5 best things post-trip

This article is just too fun to pass up. Famous outdoor athletes name their 5 favorite things about returning to civilization after an extended trip into the brush.

Fun Snowboarding/Skiing Video

I found this video over on the GoBlog earlier. Great clips of some beautiful carving and even cooler paragliding/skiing.

EXTREME - RIDE THE PLANETS
by tv8montblanc

Teton Gravity Research

If you're into cliff jumping on skis, or even if you've never done it but still consider it a worthwhile way to wile away those empty hours, then you may find this video from the Teton Gravity Research site riveting:

http://www.tetongravity.com/viewer/Clip_RECORDCLIFFHUCK.aspx

Rafters Get Last Look at the Great Bend of the Yangtze

"A year from now, it will be impossible to repeat the eight-day rafting trip we just completed down the Great Bend of the Yangtze. This 120-mile section of the Yangtze, like many of China's rivers, will be dammed in 2009. It was amazing to experience this world-class stretch of whitewater before it changes forever...."

View some pictures and read the rest of the story>>>

Summer reading list

Going through Daniel Marcus' book on Number Fields, completing the proofs of the elementary results about number rings in Microsoft Word is getting tedious so I'm extending my break again. In the same vain as the post on my summer poetry list, I'm starting to compile another list. The two are really one list, but we can think of them as subgroups or, more aptly, orders. ok -

Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen, and maybe Faust part 1


Bertrand Russell: Principles of Mathematics

Wittgenstein: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics), or Philosophische Bemerkungen (Philosophical Remarks) if I don't like Russell's

Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise, The Last Tycoon


Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Hesse: Steppenwolf(!), The Glass Bead Game


Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals

Secondaries:

Schiller: William Tell (maybe)
Sophocles: Antigone
Vasilii Semenovich Grossman: Life and Fate

Have any recommendations?

Poets to read

I'm taking a break from writing my thesis, which is due in a week, and I started thinking about all the post-graduation reading I'd like to do. And this got me thinking about poetry. With the internet at my fingertips, I searched for poets I'd like to invite to sit on my never-ending reading list. Given the sheer volume of the poetic repertoire, one can easily imagine the difficulty anyone has in narrowing down the potentials to a manageable collection. I've come up with the following poets so far. Feel free to add or subtract, keeping in mind my position as a genuine new-comer to the world of poetry and the limited amount of time and energy I have to gobble up these works. (Remember, this is not a complete list, but rather a realistic list of the poets I can approach this summer and next year)

Homer: the Iliad and/or Odyssey
Dante: Divine Comedy
Shakespeare: sonnets
Lord Tennyson: Ulysses

Emily Dickinson

Dylan Thomas

Keats

Sylvia Plath


What does your list look like?

Roma Journeys

The photographer Joakim Eskildsen has an incredible show at Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center about the Roma people, spanning many countries. A few pictures from this incredible compilation can be found on his website, and I urge you to take a moment and riffle through them.

Tricky Linguistics

A great example of the absurdly hilarious comedic style that Fry & Laurie excel at.

"Hold the news-reader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers".... a unique child delivered to a unique mother

Gelliant Gutfright

Between imagination and desire, between reality and ambition, between what is known and what is feared, between purpose and despair, between sense and shite, between the outer world and the inner world, that straddles the curtain between what we know and what we think we suspect, hangs a dark veil that waves gently between the beckoning finger drawing us into the world of what could be and what never couldn't be possible to have dreamt; or do they? Perhaps it isn't. Maybe we were only dreaming. Perhaps the answers could be found in that other realm, that lies between the boundary of the heart and the sweaty laundry room of the imagination, where the only rhythms are the smiles of the forgotten winter and the incessant beating of the human thigh that we call fear...

"When your knight is a perilous yo-yo eaten by Destiny's right hand." Stephen Fry's narration is fantastic.

"Memo to Bush on Darfur"

Nicholas Kristof has written a great article on what steps the Bush administration should take toward tackling the situation in Darfur. A great read that stands solidly sober in a teeming sea of indignation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10kristof.html?ex=1365566400&en=a3d65fc4bc87211e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Googly Eyes Gardener

I try not to post videos of no consequence, but I found this one hilarious:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/16417/saturday-night-live-googly-eyes-gardener#s-p1-st-i0

Sage Wohns, the Rakuten Warrior

I'd like to bring to everyone's attention Sage's profile on page 11 (if you're going by the web viewing application, or page 9 if you're going by the magazine) of the May edition of J-Life.

One can immediately tell by his sinister stance and dangerously stylish suit that his presence in Japan is hazardous to the well-being of the Japanese nation. If it wasn't for his mystifyingly cabalistic look that says, "I may be dangerous, but man I look good in this suit," in a monastic sort of way, but with a touch of dash, I would notify the authorities forthwith.

Posthumous Poet

O here is my left hand and here is my right hand,
And I on myself cast up as on a desert island,
In my right hand a dagger and on my left hand a ring,
And from under my feet the earth falling.

O here is my beginning, and here is my ending,
And at my bedside the armoured day standing,
Saying, Rise up, my lost one, and begone
Into reality as into a prison.

- Sylvia Townsend Warner


Claire Harman's discussion of Warner's love poetry in "The Guardian"