Thursday Night Links
* “A superbly crafted combination of tower defence game and management sim that’s consistently thought-provoking, yet never heavy-handed”: Sweatshop HD is the latest victim in Apple’s war on serious games.
* Former Students’ Recollections of Classes Taught by Famous Authors. Here’s Nabokov:
He then described his requisites for reading the assigned books. He said we did not need to know anything about their historical context, and that we should under no circumstance identify with any of the characters in them, since novels are works of pure invention. The authors, he continued, had one and only one purpose: to enchant the reader. So all we needed to appreciate them, aside from a pocket dictionary and a good memory, was our own spines.
* I just want to hear them deny it: Big Soda: We’re not mass killers. #off-message
* A measure limiting National Science Foundation funding for political science research projects passed the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, quietly dealing a blow to the government agency.
* And some large Scale Anamorphic Illusion Paintings by Felice Varini.
Gerry Canavan 
I really dislike Nabokov. His stupid opinions about literature and art run deep in his writing.
arg11
March 21, 2013 at 9:05 pm
It was interesting to spend all our time pouring over LOLITA and the questions it raises only to have us get to his afterword which insists the only thing that matters about the book are the puns in the class-list.
gerrycanavan
March 21, 2013 at 9:06 pm
That said, I’ve always thought that aspect of Nabokov’s persona was at least mostly a put-on.
gerrycanavan
March 21, 2013 at 9:07 pm
Strong Opinions is one of the worst books of literary criticism I’ve read. (Yes, I know that’s a strong opinion).
arg11
March 21, 2013 at 9:08 pm
This, on the other hand, is gold:
Barthelme had no set reading list that I can recall. He simply said, “Read all of Western philosophy, for starters, then read some history, anthropology, history of science.” I’ve read a reaction that a Johns Hopkins class had to this command (which was similar to the one he made to us). A student there said, “But we have to eat and sleep.” Give up sleeping, Barthelme replied; that’s a good place to start.
arg11
March 21, 2013 at 9:11 pm
When some one searches for his necessary thing, therefore he/she desires to be available that in detail, so that
thing is maintained over here.
radowatch.ru
September 19, 2013 at 11:04 am