I didn't know...

... that Javier Bardem secretly had a career as a Pakistani movie actor.

image courtesy of The Hotspot.

My One Weakness

There are few things that I love more than a well preserved giant lithograph. Though a well-indexed text is not far behind.

 

 

Parental Guidance and Universal Truths

Sorry for having fallen under the stupor of negligence, but it has been a busy last month, what with eid, coming back from Pakistan, starting up school, and nervously typing away grant proposals. I was reading the Qabus-namah for my Persian advice literature course and in the very beginning of the introduction Kay-Ka'us b. Iskandar b. Qabus b. Washmgir states a truth as universal as one mentioned by Jane Austen or Leo Tolstoy and one which I think transcends any cultural relativism: 

It is the nature of the time that no son desires the advice of his father because of the burning desire inside the young, which, due to their imprudent assumptions, [makes] them see their own knowledge as superior to that of their fathers. 

---  Qabus-namah, ed. Ruben Levy (London: Luzac & Co., 1951), p. 5.

Babur receives a courtier (often thought to be Babur advising his son Humayun) c. 1589

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian