In the spring of 2003, Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi left for Iran. On June 23, 2003, she was arrested while taking photographs outside Evin prison in Tehran during student-led protests. On By July 11, 2003 it was known she died was dead — supposedly from hitting her head when she fell “accidentally.” July 10, 2004: […]
Jonathan Delacour’s recent Before the Revolution entry is excellent. I’m not sure I can really summarise it, but I think Jonathan sees a change in the purpose of blogging as it pivots, in a not-so-pleasant way, from exploration to strategy. His entry begins with a discussion of a quote by Talleyrand (b. 1754), which Bernardo […]
It’s been a really busy few days lately. Ragged, to the point that I have no mind for complicated topics, either. But here’s a simple bit that stuck out for me: On the weekend I found myself sitting between two women — moms — while we waited for our kids to finish a master class […]
We rented the 2004 Manchurian Candidate remake of the 1962 original this weekend. IMDb‘s reviewers give it barely 7 stars out of 10, and since I don’t often like remakes myself I was sceptical. But this one is very good: it raises all the usual fun paranoid conspiracy issues, along with technology issues, while the […]
A young boy was making an argument yesterday about right and wrong. He sought to dispute that right and wrong exist as such since they are determined by the perspective of whoever is doing the action. An atrocity is seen as bad (“wrong”) from the victim’s point of view, but as good (“right”) from the […]
Lovely twist of irony, if somewhat macabre: can this be for real? It’s actually kinda gross: Obesity could help keep Social Security solvent because people will die younger. “One of the consequences of our prediction is that Social Security does not appear to be in nearly as bad a shape as we think,” said study […]
On the subject of “metablogging” and disfunction (as manifested in weblogging), this post, Steve Levy, Dave Sifry, and NZ Bear: You are Hurting Us, by Shelley Powers aka Burningbird, is simply the most important and pithy I’ve read so far. Period. It’s a good idea to read it, too, in relation to her Guys Don’t […]
The other day Chris Locke blogged about Marianna Torgovnick’s 1998 book, Primitive Passions: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstasy, which sent me to my jumbled, ratty bookshelves to find Torgovnick’s previous book, Gone Primitive; Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. For general interest, and generally in support of Chris’s research, forthwith some quotes from the latter. […]
Judging from the snippet I heard on CBC Radio tonight, the sharia law debate continues in Canada. In a brief automotive interlude, I heard As It Happens interviewers speaking to Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, Minister of International Relations and of La Francophonie in Quebec, who defended Quebec’s refusal to allow any aspect of sharia law to take […]
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