The shock doctrine - A. Cuaron / N. Klein

Maths language and symbols

4H
mathematical_symbols
maths videos.html

Gray's Anatomy

3H - 4H - 5H
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray

Skin anatomy

4H
anatomy.html

Skin diseases

4H
skin diseases
Angioma
Acne
Cyst
Dandruff
Dermatofibroma
Xerosis (Dry Skin)
Dermatitis
Alopecia
Herpes Simplex and Zoster
Melanoma
Moles
Mycosis Fungoides
Psoriasis
Scabies
Urticaria (Hives)
Vitiligo

Booze & drugs

5H

http://www.bankhead.net/BoozeAndDrugs/classification.html - Classification of drugs

http://www.padui.org/effect.htm - Effects of alcohol and drugs on human body

http://www.drug-effects.com/ - Effects of drugs on brain

The heart

5H
http://www.heartlibrary.com/heart-library-heart-anatomy.aspx - Videos
Introducion to Heart anatomy
Arrhythmias
Heart diseases
Hearth health
Patients' stories
FAQ
Glossary

Respiratory deseases

Class 5H
Respiratory diseases:
Asthma
Asthma attack
Bronchitis
Influenza
Pneumonia
Emphysema
Tuberculosis
Pleurisy
Lung cancer

AIDS

Class 5H
Lesson (slide presentation)
What is aids - (texts)

Eating disorders

Class 5H -

http://www.mirror-mirror.org/ed.htm
Anorexia nervosa
Bulimia nervosa
Binge eating disorder
Compulsive overeating
Dangerous methods
Social impact
Teenagers
Women
Men
Athletes

W. H. Auden - The unknown citizen

S. Beckett - Waiting for Godot

H. Pinter - The Caretaker (The job offer)

T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock / The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead) / The Hollow Men

Eveline - James Joyce

James Joyce’s “Eveline,” focuses on a character of the same name amidst an emotional turmoil. This story could be deemed a love tale which involves Eveline who struggles to remove herself from the strong ties to her family and follow her love, Frank, to Buenos Aires. Joyce uses literary elements such as setting, symbols, and themes that help convey Eveline’s emotional struggle.

This story begins in a town in Ireland with the introduction of family characters. Family seems to be a strong theme in Joyce’s writing. This theme is evident when Eveline stays home and takes over the motherly duties in the household as a teen after a promise was made to her dying mother. Death plays a major role in this story as the author points out that many of Eveline’s friends and family are said to have died at some point. Symbolism such as dust collecting around the house and the aged yellow painting of Mary Margaret Alocoque, a French nun, enable the reader to get a sense of the death and loneliness surrounding Eveline. There are several issues presented by Joyce that give rise to Eveline’s internal conflict of breaking the promise to her mother and leaving with Frank. One major problem is that the family is very poor and money is a very precious resource in their lives. Eveline expresses the importance of money when she is walking to the market with her purse clasped close to her body almost as if to protect it as though it were her very own life. Her family’s poverty is apparent when Frank takes her to the theater and she expresses her delight with the seats Frank has purchased because she has been accustomed to sitting in the back row due to her inability to purchase better seats.

To Eveline, Frank represents a new and exciting lifestyle that she has not had the opportunity to experience after taking over the mother role. Her routine, mundane lifestyle that Eveline has led appears to be comforting to her because of its stability, whereas being with Frank is something new and spontaneous. Perhaps Eveline is not so much in love with Frank as she is with the opportunity to embark on a new lifestyle that contradicts everything she has known and become accustomed to. When the time comes for Eveline to make her life altering decision she falters. Frank is urging her to go as they are at the station and Eveline becomes frozen in a state of emotional paralysis, unable to make a decision. Again, Joyce uses symbolism when Eveline grips onto the handrails that lead down the steps to her new life. The handrails represent stability and control. They represent the life she has always known and the comfort that it provides. James Joyce tells us that Eveline lacks the strength to make her own decision. Therefore, she remains dysfunctional due to her fear of failure, promise to her mother, or guilt that she faces for leaving her family behind. Joyce is able to exaggerate all of these feelings inside Eveline primarily because of his writing style. The use of these literary elements gives a more intense understanding of the emotional quarrel that Eveline is forced to deal with.

R. Burns - To a Mouse / To a Louse

Robert Burns' "To a Mouse" (1785) is a deeply poetic monologue of a young man who accidently overturns the soil of a mouse's nest. Emotionally surrendering to the pitiful scene, Burns' narrator succumbs to the weight of his past failures and fears for the future and expresses himself in a profoundly poignant soliloquy. One of the lines, now a famous quote, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / gang aft agley" (38-39), is perhaps one of the most profound quotes of Scottish, and indirectly, European and American literature. Burns' poem, in its intimate solidarity with all men, touches the reader in ways few poetic works ever really can. To understand what Burns' "To a Mouse" genuinely means to a reader is to know their darkest, innermost secrets and most remorseful memories of regret. It is this intimacy that gives Burns' "To a Mouse" its intensity.Scottish writer, Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), was an accomplished and very well known Scottish poet whose works went well beyond the borders of Scotland. Often writing in English as well as a light Scot-English dialect, his writing was readily accessible to readerships throughout Europe and North America. "To a Mouse," would be an example of one of Burns' 'Scot-English' works, with its deep, predominantly English verse accented with some Scottish vocabulary and culture-typical idioms. Often, when an English speaker is reading Burns, they must imagine a smooth rhythmic Scottish accent, and try to avoid toiling over any literal meanings of English words spelled in Scottish dialect. Burns must be 'felt'; allowing the words to flow uninterrupted so that the greater theme can more freely reveal itself. In the case of Burns' "To a Mouse," the message is a theme that is absolutely worth the relationship.
The first six stanzas of Burns' "To a Mouse" is a heart felt description and apology to a little 'mousie' who has had her nest destroyed by the narrator who was plowing his field. With all her work destroyed by the blade of the farmer's plow, the little mouse's fate of dying in the harsh December weather is assured. The narrator tries to tell the terrified little mouse that he had meant her no harm and, that though she stole the odd piece of corn, he never actually held any malice towards her for doing so. He goes on to say that in many ways he was glad to share for the sake of the little creature, and felt that man's progress has already broken too many of God's natural bonds. These bonds are the connections that they as fellow mortal beings shared against the suffering and cruel interventions of chance and fate on Earth.
It is here, as Burn's narrator pours his heart out to this pitiful little 'mousie,' that the narrator seems to be undone by what has happened to her. In the lines "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley, / An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, / For promis'd joy!" (38-41), he tries to explain that no matter how well thought out or how well intentioned our plans may be, even the best of them can be ruined by a simple turn of luck; the mouse's nest, a careful and diligent construction of a summer's labor, was just as easily destroyed as any house or farm ever built by man. For our labors, our most earnest hopes, Burn's narrator mourns and describes their returns of "grief an' pain, / For promised joy!" (40-41).It's this turn in the course of the poem's theme after the seventh stanza, Burns' full intentions coming to light, that the narrator reveals why he is talking to this frightful mouse in such a pathetic manner. He see's in the mouse a fellow victim of the hand of fate, and cannot but feel empathy for her loss. The narrator speaks as if he himself has recently lost a dream that he too saw hewn in half by some uncontrollable force of destiny. As he talks to the mouse, it seems fresh in his mind as the describes the past as a stinging recollection of failures; "Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! / The present only toucheth the: / But Ouch! I backward cast my e'e, / On prospect drear! / An' forward, though' I canna see, / I guess and fear!" (Line 42-47). As many who have suffered failure and loss, Burns' narrator, or perhaps Burns himself, expresses jealousy for the mouse's ability to live perpetually in the present without a past to rush painfully back into her mind whenever she remembers. Burns' narrator, in this distant forlorn monologue, describes how he can only guess what the future may hold, and fears for its uncertain outcome. It seems that Burns' narrator has been wrestling with this repressed pain and worry for some time, and now, only with the emotional catalyst of the mouse's disaster is he forced face them. He somehow feels obligated to apologize to a little creature that has no understanding of what he's trying to say, and whose death is all but assured thanks to his ignorant action. Yet, in some metaphysical metaphor, Burns manages to turn the mouse into a tiny helpless symbol of ourselves, terrified at a world that could so easily destroy us at any moment, and make us wonder if God feels the same way we do when he stands over disaster.

