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Showing posts from July 5, 2009

Jean-Jacques and the women

They only want you when you’re seventeen When you’re twenty one, you’re no fun… Marie d’Agoult, in her summation of the struggle for equal rights for women in France, felt she had to dispell a myth about where Rousseau stood in this history: “It is to Condorcet and not to Jean-Jacques, as is generally believed, who deserves credit for the initiative of reforms proposed in the education and condition of women. The first man posed the principle of the entire equality of the sexes. Jean-Jacques, who had spoken to women with an incomparable eloquence and tenderness, showed himself, however, less liberal and less serious to them than Fenelon. In his plan of education, which was applicable neither to the women of the people, who did not occupy him, a man sprung from the people, nor even to the women of the middle class, but only to wealthy girls, he established as a principle that women ought to be exercised in constraint; that dependence is their natural state. He wanted to see developed in

Amie's Excellent News - and the ten song countdown!

Amie, long the friend of LI, told me some excellent news yesterday, and I persuaded her to let me celebrate it with a list of ten songs. What the news is can probably be gathered from my not so subtle subtitles. The brain - Soave il vento The beating heart Santigold – Creator. Eyelids – Talking Heads Naïve Melody Oh expressive Mouth - Yet nature is made better by no mean/But nature makes that mean Sezen Aksu – Rakkas Hair - Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy Dhoom machale Skin that blocks the light of the sun - the birth of our shadows Dandy Warhols –Good Morning Hearing voice makes space from which we dare not turn Metric Help I’m Alive And the red blood cells then came then Dionysos et Kaolin C’est la vie And the world was the best thing sense had ever sensed Stravinksy Sacre de Printempts, part 1 Kick out the jams Sexy Sushi – Hibernatus J'ai tout visité en 2 secondes, Pékin, Tokyo, la Joconde. J'ai fait tous les jobs possibles, Plombier, pute et belle fill