“We just got wired into the system.” Is this the future? EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

From Brian Urquhart’s “Extreme Makeover” in The New York Review of Books: In his recent book on the Scottish Enlightenment James Buchan writes of Edinburgh in the early eighteenth century, “Men and women were coming to suspect that knowledge acquired through skepticism might be more useful in this world below than knowledge ‘revealed’ by scripture.” […]

Carol Reed was “a passable journeyman who could sometimes push a story along.” So sayeth Christopher Byron in The Sunday Times of London, referred to earlier. Jan — After Hitchcock left to work for Selznick, Carol Reed was the best director in England, and made some excellent movies before he went to war — “Midshipman […]

I don’t even want to think about the state of our banana nation, so with apologies to Leonard Cohen for borrowing the title of his first book of poetry, here’s a comparison of three news stories that appeared earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post about […]

Today is Groundhog Day and, as history has it, James Joyce‘s birthday. FINNEGANS BASH“Tell me now, then, is it your shadow,You’re seeking, Punxsutawney Phil?If so, you’d best be looking poorly,Else we’re stuck with the full winter’s drill.“Follow the modus op of that slackerFinnegan Seamus Patrick Dougherty(Who thumbed his nose at enslavement to duty)And hoist a […]

Arts & Letters Daily is one of the Web’s great cultural boons. It is no more than a content aggregator, but its links provide some of the most intellectual articles for a general audience to read about literature, philosophy, history, sociology and science. I don’t mind that the site leans strongly to the libertarian right. […]

Dontcha just love it? PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) — The American Nazi Party has volunteered to pick up trash along a quiet stretch of rural road in Oregon state, causing an uproar after getting a sign placed there crediting its work. And they’ve got some fine little helpers. The sign, on a quiet stretch of road […]

As long as I’m posting messages from friends and messages about movies, here’s one about another movie (more or less) from another friend, a guy who calls himself Mr. Cheer, whom I’d tipped to Christopher Bray’s review of Clinton Heylin’s new book, “Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios,” in the Sunday (London) […]

Filmmaker Danny Schechter‘s latest flick, “Weapons of Mass Deception,” will be released later this week. Have a look at the 30-second TV spot to be aired in New York on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. He sends this message: Dear friends, I am writing to friends, colleagues, and anyone I can think [of who] might be […]

Sirhan Sirhan joined a conservationist suit, as noted in December, to preserve the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Why? Because he and his lawyers believe that bullets still lodged in the hotel walls would prove he was not Kennedy’s assassin. (Sirhan, below, in 1997.) Now comes news that he […]

Jan — A few days ago Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner pointed out that women seemed to represent about 50 percent of the downtown electronic music composers. I wondered why there seem to be more women in that scene (if there are). I speculated that it might be because the downtowners have possibly rejected the concept of the […]

Still rolling along as it has been all week, yesterday’s Democracy Now! broadcast was another stunner, this time featuring an interview with William Arkin, whose new book, “Code Names,” exposes the obsessive secrecy of the U.S. government and its apotheosis under the current regime. Arkin, at right, a longtime investigative journalist and military-affairs analyst, has […]

Democracy Now! is on a roll. Yesterday it featured Gore Vidal and Matt Rothschild on Geogie Boy’s imperial God-mania. This morning it has video excerpts of Seymour Hersh giving a talk, “We’ve Been Taken Over by a Cult,” and Sen. Robert Byrd speaking in the Senate against the nomination of Ms. Mushroom Cloud for Secretary […]

A reader writes, “Pardon me, boy, is this the Ugly Hombre’s Station?” (Click the keys to start the morning off right, but pardon the instrumentation.) He continues: Alas, I’ve seen it before, the Calamity that comes when a Lifetime of Happy Dreams is crushed against the Rocks of Despair. Yes, we mistake Hapless Twits for […]

Two pieces of essential listening from this morning’s edition of Democracy Now!: Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, on the hidden passages in Georgie Boy’s inaugural address, and Gore Vidal on the most un-American speech he ever heard. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Yesterday’s tonnage was not enough. Now comes David Thomson to lend his expert opinion on the subject of Johnny Carson with an eloquence that has turned spuriouser and spuriouser. Calling Carson “a great movie star” and “a romantic icon,” despite appearances, Thomson also declares him “a master spy” and “an immaculate secret.” Topping all of that, he […]

In case anyone wants to know the relative historical importance of showbiz celebrity Johnny Carson and Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a revered World War II hero of the Polish underground who devoted his life to the cause of an independent Poland, the size of their obituaries in this morning’s New York Times ought to make it clear: […]