f you are an aspiring dictator looking for ways to muzzle the independent media, do a stint in Moscow. The Kremlin's successful recipe has been at work for a decade.

Meanwhile: Russia's last refuge: the blogosphere - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Revealing more about himself than he ever has, Garry Trudeau gives us tantalizing clues about what's behind his venerable comic strip's recent burst of genius, and pain.

As notewothy might put it, this is a gold star article. Read the whole thing. It's a rare insight into the world of Garry Trudeau, who is nothing short of a pop-culture hero of mine. It's rare there is anything written about Trudeau that isn't an op-ed either complaining or cheering about this work.

Doonesbury's War - washingtonpost.com

Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the tumult around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky-looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.

awesome and brave

A TV Comedy Turns an Unconventional Weapon on Iraq’s High and Mighty: Fake News - New York Times

A senior US state department official has said that the US has shown "arrogance and stupidity" in Iraq.

Alberto Fernandez's made the remarks during an interview with Arabic television station al-Jazeera.

The state department says Mr Fernandez was quoted incorrectly - but BBC Arabic language experts say Mr Fernandez did indeed use the words.

so they didn't like what he said and lied thinking no one would notice

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US 'arrogant and stupid' in Iraq

The old man rose painfully as the performance ended. The applause built slowly from a single clap of hands to a tumult. Harold Pinter, playwright and actor, weakened by the years and by illness, had just performed “Krapp’s Last Tape,” by his friend and fellow Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett.
...
“And all along Pinter makes you feel the gravity, the meticulousness, the sheer power of his endeavor,” Mr. Nightingale [of The Times of London] wrote. “This is an old man’s last-gasp search for a meaning he knows he’ll never find.”

wow Pinter does Beckett - terrifing, awesome
I would love to witness it

edit
part of me reflects that in a sense i've been in the hinterland - upon occasion - and one day, barring car accidents or some other sudden exit, i'll face the silence that follows twilight

Life, Meet Art: Pinter’s Last Stand - New York Times

Decius wrote:

this is why I find this matter interesting. I understand your perspective. This cuts very close to freedom of expression, and challenges the boundaries. Certainly they've a right to retain their culture, in private.
...
I think there is a political dimension to this in which tolerance for things like the veil is darkened by the fact that it symbolises a domestic group which can and has murdered people and threatens to continue to do so

wonderful discussion
I have to say I come down on the side of individual expression in this context
a, because I believe in individual liberty except under extreme conditions
b, because we rightly expect Muslims to accept what they perceive as intolerable insults to Islam and so I feel hypocritical not to similarly defend their rights to the hijab or veil
c, for the more practical reason that Muslims already feel persecuted in our societies and I see no good reason to add fuel to the fire by asking some Muslims to comply on this matter when it adds little to our society and causes a great deal of damage to community relationships. I think things like this fuel terrorism.

These woman are free to choose the veil or not (in law if not in custom depending on what tradition they come from) very often it is a deliberate religious and political statement. There is pressure from elements within the community for women to do this but it is wrong to suggest that many do not make a very deliberate and conscious choice.
I absolutely agree that the debate is "darkened by the fact that it [the veil] symbolises a domestic group which can and has murdered people and threatens to continue to do so". My first reaction was to think of Snow Falling on Cedars. We attack the symbols of our fears. Symbols are very important. On the one hand the veil is symbolic of fundamentalist Islam's treatment of women where in Afganistan women were denied access to little more than a cursory education. It is a symbol of being apart and seperate. I think Muslims have every right to assert a distinct identity as do Jews or the Amish ( the latter being interesting because they physically and culturally exclude themselves -- but they do not fly into buldings or bomb buses). This is about threat and the appropriate response. I say attack Islam on the basis of its treatment of women, homosexuals, the barbarity of certain aspects of Sharia law as exibited in Saudi Arabia and politically the democratic deficit in most Muslim States (although I'm with Fukuyama you build structures and the bedrock of democracy and let it grow from below rather than impose it).
A symbol is under attack and I want to see Muslim women reject that symbol, not because of any coersion, but because they choose to reject Islamic fascism and inferior status but I believe this is only something the Muslim community can decide and specifically Muslim women. I think encouraging a seige mentality only helps the extremists.

RE: BBC NEWS | Politics | MP tells veil woman 'let it go'

The complete works of one of history's greatest scientists, Charles Darwin, are being published online.

The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images of original publications - all of it searchable.

Surfers with MP3 players can even access downloadable audio files.
...
Darwin Online features many newly transcribed or never-before-published manuscripts written by the great man.

These include a remarkable field notebook from his famous Beagle voyage to the Galapagos Islands, where detailed observations of the wildlife would later forge his scientific arguments.

wow a Darwin Galapagos field notebook
how cool is that?
like seeing the sunrise of a potent and seminal meme
it needs Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra as a soundtrack

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Charles Darwin's works go online

The girl approached me on a desolate stretch of Metropolitan Parkway, about halfway between the airport and the clustered lights of the downtown skyline. The night was unusually cold and she was shivering a little. She told me she was 15, but she didn’t look more than 12.

It was bad enough that the child was outside at all at midnight. The fact that she was turning tricks was heartbreaking. I explained that I was a reporter for The New York Times and asked if she would wait while I went to get someone to help her. She looked surprised. “I don’t need any help,” she said.

someone needs to introduce her pimp to Travis Bickle

Young, Cold and for Sale - New York Times

How a beauty queen was helped by Nelson Mandela to catch up on her lost education. The story of Peggy Sue Khumalo and a changing South Africa.

When beauty queens are crowned, what are they going to take away as a prize?

Peggy Sue Khumalo, winner of Miss South Africa, had a steely certainty about what she wanted: the university education that she'd been denied.

Unconventional perhaps. But Peggy Sue, who grew up in the grinding unfairness of apartheid, has spent a lifetime defying other people's stereotypes.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The South African queen

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill

list of quality insults

When insults had class - Sticking in the daggers - on Bore Me