Month: February 2011

The Great Gatsby game should warm up the cockles of TNC's heart:

Some brilliant artists have re-imagined F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as a Nintendo game from the late 1980s. … According to the website, this wonderful bit of fan fiction was discovered at a yard sale. We are a bit skeptical about this creation myth, but it is a lovely piece of fan fiction.

True origins of the game explained here.

Josh Levin explains a new generation of TV criticism:

Television criticism used to be like restaurant criticism: A writer would sample a few episodes and then issue an informed recommendation. Today, it's more akin to visiting the same restaurant every week, then reporting back on the mood of the wait staff, the condition of the silverware, and what dishes might appear on the new fall menu. …

Rather than tell you what to watch, Sepinwall, Murray, and Time's James Poniewozik, among many others, validate your interest in the shows you're already watching.

"Blizzard" by William Carlos Williams:

Snow:

years of anger following

hours that float idly down —

the blizzard

drifts its weight

deeper and deeper for three days

or sixty years, eh? Then

the sun! a clutter of

yellow and blue flakes —

Hairy looking trees stand out

in long alleys

over a wild solitude.

The man turns and there —

his solitary track stretched out

upon the world.

(Photo: Afghan men walk near the Darul Aman palace in Kabul on February 16, 2011, on the occasion of Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, the birthday of Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet Mohammed was born in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca on the 12th day of Rabi-ul-Awwal 571 A.D. By Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images)

Emily Willingham catalogues what lice have wrought on history, namely through typhus:

Typhus helped decimate the half-million strong Grand Armée of Napoleon in 1812 to a mere 35,000 men and kept the great general from conquering Russia. Many of the dead met their fates not on the battlefield but in louse-infested hospitals packed with dead bodies.

Dances with goat:

I don't have a problem with people disagreeing with my fiscal conservatism. But the personal nature of this attack (if you can read it through the invasive BP ad) is really over the top:

3.) The fundamental thing you need to understand when talking to deficit hawks is that when they say something is painful or that cuts will hurt people, you need to recognize that what they really mean is that the cuts will be painful TO SOMEONE ELSE and hurt people THEY DON’T KNOW AND WILL NEVER MEET. That’s why it’s so easy to be a condescending asshole about the budget.

Actually, my own position – that we should focus future cuts on the wealthier elderly (by means-testing, higher premiums based on income, etc), that sending social security checks to Warren Buffet is unaffordable, that the Bush tax cuts on those earning over $250,000 should go because of the fiscal crisis, that defense should be on the table – doesn't seem like an attack on the poor. If I live long and prosper, I'd be the one getting taxed at much higher rates, getting much less social security and paying bigger premiums and bigger co-pays for Medicare. I also supported the health insurance law. To personalize this and say it's all because I have contempt for "people I will never meet" seems bizarre. I have met one of those who will be much worse off if we can end the federal debt on Bowles-Simpson lines and he's staring at me in the bathroom mirror every morning.

And then there's this swipe at my own privilege of:

taking a month off from writing on the internet to recover from a cold.

Three weeks, actually. Cole adds his own personal touch to attacking me for being lazy rather than sick. I haven't given every single detail of my own bout of illness for what small shred is left of my privacy. But when you are HIV-positive for 17 years and have a triple viral, bacterial and fungal infection in your already asthmatic lungs, are attached to a nebulizer because you cannot breathe even when stationary, and lose half your t-cells in a month, you're not just "recovering from a cold". Yes, I am lucky to have an employer's health insurance. That's why I backed a law that makes it possible for everyone to have access to such insurance. But just because I believe that the debt will kill us unless we tackle defense, revenues and Medicare, I am a heartless, insulated, lying asshole. Really: you have to resort to this kind of nastiness to make a point?

I guess they do. It's all they seem to have. But I wish their own sick blogger all the best and hope he recovers soon.

A Bahraini girl stands next to graffiti reading 'We reject humiliation' at an impoverished neighbourhood in Manama on February 19, 2011. Bahraini police dispersed protesters who poured into the capital's Pearl Square as soon as the army pulled out amid mounting pressure on the pro-Western Gulf kingdom to negotiate with the Shiite-led opposition. By Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty.

An eye-witness from Libya’s bloodbath:

Money quote from a doctor on the scene:

“This is not a well-equipped hospital and these injuries come in waves. All are very serious injuries, involving the head, the chest and the abdomen. They are bullet injuries from high-velocity rifles. “All are civilians aged from 13 to 35, no police or military injuries,” he said, adding that there was no way the wounds could have come from anyone other than security forces.

Here he wants to end the commercial celebration of Christmas in some Arab states. Here he berates his fellow Muslims for being lazy and too dependent on the West.

The revolutionaries in Pearl Square don't sound too radical right now:

There is also a striking uniformity in what the people gathered there say they want. There is little appetite for the abolition of the monarchy; they want, instead, its reform. "The monarchy has to reform or be thrown away," opposition leader Ebrahim Sherrif told me earlier in the day. Mr Sherrif will play a major role in the negotiations with the government that will now begin.

"We not saying to the royal family 'you're not part of this society'. We are saying 'you are welcome to be equal, but not to be above the law'. We don't want to overthrow the monarchy. We'd like to see a UK- or Spanish-style constitutional monarchy. A republic does not solve the problem – we had republics in Tunisia and Egypt and they were the first to be overthrown," he said.

Meanwhile, in Egypt we get this message from the returning exile and guru for the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Qaradawi:

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said.

This seems to be the same spirit that had Egypt's Muslims personally protecting Copts from Jihadist mass murder earlier this year (something unthinkable in Iraq). One can only say this: let's hope this lasts.