Melbourne author Jeff Sparrow’s latest book takes him a long way from his previous ‘radical’ histories. After becoming fascinated by the mummified head of a Turkish solder in World War I, discovered in a country town recently, Sparrow embarks on a quest to find out how hard it is for humans to kill. Being fascinated, [...]
Also posted in Genocide, Nonfiction |
I’m still savouring Hilary Spurling’s Matisse biography (I’m a third of the way through her second volume Matisse the Master). One aspect of Matisse that captivates and astounds me is how he is driven by some volcanic impetus, again and again, to innovate, at huge cost to his psyche and his family. In June 1914, [...]
Yesterday I revisited a portion of Damon Young’s Distraction, a fifteen-page section called ‘Looking More Closely’ within a chapter on the philosophy of art. This book section examines why ‘many of our encounters with art are duds,’ straddling Marcel Proust’s early flop experience at the Balbec Cathedral, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s equation of art genre with [...]
Even though Radovan Karodzic, former Bosnian Serb leader now in jail, won’t attend the start of his Hague war crimes (genocide) trial, that trial will commence tomorrow (see the CNN article). I’ll try and follow this, as it seems to me yet another signal from the international community. Signal: no matter how safe you think [...]
Also posted in Genocide |
Well worth checking out is Stephen M. Walt’s latest post (Does Obama watch “Frontline?”) on the futile games being played so that Obama can avoid being tarred and feathered for ‘losing’ Afghanistan. The Frontline documentary (Obama’s War, not out here yet) evidently damns the continuing effort, with even proponents clearly ‘in damage-limitation’ mode (Walt’s words). [...]
Also posted in Vietnam Redux |
Days after stumbling across a new book on oil, Peter Maass’s Crude World, a regular email from Harper spruiks a fascinating, more general book on energy, Amanda Little’s Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells – Our Ride to the Renewable Future. Any book that comes with blurbs by Robert Redford, Jim Rogers (Duke [...]
A little old but check out a great interview with James Hansen on Grist. As he puts it, ‘you’ve got to cut off the coal source.’
Also posted in Coal's End |
Does anyone else feel fear at the news I first got from the wonderful Andrew Leonard at How the World Works? I put stuff on the cloud – now I wonder whether I should. Here’s Leonard’s intro: The news that Microsoft has somehow managed to permanentlylose the data stored online by tens of thousands of [...]
Also posted in Creative Life |
Always on the lookout for readable books about energy sources, I was delighted to read Jonathan Hiskes’ interview (on Grist) of journalist Peter Maass, about his new book Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.
Can a novel change your life? Can it indeed! One third of the way through Roberto Bolano’s final, posthumously released, 898-page novel, I scribbled down: ‘2666 has changed my life.’ What on earth did I mean? I’m still puzzling over those five words (and the puzzle feels increasingly meaningful) but I think I was exulting in [...]