The Right Number is a projected three-part online graphic novella about math, sex, obsession and phone numbers presented in an unusual zooming format.This "zooming format" is promissing but the unusual motion may make some people a bit dizzy at first. The Right Number is a great little story about probability.
I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.
Mark Twain (attributed: source unknown)
The New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they'd earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table. (found here)
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." 1984, part 1, chapt 1.
Ask a toad what is beauty… He will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back.
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1794
Whilst Gill was a deeply religious man, largely following the Roman Catholic faith, his beliefs and practices were by no means orthodox. His personal diaries describe his sexual activity in great detail including the fact that Gill sexually abused his own children, had an incestuous relationship with his sister and performed sexual acts on his dog. This aspect of Gill's life was little known until publication of the 1989 biography by Fiona MacCarthy. Robert Speaight's earlier biography mentioned none of it.
As the revelations about Gill's private life resonated, there was a reassessment of his personal and artistic achievement. As his recent biographer sums up: "After the initial shock, […] as Gill's history of adulteries, incest, and experimental connection with his dog became public knowledge in the late 1980s, the consequent reassessment of his life and art left his artistic reputation strengthened. Gill emerged as one of the twentieth century's strangest and most original controversialists, a sometimes infuriating, always arresting spokesman for man's continuing need of God in an increasingly materialistic civilization, and for intellectual vigour in an age of encroaching triviality. (Wikipedia)
Listen! I will tell the best of dreams,Christ has became, by now, the Germanic hero, victorious even in his defeat. And the tree takes on the persona of a loyal member of the war band, “I could have killed them all”, the tree says … but the tree, out of loyalty to the Lord must became the instrument of his death. The Christian pallet created something uniquely English that could reconcile people to the new religion.
which I had at mid-night,
When all the world sleeps.
I dreamt I saw a wondrous tree
towering in the sky above me,
suffused with light,
the brightest of beams.
(…)
And then that most beautiful of trees
Spoke these words:
“Long ago it was –I still remembered—
I stood on the edge of the forest
when they came to cut me down.
Strong foes carried me away,
set me on a hill.
And then the young hero,
Christ, firm and unflinching,
striped himself, brave in the sight of all,
minded to save mankind.
And I trembled when the hero clasped me
and they pierced me with dark nails.
All creation wept, lamented
the King’s death.
