From James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 19 June 1786

To Thomas Jefferson

Orange June 19th. 1786

Dear Sir

Since my last which was of the 18th. of May1 I have recd. your very agreeable favor of the 28th. of Octobr. I began to fear it had miscarried. Your reflections on the idle poor of Europe, form a valuable lesson to the Legislators of every Country, and particularly of a new one. I hope you will enable yourself before you return to America to compare with this description of people in France the Condition of the indigent part of other communities in Europe where the like causes of wretchedness exist in a less degree. I have no doubt that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate wherever the Government assumes a freer aspect, & the laws favor a subdivision of property. Yet I suspect that the difference will not fully account for the comparative comfort of the Mass of people in the United States. Our limited population has probably as large a share in producing this effect as the political advantages which distinguish us. A certain degree of misery seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness. If the lands in Europe which are now dedicated to the amusement of the idle rich, were parcelled out among the idle poor, I readily conceive the happy revolution which would be experienced by a certain proportion of the latter. But still would there not remain a great proportion unrelieved? No problem in political Oeconomy has appeared to me more puzzling than that which relates to the most proper distribution of the inhabitants of a Country fully peopled. Let the lands be shared among them ever so wisely, & let them be supplied with labourers ever so plentifully; as there must be a great surplus of subsistence, there will also remain a great surplus of inhabitants, a greater by far than will be employed in cloathing both themselves & those who feed them, and in administering to both, every other necessary & even comfort of life. What is to be done with this surplus? Hitherto we have seen them distributed into Manufacturers of superfluities, idle proprietors of productive funds, domestics, soldiers, merchants, mariners, and a few other less numerous classes. All these classes notwithstanding have been found insufficient to absorb the redundant members of a populous society; and yet a reduction of most of those classes enters into the very reform which appears so necessary & desireable. From a more equal partition of property, must result a greater simplicity of manners, consequently a less consumption of manufactured superfluities, and a less proportion of idle proprietors & domestics. From a juster Government must result less need of soldiers either for defence agst. dangers from without or disturbances from within. The number of merchants must be inconsiderable under any modification of Society; and that of Mariners will depend more on geographical position, than on the plan of legislation.2 But I forget that I am writing a letter not a dissertation.

Things have undergone little change here since my last. The scarcity of money3 the low price of Tobo. & the high price of bread continue to be the topics of complaint. The last evil is likely to be much increased by a sudden vicisitude in the prospects of wheat. At the date of my last we were praying for rain. Shortly after we had a deluge of it. From the 19th. of May to the 4th. of June, we scarcely saw the sun, had almost incessant rains, and sometimes showers, or rather torrents that threatened to sweep away every thing.4 The planters pretty generally availed themselves of the Season for getting their Tobacco into the hills. But the farmers have nearly lost their crops of Wheat. A great proportion of the heads in this part of the country are blasted, and in many parts it is said the fields will not be worth cutting. Our crops of apples also which in common with all other fruits seemed to be abundant, appear to have suffered much from the wet. We are now again suffering from the opposite extreme. We have had no rain since the cessation of the long spell, that is since the 3d. instant, and the earth is as dry and as hard as a brick.

In an answer from the Attorney to a late letter, he says “that after great anxiety we have recd. the plan of a Capitol from Mr. J. and with some difficulty the directors have assented to conform the bricks already laid to that model.”5

I have a little itch to gain a smattering in Chymistry. Will you be kind eno’ to pick up some good elementary treatise for me, with a good dictionary of moderate size, unless the Chymical volume in the Encyclopedie should be judged a competent provision. Morveau’s Elements I observe are quoted with great respect by Buffon. I wish also to get his two Boxes, called Le Necessaire chemique. They are described in the Bibliotheque Physico-Economique for 1784. p. 134. where the Maker in Paris is also referred to. I project this last indulgence on the supposition that the whole apparatus, including the contents of the Bottles will not cost more than a couple of Louis.

I observe that in your analysis of the Revisal p. 251. of your notes, a Bill is mentioned for con[s]igning our roads to Undertakers, instead of the present vicious plan of repairing them.6 No such provision is comprized in the Road bill reported & printed. If it be any where in existence, I wish you could put me on the means of getting a sight of it. I conceive such a reform to be essential & that the Legislature would adopt it, if presented in a well digested form.

