“Israel is neither Europe, nor the Middle East,” the commenter wrote. “All of the moral categories you’ve been trained to apply to countries from those regions won’t work. They’re foreign, like you.” A self-identified American soldier, but currently enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, he was making this point in criticizing a journalist for penning a favorable article about an anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv.
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“It remains exciting.” Angela Merkel in (well, sorta) party mode. Berlin, 03/11.
San Francisco-based Thomas Dimuzio is one of those unsung artistic figures whose influence and abilities have substantially outstripped his visibility. Composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, experimental electronic musician, collaborator and mastering engineer – Dimuzio has been busy doing his thing(s) since the late 1980s, but is still only known to a small circle of electronic music enthusiasts. (More…)
Ryu Murakami’s Popular Hits of the Showa Era, just released in English translation, has a plot that is both straightforward and surreal. Six single men in their twenties, all social outcasts touched by madness, band together to form a karaoke club. Six single women in their thirties, similarly cut off from society but much less demented, do the same. When one of the men randomly assaults and murders one of the women, a grisly chain reaction ensues, turning these outwardly unassuming ensembles into de facto gangs worthy of the American inner city.
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It was an obvious gaffe. A Mussolini figurine sits next to an iMac displaying a photo of a younger Silvio Berlusconi. The occasion: Casting agent and Berlusconi associate Lele Mora, defending the Italian Prime Minister against charges of abuse of power on Euronews. Read a transcript of the Wednesday broadcast, or watch the program.
Sometimes I’m not sure what to call her. Is it Yafo? Or Jaffa? Then there is the old Arabic nickname, Urs al-Bahr, Bride of the Sea. Each word has its history. And each has its fate. (More…)
Odessa, once the Soviet Union’s largest commercial port, was the funkiest place in the Nazi empire. It is said that the occupying Romanian officers would never consider going out without their make-up on, the better to attract the favors of the city’s belles. That reputation lives on, to this day. (More…)
Piazza Bodoni. Torino, Italy, 04/11.
Hospital waiting rooms are a horrid place. You’re either about to be diagnosed with something awful, or in love with someone who is. My San Francisco hospital, in its boundless touchy-feeliness, commissioned a harp player to set up next to us and play harp arrangements of Debussy and other typically floral-sounding songs. (More…)
Leave it to late Khmer Rouge head Pol Pot to turn a high school into a prison. As though that weren’t an apt metaphor for the late dictator’s philosophy of education. After all, his regime is credited with popularizing the term re-education camp, following the death of a million Cambodians in such centers. A more formal detention facility, this picture was taken at Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh. Now a museum, it has turned back into an educational space – teaching Cambodians about genocide.
When we first saw the cover of the Sunday Telegraph we did a double take. The photo of the burning MiG 29 above the fold immediately caught our attention. Combined with the left-side headline “British Forces Attack Gaddafi,” the layout suggested that the Russian-made fighter had been shot down by the RAF. (More…)
Another day, another cloud-based service. Another day, another music service launches. Double-whammy, we get Amazon’s new music service, Cloud Player. Too little, too late. (More…)