T. Gray - Elegy written in a country churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

[...]

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

A- Tennyson - Ulysses; R. Browning - My Last Duchess

W. Wordsworth - Daffodils

Robinson Crusoe - Colonialism and Imperialism

In order to keep expanding, capitalism requires a cheap source of raw materials and markets for finished products. Colonies serve both functions for the mother country. So though capitalism and colonialism are not identical, they are closely associated. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, colonialism and imperialism were generally synonymous; today the terms are still often interchanged, though they are not truly identical. In colonialism, one nation controls the territory, the economy, and the political structure of another country; in imperialism, one nation extends its empire or its dominion over another nation. Thus, colonialism is one form that imperialism may take in extending its domination of other lands; today, however, imperialism is more likely to consist of a wealthy, powerful nation coercing or threatening weak or poor nations to control them politically and/or economically.
Crusoe acts as a colonizer in assuming complete dominion over the island and any people he encounters. The land and all its products belong to him. Several times he notes the abundance of trees suitable for making masts (the British navy and merchant ships looked to the American colonies to meet their need for trees to make masts). Crusoe's actions as an individual duplicate those of nations in claiming land for colonies. When Crusoe leaves the island, he leaves behind English and Spanish sailors as colonists. An absence of years does not diminish his ownership. The chapter which narrates his return to the island is titled "I Revisit My Island" (italics added for emphasis). He visits "my" colony on the island (298) and gives some land to the Europeans, keeping title to the whole island for himself. In return, they agree not to leave the island (do they have any choice, since Crusoe has the only boat?).
As an embryo imperialist, Crusoe sees himself as king and others as his subjects, including his pets. He creates, not a democracy, not a republic, but a kingdom He imposes his will on others, most obviously Friday, but also on the worst of the English mutineers, whom he forces into staying on the island. For James Joyce, Robinson Crusoe is "prophetic," forecasting English imperialism:
The true symbol of British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.
Crusoe as imperialist-conqueror is not a twentieth century invention, as Jules Fesquet's 1877 illustration of a heroic Crusoe demonstrates. Fesquet presents Crusoe as Hercules with a nude muscular body, Hercules's trademark lion's skin, and a sword. His sovereign rule is suggested by the orb he holds and the abject submission of the native. This picture asserts European domination over native populations, whose inferiority is expressed not only in the caannibal's submissive posture but in a somewhat less muscular body. The limitlessness of Crusoe's/the white man's power is suggested by the absence of a frame around the original illustration. An aside: do you think the prone figure is Friday?

