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Amnesia: hackers and subversion in Australia

January 16, 2015 by William Eaton

[email_link] Amnesia begins with a hacker known as Angel. She releases a computer worm which opens the gates of CIA-sponsored prisons around the world. Many of these are in Australia. Some suspected terrorists manage to escape; others are shot by prison guards. Angel goes on the run. Her mother, a well-known actress, asks investigative journalist Felix Moore to write the girl’s life story. The idea is to create a wave of public sympathy for her and help her avoid extradition […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, crime, History, literature, politics

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Last Exit to Elsewhere–II of II

January 15, 2015 by William Eaton

Part I (8 January 2015) — “Podunk and Toonerville” — introduces Blue Highways In Blue Highways, author William Least Heat-Moon takes the “last exit to elsewhere” — Nameless, Tennessee or Remote, Oregon or Why, Arizona or Why Not, Mississippi, anyplace and no place. Heat-Moon’s narrative is travel writing at its best: self-discovery; observations painting a portrait of the destination – its place, its culture, its personality; captivating, solemn, enthralling and charming storytelling; wonderment, tolerance and acceptance arising spontaneously along the way; […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: blue highways, travel, william least heat moon

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What it is that has to give

January 13, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Bernal Hill (pictured to the right) boasts an unobstructed view of photogenic San Francisco. So, it is unsurprising that it spawned a poem that bears its name. The piece is by Randall Mann, an openly gay poet who often writes about life in San Francisco and who was the recipient of the prestigious Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry in 2003. I like the poem because it is simple and it rhymes. And, anything that is simple, rhymes and works is […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

Ditch the term pathogen

January 11, 2015 by William Eaton

A short comment, published in the 11 December 2014 issue of Nature and entitled “Ditch the term pathogen,” is the most interesting, thought-provoking piece that I have ever read in that distinguished science magazine, and, over the years, I have read quite a few. The argument of the authors, Arturo Casadevall and Liise-anne Pirofski, is that the idea that diseases are caused by external agents—pathogens, bad microbes—is incorrect and part of an oversimplistic paradigm. This paradigm, which can be associated […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: bacteria, Charlie Hebdo, FBI, Freud, history of science, medicine, Nietzsche, poetry, politics, science

Reading a poem/A poet reading

January 10, 2015 by sjzeteo2015

By Stuart Johnson Davidson College, down the road from me in North Carolina, just announced that its alumnus Charles Wright will be appearing on campus next month, so I pulled his 2014 collection, Caribou, off the shelf. For those who don’t keep track, Wright is the current US Poet Laureate. I have been reading the poems in Caribou with the thought that Wright’s appearance is likely to be for a reading of his work, and the poems in that book […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Charles Wright, Christianity, poetry, reading

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After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, business as usual?

January 9, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] With all France stunned and sickened by the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo magazine, the political establishment is scrambling to present the situation to its best advantage. A tweet from the French President at the Elysée Palace, reproduced in Vanity Fair, shows François Hollande on the phone. The subtitle says Obama expresses American solidarity. The article quotes President Obama: France is America’s oldest ally, and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorists […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: assassination, cartoons, France, Middle East, politics, terror

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Podunk and Toonerville – I of II

January 8, 2015 by William Eaton

Part II (15 Jan ’15) – “Last Exit to Elsewhere” – illustrates Mr. Heat-Moon’s superb writing I was going to stay on the bent and narrow rural American two-lane, the roads to Podunk and Toonerville. Into the sticks, the boondocks, the burgs, backwaters… Into those places where you say, “My god! What if you lived here!” The Middle of Nowhere. Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon’s classic 13,000 mile drive in 1978 through the nation’s back roads — its blue […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: blue highways, road trips, travel, william least heat moon

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Rich Possibilities

January 6, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

In this, my first post of a brand new year, I offer a poem about possibilities. It is by poet Adrienne Rich, who died in 2012 after a hugely successful career as a poet and essayist, feminist and activist. The poem below feels like it was written after a turning point, or significant change, in her life. Indeed, she had many. Here is a great article from The Guardian about the poet. And, here is The Poetry Foundation’s summary of her […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

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“What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire?”

January 4, 2015 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link] Given that Mike Leigh and Timothy Spall are now offering us such a rich, idiosyncratic portrait of the painter J.M.W. Turner, and given that the movie, for whatever silly reason, takes a detour to make fun of the art critic John Ruskin, I should begin with this: Who cares whether Mr. Ruskin’s views on Turner are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: dialogue, History, J.M.W. Turner, John Ruskin, literature, Mike Leigh, movies, Oscar Wilde

ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Category Archives: ZiR

Amnesia: hackers and subversion in Australia

Last Exit to Elsewhere–II of II

What it is that has to give

Ditch the term pathogen

Reading a poem/A poet reading

After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, business as usual?

Podunk and Toonerville – I of II

Rich Possibilities

“What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire?”