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Are you that special person who - weary from trudging the endless superhighways - just longs to camp next to a glorious oasis of the mind? Do you desire to explore new frontiers, splash in shared ideas, fill your belly with the refreshing fruits of inspiration, and bask in the gentle rays of fond reflection?

Well, you can fuck right off. This, my friends, is not that place. This place is... The ShadowLands.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

On this day

...in 1936 Alan Turing submitted "On Computable Numbers" for publication, a seminal work about mathematics and computing. Turing pioneered computing and quite possibly saved the world with his work in breaking German codes during WWII. He was eventually jailed for his homosexuality, forced to take female hormones to suppress his libido, and eventually ate an apple laced with cyanide. If only I were making this up.

...in 2003, Rev Peter Hollingworth was forced to resign as Governor General of Australia for failing to look as hang-dog as Sir William Deane.

...it is the anniversary of the birthday of Australia's only Nobel Laureate for Literature, grumpy old Queen, Patrick White. The Nobel Prize had a major impact on booksales with thousands of unfortunate schoolchildren thence being forced to read his novels against their will. Like Kevin Rudd, he had occasional infatuations with Australian actresses.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reading Patrick White left me with a profound suspicion of a) the Australian literati and b) the Nobel selection committees.
At 19 I found The Tree Of Man totally beyond me, but vowed I would try again with another White novel. Which was, as it turned out, The Vivisectionist when I was 27.
I've been White-free ever since. And no regrets.
SwinishCapitalist.