Remakes, sex scenes and bad hair: the Coen brothers, David Hare, Mike Figgis, Steven Soderbergh and DBC Pierre make lists of five movies. «MORE»
13.10.07
Darwinism in evolution
The classical Darwinist account of evolution as primarily driven by natural selection is in trouble on both conceptual and empirical grounds. Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon. «MORE»
Lashing back
The script America reverted to in the fall of 2001 was the oldest in our literary imagination, our frontier fear that savages would seize our defenseless women while our girlie men were watching Oprah. Susan Faludi takes a look at post-9/11 masculinity. «MORE»
Surfing the Waste: A Musical Documentary About Dumpster Diving
The National Film Board of Canada and Alden Penner, formerly of the Unicorns, avoid the expected tendentious crust-punk preaching in a short documentary with unreasonably good music. «MORE»
WWJD about Italian mosques
Laying the smacketh down Xian-style for anti-mosque fools in Italy: "Your children are friends of Italian children of the same age; they grow and study together. You are in a country which is now your second home. Make yourselves known better still. Do not be afraid." «MORE»
Another scene from Rodney Graham
"There’s no trace in the decor of any prior interest in art. The interest is a sudden explosion; there are art books piled up all over the place." «MORE»
Brewing interest
At an audition for a David Attenborough documentary, a yeast cell guzzling away on sugar is bound to do a lousy job. But yeast can show how relatively small changes in DNA can lead to dramatic changes in how animals grow into adults. «MORE»
Wedge issues
The Zionist enterprise challenged the Palestinian Arab community and unified it into a distinct national group; now, Israel caused them to take upon themselves split identities. «MORE»
Communism by the meter
A Houston TV station starts including Celsius temperatures in its weather forecast and all hell breaks loose. "THEY SHOULD LEARN THE AMERICAN WAY. ENGLISH AND FAHREHEIT." «MORE»
From on high
Demanding a share of non-renewable resource revenues is "aggrieved nationalism", historical identity is born of a "sense of grievance and loss" and the economic value of "super-sized holiday homes" sadly goes unrecognized: Newfoundland as seen by The Economist. «MORE»
Three-way tie for last
For those who still turn to American broadsheet editorial pages looking for a coherent guide on how to think, the Washington Post has become a big disappointment, what with the "intellectual incontinence" of David Broder, the "off-the-shelf hackery" of David Ignatius, and Howard Kurtz, "one of the dumbest figures in print media". «MORE»
10.10.07
Tempest in a minaret
Some Muslims want to build mosques in Genoa and Bologna, giving mayors who should know better the perfect excuse to turn a building permit into a cultural battlefield. «MORE»
It's safe to like Brian DePalma again
Among the offerings at the Vancouver Film Festival, Brian DePalma's Redacted is a bit like watching later seasons of MTV’s The Real World, and spotting the most recent incarnations of Puck and Pedro and Judd. «MORE» Meanwhile, DePalma gets into a pissing match with his own studio at a press conference... «MORE»
The end of American hegemony
The American dream has been submerged by images of a military leviathan disregarding world opinion and breaking the rules. Power is not reducible to the ability to coerce; once lost, hegemonic legitimacy is hard to restore. «MORE»
NATO troops getting killed in Afghanistan? Send more
Italy's top general begs the Germans to stay in Afghanistan. There is no power vacuum: Taliban fundamentalists, armed tribal warlords or criminal gangs control the areas where there are no international troops. In fact, the rule of law ends only a few hundred meters from his headquarters. «MORE»
Barbara Ehrenreich on the conspiracy of happiness
"The Templeton Foundation is a plot to numb Americans into smiley-faced acquiescence to the status quo... it has become a serious force in the academic world, generally funding anything too soft and fuzzy for the governmental grant-makers--studies, for example, on optimism, happiness, character, forgiveness and faith." «MORE»
Hope in the jungle
In northern Thailand, 1.5-2 million Burmese refugees have fled from the world's longest civil war. Other than drugs, these migrant workers are likely Burma's biggest export. Last year, the Mae Tao Clinic, with a staff of 300, treated over 100,000 of them. «MORE»
Post-agricultural America
Between 1975 and 2006, 40 percent of Iowa's farmers exited the business. Farmers fled the land en masse, but their land generally did not flee agriculture: It got sucked into ever-larger operations. «MORE»
No way out
the US may be 'stuck' precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no 'exit strategy'. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. «MORE»
Documenta and the "new institutionalism"
Art institutions can lay claim to both the consecrated and risky forms of cultural production. In this schema, conflict is simply counterproductive and inefficient. Its irruptions may be described as fits of immature and irrational pique, and eventually be associated with “terrorism.” «MORE»
(non-)Chinese (non-)democracy
Over fifteen years since the end of the Soviet Union, its former components are characterized by imitation democracy. "Elections can be reduced to a ritual, yes – but it is a ritual no regime could do without. Constitutions may serve as fig-leaves, true – but fig-leaves without which one wouldn't appear in public." «MORE»
9.10.07
Get in print
Starting a newspaper, magazine or publishing house isn't nearly as hard as it seems, and in weird models lie the future of alternative print media, says The New Press' André Schiffrin. "For centuries, publishing was artisanal and can still succeed as such." «MORE»
White lobster
Accidental finds of enormous quantities of cocaine have been the economic salvation of Nicaragua's most isolated and impoverished region. "The community is like this: you find drugs, this one find drugs, the next one find drugs - that money is stirring right here in the community, going round and round." «MORE»
8.10.07
Madras to Seattle to Iraq
After less than a year in the US, an Indian student signs up for the American army: “[I ] met someone in the army who advertised the fact that the army is a good way to pay for college. It seemed a good proposition at the time.” «MORE»
The memory industry
"Over the last twenty or twenty-five years, every country, every social, ethnic or family group, has undergone a profound change in the relationship it traditionally enjoyed with the past." France and the rise of "memorialism". «MORE»
Luc Sante on the three-line news genius of Félix Fénéon
"The schoolchildren of Niort were being crowned. The chandelier fell, and the laurels of three among them were spotted with a little blood.
At five o'clock in the morning, M.P. Bouget was accosted by two men on Rue Fondary. One put out his right eye, the other his left. In Necker.
Eugène Périchot, of Pailles, near Saint-Maixent, entertained at his home Mme Lemartrier. Eugène Dupuis came to fetch her. They killed him. Love." «MORE»
Delayed reconstruction
A new museum in Cologne builds on the ruins of an church with ancient foundations destroyed in World War Two. "You can sit here gazing at the bricks and feel no need whatsoever to be anywhere else in the world." «MORE»
Remembering great awakenings
Guardian readers contribute encomia, laments for great feminist literature: "Thirty-seven years after The Female Eunuch was published, we still hate ourselves." «MORE»
Tariq Ali on Pakistan at sixty
Corrupt and implacable Pakistan is fueled by religious fervor, repressed sex, and half-fulfilled aspirations to authoritarianism. "‘Rudy Giuliani, when he became mayor of New York, closed the brothels,’ Rashid said. ‘Was that also Talibanisation?’" «MORE»
"When is there going to be a Druze writer writing about a Druze whore?"
Poorly-understood Levantine minority still suffering in the shadow of trademark flatbread, yogurt «MORE»
Getting it in the neck
British life continues to be defined by random acts of public hostility, especially for priests in uniform: "I got fed up of being a target in spitting competitions, or having things thrown at me from car windows" «MORE»
2.10.07
State Religious Affairs Bureau Order No. 5
We already knew that the afterlife has taxes, permission slips, and bus passes. But what if it had commissars? «MORE»
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