Technological heroes

Today, thoughts about the isolated hero of Western technology. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Only a third of the book is about his survival on a remote island. But that part is now a metaphor for the way we save ourselves with technology.
Fourteen years earlier, a real person, Alexander Selkirk, was left by his shipmates on a real island -- off the coast of Chile. Selkirk had fled his contentious Scottish family in 1702 and gone to sea in a British privateer. Its business? Harassing Spanish outposts in the Pacific. Conditions on the ship were terrible, and Selkirk carried trouble with him.
One day, in a rage, he told his shipmates to put him ashore. So they did -- on a deserted island. As the longboat pulled away, he screamed for them to take him back. They would not. And there he stayed 'til a British ship found him four years later.
A London magazine published the story in 1713, and Defoe read it. Meanwhile, Selkirk went back to his erratic life -- marrying women here and there -- going to sea now and then. He died in 1721, two years after Defoe published Robinson Crusoe.
Of course, Defoe changed his hero. He modeled Crusoe on himself -- made him part of the conservative middle class. He used Crusoe to explore his own ideas about imperialism. Crusoe becomes the benevolent colonizer -- teaching the savage, Friday, to be what he himself is. There was no Friday in Selkirk's story.
Selkirk was pretty savage before he was deserted, and he brought little technology to his imprisonment. The sailors who found him said he was almost naked -- that he had to relearn human speech. Oddly enough, Defoe undercut his own survival thesis in another book. He wrote, "Necessity makes an honest man a knave."
In 1750, the Spanish built a small fort on Selkirk's island. Later, they made the island into a prison. Neither lasted long. In 1966, the Chilean government changed the name of the island to Robinson Crusoe. They hoped to pick up tourist trade. Today the population is around 600 -- mostly fisherfolk who live in near isolation. There are three small hotels -- not heavily used.
The theme of a lone technological man carving civilization from the primeval forest recurs down through our technical/scientific world -- from Crusoe all the way to Gilligan's Island!
Mark Twain put that old wine in a new skin when he wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. But Twain was smarter. His Yankee hero eventually made a mess of things.
So: what about the lone technological hero? Well, it didn't work for Selkirk, and I doubt it'd work for anyone. In the end, technology is culture -- something we do together. Technology does define our survival, but only in the framework of community.

William Blake - London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldier's sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born Infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

A. Marvell - To his coy mistress

J. Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn; P.B. Shelley - Ode to the West Wind

W.B. Yeats - Easter 1916

Benjamin Zepheniah - Genetics / The British (serves 60 million)

Take some Picts, Celts and Silures

And let them settle,

Then overrun them with Roman conquerors.
Remove the Romans after approximately 400 years

Add lots of Norman French to some

Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Vikings, then stir vigorously.
Mix some hot Chileans, cool Jamaicans, Dominicans,

Trinidadians and Bajans with some Ethiopians, Chinese,

Vietnamese and Sudanese.
Then take a blend of Somalians, Sri Lankans, Nigerians

And Pakistanis,

Combine with some Guyanese

And turn up the heat.

Sprinkle some fresh Indians, Malaysians, Bosnians,

Iraqis and Bangladeshis together with some

Afghans, Spanish, Turkish, Kurdish, Japanese

And Palestinians

Then add to the melting pot.
Leave the ingredients to simmer.
As they mix and blend allow their languages to flourish

Binding them together with English.
Allow time to be cool.
Add some unity, understanding, and respect for the future,

Serve with justice

And enjoy.

Note: All the ingredients are equally important.

Treating one ingredient better than another will leave a bitter unpleasant taste.

Warning: An unequal spread of justice will damage the people and cause pain.

Give justice and equality to all.

O. Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol / Wilde - Part 11/12

'They' - Sigfried Sassoon

The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race,
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'

G. M. Hopkins - The Windhover / Pied Beauty

D. Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

E. Lee Masters - The Anthology of Spoon River: the Judge

The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford

The outlaw Jesse James was one of the first American celebrities, enjoying the fame that the printing press could deliver in the growing United States of the early 1880. His notoriety was laundered by romanticised tales that likened him to Robin Hood, washing away his murderous deeds and cruel, arrogant nature. He was a sum of his media parts as much as a feared bandit who robbed trains and banks with his gang.Casey Affleck delivers the film's most haunting performance as Robert Ford, the 19 year old hanger on whose brother Charley (Sam Rockwell in wonderful, complex form) is already a part of the Jesse James gang. But Robert is a little strange in his obsession with James, which makes James unsure about him. Brad Pitt paints James as an enigmatic, edgy, volatile and indeed sometimes vile figure, verging on mentally unstable.Andrew Dominik, clearly enamoured with Ron Hansen's much praised novel, adapts the book with intense attention to its rich, textured style. I haven't read it myself, but Newsweek's Peter S. Prescott describes it well: "The language of Hansen's novel is dense and textured, requiring careful reading. The pleasure of the book is in the eloquence of its dialogue and description, which are both literary and historically appropriate." The film reflects these elements - to a fault. The first two hours is diminished by a lack of clarity, a result of both the complexity of characters and relationships and a fearfully difficult dialogue - both in period style and in sheer audibility. The screenplay seems to have been driven by a desire not to miss any of the nuances and textures of Hansen's book, which is a problematic approach for cinema. The result seems like a meandering, unfocused screenplay that breaks down our willingness to be transported by it.In every technical detail (save the dialogue mix), the film is outstanding, with stunning cinematography and production design. The performances of the entire cast - and there is a large cast - is exemplary, and Dominik's ability to sustain tension in the latter scenes is admirable. While it is acknowledged that the exact details of the last days or months of Jesse's life will never be known, the film gives us an opportunity to appraise it as fictionalised biography - and at least as valid as the many others in that genre.

