Meet the Researchers Who Can Engineer Your Dreams The Walrus. “Let me guess how this will work: they engineer criminal dreams and then they put you i prison for pre-crime.
Wuthering Heights, the movie
I liked it very much, noting it is not one for the purists. The visuals and soundtrack added to the general passionate feel. I can recommend the Jonathan Bate review and the Louise Perry review (WSJ). The other version of this movie I can recommend is the Luis Buñuel Mexican interpretation, also full of passion and that poor pig. At its heart, this is a very Mexican story and no way should it be done in a Masterpiece Theater kind of style.
I liked it very much, noting it is not one for the purists. The visuals and soundtrack added to the general passionate feel. I can recommend the Jonathan Bate review and the Louise Perry review (WSJ). The other version of this movie I can recommend is the Luis Buñuel Mexican interpretation, also full of passion and that poor pig. At its heart, this is a very Mexican story and no way should it be done in a Masterpiece Theater kind of style.
The Kremlin Banned These Books. You Can Find Them in a New York Library
The New York Times Gift Article: “Millions of banned books were smuggled into the Soviet Union in the 20th century — often in small batches, hidden in deliberately mislabeled containers, packed in food tins or tampon boxes and, in at least one case, tucked into a child’s diaper.
Soviet tourists visiting Western Europe brought mini-volumes of “Doctor Zhivago” back home with them. Members of the Moscow Philharmonic were said to have lined their sheet music with book pages.
From balloon-launching sites in West Germany, copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” were lofted into Eastern Europe. Published in Russian and other languages and known as “tamizdat,” the books were part of an audacious American venture, part literature, part propaganda and part spycraft, to destabilize the authoritarian Soviet regime from within.
Over the past several years, Hunter College in Manhattan has become home to a library of these remarkable books, thousands of which were once banned in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and hundreds more that are censored in Russia today. The library is run by the nonprofit Tamizdat Project, which now possesses one of the largest special collections of contraband Russian literature in the world.
The library is open to visitors upon request, and this month White Rabbit Books on the Upper West Side will open a new section of its store devoted to selling old and new contraband Russian literature curated by the project.
The Tamizdat Project is the brainchild of Yakov Klots, a soft-spoken, unassuming literary scholar who teaches at Hunter. He chose the name from a Russian word meaning “published abroad,” which, along with samizdat (“to self-publish”), was one of the two main methods of evading Soviet book censorship.
The Iron Curtain, he noted, “wasn’t so iron after all,” and the books seeped through. Mr. Klots has assembled the library bit by bit, recruiting his students to build the metal IKEA bookshelves and soliciting book donations from friends and strangers, including the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle…”
A Law School Class on the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein?
Although he is long gone, Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct has gripped the nation for many months. What about a law school course focusing on the legal issues surrounding his criminal activities?
There certainly are enough legal issuesto cover in a course. Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on federal sex trafficking charges and is currently in prison. A few weeks ago, she pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify before Congress. Former President Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before Congress on their relationship with Epstein. Maxwell and the Clintons’ knowledge of Epstein and his activities alone raise many legal issues. Among many others:
- The law surrounding sexual abusers and human trafficking.
- The professional responsibility of prosecutors to protect the public and abuse survivors.
- The moral failure of many people and the system to call attention to the ongoing victimization of minors.
- The influence of money, power, and influence on the criminal justice system.
- The pardon power of the President. Ghislaine Maxwell seems angling for a pardon for her testimony and President Trump has not ruled one out. Do the references to Trump in the Epstein files make a difference to the pardon potentials?
- The lawfulness of the redactions of the documents produced to Congress and related issues of the privacy of the survivors.
- The bi-partisan legislation resulting in the mass production of the Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice.
- The possible discipline of university professors for contacts with Epstein. See, e.g., here; here.
- Congressional oversight of the Department of Justice.
- The failure of government officials to act for years despite the many red flags surrounding Epstein and his activities.
There no doubt are a ton more issues. And certainly enough for a robust law school course — and much discussion.
