noted

CM friend zunguzungu has three must-reads up, on Bush Doctrine, McCain, Obama, and all things considered. Bush Doctrine is about lynching, Lynching, Shock & Awe and other violent spectacles, Death and American Spectacles, Take three

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“If we must say something, let’s at least only say true things.1 The principle of his fiction, as I understand it.” Zadie Smith @ McSweeney’s. “He went on to mention, all too briefly, his hope that there might be “a model for what free, informed adulthood might look like in the context of Total Noise: [...]

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From *Daily Waqt* – published from Lahore, Sunday August 31, 2008: Obama’s mother stayed in Pakistan for 5 years Lahore (Pervez Al-Islam): The mother of American Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, Mrs. Ann Dunham lived in Pakistan for five years. During this time, Barack Obama also visited his mother and stayed for a few month. Mrs. [...]

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<media critique>Good God, this is some ridiculous shite.</media critique> Oh, for full effect, turn the volume off and just follow the subtitles.

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Film scholar David Bordwell’s blog is about the only thing I read on film and this entry on WKW’s two versions for Ashes of Time Days of Being Wild is just awesome read for us fans (of both Wong Kar Wai and David Bordwell). I know, long post. But the end leads to another long [...]

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While Hijab-Gate continues to roll across our screens and inboxes, the world was just made safer for terrorist snoopers. Priorities, people! update: Just saw Obama’s disappointing statement. Also: First Day of Summer.

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Fox News unveiled their strategy for keeping the WH for the Republicans: Next up? Obama shown sippin Cristal? I don’t know if this musters a mythbusting entry but one can never be too careful. Gawker lists the Top Five.

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Thank god May is over soon.

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I have long admired Rosenbaum as one of the two premier critics in Chicago (the other one should be an obvious guess). He has now retired from the erstwhile Chicago Reader and all his reviews are now online. Including one of my favorite one – on Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private [...]

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Pardon the title but being a fan of visual representation of quantitative data, and of Edward Tufte, I really, really liked The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts, 1986-2008 by Mathew Bloch, Lee Byron, Shan Carter and Amanda Cox. Great stuff. Us historians need to learn from these guys ways of presenting historical [...]

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I will be in Berlin and Copenhagen next week. Any gentle readers in continental Europe are urged to make arrangements for a proper sitdown with this provincial, liberal sectarian. Rest can go about their own business.

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This just made my day.

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From Jane Kramer’s The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a tenure battle at Barnard, New Yorker, April 21, 2008: Hannah Temple, a MEALAC major who graduated last June, told me, “I left Columbia sorry to have had my academic experience in that department. You couldn’t get anything done; it was so bitterly divided. And then there [...]

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Catching up on my NYer, I see that Salman Rushdie is now doing movie tie-in literature. To coincide with the release of Jodha Akbar, is his maudlin The Shelter of the World. Finally, someone brings the missing Three Deep Marks on testicles to the historical narrative discovered by the mighty good fillum. Um. Enjoy?

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“The last thing we’d want is boxes and boxes of crumpled receipts.” Um, brilliant.

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As you know, The Atlantic has opened up its archives for free – following NYT etc. I recommend, The Young Kipling, December 1887 – extracts from letters and diaries of a young American girl living in Allahabad and getting to know Kipling. “How Kipling does love those wild men of the North! He calls them [...]

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We came here from Georgia. Our family did. Horse and wagon. I pretty much know that for a fact. I know they’s a lots of things in a family history that just aint plain so. Any family. The stories get passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that [...]

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Of course, one needs flour to make cake. The Dictator Formerly Known As The General recently opined that the flour crisis is not real and that the cost of flour in Pakistan is, in fact, cheaper than neighboring countries. Let it be noted that the price of flour in Pakistan is 3 or 4 times [...]

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