Exiles The Power of Blunt Nostalgia & Secret Life of Endgame
Not two cultures, but two mentalities, two spiritualities meet: the people in the land toward the sea, in biblical Canaan, were concerned with commerce, with trade, with agriculture. The people to the east, the people in the desert, were concerned with spirit, with visions. The two have always met in Jerusalem.
· Meeting Cultures [Forward]
From MittleEurope to the Strange Land Of the Oz to the End of Games, actor Jacek Koman has led a strange, if not secret, life.
When he left his country, just over 20 years ago, Jacek assumed he would have to leave acting behind, too. It's a measure of his determination he considered this a fair price to pay for freedom. His reasons for wanting to leave were mixed: partly to escape the communist regime, and partly because he wanted to see the world. He says he wasn't especially political. Not beyond what everyone was. There was this shared hatred towards authority, and you followed that because you sucked it with your mother's milk.
If you believe in fate, if you believe that things offer themselves at the time you are ready for them, or when it's important for you to expose yourself to things . . .
· Remembering Mother’s Milk [Sydney Morning Herald]
Seven Deadly Sins Gobble up: gluttony is the gift of civilisation
Boxing Day mirrors reflect the waistlines of sin. Gluttony induces guilt. Now, moralists, dietitians, fashion advertisers and lifestyle journalists try to nag us into frugality. I doubt whether even so formidable a combination of forces can reverse evolution and history. Gluttony has a powerful pedigree. Excess at table is hallowed by antiquity. So eat on.
· Snis (Dream) [Times UK]
New Year Resolution - 2003 Say you want a resolution?
It’s that time again, the end-of-the-year, assess-where-you’re-at-and-decide-to-make-some-big-life-changes time. I’ve been through this routine before, like, 20 times, and I can happily report that I have never, not once, stuck to any of my New Year’s resolutions.
· Time and Time Again [Boston]
Mittle European Folklore Lead of Luck
Finding out about the year ahead is a bit risky, since to that end, Germans melt lead in a spoon over fire, throw it into cold river and use the hardened form to predict what the new year will bring. For example, a human shape with a large belly could mean pregnancy. Fortune-telling kits for - Bleigießen, which are available at supermarkets, need to be handled with care. Melted lead can burn skin and damage furniture. And the poisonous vapors shouldn't be inhaled. If you try it, remember none of the various trash bins in German households are suitable for these lead oracles. They need to be disposed of at hazardous waste sites.
· Slid well [FAZ]
Dissent Doesn't Mean A Lack of Patriotism
There is little chance that Columbia or Yale, where we teach, would heed the call to allow outsiders to dictate what opinions faculty may voice. The danger is that institutions less financially secure and more dependent on legislatures may bend to this gathering threat to freedom of speech.
· Professors Who Love America [LA Times]
Politics & Punishment Former East-West German Minister jailed
Günther Krause, one of the first politicians out of the former East Germany to attain prominence and power in reunified Germany, has been sentenced by a court in the eastern city of Rostock to three years and nine months in prison on breach of trust, fraud and tax evasion charges.
· Punishment [Faz]
NEPOTISM, GOOD SENSE, OR BOTH? According to this story, former Sen. Frank Murkowski, who was just elected governor of Alaska, has just appointed his replacement who will serve in his stead in the Senate until the next election: His daughter, state legislator Lisa Murkowski.
· Reward? [Washington Post]
Misko Janovsky asks whether the director of the agency set up to facilitate filming projects in Los Angeles defrauded the city and county by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses and political donations, some to members of the board that oversees the agency? That's what an investigation of the agency currently underay, hopes to find out.
· Independent Agencies For Corruption [The New York Times]
Australia has a crazy system of eight different reward-defamation laws which has thrown up the following colourful cases over the years.