No country for old men

Over wide shots of desolate, expansive West Texas country in June 1980, local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) narrates his belief that the times are changing and that the area is becoming increasingly violent. As Bell's narration concludes, the film's antagonist, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), is arrested and taken into custody by a sheriff's deputy. The deputy scarcely has time to describe Chigurh's unique weapon, a captive bolt pistol, to authorities before Chigurh wraps his handcuffs around the deputy's neck -- strangling him to death, and allowing Chigurh to escape.
Miles away, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) hunts pronghorn antelope near the Rio Grande when he stumbles upon a group of corpses and a lone dying man: the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry. In addition to a shipment of heroin, Moss finds two million dollars in a satchel, which he keeps, leaving the lone survivor to die. Later that night in bed with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), Moss's conscience pushes him to return to the scene with water for the dying man, which shortly triggers a cat-and-mouse game between a gang of Mexicans, Moss, Chigurh, and Bell as they chase the money and each other across the West Texas and Mexico landscapes.
Chigurh, a professional hitman hired to retrieve the stolen money, tracks the satchel with a radio receiver corresponding to a small transponder hidden in the satchel. A meticulous, brooding psychopath, Chigurh does not hesitate to kill anyone impeding his mission; his victims range from Mexican gangsters and law enforcement officials to civilians he encounters by chance. Moss, unaware of the transponder's existence, sends his wife Carla Jean out of town while he darts from motel to motel in an attempt to elude both Chigurh and the Mexicans sent to retrieve the money. In the meantime, Bell focuses his efforts on locating and protecting Moss, following the trail of corpses left by Chigurh, while he tracks Moss and the money.
Chigurh tracks Moss through several Texas towns, climaxing in a border-hotel firefight that spills onto the streets. Narrowly escaping death by crossing the border, Moss wakes up in a Mexican hospital and meets Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), an assassin dispatched by the drug buyer. After Moss disregards his offer to save Moss' life, Wells returns to his hotel where he is ambushed and killed by Chigurh. When Moss has second thoughts about the offer, he calls Wells' room and Chigurh answers. Chigurh offers Moss a deal, if Moss forfits the money and his own life, Chigurh will not go after Carla Jean.
Moss rejects the offer and orders Carla Jean to travel to El Paso, where he intends to give her the money and move her out of harm's way. Carla Jean agrees, but timidly informs Bell of Moss' destination. Bell travels to the El Paso rendezvous point only in time to see the finale of a firefight between Moss, and some Mexicans who have tracked him there. When Bell reaches Moss, Moss is lying dead on the floor of his motel room. Later that night, Sheriff Bell returns to the motel crime scene, where he finds the lock of Moss' hotel room door blown out in a fashion similar to that of Moss' trailer. Entering with his gun drawn, he remains unaware of Chigurh, hidden in the shadows silently observing the cautious sheriff. Surveying the room, Bell discovers the vent cover of the air conditioner has been removed with a dime, with drag marks inside denoting the former presence of the satchel. Bell sits in the darkened room, staring at shadows, before leaving without encountering Chigurh.
Days later, a weary Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), a former sheriff now confined to a wheelchair. Announcing his retirement because of the changing, violent times, Ellis points out that the region has always been violent, accusing Bell of "vanity" in thinking that he could change the condition of the world. Miles away, Carla Jean returns from her mother's funeral, where she encounters Chigurh waiting for her in her bedroom. Chigurh, reminding her of Moss's willingness to risk her life to save his own, flips a coin for her life and asks her to call it. Carla Jean, disgusted with the gesture, refuses to call it, surprising Chigurh. As Chigurh leaves the house, carefully checking the soles of his boots, he is involved in a car accident, leaving him nursing a broken arm as he flees the scene before the police arrive.
As Bell sits at home reflecting on his life choices, he relates to his wife (Tess Harper) two dreams he had, both involving his deceased father, also a lawman. Bell reveals briefly that in the first dream, he lost "some money" that his father had given him. Bell says that in the second dream, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by Bell with his head down. Bell then relates that his father was "going on ahead, and fixin' to make a fire" in the surrounding dark and cold, and that when Bell got there, his father would be waiting. Bell closes the dream narrative, and the film, with the final words: "And then I woke up."

