Seaweed Soup

I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment. But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.

2013-02-08

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

— Christopher Hitchens (via kateoplis)

Source: kateoplis

2013-02-07

Marie Curie

Source: theplumtree

→

How photography changed painting and vice versa

→

Jemima Khan: The inside story of how Julian Assange alienated his allies

I passed through Los Angeles recently on my way to the Sundance Film Festival. I don’t know the place well, but it always feels to me as if it is in limbo and has never grown into a proper city: a municipal playground, populated by restless kidults. Here, people dine at seven and sleep by nine, ferried around in cars, sipping sodas, suspended in a make-believe world, poised in that fake calm between a toddler’s fall and ensuing screams.

Its transient, unevolved quality may have something to do with it being a temporary home to a disproportionate number of famous people. There’s a theory about fame: the moment it strikes, it arrests development. Michael Jackson remained suspended in childhood, enjoying sleepovers and funfairs; Winona Ryder an errant teen who dabbled in shoplifting and experimented with pills; George Clooney, a 30-year-old commitment-phobe, never quite ready yet to settle down.

Every plan in LA is SBO (“subject to better offer”). Fame infantilises and grants relative impunity. Those that seek it, out of an exaggerated need for admiration or attention, are often the least well equipped to deal with criticism.

Julian Assange was the reason I ended up at Sundance, the showcase for international independent film-makers. I was there to attend the premiere of Alex Gibney’s documentary about WikiLeaks, We Steal Secrets, which I executive produced and which Assange denounced before seeing. He objected to the title; WikiLeaks tweeted that it was “an unethical and biased title in the context of pending criminal trials. It is the prosecution’s claim and it is false.”

However, as I had previously pointed out to Assange, the title was derived from a comment in the film by Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, who told Gibney that the US government was in the business of “stealing secrets” from other countries. It was used specifically to highlight the irony of the situation of Bradley Manning, the US army private alleged to be the source of the American intelligence cables leaked to Assange. Manning may be put to death by his own government for doing the very thing to which Hayden so candidly admits.

The film wasn’t in the competition at Sundance, as Gibney is a well-known film-maker and it already has a distributor, but that didn’t stop the WikiLeaks account from tweeting: “Anti-#WikiLeaks doc ‘We Steal Secrets’ steals no prizes at Sundance as film is rejected in all 31 categories”.

The problem with Camp Assange is that, in the words of George W Bush, it sees the world as being “with us or against us”. When I told Assange I was part of the We Steal Secrets team, I suggested that he view it not in terms of being pro- or anti-him, but rather as a film that would be fair and would represent the truth. It would address, directly, the claims of his critics, which needed to be included so that the film could be seen as balanced and could reach people beyond the WikiLeaks congregation. He replied: “If it’s a fair film, it will be pro-Julian Assange.” Beware the celebrity who refers to himself in the third person.

It became clear to me that Assange would be willing to co-operate only with an amanuensis and not an independent film-maker such as Gibney, whose nuanced work includes Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: the Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Taxi to the Dark Side, for which he won an Oscar. In many ways, the film’s narrative arc mirrors my own journey with Assange, from admiration to demoralisation.

Read the entire article here»>

2013-01-10

Why Hugh Hefner is what women really, really want

2012-10-31

Celebrate by Pippa Middleton

I suspect that on many levels Celebrate really is a mirror reflection of the woman herself: expensively packaged, sleekly styled, stuffed with bland inanities and dizzy with images of Pippa and interchangeable posh young men in fleeces. If you ever wondered what being Pippa would be like, wonder no more.

2012-10-25

Sewell on Postmodernism

Once the distinctions between the visual arts and other forms of intellectual sustenance are blurred in the pan-cultural soup of Postmodernism, nothing means anything precisely, everything is individually interpretable by anybody, and the deliberately obscure language of this anybody or group of anybodies becomes an art form in itself, for in Postmodernism art and language are one and the same and everything is text.