· The Crikey defamation list: Oft-sued Crikey publisher [Crikey.Com]
Law & Justice Whistle-blowers tapped to clean up corporate crimes
Uncle Sam is looking for a few good whistle-blowers. No, it's not part of the Justice Department's war on terrorism. Rather it is a centerpiece of the government's corporate reforms to prevent the kinds of bookkeeping excesses that led to the downfall of business giants like Enron and WorldCom. New law taking effect in January forces lawyers to expose corrupt business practices.
· Will it do any good? [CS Monitor]
· Law Firms: Who Represents America's Biggest Companies? [Law.Com]
Literature Cold River: Book They Wish They'd Written (Just Dreaming)
Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones): If I could transform into anyone this year (and many other years, for that matter!), it would be William Trevor. His new novel, The Story of Lucy Gault, is just so beautifully written . . . When I closed the book, after two evenings reading it, I thought, This man doesn't just write a novel, he composes a symphony.
· Sneaky eccentricities [Law Weekly]
Bad conversationalists borrow, good conversationalists steal; It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction; I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real...
· Sometimes a quote is just a quote [By the Finest Newspaper in the world the Sydney Morning Herald]
The Year in Books
Oprah Quits! Double Dragon gives birth to Cold River! Historians are caught in a sea of plagiarism piracy, this year was a rollercoaster ride for everything literary! It was a year full of screaming headlines about the book world. There were plenty of breakout bestsellers, shocking controversies, and head-scratching oddities.
· Wishful Thinking [Central Booking]
The Year of the Blog - Media Dragon
In the annals of Internet history, 2002 may go down as the year of the blog. Twelve months ago, few of us had ever heard the term -- a contraction of Web log -- even though blogs had existed in one form or another since at least 1997. Today, their number is estimated to be anywhere from 200,000 to more than half a million.
· The explosion in blogging [Law.Com]
· Czeching the czechers: Matthew Yglesias fisks the fiskers. Do they ever tire of looking foolish? [Matthewyglesias.com]
The Year of the Arts
From Moscow to Melbourne, money dominated the arts this year. Expensive Australian festivals losing pots of money; the crumbling Bolshoi Theatre and Hermitage Museum shoring up operations with gaffer tape and the kindness of strangers; the once imperious global Guggenheim cutting loose staff and satellites; the Uffizi in Florence unable to pay its light bills; orchestras and opera companies across North America swimming in red ink.
Still, cheer up and take an Art Quiz.
· The top arts stories of 2002 [Evening Standard]
The Year of the Blues
Congress has officially declared 2003 - The Year of the Blues.
Well, naturally. War is imminent, the economy is lurching along in a rut and "The Sopranos" has only one season left. Actually, the legislators designated the "Year of the Blues" in a literal sense, as a tribute to the blues, the most influential form of American roots music. But the broader implication is too obvious to ignore.
· The blues have documented Cold River [LA Times]
It Had To Come to This We Have Experienced Another Sea Change & So We Must Pretend That All is Well ...
At first, the new owner pretends he never looked at the living room floor. Never really looked. Not the first time they toured the house. Not when the inspector showed them through it. They’d measured rooms and told the movers where to set the couch and piano, hauled in everything they owned, and never really stopped to look at the living room floor. They pretend. Then on the first morning they come downstairs, there it is, scratched in the white-oak floor:
GET OUT
Some new owners pretend a friend has done it as a joke. Others are sure it’s because they didn’t tip the movers. A couple of nights later, a baby starts to cry from inside the north wall of the master bedroom.
· Lullaby for Characters like Gustav Husak or Ian Faulks who made war, not love, against disliked politicians such as late John Newman within the walls of five star hotels - courtesy of the NSW Taxpayers [Central Booking]
The Accidents Waiting To Happen Are we more prone to fights and accidents than in the past? (grin)
There are accidents and there are bike accidents like mine breaking two of my hands. A good many, like earthquakes and tornadoes, are unavoidable acts of nature. But many more are human accidents provoked by the very technology that we celebrate: they represent the dark face of progress. Hear, Hear, Hear ...
· Deaths, Taxes and Accidents on Bikes [The New York Times]