G. Corso - Bomb

13.Tzameti - Gela Babluani

In a town on the Normandy coast, a young man has been hired to replace some wooden attic beams in a house not far from the small apartment in which his immigrant Georgian family lives. He inadvertently rips a hole in a ceiling of the room below, whereupon he learns of a package that promises considerable riches. When the house's drug-addict owner overdoses fatally, the young man grabs it.In "13 Tzameti," one surprise triggers another in ever-spiraling fashion. Yet it is already clear in its deceptively low-key opening sequences why this extraordinary film, written and directed by young Georgia-born Gela Babluani, took the best first feature prize at Venice in 2005 and the grand jury world cinema award at Sundance earlier this year.
While the film's score strikes an ominous foreshadowing note, the tone of "13 Tzameti's" first scenes is droll, verging upon deadpan. That package proves to be a veritable Pandora's box, with the young man, Sebastien (Georges Babluani, the director's brother), discovering detailed instructions that will prompt him to assume the dead man's identity and take off for a hotel, off-season and deep in the countryside, where a clandestine high-stakes gambling tournament has attracted around 40 men, virtually all middle-aged and older. What the game entails and its rules won't be revealed here, but "13 Tzameti" — "tzameti" is the number 13 in Georgian — is not for the faint of heart.Every frame of the film reveals Babluani's confidence and sound judgment. Instead of staging the film's initial sequence like a conventional thriller, Babluani evokes a somber, even leisurely mood, suggesting the plight of Sebastien, an intelligent young man all too aware of his meager prospects in life. This mood extends all the way into that rural resort, abruptly giving way to shocking intensity.At times Babluani recalls the austerity, the closely observed fascination with secretive ritual, of Robert Bresson, yet he expresses these qualities — in ravishing black-and-white CinemaScope — with a poetic cinematic grace that is all his own. As an actor, Georges Babluani possesses the same resources, with a special understanding of the effect of emotional reserves held in check. Although it's likely too stark for everyone, "13 Tzameti" offers a mind-blowing experience for anyone willing to go along for the ride.

