Ziad Shihab

Alien World of Money and Beyond

by Ziad Shihab/ April 26th, 2024

Chapter 6 from the 1998 book Money and the Human Condition by Michael Neary and Graham Taylor.Authors:  Michael Neary and Graham TaylorApril 24, 2024          The Alien World of Money and Beyond . . . The magical qualities of money transfixed the philosophers of the ancient and medieval eras. The quest to turn base metals into gold eluded the greatest of ancient minds. It was the modern bourgeoisie which was to discover the secrets of the philosopher's stone. The class that laid naked the sup...

The Never End

by Ziad Shihab/ April 25th, 2024

The Other Orwell, the Cold War, the CIA, MI6, and the Origin of Animal Farm John ReedPalgrave Macmillan ($119.99) by Zoe Berkovitz "Orwell has come to an end," John Reed tells us. He’s earned a say in the matter: His newest book, The Never End, collects twenty years of essays, long form pieces, and interviews that parse the complicated history and l...

TO DIE FOR Review - This Film Kills

by Ziad Shihab/ April 24th, 2024

For most of its residents, the frigid burgh of Little Hope, New Hampshire can’t help but live up to its town’s moniker.  A perpetually blah place with an unromantic blue collar frozen-in-time and also freezing quality, its denizens have been long resigned not to ask too much of life. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.But not for Suzanne Stone-Maretto.  For this young, recently wed career-minded woman, her frigidity comes from within.  Portrayed with an exacting edge by Nicol...

History of Ritual Practices and Folklore of Death in America

by Ziad Shihab/ April 24th, 2024

The wide range of ways in which Americans have experienced the presence of those who have departed.GhostsThe Haunting of a Heights HouseAlthough its owner died in 1865, many visitors to the Morris-Jumel Mansion still come just to see her.The supposedly haunted Morris-Jumel Mansion in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, 2012. / Seth Wenig/Associated PressSet on a green lawn at the edge of northern Manhattan, the Morris-Jumel mansion, white and stately, might seem charming enough on a ...

Translation analysis results explained

by Ziad Shihab/ April 24th, 2024

The article: Computational Perspective on the Millennium Trilogy "Larsson, Remade: A Computational Perspective on the Millennium Trilogy in English," was published online by Cambridge University Press on April 17, 2024. Authored by Karl Berglund and Sarah Allison, the essay explores the transformation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy in its English translation¹. The study employs computational methods to analyze the novels in both Swedish and English, identifying significant changes to p...

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Computational Perspective on the Millennium Trilogy

by Ziad Shihab/ April 23rd, 2024

23 April 2024: We are investigating problems with ecommerce on Cambridge Core. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to have full functionality restored shortly. Skip to main content Accessibility help We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Home Cart ( 0 ) ...

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Glass Mountain - The - by Donald Barthelme

by Ziad Shihab/ April 15th, 2024

"Don't look down, don't look down..."It's a Donald Barthelme double feature this weekend! "The Glass Mountain" is unlike any short-story I have encountered before--the entire narrative structure consists of 100 individual bullet points! It's clever, hilarious and surprisingly poignant without ever feeling like a mere gimmick. Not many authors could pull off this narrative technique, let alone deconstruct the fairly-tale genre in the process. It's a masterful literary achievement that I can't ...

Dogville at 20 - On the Maddening Descent into Womanhood

by Ziad Shihab/ April 14th, 2024

Skip to the content Crooked Marquee Search for: Dogville at 20: On the Maddening Descent into Womanhood Anna McKibbin•Posted on03/25/2024•Happy Birthday, Looking Back There is nothing quite like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. Formally, it is constructed like a low-budget theatre piece, rooms marked with white paint on a dark soundstage...

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With and Against

by Ziad Shihab/ April 12th, 2024

By James Rushing Daniel.   Dominique Routhier, With and Against: The Situationist International and the Age of Automation (Verso, 2023) In the contemporary art world dominated by glitzy international fairs and heavily licensed celebrity artists, it’s sometimes hard to fathom that art once held more serious political ambitions. Throughout the history of the avant-garde, from Dada to Fluxus, artists, in vastly different national contexts and through a variety of media, sought to cr...

Aftersun and the reflective property of memory

by Ziad Shihab/ April 10th, 2024

Chama Al Houari (f. 2002) is an aspiring filmmaker from Morocco. She is currently studying at NSKI in Oslo, and is passionate about film history and how movies reflects the world.*I walk into the theater not knowing what to expect, something about a father and a daughter. Something about a critically acclaimed directorial debut. Aftersun. The film starts, and I brace myself for another conventionally unconventional A24 flick. But before I know it, without warning, I’m looking at the broken pi...

Trains of Europe

by Ziad Shihab/ April 5th, 2024

Review By Eoghan Smith  John Holten, The Trains of Europe (Broken Dimanche Press, 2024)Since the Covid pandemic, there has been no shortage of fiction speculating on planetary catastrophes yet-to-come. As with typical iterations of this species of anxiety-driven literature, the cause of the apocalypse is never an abstract entity but a manifestation of an existing mega-threat already facing the world. Recent examples include the technocapitalist hellscape of Niall Bourke’s Line, the spectre of...

