We hear about it, have heard about it for what seems a long time now – but it’s hard to get a good picture of it in our minds: what it’s like in Afghanistan. And how it would be like to be a Coalition soldier there. To see the pictures below is to have something [...]
Quick, who are these six people?
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Apparently, it’s all in the eyebrows. In an MIT study subjects were asked to identify celebrities by altered photos: without eyebrows, and without eyes. With eyebrows, but sans eyes, celebrities were recognised 60% of the time. With eyes but sans eyebrows, only 46% of the time. So, stop plucking them [...]
Only 9 months into Obama’s term the the enthusiasm gap has gone the south on the Democrats and even the 2010 midterm elections are, amazingly, looking rather painful.
Thank goodness one other American measure of public feeling is going his way.
I’m guessing that’s a certain Ann Coulter above, with her Barbarian slaying sword, and that’s [...]
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The Amen break
To talk fascinatingly about 40-year-old drum break you don’t know that you know. Brilliantly oblique! This is the apparent subject of a fantastic youtube recording of what amounts to an art project, but which is also a dissertation or argument for open copyright as an essential ingredient in the health of culture. Nate [...]
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Last weekend I went to see my friend Andrew Raiskums conduct his terrific choral outfit Gloriana in one of their quarterly performances. It’s an amateur group – the thirty or so choir members (one of whom rejoices in the name Kate Gondwana) do it out of love and desire; you can tell. The drawings here [...]
If for no more reason than the new Dan Brown has just been published, today’s post nods back to books. (’The [Dan Brown] books came straight off the printer, went straight into boxes and were then wrapped in black plastic and sealed,’ Random House spokeswoman Ms Reid said.)
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To a book with a cosmically different level [...]
Postmodern Writer Is Found Dead at Home
Headline, New York Times, Sept 14, 2008
Interviewer: ‘What does postmodern mean in literature?’
Foster Wallace, smiling: ‘After modernism.’
‘… I think that postmodernism has to a large extent run its course.’ This, in 1997.
He doesn’t loom large in the Australian landscape as he does in the US. No matter, his effect [...]
“Ninety percent of everything is crud.” Sturgeon’s Law
On a roll – we follow on from yesterday’s post about the theft of Damien Hirst’s £500,000 pencils.
You may recall: the reputedly richest artist in the world (pictured left, poss. net worth £200 million) is in dispute with an 17-yr-old graffitist, Cartrain, which will end up in court [...]
Long story short: teenager steals a pack of pencils (above) from multi-millionaire artist, is arrested and up to be fined £500,000.
Slightly longer story: 18-year-old graffitist Carwreck, sorry – Cartrain – arrested by the Art and Antiques squad from New Scotland Yard for the theft of a packet of pencils from Tate Britain gallery. Currently out [...]
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