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News Flash: Potatoeheads at Harriet in Line for Promotion to Muttonheads
So let me get this straight. The Harrieterati want us to sneer at Bradley Cooper playing Lucifer but applaud the casting of con man Kenny Goldsmith as Julian Assange because Goldsmith routinely violates copyright laws at UbuWeb. Now, I’m sure Cooper will never match my favorite film Satan, David Warner; but I’m equally sure that Goldsmith bears as much resemblance to Assange as Dan Quayle did to John F.Read More
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Incredible Machines
This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Ninety-seven percent of the machine’s components are farm equipment parts provided by John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa. It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video. The machine is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.Read More
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The Great Debate
No, not Obama v. McCain, but this (a repost of a November 2007 post by Bill Knott on his blog today [links not in the original]): Randall Jarrell, writing in 1941: ”Realizing that the best poetry of the [1920s] was too inaccessible, we can will our poetry into accessibility—but how much poetry will be left when we finish? Our political or humanitarian interests may make us wish to make our poetry accessible to large groups . . . . “ The debate—whether one should strive to make one’s verse accessible—still rages of course.Read More
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A Mysterious Deference
This from a recent BookForum column by Paris Review managing editor Radhika Jones on one of the leading lights of UbuWeb, the so-called avant-garde archive: [Kenneth Goldsmith’s] position on writing is as follows: Modernism and postmodernism are over, and the literary arts have entered a new technology-driven paradigm. Originality is out the window. “Writers don’t need to write anything more,” he says.Read More