Being "always on" is being always off, to something.
Paris Match
Topic: Arts
7:24 am EDT, Aug 19, 2008
Just months after his May 2007 election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy faced growing criticism over his stalled reforms, flashy style, and stormy divorce. The last straw should have been his whirlwind remarriage, to an Italian heiress, ex-model, and singer who had past liaisons with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, among others, and nude photos all over the Internet. But the lady in question, Carla Bruni, is proving an unexpected asset. At the Élysée Palace, Maureen Orth encounters a pair of romantic predators who appear to have met their matches.
From the recent archive:
Carla Bruni, first lady of France, has a new album.
And from the thread in 2005 about her first album:
For some, the idea of listening to songs in another language is akin to watching a ball game in which the ball is invisible: meaningless and frustrating. For me, it works the other way round. Freed from following the words, I am ready to be lured by the sound of the singer's voice, alert to the interplay between voice and instruments.
We've got comely shepherds and shepherdesses in pristine neo-Classical tunics standing around in their fields. They sing, they dance, they discourse on love. If they do any actual herding of sheep, we don't see it.
Second, on Ludivine Sagnier's new film (watch the video):
Arguably, "A Girl Cut in Two" is more fun around the edges, as an assemblage of bizarre supporting characters and throwaway comic bits, than it is down the middle, as a classic French morality tale about an innocent girl despoiled by two warring predators. Chabrol's intermittent parody of provincial French television is hilarious, and Cavalli, Silhol, Marie Bunel and the feral, dominatrix-like Mathilda May stand out amid a cast of amazing women. But Sagnier's luminous performance is in every way the heart of the picture; Gabrielle is the one real person, the one who strives, suffers, yearns and survives in this world of grotesque artifice.
Here's NYT on the film:
It is, in truth, a rich, textured divertissement from Claude Chabrol, a sinister master of the art, who, after a series of vague if invariably entertaining cinematic sketches, has returned to elegant tight form with an erotically charged, beautifully directed story of a woman preyed upon by different men and her own warring desires.
Next up, Woody Allen's new film:
In fact, for my money Cruz's modest supporting role is the best thing about the movie.
NYT:
Bathed in light so lusciously golden and honeyed that you might be tempted to lick the screen, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a rueful comedy about two young American women who, during a summertime European idyll, savor many of the Continental delicacies that such travelers often take pleasure in: art, music, culture, yes, but also strange bodies and unexpected dreams.
Woody Allen’s new movie has an easy, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters.
Now for the not:
The ossification of "Star Wars" continues with "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated sub-chapter (appendix? owner's manual?) of George Lucas's cynically plundered saga. This one shucks off all pretense that "Star Wars" has a wonderfully universal appeal and instead unfolds with all the entertainment value of watching somebody else play a video game.
From what I have read it is everything I have feared in a Star Wars film. The plot centers around Jabba the Hutt’s son nicknamed Stinky (not making this up) getting kidnapped and Anakin Skywalker and his new, hip, cool, sassy, spunky, teenage female sidekick — who apparently refers to him as “Sky Guy” — try to rescue him. This addition is on the level of adding Poochie to The Itchy and Scratchy Show, only for real.
Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.
Check out the highlights. And for other samples, see here.
Let's face it, we are dealing with the adaptation of the world's largest industry, under the pull and push of different problems. To have even a small chance to improve matters and end our dependence on imported oil, we need to ask basic questions: What problems do we intend to solve? And in what order? Environmental? Economic? National security? They are all important, but our answers lead to different approaches and to different outcomes.
Personally, my bias is that national security has to be our first priority. We can't lead the world if we're on our knees begging often-hostile nations for oil. Wars have been fought over natural resources, and this could happen again. But whatever the answer, objectivity and clarity are essential for us to make progress on the issue that informs the life of our generation.
From the archive:
World Made By Hand, by James Howard Kunstler -- a novel of America's post-oil future
Is an imperial presidency destroying what America stands for? Bill Moyers sits down with history and international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich who identifies three major problems facing our democracy: the crises of economy, government and militarism, and calls for a redefinition of the American way of life
Two decades after al-Qaeda was founded in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar by Osama bin Laden and a handful of veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project -- to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate -- has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.
No matter what bin Laden's fate, Muslims around the world are increasingly taking a dim view of his group and its suicide operations. In the late 1990s, bin Laden was a folk hero to many Muslims. But since 2003, as al-Qaeda and its affiliates have killed Muslim civilians by the thousands from Casablanca to Kabul, support for bin Laden has nose-dived, according to Pew polls taken in key Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Pakistan.
At 20, al-Qaeda is losing its war, but its influence will live on. As Michael Scheuer, who founded the CIA's bin Laden unit in 1996, points out, "Their mission is accomplished: worldwide instigation and inspiration." To our grief, that legacy will endure, even after al-Qaeda is defeated.
'Millennium bomber' sentence tossed out by US court
Topic: War on Terrorism
7:24 am EDT, Aug 19, 2008
A federal appeals court Friday threw out the 22-year sentence imposed on Algerian Ahmed Ressam for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium.
The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to U.S. District Court in Seattle to recalculate a sentence for his conviction on nine felony counts. It was the second time the appellate court has scrapped Ressam's sentence.
This course examines the role of the engineer as patent expert and as technical witness in court and patent interference and related proceedings. It discusses the rights and obligations of engineers in connection with educational institutions, government, and large and small businesses. It compares various manners of transplanting inventions into business operations, including development of New England and other U.S. electronics and biotechnology industries and their different types of institutions. The course also considers American systems of incentive to creativity apart from the patent laws in the atomic energy and space fields.
"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."
We've been here before. This is like that store in the run-down strip mall that has been Going Out of Business for the last ten years, although this one happens to have much better stuff on offer.
