The visions of Buckminster Fuller
Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker June 9, 2008) presents a wonderful portrait of Buckminster Fuller (yes, this a name of a person). My own imagination was fired up when I read some of Fuller’s incredible ideas.
Annals of Innovation: Dymaxion Man
The U.S. Pavilion for the 1967 World
Continue Reading“Dad, at least you didn’t get busted playing golf”
Question to Steward Copeland of the Police: Sting was photographed outside the Relax bordello in Hamburg in September. Were you tempted to join him?
SC: He never asked us to go with him! His 17-year-old daughter said it best, though: “Dad, at least you didn’t get busted playing golf.” None of The Police play golf.
Watching the Supreme Court for 30 Years
LINDA GREENHOUSE covered the Supreme Court for the NY Times during the past 30 years. The review of her experience is a great read and a superb civics lesson.
2,691 Decisions
By LINDA GREENHOUSE (NY Times)
WASHINGTON
Collateral Damage When Small Men Become Political Leaders
Read this book review and be reminded why George Bush stepping down is going to be a big relief for America. [A day later: Frank Rich also reviews the book and comes to the conclusion that we may be in for an terrorists attack before long. Then all bets about the election are off]
THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. By Jane Mayer: Doubleday. 392 pp. $27.50
With the appearance of this very fine book, Hillary Clinton can claim a belated vindication of sorts: A right-wing conspiracy does indeed exist, although she misapprehended its scope and nature. The conspiracy is not vast and does not consist of Clinton-haters. It is small, secretive and made up chiefly of lawyers contemptuous of the Constitution and the rule of law.
Continue ReadingPenelope
My expectations about this airplane film were modest. A family is cursed and the fist female bay will be born with a pig’s nose. Ok. A little children’s movie. Yet to my surprise Penelope is one of the most clever films I have seen in a while. It is Cinderella, Romeo and Julia, Miss Piggy and teenage beauty obsession all mixed together in a magical realistic fairy tale reminiscent of Charles Dickens. Few movies can please both the young and adult mind. This one can.
Where has Obama’s Magic Gone?
The last couple of weeks my excitement about Obama’s candidacy has cooled considerably. BOB HERBERT (NY Times) has articulated well what is bothering people like me. I wonder whether the fund-raising machine will work without a message that is one of change rather than putting together a convenience coalition. Obama has stumbled before and come back. From the beginning the question of Obama’s candidacy was whether he would be a transformative president or not get anything done. The good news is that it is almost impossible to be worse than G. W.
Lurching With Abandon
In one of the numbers from
Continue ReadingWe Own the Night
We Own the Night transports you back into the disco era. Drugs were a big part the Studio 54 scene (I visited famous disco once before it closed and marveled about Grace Jones’s rooftop haircut). One son of a family of senior police officials son a night club. Before long he has to choose between his law enforcement family and the vast opportunities given to him by the Russian owner of the club. Skip this film and instead watch the documentary of Studio 54 produced by VH1.
No Country For Good Men & There Will Be Blood
Both films have high ambitions: they want to capture the spirit driving American society. In the Coen brothers’ No Country For Good Men America is at its core only greed and violence. The writer and director of There Will Be Blood offer a more balanced and accurate depiction of America. There is violence but there is also hard work and tender feelings, especially toward children. There is greed but also wealth generation that benefits the community. There Will Be Blood is slow because it strives to portray in detail just how difficult it was to develop the American continent. Daniel Day Lewis deservedly received an Oscar for his unusual performance as the lead character.
An Ideal Husband
To fully appreciate this story you have to know that Oscar Wilde wrote over a hundred years ago the comedy “An Ideal Husband,” and later on was thrown into prison because of a homosexual relationship. Maureen Dowd, the writer of the column, as far as I remember is single, and once remarked about her own state that men are scared by strong women
By MAUREEN DOWD (NY Times)
This weekend, we celebrate our great American pastime: messy celebrity divorces. There’s the Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook fireworks on Long Island and the Madonna/Guy Ritchie/A-Rod Roman candle in New York. So how do you avoid a relationship where you end up saying, “The man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was” — as Brinkley did in court when talking about her husband’s $3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit? (Not to mention the 18-year-old mistress/assistant.)
Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.
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