Somebody’s Always Listening

by Ziad Shihab/ April 5th, 2024

Paramount Pictures/Ringer illustration            As the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, $100 million extravaganza ‘Megalopolis’ nears, it’s worth revisiting ‘The Conversation’ from 50 years ago as a reminder of what it looks (and sounds) like when a master is at work"At my age, I can afford for film to be a passion and not a business." That’s what Francis Ford Coppola told me 15 years ago during an interview about his 2009 film, Tetro, a glossy, quasi-autobiographical melodram...

Jonah and genre

by Ziad Shihab/ April 5th, 2024

Jonah and genre - OUPReading a piece of writing—from instruction manual, to sports page, to Op-Ed piece—according to its genre is something we do so naturally that it seems odd to even talk about it. Indeed, the very phrase "reading according to genre" sounds odd itself, entirely too formal, perhaps suitable for some English or Comparative Literature class, but hardly something that normal people do when reading normal things on an everyday basis. While that is true, to some degree at least, ...

Text of Light - Staying Vertical

by Ziad Shihab/ April 4th, 2024

Text of Light No. 3Staying Vertical by Jordan Cronk Last month I visited the Academy Museum’s exhibition "Shifting Perspectives: Celebrating Vertical Cinema," for which a trio of Southern Californian artists were commissioned to make short works to be projected onto a 20-foot-tall screen in the 9:16 aspect ratio—essentially a lengthwise inversion of the standard widescreen frame. Inspired by a concept by Sonic Acts, an interdisciplinary arts organization in Amsterdam that’s been presenting pr...

Teaching Media Archives

by Ziad Shihab/ April 2nd, 2024

We welcome submissions from all graduate students and faculty or independent scholars Apologies for cross-posting Synoptique is soliciting proposals for book reviews for our upcoming issue 11.1, which is a special issue with the topic "Teaching Media Archives." We invite reviewers to propose reviews for both the themed and general review sections. If you are interested in writing a review for this issue, please contact book.reviews@synoptique.ca with a short proposal (maximum 250 words) outl...

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Phoenix and Phoenices

by Ziad Shihab/ April 1st, 2024

Phoenix and Phoenices Copilot answers zas inquiry about "Phoenix" in mythology The oldest referent of the name "Phoenix" in mythology is associated with the ancient Egyptian Bennu bird. The name "Bennu" relates to the verb "weben," meaning "to rise brilliantly" or "to shine"⁴. This bird is often linked to the sun, creation, and rebirth. The Greek word "phoenix" could have been derived from the Mycenaean Greek "po-ni-ke," which may have meant "griffin" or "palm tree" and is believed to be a...

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Fear as Original Sin

by Ziad Shihab/ March 31st, 2024

Fear as Original Sin Certainly! The concept of "fear as the original sin" is an intriguing perspective that diverges from the more common understanding of the original sin based on the story in the book of Genesis. Let's explore this idea further. Original Sin: Traditional Interpretation The traditional view of original sin is rooted in the biblical account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. According to this interpretation:The Fall: Adam and Eve, the first human beings, were placed in ...

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Romulus and Remus

by Ziad Shihab/ March 30th, 2024

Romulus and Remus Definition by Brittany Garcia published on 18 April 2018 9Save Available in other languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Turkish Romulus & Remus Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA) In Roman mythology, Romulus and his twin brother Remus were the founders of the city of Rome. They were the children of Rhea Silvia and Mars (or in some variations the demi-god hero Hercules) and their story is recorded by many authors including Virgil ...

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Reflections on Books 1 - 4 of The Odyssey

by Ziad Shihab/ March 30th, 2024

Books of Titans The Odyssey: Reflections on Books 1 – 4 Erik Rostad 4 months ago The first part of The Iliad foretold much of what transpired throughout the epic. In similar form, the first two sections of The Odyssey (lines 1-25) set the stage for the ensuing return of Odysseus. A few themes become immediately apparent. Odysseus is no ordinary man. Emily Wilson calls him a "complicated man" while Robert Fagles describes him as a man of "twis...

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Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks

by Ziad Shihab/ March 29th, 2024

26 Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks 26 Mind-Bending Movies That Feature Dark Twists | Wealth of Geeks https://flip.it/0kBrb5What's your favorite aspect of a film? For countless film buffs, it's that precise moment when all of your preconceived notions about where the story is going

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Summary of The Ear the Eye and the arm by Nancy Farmer

by Ziad Shihab/ March 28th, 2024

Certainly! "The Ear, the Eye, and The Arm" by Nancy Farmer is a captivating science fiction novel set in the year 2194 in Zimbabwe. Let me provide you with a detailed summary: 1. Setting and Characters: The story unfolds in Harare, the dense and crime-ridden capital of Zimbabwe. Three siblings—Rita, Kuda, and Tendai—are the protagonists. They are held captive by the ruthless General Matsika, who seeks to eradicate crime from the country. 2. Escape and Mutant Detectives: The childr...

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Homely Comfort in the Ancient World: Furniture Textiles in Classical and Hellenistic Iconography

by Ziad Shihab/ March 26th, 2024

The dining room, or "triclinium," of a Roman house derived its name from the three couches that were grouped at right angles to one another in a U-shape. Wealthy citizens ate while reclining on these couches. On this example, bronze fittings decorate a wood frame (restored). Straps originally would have supported a mattress covered with luxurious textiles. The ends of the couch are decorated with bronze fulcra, the curving ends of the armrests, which terminate in lion heads in the front and d...