I lately sent you some particulars relating to our Mole.* For want of something better to fill the remainder of my paper I will now add the result of my examination two days ago of another of our minor quadrupeds. I mean, a Weasel. It was a female & came to my hands dead. Its colour corresponded with the description given by D’Aubenton of the Belette & Roselet or Hermine when in its summer dress, excepting only that the belly &c. which in the European Animal was white, was in ours of a lightish yellow, save only the part under the lower Jaws which was white for about ½ an inch back from the under lip. The little brown spots near the corners of the mouth mentioned by D’Aubenton, were peninsular. The tail was of the color of the back &c. all but the end which was black. The ears were extremely thin, had a fold or duplication on the lower part of the Conque about 2 lines deep, and at the margin all around were covered with a very fine short hair or fur of the colour nearly of the back. The rest of the ear was in a manner naked, and of a lightish color. The forefeet were tipped & spotted with white. The hind feet were also tipped with white, and one of them a little spotted. It had five toes on each foot, the fifth on each being very short and at some distance from the end of the foot. Its smell was a sort of rankish musk, but not so strong as to be very offensive. It had no visible teats. Its weight dimensions &c. compared with those of Buffon’s Belette & Hermine were as follows,

	Weasel			Belette			Hermine
Weight	oz	pwt.	gm.		oz.		oz.	pwt.
	2	17	13		2**		7	10
†	Inch		lines	Inch		lines	Inch	lines
Length from muzzle to root of tail	7		9	6		6	9	6
of the trunk of the tail	3		6	1		3	3	10
Height before	1		11	1		5	2	8
behind	2		6	1		6	3	10
distance from muzzle to lower corner of the eye			5			5		7
from upper corner of eye to the ear			4½			5		7
from one corner to the other of the eye			3			2¼		3½
length of the ear perpendicularly			4½			3		4
width of the ear horizontally			4
distance between the ears at bottom			10½			9		1
Length of the neck	1		1½			11	1	4
circumference of neck	2		5	2			2	6
of body behind forelegs	2		10	2		3	3	4
before hindlegs	3		3	2		2	3	4
of head between eyes & ears	2		9	2		6	3	3
Length of foreleg from knee to heel			10½			9	1	2
from heel to the nails			9			7	1	1
of hind leg from knee to heel	1		4			11	1	10
Width of forefoot			3½			3		3½
of hindfoot			3½
Length of nails of forefoot			2			2		3
of hindfoot			1½
of hair of the body			3½			3		6
at end of tail			6½			short	3
distance between anus & vulva			3			1
Spleen, length of	1		3			11
width of in middle			3½			4
Kidneys, long			7½			5½
wide			4½			4
thick			3			3
Heart, long			6½			4
round	1		4½	1		3
Tongue, long from end to the filêt			3½			2½
wide			2¾			2
	number			no.			no.
Teeth	34			34			34
Ribbs	14			14			14
Vertebrae of tail	14			14 or 15			19
Palate, furrows of	6			6			6

The Gall bladder was empty, the membrane of the Bladder very thin, and the two last furrows of the palate broken in the middle, in the Weasel as noted in the Belette, and the contrary not noted in the Hermine.

The spleen was of the same color on both sides in the weasel. In the Hermine it was of a reddish brown as in the weasel, on one side, and of a very pale hue on the other. Nothing is said as to this circumstance in the description of the Belette.

The right Kidney in the weasel was advanced a little only before the left, as in the Belette, and not its whole length as in the Hermine.

The attempt to examine whether the number of false ribbs in the weasel was 4 as in the Belette or 3 as in the Hermine was frustrated.

