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It is Sartre’s most powerful and recurrent complaint: that people are being treated as things. The “nausea” of the 1930s, elicited by pebbles and trees and ocean depths (and thus, as in New York, nature in general) morphed, in the ’40s and ’50s, into a specific aversion to the nonorganic products of economic forces. In America he understood that things (the “in-itself”), in all their massiveness, were threatening to reify the amorphous human (or “for-itself”) and produce what he called in a later formulation the “practico-inert.”

Still, Sartre holds out the hope that New York is moving in a generally Sartrean and semi-apocalyptic direction. All those skyscrapers? Obviously, they are doomed. “They are already a bit run-down; tomorrow, perhaps, they will be torn down. In any case, their construction required a faith that we no longer have.” The Chrysler and the Empire State already appear to Sartre like ancient ruins.

But soon enough he started to realize what his fundamental objection really was. The whole point of the city was to fortify itself against nature. But Manhattan failed to do that: an “open” city with a limitless sky above, it let nature in on every side. It was, of course, an island, and thus too exposed to the elements: to storm, hurricane, snow, heat, wind, floods. It had no real protection against anything. “I feel as though I were camping in the heart of a jungle crawling with insects.”` Therefore he learned to appreciate it only while crossing it in a car, as if he were “driving across the great plains of Andalusia.”

And just as he inverts the perception of the American city, so too Sartre turns the notion of American freedom inside out. By February, having been shuttled to and fro across the States, wined, dined and given propaganda tours to industrial installations, he comes to the conclusion in another article, written for Le Figaro, that America is the land of conformism. He finds that beneath its notional attachment to “individualism,” America does not actually trust the solitary individual. Despite the “liberal economy,” America is an embodiment of a Rousseauist “social contract” in which the general will of the “collectivity” dominates: “Each American is educated by other Americans and he educates others in turn. Everywhere in New York, in colleges and beyond, there are courses in Americanization.” Existentialist anomie is prohibited: America is hyper-normative, producing citizen clones.

Sartre wrote dozens of articles for Combat while in the States, often phoning them back to Camus in Paris, and eventually went on to talk philosophy at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and elsewhere. In the process, he acquired an American girlfriend (about whom he wrote abundantly and explicitly to Simone de Beauvoir: “I am killed by passion and lectures.”). But the very personal article he wrote for Town & Country, “Manhattan: The Great American Desert,” records that he suffered on arrival from “le mal de New York.” He never really recovered.

Sartre, leaving the confines of the Plaza Hotel, walked up Fifth Avenue beneath a frozen sky, looking for New York, but not finding it. There was nothing on which to focus his gaze; it was a city for “the far-sighted,” he wrote, since the natural focal point was somewhere around infinity, over the horizon. He missed the intimate quartiers of Paris, finding in their place only “filmy atmospheres, longitudinally stretched masses with nothing to mark a beginning or end.” Just the kind of place, one might think, where an expatriate existentialist ought to fit right in. And yet he suffered stubbornly from a sense of disorientation. “In the numerical anonymity of roads and avenues, he wrote, “I am just anybody, anywhere.” New York put him in mind of the steppes or the pampas.

In some sense, existentialism was going home. The “roots” of 20th-century French philosophy are canonically located on mainland Europe, in the fertile terrain of Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger. But it was not entirely immune to the metaphysical turmoil of the United States at the end of the 19th century. French philosophy retained elements of the pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and the psychologism of William James (each receives an honorable mention in Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”). More significantly, both Camus and Sartre had learned and borrowed from 20th-century writers like Faulkner, Hemingway and dos Passos â€"and, of course, from the films of Humphrey Bogart. Camus, in particular, cultivated the trench coat with the upturned collar and described himself as a mix of Bogart, Fernandel and a samurai.

