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Matteo is a 24 year old guy from Milano, Italy.
Likes 1,872 pages, 492 videos, 80 photos • 90 fans • Received 27 reviews
Member since Mar 08, 2007
. Je ne vois qu'infini par toutes les fenêtres
Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal
Un livre est un grand cimetière où sur la plupart des tombes on ne peut plus lire les noms effacés
Marcel Proust
Alles nake werde fern
Goethe
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My RYM page.

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The Man From Porlock: Pipe Dream
Liked it May 9, 9:19am 1 review blogs, genius, man-from-porlock •http://themanfromporlock.blogspot.com...
A man from Porlock



A whole big masterpiece of a blog.
A great writer.
An intruder in arts history.
A man from Porlock.
Project Syndicate
Liked it May 8, 8:23am 1 review politics, samuel-huntington-refutations •http://www.project-syndicate.org/comm...
Cultural clashes



    To be Western or Westernized, above all, is a mindset which does not coincide with any continent, nor with any specific nation or religion. Huntington's mistake, it seems, was to contain the West inside national borders: there is no map of the West.

The article is a great example of how some critique can be much worse than the concepts legitimately (and probably rightfully) criticized. Samuel Huntington can and must be addressed for his simplifications, but he warned everyone in his book that he doubts he could divide the world into REAL different civilizations. His own theories remain theories, and he's the first to criticize who draws outright conclusions from those same simplifications he proposes.
He was one of the first to try, in the post-Cold War era, to reincarnate geopolitics into some sort of cultural empires with no precise boundary but defined and different ideals. Much may be biased, not precise or simply disputable, but these simplifications need to be made if one wants and try to make sense of the world - which is in any case inert and not rational (an attribute that includes the properties of chaos and complexity) until a mind comes and applies (Kantian?) categories to it. This is the first precept to any humanistic observational study.

The critique shows to be particularly flawed when Sorman says:

    I believe that the West is a mindset defined by three fundamental traits that cannot easily be found in the so-called Eastern civilizations: a passion for innovation, a capacity for self-criticism, and gender equality.

Innovation. He almost directly follows from Weber. That's partly ok, although criticizable: many of our innovations have proved to be no innovations at all, when not direct imports from other 'non-western civilizations'.
Self-criticism. Schismatics and heretics were not just Christians. Sects were and are everywhere. Self-criticism abunds (and abunded in the past centuries) in the Islamic world, the civilization among all that retains a very maximalist doctrine at its core. The Chinese were one of the most advanced 'civilizations' in 500 AD, and the Mandate of Heaven legitimized both power and peasants' revolts. Self-criticism still has theoretical meaning when intended in a minor, relative sense.
Gender equality. I will abstain from any comment.

Still, one core conclusion remains interesting and original:

    Does this Westernization make the Egyptian or the Saudi less authentic Arabs? Such a debate does take place within all Eastern societies, which leads us to the real clash of civilizations: all societies today are fragmented between Westernizers and non-Westernizers. This clash within civilizations on what modernization means is more significant than Huntington's alleged conflict between geographical entities.
The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath
Liked it May 4, 8:14am 1 review poetry, sylvia-plath, the-night-dances •http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ni...
Comets



    [...]
    The comets
    Have such a space to cross,

    Such coldness, forgetfulness.
    So your gestures flake off ----

    Warm and human, then their pink light
    Bleeding and peeling

    Through the black amnesias of heaven.
    [...]
House of Leaves - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No opinion May 4, 6:28am 3 reviews writing, book, danielewski, house-of-leaves •http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of...
House of Leaves



    But where the horror?
    Why the horror?
    Horror about what?
    As if questions could stop it, block its ired intrusion, one that tears, rapes, leaving me, you, all of us, rended, emptied, dying.
South Pars / North Dome Gas-Condensate field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liked it Apr 24, 8:48am 1 review politics, oil, iran, energy-game •http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_pars
Why Iran can still raise its voice



