There are so many roads to Oedipus and so many ways we could take out of it to what comes next. Here are a few older posts, or multiple versions of posts, that can take us in a few of those directions. On summarizing the play: what matters? Why? (With a hat tip to Freud […]
Read More →Category: Medicine
The plague for amphibians
We have been tackling COVID-19 in our daily lives and pondering over other forms of contagions such as the plague, sins, memes, information, beliefs, syphilis, family values, memories, influenza, AIDS, and even fictional diseases like the Shen fever every Monday and Wednesday morning. However, our discussions have been concerned about how humans are affected by […]
Read More →Fool’s Liquid Gold
“It’s the same with blood. Blood always replenishes itself. The more you take, the more it flows.” “Dream of Ding Village”, Lianke Yan Lianke’s Ding village is one driven by blood, the value of plasma and the promise of prosperity it provides. The HIV/AIDS crisis fueled by this fever for donation and compensation was a […]
Read More →Alving’s Haunt- The Form and Place of Ghosts. (Bhrigu’s Augmenter Post)
Ghosts work from home. Apart from the Flying Dutchman’s crew and the Wild Hunt, ghosts, ghouls, and other phantoms are homebodies, content to stick to one place to carry out their spooky business. Captain Alving is such a ghost, tormenting his long-suffering wife throughout the action of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Ibsen keeps Alving’s ghost in one […]
Read More →Is it only a numbers game?
Johnson’s talk at Google regarding his book The Ghost Map celebrates the mid-19th century physician John Snow and a local amateur Henry Whitehead’s effort in finding the reason for cholera outbreaks in the city of London. At the centerpiece of their efforts is the construction of a map — a map of all cholera-related deaths […]
Read More →What’s with the Metamorphosis?
Needless to say, the plot of this graphic novel is extremely chaotic– we are presented with two distinct narrators whose lives seem to merge but who follow different trains of thought, the narrative of the story is messy and difficult to follow, there’s way too much nudity, and the characters within the story–being teenagers–are acting […]
Read More →“I died because my dad was the biggest blood merchant”
Dream of Ding Village is a fiction based on the AIDS crisis in Henan Province in China. Before writing the book, Yan Lianke, the author had visited the AIDS village seven times and lived with the locals for a while. After the first edition was sold out, the book was banned by the Chinese government […]
Read More →“The world only spins forward”
The second part of Angels in America, titled Perestroika, deals with the aftereffects of the occurrences in Millennium Approaches and the conclusion of the play as a whole. In this part we gain insight into the Angels, Heaven, and God. Kushner describes them in a human way, very unlike the way they are normally discussed […]
Read More →What we don’t know is often scarier than what we do
Above: How Nerdfighters talk about Zika. Below: How US military dudes do: And here’s a Jamaican Health Ministry PSA: What difference does it make how we imagine — and talk about — disease? Welcome to #contagion16.
Read More →Iron Lungs
Significance: In Roth’s Nemesis (2010), we have come across the term “iron lungs” which some of the characters in the novel had to use when they contracted polio. It has been stated that there is no other device more associated with polio than an iron lung, or a tank respirator. Physicians that treated people who […]
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