When Sartre stepped off the plane in New York in January 1945, only months after the liberation of Paris, his head full of American movies, architecture and jazz, he might have expected to feel in his natural habitat â€" the pre-eminent philosopher of liberté setting foot in the land of freedom, a nation temperamentally and constitutionally addicted to liberty. Was there not already something of the existential cowboy and intellectual gunslinger in Sartre’s take-no-hostages attitude? Camus must have thought so in dispatching him to the United States.

By ANDY MARTIN
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/


In December 1944, Albert Camus, then editor of Combat, the main newspaper of the French Resistance, made Jean-Paul Sartre an offer he couldn’t refuse: the job of American correspondent. Perhaps, in light of the perpetual tension and subsequent acrimonious split between the two men, he was glad to get him out of Paris. What is certain is that Sartre was delighted to go. He’d had enough of the austerities and hypocrisies of post-liberation France and had long fantasized about the United States. Camus himself would make the trip soon after, only to return with a characteristically different set of political, philosophical and personal impressions.

The Chrysler and Empire State buildings seemed to Sartre to be like ancient ruins.

Quote from: islander on May 05, 2013, 11:25:12 PM
and a potential biblical fallacy?

Or perhaps a potential evolutionary fallacy as well?

Until then, we would be busy observing how the loss of the moon messes up the lives of other animals, ruins whole genres of music, poetry, and photography, and we’d probably go extinct just out of sheer boredom.

That’s assuming we survived the alien invaders who destroyed the moon in the first place. Which, to me, raises an even more pressing question: Why would they do that?

It’s possible that Earth without a moon would wobble wildly, sort of like Mars does. The Red Planet’s wobble is so extreme that it may be the cause of some cycles of climate change there. If the same thing happened here, Earth might wobble so much that seasons would become inhospitably extreme and Earth would be a much less stable and habitable planet.

Without the moon the tilt of the Earth’s axis could go from its current wobble of 22 to 25 degrees to a wide ride of zero to 85 degrees â€" zero would eliminate seasons, and 85 is basically the Earth leaning over on its side. If this happened, the current crisis we call global warming would be a very pleasant tea party by comparison.

Luckily, the wobbling would not affect things right away but over many millions of years.

The ocean tides would still happen, but the bulge of water would follow the sun, so you could expect high tides around noon everywhere, everyday. I know some fishermen who would appreciate this.

Since the solid Earth flexes tidally, it makes sense that there might be some internal grumbling when Earth loses the moon. Earthquakes. Maybe a few volcanoes getting rowdy. That kind of stuff. But there’s no reason to worry (or hope) that California will fall into the Pacific. Sorry New York. Sorry Las Vegas.

The greater concern would be in the long-term, regarding the Earth’s wobbling spin axis. Right now the spin axis of the Earth very slowly wobbles over 26,000 years, like a slowing wobbling top, because of the tug of the sun. The wobble causes true north to not always point at Polaris, a.k.a., the North Star. Experts agree that the moon acts sort of like a shock absorber to this wobble â€" keeping it from getting out of hand (see the nitty gritty details in this SETI talk).

The first thing that came to mind is that it depends on the manner of the moon’s destruction. If it was, say, zapped to bits by a Death Star and those bits still floated in a cluster in the same orbit, I expect they would exert the same gravitational pull on Earth as does the intact moon, and not much would change on Earth.

We’d no longer watch the phases of the moon at night, but see a glittering cloud of debris which would probably be a lot brighter than the full moon, what with all those zillions of little surfaces to reflect sunlight. I know some astronomers who would really hate this new interference with their dark skies.

But if the moon were dragged off and completely removed, there would be none of its mass left to tug gravitationally on the Earth. One of the effects would be that we could throw out tide tables for good.

http://news.discovery.com/
Apr 25, 2013 04:01 AM ET // by Larry O'Hanlon





Today I was asked a question that was motivated by the new movie Oblivion: What would happen to the Earth if the moon was destroyed? “I dunno,” I replied, “What does happen when the moon is destroyed?” When the expected why-the-chicken-crossed-the-road response didn’t come, I decided I’d better try and answer the question.

