WHSmith sorry for Josef Fritzl Father's Day promotion
“High street chain WH Smith apologised today after promoting a book on cellar rapist Josef Fritzl as a Father’s Day gift.” Like, WTF?
June 19th, 2009 / Trackback“High street chain WH Smith apologised today after promoting a book on cellar rapist Josef Fritzl as a Father’s Day gift.” Like, WTF?
June 19th, 2009 / TrackbackThis could become a habit, eh? Anyways, without further ado, dumping a few incoherently scattered links:
With that light entertainment aside, something more substantial:
And to resume the light programming, this:
Fiddled a little with a photo gallery (linked to on your right), so, I thunk to my own self: why not write one of these blog posts? At least dump these here links:
A minitheme: three links to articles that one way or the other speak about capitalism and work and what might be beyond it all. Mainly just to keep them around for my own sake:
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.
All kinds of snarky remarks spring to mind, but I will let it speak for it itself.
April 30th, 2009 / TrackbackIt’s odd, in fact, that some of the most vocal defenders of free speech in the matter of the current efforts by some countries at the UN to narrow the freedom to criticize religion are more uncertain when it comes to whether there should be bans on wearing religious or religious-related items in certain public contexts. But the two types of prohibition are in the same ballpark. They attempt to stop people articulating their beliefs, opinions, affirmations, on issues that matter to them, including issues central to their sense of identity. There are, of course, more reasons than one for defending freedom of opinion. A reason that is important, however, is that people do not find it easy to live a fulfilled life when they are unable to be open about what they think the truth is and how they see themselves in relation to the world around them.
Sez Norman Geras, and I would agree.
March 16th, 2009 / Tags: headscarves!! / TrackbackA book review by Julian Barnes (Such, Such Was Eric Blair) really makes David Ehrenstein get on his high horse and spew venom. The drink-soaked Trotters have a more balanced view in their Thoughts on Orwell, also talking about the Barnes thing. Their conclusion, “[h]is understanding was underpinned by a tetchy discontent and a discomfort with orthodoxy. He is disconcerting and that is why he is still worth reading and why he should never be romanticised. He was a serious and, at times, uncomfortable writer, not a prophet, even less a guru” sounds about right. IMHO.
March 10th, 2009 / Tags: literature, orwell / TrackbackAs usual, dumping a number of links will be my ersatz for actually blogging:
March 9th, 2009 / Tags: biceps! / Trackback“Think about it — all those big-mouth Republicans are major Mr. Softies: Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich. Between the bunch of them, they probably wouldn’t last five minutes on a treadmill. They are afraid — Michelle COULD punch them out.”
“Milton [Friedman] is the embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences.”
Donald Rumsfeld
Hehindeed…
March 9th, 2009 / Tags: politics, silly libertarians / TrackbackDubai is a place for the shallow and fickle. Tabloid celebrities and worn out sports stars are sponsored by swollen faced, botox injected, perma-tanned European property developers to encourage the type of people who are impressed by fame itself, rather than what originated it, to inhabit pastiche Mediterranean villas on fake islands. Its a grotesquely leveraged version of time-share where people are sold a life in the same way as being peddled a set of steak knives. Funny shaped towers smatter empty neighborhoods, based on designs with unsubtle, eye-catching envelopes but bland floor plans and churned out by the dozen by anonymous minions in brand name architects offices and signed by the boss, unseen, as they fly through the door. This architecture, a three dimensional solidified version of a synthesized musical jingle, consists of ever more preposterous gimmickry – an underwater, revolving, white leather fuck pad or a marina skyscraper with a product placement name that would normally only appeal to teenage boys, such as the preposterous Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower.
So, I am not the only one having a slight attack of Schadenfreude… what with the endless commercials that wanted to entice us all to come and shop ourselves to death in the desert. Not any more.
Via kottke.
February 17th, 2009 / Tags: the melting down of everything / TrackbackIn lieu of writing, linking…:
In lieu of writing, linking:
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
At least the WSJ tries to provide us with some light comedy in the midst of the looming crisis. Only one feels a tiny bit queasy about this really being a tongue-in-check joke, or, OMG, for real. Some paragraphs towards the end go like this:
Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.
One memorable moment in “Atlas” occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track.
And they proceed to have this Galt guy made “Economic Dictator”, and he, eh, proposes abolishing taxes and firing all government employees and stuff. And the piece grandly closes like this:
Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax “for purposes of fairness” as Barack Obama puts it.
Is it Tuesday yet? Can barely wait..
January 15th, 2009 / Tags: randnuts, america, politics / TrackbackSnaps from around the city by legendary photographer Martha Cooper.
January 13th, 2009 / Tags: photos / Trackback“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist — I really believe he is Antichrist — I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you — sit down and tell me all the news.”
I vaguely remember reading about the Gutenberg project in a dead tree publication many moons ago. Needless to say, the assessment was that it would never fly — as they said: who would, unpaid and all, enter or scan, and edit, anything worthwhile?
So, today I see that somebody unpaid did put up a rather monumental work. You might argue that it is an old translation — but it is, actually, a reasonably respected one.
Now, I will be off to feed another load of paper into the printer…
January 12th, 2009 / Tags: literature, internet economy / TrackbackAs is customary, the owner of this site will also make a public fool of himself by showing how unhip and unconnected he really is this year. Or, in other words, what cultural artifacts were enjoyed these past 12 months?
Well… and the prize for the best movie I saw in 2008 goes to No Country For Old Men. As it happens, it did not hit the screens here in Denmark till well into 2008, so (this once) we are way cool on that account. In the words of one Roget Ebert, “(t)his movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell, startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely.” I can only agree.
And, surprisingly enough, we continue with a CD that was also issued in 2008 itself, so the price for best new album I listened to in 2008 is contemporary. Drumroll. And the winner is Home Before Dark by Neil Diamond. OMG; the horror of it all… but I actually like it. As the review on allmusic ends: “It is a stark and moving portrait of what an accepted artist found when he reached all the way down to face his fear, doubt, and knowledge, and brought the discovery into his work.”
Best new book I read in 2008 had me reeling for a while. I thought I had to make excuses for nominating Per Pettersson, but then I started reading a freshly made Danish novel just days before the year ran out. The book in question is Ubevidst Rødgang by Lars Frost; so far, AFAIK, only available in Danish. An “engineering novel” set in the early seventires as we move from the postwar boom into gloomier times. A seemingly “realistic” novel that actually undermines its own realism in a subtle ways. Also a damn good yarn.
January 8th, 2009 / Trackback