Pearls
On paths not taken
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« Genocide Studies » is a house with many rooms. It accommodates and even encourages a broadening of its central concept. And like all academic fields, it presumes its object of study will always be there.
Place, non-place, place
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« What happened was that we were driving on the highway from Izola towards Koper when we saw a drummer on the side of the road. So I immediately drove to the side of the road and reversed my car and asked if I could take some pictures. »
The void that fills the void
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Relics, and the places devoted to their worship, dotted the map of Europe and the Middle East. Saints, like today’s celebrities, were both omnipresent and faraway, once-vulnerable people who became something more than human.
Unclaimed, claimed, unclaimable
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On unrecognized states, micronations and curious border zones.
It wasn’t the beer
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How could it be that despite decades of rigorous European unification, of open borders and largely adjusted standards of living, a virus was able to kill up to 40 times more people in one country than in another, only a few hundred kilometers away?
How to write; or, how to insult
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Shoulders were slapped, fingers pointed, hearts fired up. Perhaps a little scuffle broke out after class, a boisterous wrestling over insults exchanged. Nothing to be concerned about. Acquiring knowledge was, after all, a combative affair.
Who will speak European? A puzzle
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Brussels is a concave mirror that returns a concentrated (and somewhat distorted) reflection of the projection of its continent.
€ 0
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No one would have understood both the sentiment and the absurdity more keenly than Marx himself, whose face has adorned real currencies in more countries than anyone else’s, with the possible exception of Elizabeth II.
Firsts in space
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A friend of mine likes to say that the moon landing was real, but dumb. On astronautical tokenism.
Only stupidity is hereditary
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There sits a donkey before an open book, held between his forehooves in such a way that we can clearly see the pages. It is a family tree of sorts, with eight rows of seventeen standing donkeys.