You might have guessed it: Human garbage. Yep. It's the ugliest, most alien-looking, fatal and pervasive monster in the seas. Garbage patches have been getting a lot of attention lately. These are areas on the seas where currents and winds tend to concentrate floating garbage. -- http://news.discovery.com/

Do you remember when this one hit the headlines? It's not so gigantic, at four meters long, but it was observed 3,380 meters down in the Pacific Ocean near Oahu. It's pretty big to have gone unseen before its May 2001 discovery. So what else is out there? It's pretty clear marine biologists have only just begun discovering what lives in the deep sea. The more time they spend searching, the more they will find. But none would dispute that the nastiest sea monster to ever rise out of the sea is ... (drum roll please) ...

How about giant, ship-destroying squid and octopi? These monsters were old hat even to the easily freaked-out. Most folks figured they were historical exaggerations. That's until some very large and unusual squids started washing up or being hauled in by marine biologists in recent years. Colossal squid are meters long, pretty amazing beasts. Still, they have never been known to lift ships out of the water.

Another possibility is that merfolk were inspired by fish with roughly human-looking faces, like this fellow. Some fish can look humanoid. That would be enough to get superstitious sailors started.

The manatee has often been called the source of mermaid myths. It's a mammal, so it breathes air. But who would ever mistake a manatee for a sleek and beautiful mermaid? Could it be love-starved sailors with poor eyesight? There was no shortage of these fellows in the days before optometrists.

Mermaids and mermen have always been the stuff of fantasy. Where did the fantasies come from? There are some standard answers to this question, which have always seemed rather inadequate.

There are also other, newfound "sea serpents" our sea-going ancestors never imagined. This one was spotted by a satellite coiling off the south coast of Japan's Hokkaido island. What do we know about it? 1) It's arguably one of the largest organisms on Earth, 2) It swallows ships, engulfs islands and generally does what it wants, and 3) We're darned lucky it's made of plankton. Research into such massive blooms and the individual plankton cells that comprise them has revealed surprising cooperation among the microorganisms. They appear to operate like more than just floating individual cells. They live and die for the greater good, it seems. So they may be, in fact, a gigantic watery superorganism. Now that's a cool monster for you: You can swim in it and never know you've been in the belly of a beast.

Maybe it's the oarfish. It looks too monstrous to be true. It can grow many meters long, has strikingly bright silver scales, scarlet fins and some ornate headgear that more than explains why some call it a roosterfish. If only it were a reptile, it'd be a true sea serpent. Alas. It is a fish. A very weird and beautiful fish, but still a fish.

Sea monsters are truly global. This one from Japan serves as the villain for the classic maiden in distress, who awaits rescue by her hero. The poor monsters are almost always cast as the bad guys. And so they usually end hacked to pieces; fish food. But is there any truth behind these sea serpent tales?

We all enjoy a tall tale. Cultures with seafaring traditions are especially ripe in what seem like the tallest sea monster tales of all: hydra, kraken, sirens, scylla, leviathans, assorted serpents and mermaids. Usually the stories are never confirmed and usually baseless. Then again, some of the tales are based on something, or so we are learning as marine scientists plumb the depths and discover some pretty weird creatures. The bottom line: There really are bizarre, unexpected, totally startling monsters found in the seas. And the very worst of these is the most unexpected.

Pena Nieto says the holiday celebrates principles that, in his words, "encourage the political forces and federal government to pursue a transformative reform agenda that the country demands and needs."

Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops defeated a French army of Napoleon III, then considered the mightiest military in the world.

The anniversary was marked Sunday with a military parade in the city of Puebla, where the battle took place. It is considered a bigger holiday in the U.S., celebrating Mexican heritage with parades and revelry in many major cities.