On a review of the differential characters of the Belette and the Hermine, and a comparison of the weasel with both, it appears 1. that the weasel stands between the two in point of size, but much less removed from the former than the latter, unless the individual here examined was much under the ordinary size. Its having no visible teats seems to be an indication that it was young. Another probable indication was the smallness of the hindmost teeth both in the upper & lower Jaws, those in the lower being not bigger than the head of a small pin; & those in the upper disproportionate to the contiguous tooth. 2. that it resembles the Hermine in the length of the trunk of the tail, and in the blackness of its end, but the Belette in the number of vertebrae in the Trunk, and in the shortness of the hair at the end of the tail. 3 That it resembles the Hermine in the colour of its feet, and the Belette in that of the margin of the ears. 4. that it resembles the Belette & not the Hermine in the Relative position of the Kidneys. 5. that it differs from the Hermine in being an inhabitant of warm climates. Whether it resembles the Belette in not being an inhabitant of cold climates remains for enquiry. 6 that it differs from both, in never becoming white during the Winter, if this change be well founded with regard to the Belette. Buffon asserts that there are instances of it, [illegible] but it may be questioned whether they were not mere albinos of the species.

The figure of the head of the Weasel when reduced to the naked bone resembled rather that of the Belette than that of the Hermine in the Skeletons represented by Buffon. In its entire state it resembled most the head in the cut of the Hermine given by Buffon. Indeed the entire cut of the Hermine was a much stronger likeness of the weasel, than the Cut of the Belette.

The result of the comparison seems to be that notwithstanding the blackness of the end of the tail & whiteness of the feet, which are regarded as characteristics of the Hermine contradistinguishing it from the belette, our weasel cannot be of the former species, and is nothing more than a variety of the latter. This conclusion is the stronger, as the manners of our weasel correspond more nearly with those of the Belette, than with those of the Hermine. And if it be a just conclusion, it may possibly make one exception to Buffons position that no animal is common to the two Continents that cannot bear the climate where they join; as it certainly contradicts his assertion that, of the animals common to the two continents, those of the new are in every instance smaller than those of the old. But he seems to have given up this point himself. Supplemt. tom. 8. p. 329. “L’imperfection de nature qu’il [M. P. l’auteur des recherches sur les americains] reproche gratuitement a l’amerique en general ne doit porter que sur les animaux de la partie meridionale de ce continent lesquels &c.”

My next will probably be dated in Philada. or rather in N. York to which I am called by some business of a private nature in which I am concerned jointly with Col. Monroe. In the mean time I remain Yrs. very affectionately

Miller v Jackson [1977] QB 966

In summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch. In the village of Lintz in County Durham they have their own ground, where they have played these last 70 years. They tend it well. The wicket area is well rolled and mown. The outfield is kept short. It has a good club house for the players and seats for the onlookers. The village team play there on Saturdays and Sundays. They belong to a league, competing with the neighbouring villages. On other evenings after work they practise while the light lasts. Yet now after these 70 years a judge of the High Court has ordered that they must not play there any more. He has issued an injunction to stop them. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket. This newcomer has built, or has had built for him, a house on the edge of the cricket ground which four years ago was a field where cattle grazed. The animals did not mind the cricket. But now this adjoining field has been turned into a housing estate. The newcomer bought one of the houses on the edge of the cricket ground. No doubt the open space was a selling point. Now he complains that when a batsman hits a six the ball has been known to land in his garden or on or near his house. His wife has got so upset about it that they always go out at week-ends. They do not go into the garden when cricket is being played. They say that this is intolerable. So they asked the judge to stop the cricket being played. And the judge, much against his will, has felt that he must order the cricket to be stopped: with the consequence, I suppose, that the Lintz Cricket Club will disappear. The cricket ground will be turned to some other use. I expect for more houses or a factory. The young men will turn to other things instead of cricket. The whole village will be much the poorer. And all this because of a newcomer who has just bought a house there next to the cricket ground.

Adrian Carton de Wiart

Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer.

Second Boer War

Carton de Wiart was wounded in the stomach and groin in South Africa early on in the Second Boer War and invalided home.

First World War

Somaliland Campaign

In an attack upon an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, Carton de Wiart was shot twice in the face, losing his eye and also a portion of his ear. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on 15 May 1915.

Western Front

In February 1915, he embarked on a steamer for France. Carton de Wiart took part in the fighting on the Western Front, commanding successively three infantry battalions and a brigade. He was wounded seven more times in the war, losing his left hand in 1915 and pulling off his fingers when a doctor declined to remove them. He was shot through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme, through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, through the leg at Cambrai, and through the ear at Arras. He went to the Sir Douglas Shield's Nursing Home to recover from his injuries.

