Saturday, October 24, 2009

Breakdown

The older I get, the more it seems I've lived my life not in a linear fashion--day to day, year to year--but in blocks and scraps of time. These exist in my memory like an archipelago, some large islands, some small, each made up of a momentous event, a deep impression, a profound insight, a living nightmare.
--Breakdown by Bill Pronzini

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Constructing Coherence

Constructing coherence concerns the flow of attention and continuity of apprehension of the situation.
--Therese Ornberg Berglund

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Prevention of Terrorism

In Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life, John Conroy examined daily life in West Belfast, Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. One of the facts of life there at the time was the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law used by the UK to compile dossiers on individuals, to force people to become informers, and, "to harass activists whose politics the government did not appreciate". In a report by Amnesty International examining the unwarranted detentions, interrogations, and torture of individuals arrested under the act, 88% of those arrested were found to be innocent of any crime whatsoever.