Ultraist movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In a manifesto published by Nosotros magazine (Buenos Aires, 1922), [Jorge Luis] Borges summarized Ultraist goals thus:
- Reduction of the lyric element to its primordial element, metaphor
- Deletion of useless middle sentences, linking particles and adjectives.
- Avoidance of ornamental artifacts, confessionalism, circumstantiation, preaching and farfetched nebulosity.
- Synthesis of two or more images into one, thus widening its suggestiveness. (Maier 1996)
I know what school of poetry I am part of: the long forgotten ultraists.
China’s Once-Hot Economy Is Turning Cold - Keith Bradsher via NYTimes.com
China’s economy is rapidly cooling, partly as a result of the European economic mess and continued slowing growth everywhere else. But the housing and development overhang there could precipitate a real crisis:
Keith Bradsher via NYTimes.com
The most striking feature of the slowdown is that it extends beyond the coastal provinces, which depend on exports and are closely linked to the global economy, to the country’s far more insular interior, including cities like Xi’an here in northwestern China.
China’s unexpected economic difficulties are starting to unnerve investors in world markets, especially commodity markets, as China is the world’s largest consumer of most raw materials and the second-largest consumer of oil.
A deepening slowdown would ripple across the world economy. Until now, China’s economy barreled ahead mostly unhindered as the main engine of global growth, even as Europe struggled with its government debt crisis and the United States limped along with a crippled housing market.
Government indexes show real estate prices are falling in more than half of the country’s top 70 urban markets, Xi’an among them. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services and Moody’s each issued reports on Thursday warning that many of China’s real estate developers face a severe cash squeeze as apartment sales slow to a crawl. The developers still owe heavy interest payments on bank loans.
“Weak property developers in China are likely to face a test of their survival this year,” S.& P. said.
China’s economy was 8.1 percent larger in the first quarter of this year than a year earlier, but virtually all of that growth took place last year. The economy barely grew in the first quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2011, and the second quarter of this year is likely to show even less growth from the preceding quarter, said Diana Choyleva, a China economist in the Hong Kong office of Lombard Street Research.
The World Bank also warned on Wednesday of a slowdown.
“Clearly the economy is much, much weaker than most people thought until recently,” Ms. Choyleva said. “They have a real mess on their hands.”
(Source: hirofzesun)
If another motherfucker puts a charcuterie plate in front of me I will punch him in the face. I want to focus on something more challenging and illustrate to people that food of the South is greater than what you can do with pork.
Food Is The New Rock&Roll
The live music season is upon us, but this time food is on the bill along with the bands:
Jeff Gordinier, Pork Belly, Lobster, and, Yes, Music via NYTimes.com
Think of it as Monterey Pop for foodies, the latest crest of a cultural and generational shift. In fact, with all eyes on the kitchen as much as the main stage, the months ahead are shaping up as something of a gastronomic Summer of Love.
In June and July, a series of Grub Crawls will wind through three thriving meccas of American cuisine — Brooklyn, Los Angeles and New Orleans — sponsored by the food magazine Bon Appétit. Clusters of diners will roam from restaurant to restaurant in round-robin fashion before the music even starts at a central stage in each city.
In September, a South Carolina festival called Euphoria will summon chefs and sommeliers as well as singers and songwriters. Meanwhile, established jamborees like Bonnaroo, Outside Lands and Lollapalooza are emphasizing and expanding their menus more than ever, deploying culinary curators and food trucks armed with kimchi, aioli and grass-fed beef.
“I think everybody and their brother knows that food is the new rock ’n’ roll,” said Justin Warner, a 28-year-old chef at Do or Dine, a Brooklyn bistro known for both its Michelin-recognized cuisine and its prankish spirit. “Right now people collect tastes like they’re records.”
Mr. Warner will provide one of those tastes at GoogaMooga: he and his team are planning an assembly line to crank out about 1,600 foie gras doughnuts, which involve the use of a pastry bag to inject unctuous duck liver and strawberry-cumin jam into a puffy ball of fried dough.
“It’s an exercise in gratuity,” Mr. Warner said. “Face it: Hall & Oates are going to be there. You can’t just show up with weak sauce.”
The 40,000 free tickets for each day of GoogaMooga went fast. But Superfly also expects to see 2,000 people each day for what it’s calling Extra Mooga, a “food and drink lover’s wonderland.” Those tickets cost $249.50 and give festivalgoers access to oyster-shucking contests, a Blue Ribbon fried-chicken party and a lecture on “the joy of rhubarb.”
Paul Grieco, 46, the sommelier and restaurateur associated with Terroir and Hearth, will be onstage at Extra Mooga, sparring with the beer expert Garrett Oliver about whether wine or beer pairs more delectably with cheese.
[…]
dirty duck dog
Mr. Colicchio, the “Top Chef” host, plans to serve the aforementioned dirty duck dog, courtesy of his New York restaurant Craft, as well as a pork-belly-shawarma taco from Colicchio & Sons. He says the idea of savoring well-executed snacks while basking in music has been a long time coming. “Why shouldn’t you have good food while you’re there?” Mr. Colicchio asked. “Why should it be garbage?”
