We already knew from a footnote in Marx’s Capital that the Scottish industrialist Peter Fairbairn, who based his life and business in Leeds and was city mayor, “discovered several very important applications of machinery to the construction of machines as a result of strikes in his own factory.” Now Oxford has digitised a number of…
Say what you like about the Hamsa squatters, but their PR operation is slick, and I’m 99% sure the following graffiti is their work. It appeared roughly 24 hours after the outbreak of a riot at the Quatre Camins gaol here which left a deputy governor in intensive care: The revolting state of Spanish prisons…
Ah, how we all laughed at mad old Arnie! Mr Schoenberg, who was born on the 13th and feared the number all his life (Twelve tones? That’ll do nicely…), of course died on the 13th, just when he thought his illness had passed. And now the epidemiologists (c/o Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd) seem to be…
Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist this photo, which was sent to me by le Big FFF, who received it from someone else a long time ago. I think it’s probably early 70s Anglophone West Africa, but your guess is as good as mine:
I once saw a pocket trumpet miraculously transformed by a car into something vaguely resembling a plate, but back in 1753 James Hanson and his father were condemned to transportation for trying to achieve the opposite without paying for the raw materials. This text is from the online proceedings of the Old Bailey: (M.) James…
Lovely line in La Vanguardia, discovered lazing on top of an article re bullfighting: Bullfights fracture the allergy of intellectuals to proscription. And, continues the article, The generation of May 68 postulated a tolerant and flexible society to the unanimous cry of “It is forbidden to forbid”. This is one of the most important, most…
Re the Abramovich boat post: I’ve been contacted now by three British newspapers, one gentleman who sounded suspiciously like a Russian investigator, various salesmen and a couple of nuts. Honest, I don’t know where the boat is, I haven’t got the faintest idea how he paid for it, and it doesn’t interest me in the…
Frequently racist paranoia vis-à-vis “imperialistic cultures” like the “Anglo-Saxon and Germanic” (with particular reference to the former) has permeated political thought of most varieties here for a long time and has been particularly evident in the last year or so. Sometimes, however, conflicts of interest arise. José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was an elitist liberal…
Out of sight (and probably out of my mind) for a few days, so here for you and especially for Henk is an excerpt from a Jack Bulterman number called Steeple Chase, adapted from the version recorded by Theo Uden Masman and Het Ramblers Dansorkest in Casino Hamdorff in Laren, Holland on the 13th of…