Carton de Wiart received the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in combat that can be awarded to British Empire forces, in 1916. He was 36 years old, and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), British Army, attached to the Gloucestershire Regiment, commanding the 8th Battalion, when the following events took place on 2/3 July 1916 at La Boiselle, France, as recorded in the official citation:

Capt. (temp. Lt.-Col.) Adrian Carton de Wiart, D.S.O., Dn. Gds.For most conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination during severe operations of a prolonged nature. It was owing in a great measure to his dauntless courage and inspiring example that a serious reverse was averted. He displayed the utmost energy and courage in forcing our attack home. After three other battalion Commanders had become casualties, he controlled their commands, and ensured that the ground won was maintained at all costs. He frequently exposed himself in the organisation of positions and of supplies, passing unflinchingly through fire barrage of the most intense nature. His gallantry was inspiring to all.

The Polish Mission

At the end of the war Carton de Wiart was sent to Poland as second in command of the British-Poland Military Mission under General Louis Botha. Carton de Wiart was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours List. After a brief period, he replaced General Botha in the mission to Poland.

At one time during his Warsaw stay he was a second in a duel between Polish members of the Mysliwski Club, the other second being Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, later commander-in-chief of Finnish armies in World War II and President of Finland. Norman Davies reports that he was "...compromised in a gun-running operation from Budapest using stolen wagon-lits"

On 27 July 1920, Carton de Wiart was appointed an Aide-de-camp to the King, and brevetted to colonel. He was active in August 1920, when the Red Army were at the gates of Warsaw. While out on his observation train, he was attacked by a group of Red cavalry, and fought them off with his revolver from the footplate of his train, at one point falling on the track and re-boarding quickly.
Second World War

Polish campaign (1939)

As Polish resistance weakened, Carton de Wiart evacuated his mission from Warsaw along with the Polish government. Together with the Polish commander Rydz-Śmigły, Carton de Wiart made his way with the rest of the British Mission to the Romanian border with both the Germans and the Soviets in pursuit.

His car convoy was attacked by the Luftwaffe on the road, and the wife of one of his aides was killed. He was in danger of arrest in Romania and got out by aircraft on 21 September with a false passport, just in time as the pro Allied Romanian prime minister, Armand Calinescu, was assassinated that day.
Norwegian campaign (1940)

Carton de Wiart was summoned in April 1940 to take charge of a hastily drawn together Anglo-French force to occupy Namsos, a small town in middle Norway. His orders were to take the city of Trondheim, 125 miles (200 km) to the south, in conjunction with a naval attack and an advance from the south by troops landed at Åndalsnes. The naval attack on Trondheim, the reason for the Namsos landing, did not happen and his troops were exposed without guns, transport, air cover or skis in a foot and a half of snow. They were being attacked by German ski troops, machine gunned and bombed from the air, and the German Navy was landing troops to his rear. He recommended withdrawal but was asked to hold his position for political reasons, which he did.

British military mission to Yugoslavia (1941)

He was appointed as head of the British-Yugoslavian Military Mission on 5 April 1941. His plane plane crash landed in the sea about a mile from the Italian coastline. Carton de Wiart was knocked unconscious, but the cold water brought him to. When the plane broke up and sank, he and the rest aboard were forced to swim to shore. They were captured by the Italian authorities.

Prisoner of war in Italy (1941–1943)

He made five attempts including seven months tunneling. Once Carton de Wiart evaded capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant.

China mission (1943–1947)

He arrived in the headquarters of the Nationalist Chinese Government, Chongqing, in early December 1943. For the next three years, he was to be involved in a host of reporting, diplomatic and administrative duties in the remote war time capital. He worked with Chiang kai-Shek and when he finally retired he was offered a job by Chiang.

He met Mao Zedong at dinner and had a memorable exchange with him, interrupting his propaganda speech to criticise him for holding back from fighting the Japanese for domestic political reasons. Mao was briefly stunned, and then laughed.