(Associated Press) | Updated May 6, 2013 - 9:48am


   
The powder of a firecracker explodes accidentally without causing injuries during a recreation of the Battle of Puebla part of "Cinco de Mayo" celebrations in Mexico City, Sunday, May 5, 2013. On May 5, 1862, Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated French troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla, in Puebla, central Mexico. AP/Marco Ugarte

MEXICO CITY â€" Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto is commemorating Cinco de Mayo by urging his countrymen to tackle current problems with the same "unity and commitment" that defeated the French 151 years ago.

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 10:00:18 AM
katol tingali ang tutunlan tungod sa kauhaw.

Quote from: Lollapalooza on May 06, 2013, 09:15:27 AM
     Ug tuod man, pagkahuman sa ilang pagpalit, ila na akong gidala sa isa ka mangitngit ug mabugnaw nga lugar.

Hmm, abi nakog gadagkot silag katol kay daghang lamok sa mangitngit nga lugar...

There is little doubt that Donner Party members who resorted to eating human flesh exemplified "survival cannibalism."

Dixon and Schablitsky, in a "Concluding Thoughts" chapter of the book, mention that they did not find any intact skeletons at the excavation site. But they add, "If the Donner families consumed only flesh and organs, as would be expected from comparative cases of survival cannibalism, then only soft tissue would have been cooked over a fire or boiled in a pot."

They conclude, "Beyond the cannibal tale, this hero saga reminds us of our own fragility, mortality, and resilience in the face of unfamiliar circumstances and less-than-predictable futures." -- http://news.discovery.com/

Johnson reports that James Frazier Reed, who left and then returned with men to help at Jacob Donner's camp, "found a gruesome scene."

Hair, bones, skulls, and the fragments of half-consumed limbs were said to be around the fire. Jacob Donner's body was found with his heart and liver removed and his limbs and arms cut off. Another account describes children having blood on their faces, after trying to consume such flesh.

In human history, several different types of cannibalism exist. Exocannibalism is when a culture, group or tribe consumes members of another group, while mortuary cannibalism is the practice of eating deceased relatives for ritualistic purposes.

Johnson continued that, based on the historical record, some members tried to eat "a decayed buffalo robe, but it was too tough and there was no nourishment in it."

The members even tried eating pine bark and twigs, with Solomon Hook later saying that at one point he "went two weeks without food, chewing only pine pitch."

With nothing else left to eat, the historical record indicates some of the snowbound victims resorted to consuming the bodies of others who perished.

Another member of the group, Patrick Breen, reportedly shot his dog and dressed its flesh. The Donner's dog Uno, itself hungry enough to eat a child's shoe, may have also been consumed.

"When the meat gave out, the emigrants turned to the hides of the slaughtered animals, which, when scraped, cut into strips, and boiled, yielded a thick glue," according to Kristin Johnson, a Salt Lake Community College librarian who has studied the Donner Party for nearly two decades.

"The emigrants also discovered that bones, if boiled long enough or roasted, could be eaten," she added.

Co-editor Kelly Dixon, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Montana, told Discovery News that she and her colleagues "are emphasizing the fact that the historical and archaeological sources present a complicated story about humans doing whatever possible, including eating hide and strings as well as consuming their dogs, before making the desperate decision to cannibalize. Thus, the bone remains at the site indicate an avoidance of cannibalism … but not necessarily the absence of it."

Dixon and co-editors Julie Schablitsky and Shannon Novak identified rodent, canine, deer, rabbit, horse and oxen/cattle bones within the over 16,000 bone fragments.

The historical record, consisting of letters and journals kept by members of the Donner Party and rescue groups, as well as the memories of some survivors, supports that the trapped members first ate all of their animals, including captured mice and the family dogs, as well as wild game.

Of the family dog "Cash," emigrant Virginia Reed Murphy wrote, "We ate his head and feet -- hide -- everything about him."

They had endured months of cold and hunger. The Donner-Reed party had set out for California in 1846 in a journey that normally took four to six months. But after trying a new route, called Hastings Cutoff, rugged terrain left the group snowbound in the Sierra Nevada.

