Twilight of Democracy, by Anne Applebaum, Pengiun, 2021, Paperback, 224 pages, ISBN: 9780141991672, £9.99. „Never voluntarily leave the EU because its leaders have invented too clever ways to highjack EU funds“. Sounds like meaning Bulgaria but in fact targeting Hungary. One of this summer’s reads, Anne Applebaum’s 200 pager, „Twilight […]
In English
Today we have it again. Three people have died in a knife attack at a church in Nice. One elderly victim was „virtually beheaded“, officials said.A male suspect was shot and detained. Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi spoke of „Islamo-fascism“ and said the suspect had „repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is […]
Or why resolving the force fields between an academic white-collar and a DIY self-ascribed authority can be surprisingly arduous, and how arguments across the board including the Sokal affair and COVID-19 conspiracies tend to be articulated and take flesh over bones. And thy shall not ask what Humboldt and Gauss […]
This Unknown Land [in English], by Marco Schöller, Janet45, Sofia-Bulgaria, 2020, Paperback, 548 pages, ISBN: 978 619 186 543 7, BGN 23.75. I have my reading habits, clearly, with all my ups and downs. Scanning quickly through working documentation, reading in details essential information, focus reading on stuff you need […]
Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority, by Gary R. Bunt, North Carolina University Press, Chapell Hill, 2018, Paperback, 232 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1469643168, $24.95. Been a while since I promised myself a review of one of my good academic reads recently – the “Hashtag Islam” of Gary R. […]
A calligraphy piece always starts blank, in infinite potentialities. One needs to choose among endless combinations of texts, media, scripts; a calligrapher faces an endless amount of possibilities of form that can – and shall – choose from. But then, he can start a calligraphy piece in two ways, somehow […]
Quarantine photos should have an end. Photos of thrown gloves, gloves of latex, gloves of canvas, gloves blue, gloves grey, gloves white, empty shop stalls, sunrises and sunsets, days gloomy and sunny, quarantine mornings and evenings, quarantines lonely and with friends, Corona beers and white wines, meats and salads, books […]
Parallels tend to spill over into, and down over to funny directions. Inevitable as it seems, we are easily tempted to project one’s own epistemological prejudice upon what’s out there. A natural act of building syllogisms, good or bad ones. Following a happy path of process design along the confirmation […]
As it has been made clear, sources of Muslim educational tradition provides both prescriptive and descriptive information on legitimate use of flogging as indispensable part of the educational process. The chart below presents a high-level outline of the intersecting instances of beating (ḍarb) in its most general sense, ʾadab or […]
This time my review is a bit accidental, did not plan this purchase that was rather the outcome of a momentary mood while being on a sea camping vacation at the Bulgarian part of the Black Sea. While browsing carelessly through the online Facebook shops, my eye was caught by […]