Archive for August, 2009

Why Socrates Died

Posted By Zócalo On August 21, 2009

whysocratesdied

Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths
by Robin Waterfield

Man and myth, hero and villain, scrupulous citizen and impious social deviant — after his death, whenever a quality was attributed to Socrates, he was also called its opposite. So much was written about the man that only decades after he drank a cup of hemlock, Socrates became a subject of great controversy and intrigue. In a revisionist history that decodes the strange circumstances of Socrates’ trial for a modern audience, Robin Waterfield proposes a new understanding of Socrates.

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Paul Krassner on the New Meaning of Obscenity

Posted By Zócalo On August 20, 2009

paulkrassner

Perennial rebel Paul Krassner founded counterculture magazine The Realist in 1958. He went on to party with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, found the Youth International Party (Yippies), and edit Lenny Bruce’s autobiography while becoming one of his protégés. The author, journalist, and comedian’s most recent book, Who’s to Say What’s Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy

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Thing Language

Posted By Zócalo On August 20, 2009

by Jack Spicer


This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

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Posted By Zócalo On August 19, 2009

The New Advertising


Mad Men: How much the industry has changed since the 1960s.
India: On the anniversary of independence, a group of artists remixes one of the country’s most cherished movies, “Mother India.” Did it work?
Heathrow: The airport and its PR agency have commissioned Alain de Botton as a writer-in-residence.

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Ogden Nash

Posted By Zócalo On August 19, 2009

candy is dandy

American poet Ogden Nash was born on August 19, 1902, and became popular for his light humor, simple verse, and knack for unconventional rhymes. His most widely-quoted poem, “Reflections on Ice-Breaking,” contains only four lines and eleven syllables, but gets the point across: “Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker.” Other poems, like his animal verses, like to make use of fabricated words to accommodate for his unique rhymes: “Who wants my jellyfish? / I’m not sellyfish!” Below, a sampling of his poems.

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Feuilleton
Friday, December 3, 2010
How One Family Created Chinese America
Zócalo

The Lucky Ones, by Mae Ngai The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America by Mae Ngai Hyphenated cultures seem to be a natural part of California’s landscape today, but it wasn’t always so. The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai offers a fresh look at California history by reconstructing the lives of immigrant and second generation pioneers who lived between cultures when it was not such a common phenomenon. Ngai’s narrative brings Chinese Americans into a richer tradition of historical storytelling by humanizing an ambivalent, middle-class immigrant family, situating their lives within the more well-known histories of Chinese laborers and those who suffered from the 1882 Exclusion Act.

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