Now a new book analyzing one of the most spectacular tragedies in American history reveals what the 81 pioneers ate before resorting to eating each other in a desperate attempt to survive. On the menu: family pets, bones, twigs, a concoction described as "glue," strings and, eventually, human remains.

The book, "An Archaeology of Desperation: Exploring the Donner Party's Alder Creek Camp," centers on recent archaeological investigations at that campsite near Truckee, Calif., where one quarter of the 81 emigrants spent their nightmarish winter of 1846-47.

No human bone was identified in the fragments analyzed from the extensive bone sample at Alder Creek, but the researchers conclude that "some Donner Party members participated in cannibalism" during the last week of February 1847.

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 09:57:03 AM
why man?  magtakin-takin diay sila ug orinola?  si bolbuhol kaha?

Mangyaka ra sila deretso?

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 09:55:29 AM
i'd rather go back and read william faulkner's nobel prize acceptance speech...

Hmm, doesn't this story smell more of the human condition?

Ni Lesley Caminade-Vestil & Chelsea Quijano (Banat) | Updated May 6, 2013 - 12:00am


CEBU, Philippines -  Usa ka lalaki ang gipusil patay sulod sa Aloha Apartelle diha sa dalan Echavez sa barangay Zapatera dakbayan sa Sugbo kagahapon sa tungang gabii.

Ang biktima gihulagway lang nga nagpangidaron og 35-anyos, adunay gitas-on nga 5’2, nagsul-ob og yellow nga t-shirt ug gray nga shorts. Dunay pagdudang ‘kawatan’ kini nga misud sa maong establisamento. Base sa gibutyag sa usa ka John Labis,42, nga iyang nadunggan ang kusog kaayong lanog sa buto sa armas ug adunay nag-agulo. Sa iyang pagsusi naghapla na ang biktima.

Tungod niini, daling nangayo og tabang si Labis sa tagdumala sa maong apartelle apan ang gwardiya lamang nga si Andy Flores nga nag-duty nianang gabhiuna ang diha apan wa na usab kini igkita bisan nangabot na ang mga polis. Nakuha gikan sa biktima mao ang tsinelas nga iyang gibutang sa iyang duha ka kamot, screw drivers, nail cutter ug coin purse.

Sa pakighinabi sa Banat News ni PO1 Merlo Laborte sa Homicide Section, gituohan nilang k******n ang maong lalaki nga napatay ug nagduda silang ang gwardiya maoy mipusil niini. (BANAT NEWS)

     You may imagine how glad the queen was when she heard the name. And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and asked, "Now, mistress queen, what is my name?"

     At first she said, "Is your name Conrad?"

     "No."

     "Is your name Harry?"

     "No."

     "Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?"

     "The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that," cried the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

     On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, "I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted -

     'To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,

     the next I'll have the young queen's child.

     Ha, glad am I that no one knew

     that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.'"

     So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be. When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, "That is not my name."

     On the second day she had inquiries made in the neighborhood as to the names of the people there, and she repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. Perhaps your name is Shortribs, or Sheepshanks, or Laceleg, but he always answered, "That is not my name."

     A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he came into her room, and said, "Now give me what you promised."

     The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the manikin said, "No, something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world."

     Then the queen began to lament and cry, so that the manikin pitied her.

     "I will give you three days, time," said he, "if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child."

     Who knows whether that will ever happen, thought the miller's daughter, and, not knowing how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the straw into gold.

     And when the king came in the morning, and found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and the pretty miller's daughter became a queen.

     The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had not gold enough, and he had the miller's daughter taken into a still larger room full of straw, and said, "You must spin this, too, in the course of this night, but if you succeed, you shall be my wife."

     Even if she be a miller's daughter, thought he, I could not find a richer wife in the whole world.

     When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third time, and said, "What will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time also?"

     "I have nothing left that I could give," answered the girl.

     "Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child."

     By daybreak the king was already there, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his heart became only more greedy. He had the miller's daughter taken into another room full of straw, which was much larger, and commanded her to spin that also in one night if she valued her life. The girl knew not how to help herself, and was crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared, and said, "What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?"