Kevin Thomas

W. Shakespeare - Richard III - Plot

After a long civil war between the royal family of York and the royal family of Lancaster, England enjoys a period of peace under King Edward IV and the victorious Yorks. But Edward’s younger brother, Richard, resents Edward’s power and the happiness of those around him. Malicious, power-hungry, and bitter about his physical deformity, Richard begins to aspire secretly to the throne—and decides to kill anyone he has to in order to become king.
Using his intelligence and his skills of deception and political manipulation, Richard begins his campaign for the throne. He manipulates a noblewoman, Lady Anne, into marrying him—even though she knows that he murdered her first husband. He has his own older brother, Clarence, executed, and shifts the burden of guilt onto his sick older brother King Edward in order to accelerate Edward’s illness and death. After King Edward dies, Richard becomes lord protector of England—the figure in charge until the elder of Edward’s two sons grows up.
Next Richard kills the court noblemen who are loyal to the princes, most notably Lord Hastings, the lord chamberlain of England. He then has the boys’ relatives on their mother’s side—the powerful kinsmen of Edward’s wife, Queen Elizabeth—arrested and executed. With Elizabeth and the princes now unprotected, Richard has his political allies, particularly his right-hand man, Lord Buckingham, campaign to have Richard crowned king. Richard then imprisons the young princes in the Tower and, in his bloodiest move yet, sends hired murderers to kill both children.
By this time, Richard’s reign of terror has caused the common people of England to fear and loathe him, and he has alienated nearly all the noblemen of the court—even the power-hungry Buckingham. When rumors begin to circulate about a challenger to the throne who is gathering forces in France, noblemen defect in droves to join his forces. The challenger is the earl of Richmond, a descendant of a secondary arm of the Lancaster family, and England is ready to welcome him.
Richard, in the meantime, tries to consolidate his power. He has his wife, Queen Anne, murdered, so that he can marry young Elizabeth, the daughter of the former Queen Elizabeth and the dead King Edward. Though young Elizabeth is his niece, the alliance would secure his claim to the throne. Nevertheless, Richard has begun to lose control of events, and Queen Elizabeth manages to forestall him. Meanwhile, she secretly promises to marry young Elizabeth to Richmond.
Richmond finally invades England. The night before the battle that will decide everything, Richard has a terrible dream in which the ghosts of all the people he has murdered appear and curse him, telling him that he will die the next day. In the battle on the following morning, Richard is killed, and Richmond is crowned King Henry VII. Promising a new era of peace for England, the new king is betrothed to young Elizabeth in order to unite the warring houses of Lancaster and York.

F. Kafka - The Metamorphosis - Summary and themes

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find that he has been inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. He has also slept late. His parents and his sister Grete try to rouse him so he can make it to his dreary job as a traveling salesman. The family depends on him for its livelihood. Gregor, however, is now a bug. When a clerk from his company comes to demand an explanation for his absence, Gregor makes a great effort to open the bedroom door and show himself. This sends the terrified clerk tearing down the stairwell and Gregor's family into shock.

Grete, more than his father or mother, handles the situation practically. Gregor is fed, and his room is cleaned. Before long, however, economic reality requires all three to find work, and less attention is paid to Gregor--except when he gets out of his room. No one in the family is fully able to reconcile him- or herself to the insect Gregor, and Gregor is unable to express himself to his family. The fear and disgust his presence inspires (the irrational fear of the mammoth cockroach) is a detriment to his mother's health and incites his father to brief fits of violence. One such fit, a bombardment of fruit, deals Gregor a deep and crippling wound.
Hobbled and neglected, Gregor begins to waste away in his room. The family takes in three carping lodgers, using Gregor's room to store excess furniture and other miscellanea--adding insult to injury. Yet the family does leave Gregor's door slightly open in the evenings, so that he may take part in the household in a small way. One evening, the lodgers hear Grete practicing her violin. They call her into the parlor for a concert. She obliges, and the music so moves Gregor that he creeps out into the parlor towards her, wanting to convey that he understands her gift and will help it to blossom. The lodgers see Gregor and immediately give notice. This is the breaking point for the family. Grete declares that they must abandon the notion that this hideous bug is their dear Gregor. All sadly agree. Gregor slinks back into his room. He dies that night.
A great weight has been lifted from the family. After a moment of mourning, the father demands that the lodgers leave immediately. The family takes a trolley out of the city and into the countryside. It is a beautiful, sunny day, and as Grete stretches out her limbs in the trolley car, her parents' thoughts turn to finding her a husband.

