I’m sure more year-end listmaking will be coming here at this blog, just as soon as I catch up on more the 2004 film and music releases. (Feel free to send suggestions of what I should look at/listen to.) Meanwhile, my friend Zoe (a/k/a Francine) has a great inaugural post up on her blog reflecting […]
It’s hard to grasp the numbers we’re hearing from the tsunami disaster, numbers that seem to be mounting each time my web browser refreshes the front page of whatever newspaper site I have up. So Lis Riba compares American cities with census populations under the current death toll: Berkeley, CA, Athens, GA, Charleston, SC, Cambridge, […]
Real Climate continues their attack against facile denial of climate change. (Hat tip: David Sucher). Lately, George Will is their target for propagating two fallacies of Michael Crichton’s: a) confusing local and global climate change, and b) concluding that change of scientific consensus means that consensus itself is subjective herdthink. (Mind you, Will’s favorable comparison […]
The advantage, if you can call it that, of watching a film on DVD is that the little clock lets you know how well the narrative is following the Robert Towne/Syd Field model for effective screenplays. In Collateral, the first plot point comes right at 20 min. on the clock. (The second is a little […]
I’m no Susan Sontag expert. I’ve read little of her writing. Still, I think that David Sucher is prematurely dismissive in saying that she has no relevance for architecture.
With all due respect to the dead, to Sontag… did Sontag ever say much of anything about the built (or natural, for that matter) environment? Just curious. […]
The earthquake and tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia is unimaginable in its horror. Partly it’s the sheer scale of destruction. Partly it’s the tragedy of a lack of warning that could have saved thousands.
Like Matt Yglesias, I wondered about the slowness of American TV news to give the story much play. Even now, it’s […]
No posting for the rest of the week, as I’m heading out of town. Enjoy the holidays.
This is a great idea. Only judging from their response to Michael Crichton’s novel, they still need to work on penning responses accessible to the educated layman.
It’s that time of year again, when the rearguard fashion editor at LeftCenterLeft (i.e. me) takes on the worst fashion trends of the past year. And just to prove I’m not all piss and vinegar, I’ll include the notable positive trends, too.
Worst
Ponchos. I don’t know that I have anything to add to what Slate’s […]
James Wolcott takes a look at the complaints over Whither Christmas? and says “Wait a minute“: ” I’ve got news: Even here on the godless, liberal Upper West Side, people wish each other Merry Christmas without staggering three steps backward, thunderstruck and covered with chagrin.”
But there’s another bete noire in the culture war: all the […]
I agreed with Josh Marshall a month ago, when he wrote that the Democrats have to strategize along the lines of a parliamentary opposition party, but it seems especially important advice now that Social Security battles are coming up:
One thing that Democrats must understand is that they cannot win this battle legislatively. At one […]
On the Boston.com, it leapt out at me, so I clicked on the headline reading something like “Regional Planners thwart IKEA opening“, assuming they’re talking about Somerville’s battle with plans to open a branch of the furniture chain in Assembly Square. It turns out the article was about the corruption of Russian regional governments!
Swedish furniture […]
I came across this paragraph in James Patterson’s Grand Expectations (p.62).
The murder rate had halved by 1945. As became clear later, this situation was abnormal, stemming in part from the fact that the United States had a relatively small cohort of young men - those most prone to crime - at the time. This in […]
Susan Ryan-Vollmar - who writes an excellent blog on gay and lesbian rights, among other topics - lists in Bay Windows the reasons Cheryl Jacques was doomed.
Was it the uninspired “George W. Bush: You’re Fired!” publicity campaign in the run up to the Nov. 2 election during which Bush was . . . hired? Was […]
Never one to miss any bandwagon to jump on, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting an MP3 blog. If you’re not familiar with the idea, an MP3 blog posts music files for a limited time, taking off the links as new songs are posted. The idea is something akin to college radio, with […]