Mr Gholam-Hossein Nozari, Iranian Oil minister, said that the country of the Ayatollah is ready to sign an agreement with Gazprom for South Pars, Middle East's main oil field. Shell, Total and Repsol already work at South Pars. Last week Teheran launched an ultimatum on foreign multinational companies to sign new energy contracts: if the accords are not concluded by June, the companies will be made to leave the field.
Russia is not the only country searching for new spaces on the Iranian market at a notoriously difficult moment for the energetic relationships between Teheran and the international community. Turkey, planning to become Europe's energetic hub, intends to involve Teheran in the gas furnitures to the Nabucco project. "We produce 4.2 millions of barrels a day: this is the proof - says Mr Seifollah Jashnsaz, Iran's National Oil Company director - that the sanctions against our country over nuclear matters have absolutely no effect".
counternarcoticsfinal.pdf - By Nitro PDF Software
No opinion Apr 22, 4:16pm 1 review afghanistan, case-study, crop-eradication, opium-economy •http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/p...
Poppy



One of the best reports (actually, a complete case study) that I have had the opportunity to read lately. Barnett Rubin also writes at Informed Comment: Global Affairs.
OVID The Metamorphoses, and other poetry, in translation plus original Poetry an…
Liked it Apr 20, 5:57pm 2 reviews classical-studies, last-words, echo, spoiled-memories •http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/Ovh...
Echo



    One day the nymph Echo saw him, driving frightened deer into his nets, she of the echoing voice, who cannot be silent when others have spoken, nor learn how to speak first herself.

    Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. Juno made her like that, because often when she might have caught the nymphs lying beneath her Jupiter, on the mountain slopes, Echo knowingly held her in long conversations, while the nymphs fled. When Saturnia realised this she said `I shall give you less power over that tongue by which I have been deluded, and the briefest ability to speak' and what she threatened she did. Echo only repeats the last of what is spoken and returns the words she hears.

    Now when she saw Narcissus wandering through the remote fields, she was inflamed, following him secretly, and the more she followed the closer she burned with fire, no differently than inflammable sulphur, pasted round the tops of torches, catches fire, when a flame is brought near it. O how often she wants to get close to him with seductive words, and call him with soft entreaties! Her nature denies it, and will not let her begin, but she is ready for what it will allow her to do, to wait for sounds, to which she can return words.

    By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out `Is anyone here?' and `Here' Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice `Come to me!' She calls as he calls. He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks `Why do you run from me?' and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says `Here, let us meet together'. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies `Together', and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing. He runs from her, and running cries `Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what's mine is yours.' She answers, only `What's mine is yours!'

    Scorned, she wanders in the woods and hides her face in shame among the leaves, and from that time on lives in lonely caves. But still her love endures, increased by the sadness of rejection. Her sleepless thoughts waste her sad form, and her body's strength vanishes into the air. Only her bones and the sound of her voice are left. Her voice remains, her bones, they say, were changed to shapes of stone. She hides in the woods, no longer to be seen on the hills, but to be heard by everyone. It is sound that lives in her.

    Ovid, The metamorphoses, Book III
happyacress profile - StumbleUpon
Liked it Apr 20, 10:10am 97 reviews stumblers •http://happyacres.stumbleupon.com/


Stumblers like this are manna in the desert.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9a/Pobedanassolntsem.jpg
Liked it Apr 20, 6:03am 1 review russia, arts, avantgarde, suprematism, zaum •http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia...
Mostly hers


Victory over the sun


Suprematism


Aleksandra Ekster


Olga Rozanova


Fire in the city


Artistarkh Lentulov


Kazimir Malevich


Suprematism


Natalja Gonc'arova


Ljubov Popova


Still life


Constructivist still life


Varvara Stepanova


Nadezhka Udaltsova


Red light


Liubov Popova






Nikolai Suetin



Art.view | Blood on the tracks | Economist.com
Liked it Apr 13, 2:35pm 1 review painting, arts, maniac, sanatorium, mad-painters •http://www.economist.com/research/art...
Richard Dadd (1817-1886)


Fairy-Feller's master-stroke


Titania sleeping


Come unto these yellow sands




The death of Richard II



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