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Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Nearly everyone in this town of fewer than 2,000 people some 95-miles east of San Francisco has a story about the two men, who were known as wild partiers and methamphetamine users.
“It’s freaky when you realize you knew someone like that,†said Jennifer Brown, 57, a bartender from nearby Clements.
Mr. Shermantine and Mr. Herzog were regulars at several of the local bars, including the Linden Inn, owned by John Vanderheiden.
“I heard him boasting about how he killed a guy just to kill him,†said Mr. Vanderheiden, who said he shrugged off Mr. Herzog’s stories as barroom bragging until 1998, when his 25-year-old daughter, Cyndi, disappeared after a night out with the men. It is difficult to picture reading this story without wondering whether Herzog has started working on his documentary. Only icing on the cake that one of the murderers is named Herzog.
posted evening of February 18th, 2012: 2 responses
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Friday, February 17th, 2012
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Thursday, February 16th, 2012
Thanks to Damir Galaz-Mandakovic Fernández of Tocopilla y su historia for running this report on Domingo Zárate Vega's visit to Tocopilla in 1932. The photo is from a local newspaper.
In 1932, in a time of chaos, misery and crisis in the country and likewise at the local level, there appeared in Tocopilla a figure both picturesque and controversial, of national fame, named Domingo Zárate, alias ‘The Christ of Elqui.’ He was a preacher who had taken up travelling throughout Chile and the neighboring countries, Bolivia and Peru, after he learned of his mother's death in 1922. Ever since then, as a form of penitence, he had devoted his life to evangelical sermons, had given up his clothing for a simple sackcloth and sandals, had let his hair and his beard grow unchecked. Hundreds of people came to hear his preachings; children were scared by his strange appearance, which provoked jeers and catcalls from the unfaithful -- he would reply in his own defense, ‘...better to be serious than to jest, especially when we are dealing with the Gospel. They will laugh at me, perfect, it is not the first time, not for Our Lord Jesus Christ; the public will have its say...’ (Revista Sucesos 1932 p. 7: Universidad de Tarapacá archive)
posted evening of February 16th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, February 13th, 2012
(via Book Riot)
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Sunday, February 12th, 2012
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 Matthew's posting of an article about fonts at Google+ reminds me that I have not posted yet about the recent typeface change at READIN -- partly or mostly out of the conviction that it is not the sort of thing that would make any difference to anybody who is not me... But what are blogs for if not stuff that would make no difference to anybody but the author?
Lately I have been writing everything (everything I write on the computer that is not code) in Palatino Linotype, and finding that it is much easier on the eyes than any other typeface I have tried. (I do not love the numerals; but most of what I write in non-programming contexts is alpha characters.) So I modified the site's stylesheet to specify that typeface name as the primary choice; if you have the face installed (and it seems to be pretty standard-issue), that's how the site should render. Giovambattista Palatino was an Italian calligrapher of the 16th C., who in 1556 wrote a manual of lettering styles. Hermann Zapf is a German typeface designer of the 20th C., who in 1948 named a set of faces after Sig. Palatino.
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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 New cave paintings have been discovered at the Caves of Nerja in Andalusia, a system of caverns "discovered by a group of boys hunting bats in 1959." Although this is not yet confirmed, initial carbon dating of the images (left, a painting of the seals which the cave-dwellers hunted) indicates they are approximately 43,000 years old, or nearly half again as old as the images at Chauvet. Researcher José Luis Sanchidrián Torti (of the University of Córdoba) speculates they may be the work of Neanderthals. (A Facebook commenter points out that this would be appropriate, given the Neanderthal nature of Spain's contemporary justice system.) Thanks for the link, Rob!
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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My father built a time machine and then he spent his whole life trying to figure out how to use it to get more time. He spent all the time he had with us thinking about how he wished he had more time, if he could only have more time.
Time-travel paradoxes and jokes are one of my favorite things in science fiction. Today I started reading Charles Yu's first novel, How to live safely in a science fictional universe, which is looking in its early pages like it is going to be an extended time-travel paradox/joke, and a hilarious one. And not just that, also a character study, what looks like it will be a successful one -- I am identifying closely with the narrator and his quest to "relive his very worst moment, over and over," to "go back and fix his broken life."
posted morning of February 12th, 2012: Respond
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Saturday, February 11th, 2012
(Continuing in this year's theme of re-readings:) A correspondent has gotten me back interested in Domingo Zárate Vega and The Art of Resurrection. This is the frontspiece to the book,  a pastoral letter written on the 25th of February, 1931, by the bishop of La Serena, José MarÃa Caro; in my own rough/not-fully-coherent translation (original at Casa del Libro):
Dear children of Our Lord:
What has been transpiring among you has filled with grief your bishop's heart.
A poor demented man presents himself among you -- one like those who fill our madhouses; and the faithful (I include in this adjective all those who go to church and who comply with their religion, fulfill their sacred duties) have received him as God's messenger, as the Messiah himself, no less, and have made themselves his apostles, his flock.
And meanwhile the faithful -- the judicious, the educated faithful -- have been tolerating this scandal, this blasphemy, tolerating mockery from these faithless maniacs; whose meanness of consciousness seizes any occasion to display its own lack of taste, lack of discretion, of appreciation for the things and people most worthy of universal respect and veneration... How can such a thing have happened -- how can such a hallucination be contagious? Our Lord has permitted it as a punishment for some one and as a humiliation for many.
We are all sensible enough to tell when someone else is in his right mind and when he has lost it. If among you, some poor campesino stood up and claimed in all seriousness, to be the King of England, if he surrounded himself with ministers (like such a king), and wore a special gown to show his office... Is there anyone among you, even a single one, who would not see the madness such a poor man was suffering from? Wouldn't it be the same if he claimed to be Our Holy Father?
And yet there are those among you who do not recognize his madness, because he claims to be not a person of this world, but nothing less than King of Kings and Lord of Lords himself. I repeat myself, our madhouses are full of just such things... Will any one among you let himself be led by the hallucinations of such a madman?
I pray that you, you who have suffered before this spectacle, will assist with your charity, with your prayers and with your counsels in ridding us of this contagious madness.
I ask, for the love of God and of one's brother, the love that we all must bear, I ask that you do everything, with your parish in mind, devote every force to keeping from this danger those who might fall into it, and to bringing back those who have been lost to this madness.
I hope, besides this, that when the authorities come to understand this evil, as I have demonstrated it to you, they will bring some remedy, will separate this danger from us all.
I wish you peace and felicity in Our Lord.
José MarÃa Caro
Caro RodrÃguez would later be named (by Pius â…«) Archbishop of Santiago and a Cardinal of the Catholic church, the first Chilean Cardinal. I could swear I saw a better translation of this letter somewhere, when I was first reading The Art of Resurrection. But am forgetting where now, or by whom.
posted evening of February 11th, 2012: 1 response
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Friday, February 10th, 2012
Glad to see you! Have a look around...
posted afternoon of February 10th, 2012: Respond
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