Themes
Economic effects on human relationships
Gregor is enslaved by his family because he is the one who makes money. Thus, with the possible exception of his sister, the family seems to treat him not as a member but as a source of income. When Gregor is no longer able to work after his metamorphosis, he is treated with revulsion and neglected. Once the family begins working, they also find difficulty communicating with each other, eating dinner in silence and fighting among themselves. The exhaustion of dehumanizing jobs and the recognition that people are only valuable so long as they earn a salary keeps anyone who works isolated from others and unable to establish human relations with them.
Family duty
The theme of family and the duties of family members to each other drive the interactions between Gregor and the others. His thoughts are almost entirely of the need to support his parents and sending his sister to the Conservatory. Though Gregor hates his job, he follows the call of duty to his family and goes far beyond simple duty. The family, on the other hand, takes care of Gregor after his metamorphosis only so far as duty seems to necessitate. He is kept locked in his room and brought food. In the end, his room is barely cleaned and his sister no longer cares about what food she brings him. Her actions are routine, as she only wants to do enough that she can claim she has fulfilled her duty. When she decides she has had enough, she insists that their duty to him has been fulfilled: "I don't think anyone could reproach us in the slightest," she says as she suggests that they need to get rid of him.
Alienation
Before his metamorphosis, Gregor is alienated from his job, his humanity, his family, and even his body, as we see from the fact that he barely notices his transformation. In fact, even his consideration for his family seems to be something alien to him, as he barely notices it when he loses this consideration at the end. After his metamorphosis, Gregor feels completely alienated from his room and environment and, as a symbol of this, can't even see his street out the window. The Metamorphosis, then, is a powerful indictment of the alienation brought on by the modern social order.
Freedom and escapism

Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when he can finally pay off their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the restrictive demands of work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he escapes. This escape, however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus, when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his job and, when he doesn't work, he is enslaved by his family. There is no way of balancing out freedom and duty, and in the end one is always a slave. The only means of escape turns out to be death.
Guilt
Guilt stems from family duty, and is Gregor's most powerful emotion. When he is transformed into an insect, Gregor is made unable to work by circumstances beyond his control. Despite the fact that his metamorphosis is not his fault, however, he is racked by guilt every time that the family mentions money or that he thinks about the pain that he has inadvertently inflicted on them by losing the ability to support them. Guilt, it turns out, is deadly, as Gregor realizes at the end that his life is the only thing keeping the family from a better life. He dies for them just as he lived for them: out of guilt.
Personal identity

Alone in his room, Gregor tries to rebuild the self-identity that he had lost by living entirely for others and ignoring his own needs. He cannot, however, escape from what he sees as his family duty, and continues to act only to serve his family by doing his best not to inconvenience them. Gregor's comments about his family's behavior are often tinged with resentment at the way they treat him, but he will not allow himself to recognize his bitterness. Gregor manages to escape his self-effacing sense of duty only in the last chapter, when he asserts himself in realizing that his family has been neglecting him. Gregor's search for his identity seems hopeless, however, because he never had an identity to start with. He finds his humanity only at the end, when his sister's playing reminds him of his love for his family. This love, coupled with his freedom, is the final ingredient he needs to establish his identity.

Hamlet - Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Themes
The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything about the afterlife?
Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.

The Complexity of Action
Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.

The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a Diseased Body
Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Motifs

Incest and Incestuous Desire
The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny
Shattered by his mother’s decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, thy name is woman”

Ears and Hearing
One facet of Hamlet’s exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudius’s murder of the king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlet’s claim to Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb” (IV.vi.21). The poison poured in the king’s ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudius’s dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he says that “the whole ear of Denmark” is “Rankly abused. . . .”

Symbols

Yorick’s Skull

In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to “get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death (V.i.178–179). He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174–175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

J. Kerouac - On the Road

The Race Industry

The coconuts have got the jobs.

The race industry is a growth industry.

We despairing, they careering.

We want more peace they want more police.

The Uncle Toms are getting paid.

The race industry is a growth industry.

We say sisters and brothers don't fear.

They will do anything for the Mayor.

The coconuts have got the jobs.

The race industry is a growth industry.

They're looking for victims and poets to rent.

They represent me without my consent.

The Uncle Toms are getting paid.

The race industry is a growth industry.

In suits they dither in fear of anarchy.

They take our sufferings and earn a salary.

Steal our souls and make their documentaries.

Inform daily on our community.

Without Black suffering they'd have no jobs.

Without our dead they'd have no office.

Without our tears they'd have no drink.

If they stopped sucking we could get justice.

The coconuts are getting paid.

Men, women and Brixton are being betrayed.