Image via WikipediaTimes Book Review Letter, May 1, 2011:...Wallace's novel and essay and McCarthy's review are excellent demonstrations that the issues of will and choice and agency are, in our era of neurobiological investigations, not sterile and abstract. They are descending from the lofty and, yes, sometimes ridiculous heights of philosophy into the real world of human moral, social, jurisprudential and political actions. (See Daniel Wegner's wonderful book "The Illusion of Conscious Will," published a few years ago.) Did you know that if … [Read more...]

Greil Marcus interviews D.A. Pennebaker about filming Bob Dylan from New Video Digital on Vimeo.Related articlesUnreleased Bob Dylan Material Coming To Blu-Ray (wncx.radio.com)Why Bob Dylan didn't ring the chimes of freedom over Ai Weiwei (guardian.co.uk)Unsung Heroes: Jim James and Calexico in 'I'm Not There' (thefilmexperience.net) … [Read more...]

Image via WikipediaIt's great to see this work on DailyKos-where all talk of election fraud has long been scored, by founder Markos Moulitsas, as "conspiracy theory," and banned from the main page. (It may still be, in fact, as Cieran's updates are running on the Daily Kos Community Site.)Clearly, we'll be getting more of this from Cieran, so stay tuned there; and we need plenty more from other righteous bloggers, too (and from some eminent reporters with the brain and guts to deal with it, if there are any left out there).MCMWaukesha County … [Read more...]

--from David Hajdu's The Famous Door blog on New Republic's site. … [Read more...]

Image via WikipediaLate last week, at a talk he gave at West Point, Secretary of Defense Gates made the most remarkable statement. After underlining "the strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces" in the future, he added, "But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it." Now, if we were out of Afghanistan - win, lose, or draw - and Gates had been … [Read more...]

via Illusion... … [Read more...]

Image by Miguel Ramirez via Flickrfrom Publisher's Marketplace (12/15/10): Music historian and journalist Tim Riley's JOHN ONO LENNON: THE LIFE AND THE MUSIC, an examination of John Lennon's life and creative legacy, covering everything from the widely misunderstood origins of "Working Class Hero" to Lennon's epic romance with Yoko Ono, sharing insight into the emotional conceptions and musical evolution of the songs that for so many of us have become part of our own personal history, to Gretchen Young at Hyperion, for … [Read more...]

Andrew Zuckerman, Music (Abrams Books), iPad app … [Read more...]

...Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that rock album art gave generations of suburban adolescents in the 1970s and '80s their first exposure to surrealism and open-ended narrative? The cover of Hejira presented the lightly cultured teenager I was then with a visual puzzle that absorbed me in a new way. On the front gatefold, Mitchell's body is double-exposed with an image of a prairie highway; the songs on the album are about travel. I wanted to know, though, about the wintry sepia landscape in the background. The photograph winds around … [Read more...]