     "The ring on my finger," answered the girl.

     The little man took the ring, again began to turn the wheel, and by morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.

     But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, and said, "Good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so?"

     "Alas," answered the girl, "I have to spin straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it."

     "What will you give me," said the manikin, "if I do it for you?"

     "My necklace," said the girl.

     The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold.

Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, "I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold."

     The king said to the miller, "That is an art which pleases me well, if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her to-morrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test."

     And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die."

     Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller's daughter, and for the life of her could not tell what to do, she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she grew more and more frightened, until at last she began to weep.

He he, pero nganong Katol man?

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 09:28:24 AM
wa na lang sila malooy sa kahoy... kun si engr votives ug pikoy pa ni, di gyod ni mahitabo.

Bitaw. Wa na sila magkinahanglan og urinal or inodoro...

Dia pay para jingle lang...

Quote from: Lollapalooza on May 06, 2013, 08:49:37 AM
daghang nangaigo diay hahahaha

Unsaon na lang ni...

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 12:01:31 AM
Luke 4:

Jesus, as in Mark 1 and Matthew 4, travels into the desert and fasts for forty days. He is confronted by Satan, who tempts him with three things.

The first is that Satan commands him to turn stones into bread. Jesus replies "Man does not live on bread alone", quoting Moses from Deuteronomy 8:3. (wikipedia)

On a more poetic note:


Ecclesiastes 11:1

Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. (English Standard Version)

Quote from: Lollapalooza on May 06, 2013, 08:32:20 AM
Unsa kaha kung ang mga dagkung punuan sa kahoy;
Makaistorya sa tanang sekretong iyang nakit-an?
Makauulaw gayud sa mga tawong
Adunay gibuhat nga dautan ilalom sa iyang punuan...

Quote from: Lollapalooza on May 06, 2013, 08:32:20 AM
reference: Gènawah is the Literary Folio of the Cordial, Official Student publication of CJC, Digos. The word Gènawah originate from Tagacaolo which means, heart* puso* jantong* kasingkasing

Hmm, related ba kaha ning pulonga sa Binisaya nga "ginhawa"?

Quote from: Votives on May 06, 2013, 07:27:16 AM
"LAGKAW"

Quote from: islander on May 06, 2013, 07:55:45 AM
PAYAG

KAMALIG...

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

V

THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men --some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro.

He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time since--was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.

IV

So THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."

"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"

"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"

"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"

"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"

"I want arsenic."

She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.

"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -
without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began. "Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."

III

SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.

The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.

When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. .."

"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.

"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.

"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."

II

So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.

That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man then--going in and out with a market basket.

"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"

"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--"

"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But, Miss Emily--"

"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."

They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.

They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

I

WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

By Camille Diola (philstar.com) | Updated April 29, 2013 - 7:06pm


MANILA, Philippines - The daughter of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III married a Philippine Army officer on Monday amid continuing tension over the clan's claim on Sabah.

Princess Jacel Kiram tied the knot with Major Mohammad Yusoph Hassan in Zamboanga City where members of the family and its supporters gathered to celebrate the occasion.

Jacel said in a report that she and Hassan had been delaying the marriage in sympathy with members of her father's Royal Army fighting for the cause against Malaysian forces in Sabah.

She also said that even with the joyful gathering, the family will not give up in laying claim over the territory, seen as an ancestral land owned by the de facto Sulu monarchs.

The Kiram patriarch, meanwhile, said that no single politician was invited to the wedding to avoid conflicts of interest as well as to avoid any political issue, especially as the May ballot draws near.

He also denied that the clan's caused is backed by any Malaysian official, as the country that has ceded Sabah into its territory is also facing changes brought by their recent national election.

Kiram, who has asked the government for support on the dispute but failed to receive much, said that he still believes that President Benigno Aquino III's administration will eventually assist them in their territorial claim.

