Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Majakovskij.face.jpg In a way Futurism is a basic instinct. A lust of the blood for the modern. For progress. For clean lobbies and antibiotics and heart transplants and aircraft travel and genetically modified crops and embryo screening and Hotol and fusion. We eat Futurism for breakfast. In a way I like Futurism because it holds faith with technology. It says: Fly that airplane! Burn holes in the atmosphere until you can burn cleaner holes, because progress and modernity will solve the problems that arise from that valiant act. I suppose it is the masculine principle. At its heart futurism is human because it is Utopian. What is the problem with William Morris , for example? Isn't his vision of the future revolting - horribly cloying with his fussy wallpaper and his arts and crafts and his false ideas of femininity. How much more interesting Le Corbusier's futurist city , his contemporary city for three million people. Futurism may not ...

Why doesn't the world remember Takhti? By Ali Hosseyni Gholamreza Takhti's name is all over Iran and in ever city and town there are wrestling clubs with Takhti's smiling photograph hanging on the wall in a position of honour. There is even "Takhti" wrestling club in each every town in Iran. Takhti was a supporter of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh , and an enemy of the Pahlavi regime, which overthrew the democratically-elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 with the help of Britain and the US . In 1968 on the 7th January 1968, the Shah sent Savak to kill the legend. They said it was suicide. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi wept crocodile tears when he heard the news. It was not suicide. Mohammed Reza had ordered his death. Takhti was the greatest wrestler in the world in the 1950's and early 60s. He won a silver medal for Iran at the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952. He won a gold medal at 1956 in the Olympics in Melbourne and a Gold in Tokyo...

FLASHING THE GUARDIAN -- A BOOKS BLOGGERS' REBELLION :  The unheroic censor with a death wish Part 1: In which Norman Mailer stars in an experiment in search engine optimisation By ACCIACCATURE 3 February 2009 When Norman Mailer died in 2007, informed opinion – in the blogosphere, people who had read at least two of his books – was split. The army of readers who saw him as one of the most despicable misogynists writing fiction in the 20th century was perfectly matched by warriors on the other side, who raged that the label wasn’t just unwarranted but tantamount to heinous calumny. Before commenters returned to bitching-as-usual, tempers were lost on literary sites all over the net in debating temperatures high enough to bring to mind tiles burning off space shuttles re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. After I'd agreed to a spontaneous suggestion by our good friend Sean Murray -- a pioneer and stalwart of the comments section of The Guardian’s books blog – that we re-...