A visit to Tokyo to meet General Douglas MacArthur came at the end of his tenure. He was now 66 and ready to retire, despite the offer of a job by Chiang. Carton de Wiart retired in October 1947, with the honorary rank of lieutenant-general.

The Gilded Cage - Evelyn de Morgan

Satie

Mad Max

Desolation Peak

Among School Children

I
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way — the children’s eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

II
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy —
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age —
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage —
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.

IV
Her present image floats into the mind —
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once — enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her Son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts — O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise —
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Future Tours Programme

How to write about Africa

http://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Factory White Small Heart

Otto Rank

Once the favorite son of Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank later became one of his mentor's sharpest critics. From 1906-1926, the formative years of the psychoanalytic movement, Rank was Freud's closest disciple and colleague, starting as Secretary of the fledgling Vienna Psychoanalytic Society at age 21. With his expertise in art, music, literature, anthropology, history, science and philosophy he became the most prolific author after Freud, who advised him not to go to medical school but to complete his academic education. Rank obliged. A locksmith from a poor family and largely self-educated, Rank finished academic high school (Gymnasium) and got his Ph.D. at 28, in 1912 at the University of Vienna. By then Rank had published books on art, mythology, incest, and Lohengrin. "Little Rank," as Freud affectionately called him, became a leader in the psychological revolution that changed the way we see ourselves.

Otto Rank began to break away from orthodox psychoanalysis as he approached 40. Returning from New York in 1924 as an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Rank faced criticism from Freudians for The Trauma of Birth, with its emphasis on the mother-child relationship. Freud initially praised the book, which Rank intended as an extension of the father-centered approach, not as a criticism. At the same time, with Sandor Ferenczi, Rank developed a more active and egalitarian psychotherapy focused on the here-and-now, real relationship, conscious mind and will, rather than past history, transference, unconscious and wish.

Rank's conservative rivals in Freud's inner circle, especially Karl Abraham and Ernest Jones, pushed against him. Freud revamped his own theory of anxiety in response though he rejected Rank's de-emphasis of the Oedipus complex. Freud viewed Rank's interest in brief therapy as a sign of corruption by superficial American values. Rank backtracked, then finally broke from Freud in 1926 and moved to Paris. There he met Henry Miller and Anais Nin, who wrote about her therapy with Rank and their subsequent love affair. Otto Rank visited the U.S. several times before emigrating permanently in 1935. Orthodox Freudians required Rank's analysands to be re-analyzed in order to remain members of the Psychoanalytic Association. Rank referred lectured widely, published books in English, taught at the University of Pennsylvania and practiced psychotherapy in New York. He loved his new country and adopted the nickname "Huck" from Mark Twain, his favorite author. His Art and Artist, Modern Education, Will Therapy, and Truth and Reality were published by Knopf. In October 1939, divorced and remarried, planning to become a citizen and move to California, Rank died suddenly at the age 55 of a reaction to sulfonamide prescribed for a life threatening infection. A month earlier Freud had died in London at 83.

Prominent psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers and artists have brought Rank to the attention of a wider public: Ernest Becker, Matthew Fox, Paul Goodman, Robert Kramer, Rollo May, Esther Menaker, Ruth Monroe, Anais Nin, Carl Rogers, Peter Rudnytsky, Jessie Taft, Carl Whitaker and Irvin Yalom. Otto Rank is regaining an audience interested in psychotherapy, creativity and the arts, humanistic psychology, feminism, and philosophy. An innovator in interpersonal and existential psychotherapy, his writings brim with insights on art, myth, religion, education, will and soul.

The best introduction to Rank's mature ideas is A Psychology of Difference, Robert Kramer, ed., Foreword by Rollo May (Princeton U. Press, 1996). Rank's American lectures, 1924 to 1939, 21 in all, with introduction and extensive notes by Kramer.

