Photographer Lalage Snow photographed Scottish soldiers before, during, and after their deployments to Afghanistan. The photographs show “the toll that fighting … takes on our troops.”
The Faces of War
George Carlin, tireless student of language
The Atlantic on George Carlin’s seven dirty words as they turn 40 years old. You can watch a 1978 performance on YouTube, if you’ve never heard the routine. Maybe put the headphones on, though, as the language is, as you might expect, deliciously filthy, so yeah, NSFW.
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That’s Not Leather
In horrifying book news, the binding of one of Harvard College Library’s books has been confirmed to be human skin.
The Différance Between Biography and Life
“Biography, even those of intellectual figures, assumes a general reader, a reader who does not understand or want to understand the ideas of its subject. The biography of a philosopher magnifies this approach, turning its attention simply to the ‘significant events’ in the life of the philosopher.” Derrida: the impossible biography?
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Poetic Bubbles
“‘I want to meet POETS,’ I typed. Beneath my earnest headline, I described how I yearned for a workshop buddy who wrote contemporary verse, someone who wasn’t afraid to give and accept feedback. I also asked for a sample poem, just to weed out the people I didn’t jive with stylistically.” On forging friendships with poets from Denise K. James at The Rumpus.
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The Literary Rx
A book a day keeps the doctor away. The Reach Out and Read Program hopes to give children (from 6 months to 5) as much exposure to books as vitamins when they got to the doctor’s office. Pediatricians who participate in the initiative discuss reading at every check-up by giving books to families, advising parents about the importance of reading to their kids, and monitoring how the children engage with books.
Free Kindles for Big Readers
TechCrunch has discovered that Amazon is (essentially) giving away free Kindles to those readers who are in the prime Kindle demographic: readers who order a lot of books each year.