American audiences remember
Akira Kurosawa as the genius of the samurai epic, a past master who used the form both to revise and revive Western classics - Shakespeare with
Ran and
Throne of Blood, Dostoevsky with
Red Beard and
The Idiot, Gorky with
The Lower Depths - and to give splendid and ultimately immortal life to new archetypes, as in
The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo. But Kurosawa also made films of his own time. His
masterpiece, in fact, was the quiet story of a gray Japanese bureaucrat dying in post-war Tokyo, and of his attempt to do something of lasting good before he leaves. The film is
Ikiru ("To Live"; 1952).
[more inside]
posted by Iridic
on Jan 29, 2008 -
46 comments
The Australian cigarette health warnings have pretty much filtered down to every retail packet that's bought now.
They're pretty gruesome and some smoking acquaintances cover them up with stickers. I thought I'd have a look around and see what other countries warnings were like. None of them were pulling any punches except for Uruguay.
posted by tellurian
on May 17, 2006 -
118 comments
Mordecai Richler dead at 70. Noted Canadian man of letters, political commentator, frequent imbiber and author of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "Solomon Gursky Was Here," "Oh, Canada! Oh, Quebec!," and "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang." He was undergoing cancer treatment.
posted by galachef55
on Jul 3, 2001 -
5 comments
