Tough Guys Don´t Dance: 2011

quarta-feira, 2 de fevereiro de 2011

A Word to the Wise

Let the world pass in its time-ridden race;
never get caught in its snare.
Remember, the only acceptable case
for being in any particular place
is having no business there.

Piete Heine

Ann Druyan & Richard Dawkins-Science & the unknown

Carl Sagan wrote a book, named "Pale Blue Dot", demostrating how insigificant our planet is and, by consequence, we all are, nothing of what we do mean a bit to the universe. That is beeing a skeptic: ok i believe, i believe in God, i believe in spirits, i believe of post mortem experiences, just show me the proofs! Like a philosopher said: what is more likely?; Jesus made all the miracles, or a frentic followers spread out those events [like today we see], whith some adulterations?
Always use something called "Occam Razor": when exists two explanations for the same thing, the simplest must be the correct", we are not dogmatic, we are open to anything! On the opposite of what most of the people think, skepticism is a band of mad atheists; no, we just want proofs, something real.
It´s like in the middle age, we, Human Race, killed thousands of people without any proof, accusing them of beeing witches.
Like Law, that need proofs to put someone in jail ( common sense ) why, for the mother of a possible God, i should believe on what i can´t see or sense!

Tough Guys Don´t Dance: Ann Druyan talks about the Cosmos mini-series

Ann Druyan talks about the Cosmos mini-series

quinta-feira, 27 de janeiro de 2011

Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal Feud on the Dick Cavett Show

War

Of course no book or movie can obtain what a war is, killing peoploe without judjement because of ideas that might be wrong, no soldier his a hero, see the Thin Red Line By Terrence Mallick; Platton by Oliver Stone; Saving Private Ryan By Spielberg and of course "Appocalypse Now by Coppola", we can have a glimpse of what a really war is! Of course like Clasewitz said "war is politics by other means", that a theme i willl explore further in the future.
International Law only exist on paper, brute force is the realy International law!

Norman Mailer

Mailer, Norman (1923 - 2007) American novelist, journalist and polemicist, born in Long Branch, New Jersey. He was brought up in Brooklin and educate id Harvard. During WWII he served in the Pacific and his first novel " The naked and the Dead" (1948) draws hevily upon his own experience.

An antiwar and social satire blast, it was a remarkable work for one so young and it becames a besteseller, establishing him as a leading novelist of his generation.
A proponent of the " New Journalism", and one who helped define that solipsistic genre, he was created a vast body of work , impressive for it´s energyand is self - obsession.
He has mantained his antafonism towards conteporary society and mores in "Barbary Shore" ( 1951) and "The dear Park" (1955). "Advertisemnts for Myself" (1959), whose own blurb admitted that "some of the pieces are mediocre", is gennerally regarded as one of his more successful books. As a polemicist, campaigner and protester he was proeminent toward the 1960s, publishng " An American Dream" ( 1965) , Why are we in Vietnam?" ( 1967) and Armies of the night (1968), whose subject was is the 1967 protest march on the Penthagon. It won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize.
Subsquent books include " Miami and the Siege Chicago" (1969), " The prisioner od Sex" (1971), Marilyn ( a picctorial ife of Marilyn Monroe, 1973). " The Executioner s Song´" (1979), a documentary and study of convicted killer Gary Gilmore, "Ancient Evenings"(1983), a gargantual historical novel, and a thriller " Tough Guys Don´t Dance" (1984).
He has spent much of his unruly life trying to live up to the machismos of his prose. He is sometimes dismissed as a braggart, and is much excorieted bu feminist critics for his agressivemasculinityboth in real lifeand on the printed paper.Like Hemingway, he his a master of conveying the plight of men operating under extreme circumstances.
We can read on the Ny Times:
Mr. Mailer was a tireless worker who at his death was writing a sequel to his 2007 novel, “The Castle in the Forest.” If some of his books, written quickly and under financial pressure, were not as good as he had hoped, none of them were forgettable or without his distinctive stamp. And if he never quite succeeded in bringing off what he called “the big one” — the Great American Novel — it was not for want of trying.
Along the way, he transformed American journalism by introducing to nonfiction writing some of the techniques of the novelist and by placing at the center of his reporting a brilliant, flawed and larger-than-life character who was none other than Norman Mailer himself.
Of course, we can´t define a man this is only a beggining to admire a teletous, i only put his books that influenced me the most. But it will be each of us readinf his books that can form an individual opinion aboiut him, one thing is certain he did´nt past this life without let an mark.
He wrote until the end of his life, his last book was "The castle in the forest" (2007).