Foreigncy

http://foreigncy.us/

Worldwar

Azimuthal equidistant projection

The azimuthal equidistant projection is an azimuthal map projection. It has the useful properties that all points on the map are at proportionately correct distances from the center point, and that all points on the map are at the correct azimuth (direction) from the center point. A useful application for this type of projection is a polar projection which shows all meridians (lines of longitude) as straight, with distances from the north pole represented correctly. The flag of the United Nations contains an example of a polar azimuthal equidistant projection.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was Tom Stoppard's breakthrough play. It was a huge critical and commercial success, making him famous practically overnight. Though written in 1964, the play was published in 1967, and it played on Broadway in 1968, where it won the Tony for best play.

The play cleverly re-interprets Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The Laurel-and-Hardy-like pair are totally incidental to the action of Hamlet, subject to the whims of the King Claudius – who gets them to betray Hamlet – and then tricked by Hamlet into delivering a letter that condemns them to death. Stoppard's play turns Hamlet on its head by giving these two the main roles and reducing all of Shakespeare's major characters (including Hamlet) to minor roles. Written around and in-between the lines of Shakespeare's play, Stoppard brilliantly takes the main concerns of contemporary theater – absurdism, the inevitability of death, breakdown in communication and feeling – and inserts them into the text of a much earlier play.

The absurdist tradition that Stoppard is writing in suggests another enormous influence: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952). Beckett's play is just as important to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as Hamlet is. Waiting for Godot consists of two tramps sitting on-stage bantering back and forth and waiting for someone named Godot, who never comes.

Waiting for Godot changed theater by undermining many of its traditional values: plot, characterization, and dialogue that move the action of the play forward. By portraying the act of "waiting" on stage, Beckett's play also opened up new ideas about meta-theatrics (plays that are about plays – how they're made, how they're seen, and/or how they interact with society). Since the characters in Godot are in the same position as the audience – waiting for something to happen – much of their dialogue works on multiple levels and seems to hint at awareness on the part of the tramps that they're actually two characters in a play.

Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in this absurdist and meta-theatrical tradition. It is very much influenced by Beckett, and much of the silly dialogue between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern simply would not have been seen in the theater before Waiting for Godot. It's as if Stoppard uses the innovations that Beckett brought to contemporary theater in order to pry open the minor Shakespearean characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Some critics think that Stoppard was too much under the influence of Beckett at this point in his career, but we think that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is something unique and independent of both Waiting for Godot and Hamlet. It is an almost universally acknowledged masterpiece of contemporary theater.

Dr. J vs Larry Bird

Peroni

Yamato

Kung Fury

Le mal du pays

The Bard's Tale

Sultan Mehmed II's entry into Constantinople, painting by Fausto Zonaro

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was one of a few extraordinary thinkers supporting the decolonization struggles occurring after World War II, and he remains among the most widely read and influential of these voices. His brief life was notable both for his whole-hearted engagement in the independence struggle the Algerian people waged against France and for his astute, passionate analyses of the human impulse towards freedom in the colonial context. His written works have become central texts in Africana thought, in large part because of their attention to the roles hybridity and creolization can play in forming humanist, anti-colonial cultures. Hybridity, in particular, is seen as a counter-hegemonic opposition to colonial practices, a non-assimilationist way of building connections across cultures that Africana scholar Paget Henry argues is constitutive of Africana political philosophy.

Tracing the development of his writings helps explain how and why he has become an inspirational figure firing the moral imagination of people who continue to work for social justice for the marginalized and the oppressed. Fanon’s first work Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks) was his first effort to articulate a radical anti-racist humanism that adhered neither to assimilation to a white-supremacist mainstream nor to reactionary philosophies of black superiority. While the attention to oppression of colonized peoples that was to dominate his later works was present in this first book, its call for a new understanding of humanity was undertaken from the subject-position of a relatively privileged Martinican citizen of France, in search of his own place in the world as a black man from the French Caribbean, living in France. His later works, notably L’An Cinq, de la Révolution Algérienne (A Dying Colonialism) and the much more well-known Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth), go beyond a preoccupation with Europe’s pretensions to being a universal standard of culture and civilization, in order to take on the struggles and take up the consciousness of the colonized “natives” as they rise up and reclaim simultaneously their lands and their human dignity. It is Fanon’s expansive conception of humanity and his decision to craft the moral core of decolonization theory as a commitment to the individual human dignity of each member of populations typically dismissed as “the masses” that stands as his enduring legacy.

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