Looking forward to some great shows — and meals — this summer.
BANG HEAD HERE
Euro Crisis Special Edition
di richardturley, scoperta via leibniz
27% of workers ate breakfast at their desks, 62% ate lunch at their desks, and 50% spend the day rest of the days munching on a variety of snacks.
There is an opportunity to make a happier office here! What are your ideas?
There Is No Middle In This Muddle
The Germans are going to continue to demand austerity from the Greeks and every other ailing country in the Eurozone as a condition for funds. Meanwhile, Greeks and others are going to default because the levels of austerity demanded are unsupportable. There is no middle to this muddle, and the result will be default and an exit from the Euro for Greece. And soon after, Spain?
Nichola Kulish and Paul Geitner, Euro Zone Crisis Boils as Leaders Fail to Signal New Steps via NYTimes.com
Although the German and French finance ministers praised each other and spoke of their friendly and cooperative relations after their preliminary meeting in Berlin on Monday, the level of frustration in the German capital over Mr. Hollande’s vocal demand for euro bonds has become increasingly evident.
Many economists believe that euro bonds offer the surest way to end the sovereign debt crisis and for European states to restore growth. But in Berlin, many policy makers view them with skepticism, as a way for other countries to tap the creditworthiness of Germany rather than facing up to difficult but necessary economic reforms. “It is clear who wants what from whom,” said Thomas Steffen, a deputy finance minister, in an address on fiscal policy on Wednesday. “A lot of people want something from us.”
While talk has focused on how isolated Ms. Merkel has become in her stance against euro bonds and in favor of pressing deficit cuts, she is far from alone. Many Eastern European countries, which suffered through their own austerity programs to gain entry to the euro zone and are still poorer than Greece, have little sympathy for Athens. And the Austrians, Finns and Dutch have thus far hewed to Ms. Merkel’s line.
“We did not expect a decision tonight,” Mr. Hollande said after the meeting. “There was no conflict, no confrontation between the various countries and some were even more against euro bonds than Ms. Merkel.”
Ms. Merkel said Wednesday that the German Constitution and the European treaties forbade countries from assuming one another’s debts. “Aside from that, I don’t believe that they would make any contribution to boosting growth in the euro zone,” she said.
Mr. Cooley, of New York University, said: “I don’t think we’ll get all the way to the unraveling of the euro system. The way they are approaching solutions to it is the one that’s going to cause the most possible pain and damage to the countries on the periphery.”
Relative to their own reboot of the failing Greek economy, the sooner the Greeks default and exit, the better. May actually be best for Europe, too. All this wrangling while the stock markets slowly sink… maybe it’s like pulling off a bandaid.
(Source: octopusmint)
That time in *Lausanne* at the balloon release Share a memory from a place you’ve been.
Culinary Intelligence
Epicurious: Culinary intelligence, as you term it, works on the idea of maximizing "flavor per calorie." Can you explain this theory?
Peter Kaminsky: If you use ingredients that are at their peak of flavor, then you will get satisfaction from them. If you use tomatoes in February or strawberries in April or squash six months later or commodity beef, they're not going to have as much full flavor as seasonal, carefully raised ingredients. You won't get as much satisfaction from them, and you'll inevitably want to compensate, usually with some combination of sugar, salt, and fat. That's how you mask—pump up the flavor of—inferior ingredients. Say, for example, I give you an aged, grass-fed rib-eye piece of beef, and compare that to a pound, pound-and-a-half, steak from Outback. I guarantee you three slices of that rib eye, you're satisfied, but you'll eat through the whole Outback steak, which isn't that flavorful, without getting the same satisfaction. You can do the same thing with chocolate. A little bit of some really great dark chocolate will satisfy you more than a candy bar. I think it also holds true for light beer and beer. So I realized that if I used the best ingredients and prepared them well, I'd be satisfied with less.
Epi: Culinary intelligence requires eaters to make better choices when it comes to the foods they eat. Does it require willpower as well?
PK: No question. But put it this way: I gave up smoking 25 years ago. It's not even in the same ballpark. You do need to be conscious about what you're doing and what you're eating. I don't eat pastries with the regularity I did some time ago; I don't have two slices of pizza every day, which is sort of the writer's survival jacket for eating. So you do need to exercise some willpower, but once you learn to choose full-flavored, good ingredients—hopefully you are cooking a lot of them yourself—it really isn't as hard as I thought, and other people have told me the same. Now you can't, every time you have a craving, pick up even a health bar. There's a lot of calories, a lot of sugar there, but it really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.
Epi: Culinary intelligence allows you to eat a little salt and eat a little fat.
PK: Sure. Fat isn't evil. I think that's a big misconception. When we all thought fat was so evil, we all went on to carbs, and that's when the national diabetes rate went up so high. Human beings need fat. Your brain needs fat to work. You just don't need saturated fat. And you don't need it in huge quantities. I would take a fatty piece of meat over a 6-ounce serving of white pasta and white bread.
