— Presque vu LIIX

A teenager facing court in London said: “I brought a sign to the May 10th protest that said: ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.‘
“‘Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector.”
After the exchange a policewoman handed the fifteen-year-old a court summons and removed his sign.
The City of London police were criticized two years ago when it was reported that more than 20 officers had accepted gifts worth thousands of pounds from the Church of Scientology.

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Jasko Caus at Jasmin’s Heart has an interesting series of articles on James Joyce:

An early inspiration for Dubliners was the work of Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. Joyce, a polyglot, learnt Norwegian in order to read Ibsen. What he received from Ibsen was a very important, if not essential instruction for his writing: …”A measure of dramatic life” that Ibsen talks about is actually Joyce’s radiance. So is the case when he takes seemingly quite ordinary details and situations of Dublin life and makes them radiant.

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— The IGnobel prize

Early in his career Henrik Ibsen prophesied: One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door. And they certainly did. They wanted to see and hear the man who had revolutionised drama during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The Nobel committee, however, didn’t come knocking at all. Instead, they gave [...]