Quote from: Votives on May 02, 2013, 05:35:36 PM
kompyansaha gyud aning bayhana oi... ma agian gani ka ni bai hubs human jud ka.

Bwahaha! Kutob ra kas bag-id ani, Bay Vots, kay di madalidalig tangtang ang bakos...

Think Gestalt kaha, Liebling...

Then again, they could be honest-to-goodness winos...

Quote from: islander on May 05, 2013, 11:25:12 PM
and a potential biblical fallacy?

He he, I suspected that with your superb scholarship in both religious studies and pop culture, you would pounce on the dubious phrase. I would have been truly titillated, though, if you made reference to some poetic misinterpretation of the M-theory.

We excluded companies with an operating margin of less than 15%, as well as companies that did not break out revenue by division or product. In order to estimate product operating margin, in the cases when the product’s margin or revenue was not provided, we used the company or division’s operating margin as a proxy. (Operating margin measures a company's profit as a percent of revenue after deducting certain expenses. Companies with margins of less than 15% are less likely to have a product with a high product margin.)

If it was clear that the brand power of the product and high volume of sales allows the company to sell the product at a premium, we awarded the product a higher operating profit. Market share valued listed are worldwide, unless otherwise noted. We treated company products of the same type and brand as one. For example, for our purposes, Coca-Cola includes Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and Cherry Coke.

Product profitability is among the most difficult financial measurement to analyze from the financial information released by many of America’s public companies. It is also among the most difficult to find information on. Public companies tend to guard data on product profits, and rightly so. This information is the equivalent of a trade secret that corporations do not want their competitors to have, even if the figures can be estimated.

Based on data provided by Capital IQ, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the S&P 500 companies that produce consumer products. We only considered corporations that have a single product save as the company’s flagship brand, or where the product represented the largest single contributor of revenue. To account for the opaque nature of product profitability, 24/7 Wall St. only considered products of publicly traded companies that disclosed significant details about their operations. And we used operating margin as the primary measure of profitability.

The most profitable products tend to rely on the power of their brand, which can command a premium price and sell extraordinary numbers of units. In fact, some of these products, including the iPhone, Coke and Marlboro, are part of the world’s most valuable brands as measured by brand consultancies like Interbrand and BrandZ. All three companies are the market leader, despite the presence of competing products that sell for much less.

Another important factor that contributes to product profitability is good management. A company that spends too much on research and development, marketing, or management can smother a product’s margins. Of course, controlling expenses is a balancing act. A product that is not well marketed is a product that will probably not do well for long.

These products are the most profitable for several reasons. Nearly all of them are the market leader in their sector and are mass produced at an unprecedented scale. As a result, the companies can apply significant pressure up and down their supply chain, ensuring they can manufacture the product at the lowest cost, and sell it to customers at the highest possible price. Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in its most recently reported quarter. Very few smartphone or consumer electronics devices can match that volume, which gives Apple notable leverage in negotiations for components and with carriers.

By Douglas A. McIntyre, Brian Zajac and Michael B. Sauter | 24/7 Wall St â€" Fri, May 3, 2013 4:02 PM EDT



A Marlboro Billboard Advertising Cigarettes Is On Display April 30, 1997 In Los Angeles, Ca. (Photo By Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images)


Successful companies frequently rely heavily on just one product for the majority of their sales and profit. That’s true for some of the most iconic brands, including Coke, Marlboro and the Apple iPhone. Because each product represents such an outsized share of their respective company’s revenue, the products’ tremendous margins are the foundation of the company’s profit.

Mr. Webmaster, Sir:

Just for everyone to be clear on this issue: Am I to believe that, with your silence, some crank's injunction for me to register no more than 20 posts a day is with your authority? I'm sick and tired of some people not knowing which is which.

I look forward to your sobering word.

Yours in TB,
HB

P.S. Truth to tell, I can go on blithely with this sweet distraction. I hope to be forgiven, though, for stooping too low.